Earth news

Understanding the Complex History Of China's Geology

May 13, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The death toll from the 7.9 earthquake in China grows greater. Heroic efforts by the Chinese military and others, trying desperately to dig out the unfortunate people trapped in the rubble continues. As usual, regulating the building earthquake-proof structures is a very important government function. The many tragedies we see in earthquakes are due to improper or weak architecture. Modern cities must heed the lessons of other cities' woes! The school that collapsed in China is a classic example: it should have never happened. Also, we look yet again at the Himalayan mountain region and the geology of central China and why this is so unstable. Geologists are still trying to figure out how the earth's different elements intersect and interact there.

Search for China quake survivors

A massive search and rescue operation is under way in south-western China after one of the most powerful earthquakes in decades. Troops have arrived in Wenchuan county at the epicentre, which was largely cut off by the quake - but heavy rain is hampering rescue operations.

Elsewhere in Sichuan province, frantic efforts are being made to reach thousands of people under the rubble.
The death toll is now more than 12,000, officials say, and looks set to rise.

It is quite moving to see the frantic efforts of the military as they burrow deeper and deeper into the school to dig out the children. Some of the children are still alive. The soldiers are bringing in IV fluid to attach to survivors who are in shock as well as dangerously dehydrated from the cement dust in the ruins. These efforts are in strong contrast to the horrors of the poor, suffering people of Burma. There, the madcap military dictator refuses to give even slight aid. Maliciously leaving the people to fend for themselves, already over 30,000 have died. By the way, all of this is a reminder as to why we have a central government and why it has to exist to protect the people from earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis, etc. Our own government has sent much of our own military to Iraq rather than have them here to protect us. When the inevitable earthquake wrecks a good part of California, there will be no soldiers to come pouring in within the first 6 hours to dig out survivors or bring aid.

This is a warning to all Americans to cease sleepwalking in the Iraq war! If we continue this way, we will pay in precious lives at home. If our rulers want wars, they can raise troops some other way. Not send all our National Guard far away.

I have written extensively in the past about the Tibet/China clash of continental land masses. India, which is part of the Austro-Indian plate, has moved northwards very rapidly and slammed into Eurasia, causing the greatest mountain building on earth. This week's massive earthquake is related to this business. Surrounding this tremendous mountain building is some of the queerest geology on earth. When we look at this part of the planet using different tools, we see clearly, something is not right. The thinnest crust is right next door to the thickest crust on earth. And the dynamics of the lithosphere is very strange here, probably due to the rapid movement of the India half of the large plate which has not one but two continental masses. Here is an earlier story I wrote about all this:

Geologists Contradict Each Other About Tibetan Plateau

One thing about wanting pet theories to work is to look at one or another aspect. Then the puzzle seems to 'fit'. But always, when arranging a theory, one has to look at all possible similar situations and see if they match in any way. The fact of this matter is, definitely something is at work with the Tibetan plateau, the fact that the center of the Tibetan highlands is an awful lot like so many other centers of massive mountainbuilding/continental collisions means there is something rather common about all these situations. Namely, they are all operating on the same principles.

I used a box of Jiffy mix yellow cake and baked it at 400 degrees. Then I let it cool rapidly and it collapsed very neatly. A fun experiment if you don't mind a cake raw in the center and over-baked on the edges.

In this case, I would suggest that when plates, both oceanic and continental, collide and one begins to climb over the other, it is like baking a cake, literally, since this friction and compression 'cooks' everything, the whole beings to rise until a critical point is reached and then the center collapses, leaving a classic ring of mountains around a depressed center.

Perhaps the mantle, after a lot of landmass piles up on top of it and it is compressed more and more, a section in the center breaks off and begins to sink. As this slips lower, the mountains around the developing sinkhole rise, sort of like if you press down on a pillow, the edges rise.

Here is the Independent UK article I was referring to:

By Paul Rodgers
Published: 18 February 2007

The discovery of the missing mantle - the cold, heavy rock beneath the crust - was revealed last week by Professor Wang-Ping Chen at the University of Illinois, whose team used more than 200 super-sensitive seismometers strung across the Himalayas, from India deep into Tibet.

"While attached, this immense piece of mantle under Tibet acted as an anchor, holding the land above in place," said Professor Chen, whose results are to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. "Then, about 15 million years ago, the chain broke and the land rose."

By pushing the Himalayas to their current altitude, more than 8,000m above sea level, and raising the Tibetan plateau to 5,000m, the detachment of the block was responsible for both the monsoon rains that make south Asia so fertile and the Gobi desert in central Asia. Warm winds blowing from the Pacific Ocean cool as they rise over the mountains, releasing the moisture they contain as torrential rains, leaving almost no water to fall on the arid interior of the continent.

Nearly all of the great quakes are at the 10 kilometer level. As we see here with this latest example:

IRIS map:

Another interesting aspect of this latest quake in China is how far it was felt: 1,000 miles! The entire eastern half of the nation felt it. A year ago, I found some great gravity field maps of the earth while doing a story about meteorite strikes on the moon.

Here is the NASA earth gravity map:

The gravity field right below India is by far and away, the lightest on earth. But the densest is where the rest of the Australian-India plate is being subducted under the Asian plate: the most geologically active area on earth, the Sumatran chain. The densest place on earth is not the Himalayan mountains nor the Rocky mountains. It is actually the front edge of this very fast moving plate. This same plate is also moving much faster than all the other plates on earth at this time. The speed is many multiples faster than the rest of the continents. Geologists still don't know why this is. But obviously, there is a great disturbance in the planetary lithosphere connected to this particular plate! The other place with a high gravity value is, oddly enough, the north Atlantic Ocean.

I drew in some lines showing the outer edges of the Australian plate which clearly shows how it is wrapping around the Asian plate. Both India and Australia ride along their plate while the middle section between them is being stretched and warped as it folds around Asia. India, on the other hand, is crashing into Asia and shoving it rapidly upwards. Is this plate being stretched to a great degree by all this? Is this why the weakest gravity spot is right next door to the Sumatran subduction zone?

All of this is very connected with the geology of China. China is being squeezed like in a vise by the Australian-Indian plate. For the last 2 months, the Sumatran subduction zone which has been tremendously active since the Great Boxing Day Quake, one of the biggest quakes in 100 years. Japan just had a serious quake just offshore last week. Now, this latest big quake in China. And the US West coast is still having quakes along the Juan de Fucas and the San Andreas system, far more than in the last 5 years. Perhaps the energy released from the Great Boxing Day Quake has worked like a spring to pop the Australian half of the plate northwards yet again, shoving the Pacific Plate ever harder against both the Asian subduction zone off of Japan as well as the North American Plate?

National Geographic map:

In Asia, behind the leading edge of the fast moving Australian-Indian Plate, we see some interesting features. Nearly always, when plates collide like this, we get volcanos and huge uplift mountains. Several things here: the leading edge of India is not producing volcanos. It is causing only uplifts. Nor are there any volcanos in Burma and Thailand, for example. Only further to the south, in Sumatra, are there volcanos and these are some of the nastiest ones on earth. I also highlighted two interesting features in China, both of which are important in today's story about the earthquakes: the Xinjiang depression and the Chengdu depression. These are behind the Himalayan mountains. Actually, there are other, similar depressions. All over the planet, active geological areas where there is rapid mountain building, we see these odd depressions. All active mountain regions have 'long valleys' associated with them that often lie between costal mountains next to subduction zones and more distant mountains due to uplift.

Geologic framework and tectonic evolution of the Qinling orogen, central China

Qing-Ren Meng and Guo-Wei Zhang

Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China

The geologic framework of the Qinling orogen was built up through interplay of three blocks, the North China block (including the North Qinling), the South Qinling, and the South China block, separated by the Shangdan and Mianlue sutures. The Shangdan suture resulted from Middle Paleozoic collision of the North China block and the South Qinling. The Mianlue suture resulted from Late Triassic collision of the South Qinling and the South China block. Present upper crust of the Qinling is structured dominantly by thrust–fold systems. The North Qinling displays thick-skinned deformation with crystalline basement involved, whilst the South Qinling is characterized by thin-skinned thrusts and folds detached above the Lower Sinian. Two types of Precambrian basement, crystalline and transitional, are defined according to lithology and metamorphic grade and different in age. Stratigraphic and sedimentary architecture is characterized by distinct zonation.

The Qinling orogen experienced a prolonged continental divergence and convergence between blocks. During the period from Late Neoproterozoic to Early Paleozoic times, the South Qinling was the northern margin of the South China block, and the North Qinling was the southern margin of the North China block, separated by a Proto-Tethyan Qinling Ocean. The North Qinling evolved into an active margin when the Proto-Tethyan Qinling Ocean subducted northward during Ordovician time. Collision of the South and North Qinling took place in Middle Paleozoic along the Shangdan suture. Synchronous with the collision, rifting occurred at the southern rim of the South Qinling and was followed by the opening of the Paleo-Tethyan Qinling Ocean during the Late Paleozoic, resulting in the splitting of the South China block from the South Qinling. Collision of the South Qinling and the South China block came about in the Late Triassic along the Mianlue suture. The Late Triassic collisional orogeny caused extensive fold-and-thrust deformation and granitoid intrusions throughout the Qinling, and led to final amalgamation of the North and South China blocks.

In other words, China is actually two major continental masses that have been alternately squeezed and then depressions widened, most likely due to the sudden collapse of the lithosphere. The resulting ocean was then eliminated due to the nutcracker effect of the break up of the Antarctic-Australian-Indian plate, most likely due to the Permian meteorite strike that may have eliminated most life forms in the greatest extinction on earth. This is probably why, outside of the depressions of Xinjiang, Chengdu and Mongolia, China has virtually no flat plains like India, Russia, the US, central Africa, Brazil, etc.

TECTONIC EVOLUTION OF EASTERN CHINA

Several orogenic belts transecting eastern China are the sites of former convergent plate margins, although there have been varying views on the collisional framework of individual continental blocks, styles of convergence at these zones, and the timing of respective collisions. A tectonic study of eastern China, Mongolia and the southern Soviet Far East indicates the collision of the South China Block with a combined North China-Northeast China Fold Zone Block in the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic, their collective suturing to Eurasia in the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous, followed by the Sikhote Alin-Japan Block in the Mid to Late Cretaceous.

The evidence is as follows: (1) A linear belt of Late Triassic-Early Cretaceous granites and granodiorites trends east from the Qinlingshan through the Dabieshan to the Huaiyang massif. Ophiolites, flysch, subduction zone melange, a paired metamorphic belt indicating north dipping subduction and marine strata of Carboniferous to Late Triassic age from the Qinlingshan define the suture between the North and South China Blocks,

(2) A sinuous belt of ultramafics, blueschists, silicic to intermediate magmatism and west and north vergent folds and thrusts trend from the west margin of the Ordos Basin through central Inner Mongolia and along the east Great Khingan Range to the Amur River. Coupled with a Mid Jurassic-Early Creataceous unconformity a suturing of eastern Chinese blocks to Eurasia along this zone is suggested,

(3) A fold and thrust belt with ultramafics, flysch, blueschists and subduction zone melange along the Ussuri River in northeast China indicates the suturing of the Sikhote Alin-Japan Block to Eurasia along a west dipping subduction zone in the Mid to Late Cretaceous. Similarly, a tectonic study of southern China and Southeast Asia has revealed a complex regional mosaic of suture-bounded terrains which nucleated about the eastern, western and southern margins of the Yangtze Craton during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. The evidence is as follows:

(4) A north–south trending belt of ophiolites, blueschists, calc-alkaline volcanics and subduction zone melange, including granites, granodiorites arid strongly deformed marine strata all of Late Triassic age exposed in the Longmenshan of Sichuan merge with the Kekexilishan ophiolite zone Into the Ailaoshan-Tengtiaohe ophiolite and blueschist belt in central Yunnan along which the Songban-Ganzi Complex and the Shan-Thai-Malaya Block join the Craton, and

(5) A southeastern prolongation of the Ailaoshan-Tengtiaohe belt bifurcates into the southeast trending Konvoi zone of northern Vietnam and the north–south trending Pak Lay-Luang Prabang zone of Laos and eastern Thailand. Zones of ophiolite, calc-alkaline volcanics and strong Late Triassic deformation, they separate the Indosinia and Shan-Thai-Malaya Blocks from the Craton respectively. These findings differ significantly from previous interpretations of a Late Paleozoic consolidation of South–Eastern Asia as well as disputing the existence of a true Pangea.

The dispute about the inner workings of this region continue and shall continue as geologists unearth greater details of this strange region. I still think the biggest mystery is why the Australian-Indian Plate is moving so fast in the first place. India definitely has been greatly slowed down ever since plowing into Asia but Australia is still moving at a tremendously fast geological rate and by far, the most earthquakes on earth are along the leading edge of Australia. The fact that Australia itself is so geologically silent while creating the greatest havoc on earth is also a big puzzle. Eventually, all of Southeast Asia will be folded into China and perhaps Japan will be crushed between Australia and Russia a few million years from now.

A New Look into the Center of the Earth

The inner reaches of the Earth remain shrouded in mystery. Even the surface of Mars has been explored more extensively. Because deep drilling comes to a halt after a maximum of 12 kilometers, the remaining 6,300 kilometers to the center of the Earth remain inaccessible.
*snip*
“Old, cold plates are pushed down into the Earth’s mantle on the continental edges,” he explains. “At this point they collect large amounts of iron. You can imagine it as something similar to water condensation.” Weighted down by the iron, the plates sink farther and farther into the hot, molten rock until they reach the inner sanctum of the Earth’s mantle. There, at a depth of 2,900 kilometers, they finally halt their decent and settle into “plate graveyards.” This is presumably the outer edge of the earth’s heavy core, where the temperature is 4,000 degrees Celsius (7,200 degrees Fahrenheit).

Brimming with enthusiasm, Maruyama continues: “But the capsized continents don’t simply rest in their plate graveyards forever.” Rather, they are about to experience a sudden resurrection. Heat and pressure in the depths trigger chemical processes, causing the plates to deposit their load of heavy elements. Once liberated of this burden, they become lighter than their surroundings, causing them to rise like corks in water. The result: Above the old plate graves, on the floor of the Earth’s molten mantle, a mushroom-shaped upwelling of abnormally hot magma called a mantle plume makes its way toward the surface.

Eventually, the rising flow of molten rock reaches the crystallized crust and cuts through it like a welding torch. Volcanoes form, such as those on the Big Island of Hawaii. Maruyama says the red hot lava that erupts on the volcanic island comes directly from an old plate cemetery 2,900 kilometers below the surface, where the remains of an ancient continent that broke up some 750 million years ago simmer to the surface. His theory postulates the amazing comeback story of this ancient rock from the deep.

All this surface chaos is causing parts of the lithosphere to detach and collapse. The latest major earthquake is in such a battle ground: on the edge of a nearly circular spot where there is surrounding mountains and a depression.

From an earlier story at my site about volcanic hot spots and the gravity maps:

The movement of India is most astonishing: unlike most other plates, when the India subcontinent calved off of the Antarctic landmass, it took off like a bullet and shot north, hitting Asia which is moving eastwards in a long, slow arc, slamming into the belly of that great landmass with such forward force, it has raised the tallest mountains on earth which are still rising for this sector hasn't exhausted its momentum yet.
*snip*
What lurked under the joining of India, Africa and Antarctica? That center point where everything broke apart? Why is the deepest low gravity point associated with the Indian Ocean Plate and India itself INCLUDING TIBET?

From an earlier article about the lithosphere:

The question is, why are the two largest land masses on the northern hemisphere moving in a turning motion, towards one spot in the Pacific? We know they are being pushed but why in that particular direction? There is nothing at the North Pole that could be pushing them, is there? Antarctica is nearly totally stationary. Perhaps this is due to the heavy load of ice sitting on top. The earth isn't round and we have a moon that has enough gravitational pull to yank the huge oceans into high and low tides that are quite obvious on the ground.

We also have a widening Atlantic Ocean that is smaller than the Pacific. The weight of the oceans, the thinness of the ocean floors, the lithosphere, all these things affect the movement of the plates.

Here is a map of the earth I drew last year showing the general movement of the earth's plates. Note how the pressure directions for Asia are all towards the Pacific. And the leading edge of India is not due north but actually aimed straight at the region where yesterday's earthquake occurred.

This map I drew shows how all the plates except for South America are being dragged relentlessly towards one spot in the Pacific Ocean just offshore of Japan, around the Micronesian Islands. Maybe this is where the New Pangea will arise?

Perhaps the base of Australia (and India) were detached from the lithosphere allowing them to flow with minimal friction? One can only guess. What we do know is, the leading edge of Australia is causing mountain building via volcanoes. But the buckling of the continent's leading edge is minor compared to the leading edge of North America that is violently buckling under the stress of trying to crash over the Pacific Plate, indeed, it is probably shoving that plate westards at a good clip, considering. Except this doesn't explain much of anything!

Why is the Pacific Plate moving so swiftly into Asia? It hits Asia and slides under with great violence. We know that Eurasia is moving towards the Pacific thanks to the Atlantic rifting. But why is it cartwheeling to this one point in the ocean that happens to be the same spot Australia is determined to head into? If I were looking at this as a dynamic system on a flat surface, I would suspect there is some magnetic force at work, if this were concave, I would suspec that is the lowest point.

But this is a globe and there is no singular reason for all the northern landmasses to move towards that spot. Heh. Maybe I should call it 'The Great Attractor' in honor of that mega-complex of galaxies that our own is heading towards at break neck speed!

And this week's news reminds us of the curious business concerning the 10 kilometer level. Why is this a very favorite level for mega-earthquakes?

The Lithosphere Has Collapsed In Huge Areas

One of the things that always intrigues me is the number of earthquakes at the 10km level. Many 8 to 9 mag earthquakes like the terrible Boxing Day Tsunami event, are at that depth. Click on the chart here to enlarge it. This is from 3/3/2007, a normal day with a long list of earthquakes. Nearly half of them are at the 10 km depth.

Up until recently, we were taught that the lithosphere was the same all over except where it was being subducted under a continent, for example. Also, theories about tectonic plate movements suggested that the continents were basically unchanging except at the outer edges where they would bump into each other or join together like India crashing into Asia. But as scientists probe this planet's innermost structures, a totally different picture is now emerging, one that is very disturbing.

The continents are actually quite prone to falling apart because the base upon which they rest can suddenly collapse.

The discovery that a segment of the ocean floor, not just the lithosphere but the whole thing, fell away suddenly into the depths of the mantle, is an eye-opener indeed. This event happened where the earth's plates are moving apart but I suspect this is the wrong imagery. Perhaps the better idea is to think of the split that runs the entire planet from the Artic to the Antarctic plate is a serious crack in the earth.

These are two charts I drew up last year, while wondering about how the lithosphere operates.

Surface Deformation and Lower Crustal Flow in Eastern Tibet

Field observations and satellite geodesy indicate that little crustal shortening has occurred along the central to southern margin of the eastern Tibetan plateau since about 4 million years ago. Instead, central eastern Tibet has been nearly stationary relative to southeastern China, southeastern Tibet has rotated clockwise without major crustal shortening, and the crust along portions of the eastern plateau margin has been extended. Modeling suggests that these phenomena are the result of continental convergence where the lower crust is so weak that upper crustal deformation is decoupled from the motion of the underlying mantle. This model also predicts east-west extension on the high plateau without convective removal of Tibetan lithosphere and without eastward movement of the crust east of the plateau.

So, on top of literally everything, part of Tibet is actually being rotated in place while everything around this section is moving in one direction, northwards, due to India? If India was just a single continent mashing itself into Asia, we wouldn't see all these peculiar geological situations in China, would we? I would surmise that all these peculiar conditions are due to the entire Australian-Indian Plate riding up over Asia as India is doing while the other half is being subducted under Asia here the Australian-India Plate is very weak and underwater? So this is stretching both the Australian-Indian Plate as well as twisting and turning the Asian Plate where it is the weakest...namely, in the regions where east and west China were mashed together by this same Australian-Indian Plate movements?

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Dirty Volcanic Eruption In Chile Can Change Climate

May 7, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

A mid-sized volcano in Chile is having a major-sized volcanic event. If it blows off its crown, it can change global weather. It all depends on volume, power of the explosive forces breaking out into the stratosphere and the mass of ejected particulate matter and aerosol gases. We have had several 'cooling off' periods caused by volcanos during my lifetime. And in history, volcanic activity has pushed forwards evolution and has caused mini-ice ages as well as starvation and privations. Indeed, some huge volcanic eruptions have nearly killed off all homo sapiens in Africa long ago. Only about 2,000 humans survived the effects of a major volcano in Sumatra blowing up. Volcanos are the engines of evolution just as meteorites can alter the course of nature.

Chile eruption spurs evacuations

Chaiten volcano in the southern Patagonia region began erupting on Friday for the first time in 450 years.

Ash from the volcano has caused disruption in neighbouring Argentina. Sitting on the edge of the South American and Nazca tectonic plates, Chile is in one of the most volcanically-active regions on Earth. Experts say about 20 of its more than 100 active volcanoes are in danger of erupting at any time.
*snip*
"Today the volcano is erupting with pyroclastic material [of hot ash and gas] on a different scale," he told Reuters news agency.

"We... have ordered the immediate precautionary evacuation of all civilians, military and press in Chaiten."
A government vulcanologist warned there could be a big eruption at any time.

"There could be a major explosion that could collapse the volcano's cone," said Luis Lara of the National Geologic and Mining Service.

Here is the You Tube video of this event:

Notice how wide the volcanic eruption is at its base. This is no narrow hiccup by a volcano releasing pressure. It is wide and deep. The resulting cloud of gases and volcanic dust is very intense. There is no lava or fireworks. This is dark, dark material pouring out. Volcanos that are 'dirty' like this are the ones that have the biggest impact on the weather and thus, on all living things. If a volcano also blows up and this one certainly has the capacity to do this, then the world's temperatures can fall significantly.

Click here for the CNN photos at sunset.

Here are the IRIS maps showing the series of 4+mag earthquakes where the volcano is erupting.

This volcanic event is close to Antarctica and far from the Northern Hemisphere. I checked the weather maps and during this time of year, the prevailing winds are eastwards. This is causing problems for Argentina as the volcano's dust is falling thickly there.

Here is the map of all the many volcanos on the 'leading edge' of South America.

Large red triangles show volcanoes with known or inferred Holocene eruptions; small red triangles mark volcanoes with possible, but uncertain Holocene eruptions or Pleistocene volcanoes with major thermal activity. Yellow triangles distinguish volcanoes of other regions.

When I first bought our little slice of the mountain here in Berlin, it was a splendid year, 1990. The fall was so warm, we joked about global warming turning the place into Virginia weather, not the harsher Northeastern weather. It was so warm, when we staked out the perimeters of the house we planned to build, we had absolutely no fear of the following winter. And we did quite well during it. We had less than 3 feet of snow altogether. And it became warm by the end of March. So I looked forwards to an easy summer, doing serious foundation and basement work on the house.

Then, we saw the news on TV: Mt. Pinatubo blew its stack on the other side of the planet. I ran outside to see if there was the characteristic very high, very white sheet of volcanic dust and there it was! The normally very blue sky was wane and pale. 'The weather is going to change for the worse,' I warned my husband. The sun seemed to dim slightly. We were using solar energy and we could see on the computer's screen the output was dropping.

'This is going to be a problem if the volcano keeps up,' I said. I was worried and decided to get some more kerosene lanterns for fear that we would have reduced solar energy.

Mount Pinatubo Eruption

The Volcanic Mount Pinatubo Eruption of 1991 that Cooled the Planet

Aug 5 2007
In June 1991, the second largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century* took place on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, a mere 90 kilometers (55 miles) northwest of the capital city Manila. Up to 800 people were killed and 100,000 became homeless following the Mount Pinatubo eruption, which climaxed with nine hours of eruption on June 15, 1991. On June 15, millions of tons of sulfur dioxide were discharged into the atmosphere, resulting in a decrease in the temperature worldwide over the next few years.
*snip*
In addition to the ash, Mount Pinatubo ejected between 15 and 30 million tons of sulfur dioxide gas. Sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere mixes with water and oxygen in the atmosphere to become sulfuric acid, which in turn triggers ozone depletion. Over 90% of the material released from the volcano was ejected during the nine hour eruption of June 15.

The eruption plume of Mount Pinatubo's various gases and ash reached high into the atmosphere within two hours of the eruption, attaining an altitude of 34 km (21 miles) high and over 400 km (250 miles) wide. This eruption was the largest disturbance of the stratosphere since the eruption of Krakatau in 1883 (but ten times larger than Mount St. Helens in 1980). The aerosol cloud spread around the earth in two weeks and covered the planet within a year. During 1992 and 1993, the Ozone hole over Antarctica reached an unprecedented size.

The cloud over the earth reduced global temperatures. In 1992 and 1993, the average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere was reduced 0.5 to 0.6°C and the entire planet was cooled 0.4 to 0.5°C. The maximum reduction in global temperature occurred in August 1992 with a reduction of 0.73°C. The eruption is believed to have influenced such events as 1993 floods along the Mississippi river and the drought in the Sahel region of Africa. The United States experienced its third coldest and third wettest summer in 77 years during 1992.

Note how the pictures of Mt. Pinatubo look an awful lot like the eruption in Chile today. This is not a good thing to see. I was trained in childhood to look for the effects of volcanic eruptions. My grandfather saw the effects of Krakatoa in the 19th century and described to us the strange light effects this caused. When Mt. Agung in Sumatra blew its stack in 1963, we were driving from the McDonald Observatory in Texas to Kitt Peak in Tucson. Suddenly, the western sunset flared into brilliant reds and golds. My mother yelled, 'A volcano has blown up!' And my dad stopped the car and set up instruments and camera and spend the rest of the evening, studying it. They eventually wrote a book about this.

We noted that every time a volcano blew up from 1963 to 1976, it got really cold and wet, lots and lots of rain even in Tucson. One volcanic year, the rivers flooded and the desert was all green. We had to walk on boards to get to and from the buses because of the mud! We missed school because the Tanque Verde river overran the bridge, cutting off our ranch from the city.

Back to 1991: A hot June turned swiftly to freezing cold. We have a video of my son and I running around in our winter coats in the freezing cold! Danny and I began to frantically build our winter supply of wood. We were fearful. By October, we had a huge pile of wood. Only the freezing rain made it into a solid mess. We took axes to it and couldn't break it apart! It began to snow in ernest before Halloween.

'Oh my god, we are going to die!' I thought. So I strengthened the tent's roof and began to hoard food. But by November, we needed Duke, our sled dog, to haul up load after load of canned goods and bags of flour, etc. The snow got deeper and deeper. Eventually, we were in an igloo buried in the snow. We would hitch up the dog to his sled and go into the woods and fell trees since our woodpile was buried.

We survived. The howling storms were frightful. One storm, we had to brace the windows which bulged and almost blew out. When the deep snow melted, we marveled at the tree stumps left behind when we foraged for wood...they were over 4 feet tall! And Chris and I lay on the snow to cut as low as possible!

The following year was difficult, too. This time, due to the cold winter in China, the loess red dust caused huge dust storms that turned the sky over us, when the wind blew hard from the west to the east, a brilliant copper color. This dimmed the sun so we had a second very cold winter plus the snow was pink sometimes! By then, we had Sparky, our Alpine horse. He loved the very deep snow and couldn't wait to go tearing around with his sled in it. So we had a much easier time with him drawing up the mountain, all our supplies, giving Duke a break.

From my parent's book about volcanos and sunsets:

When partially blocked by trees or clouds, light from the setting sun breaks into unique beams called crepuscular rays that resemble the unusual sunsets produced by volcanic eruptions. Light from crepuscular rays scatters off gases in the atmosphere much as sunlight deflects off volcanic aerosols.

Huge volcanic eruptions cool earth, counter global warming

Pinatubo’s eruption triggered high-speed avalanches of hot ash and gas, huge mud flows that displaced about 20,000 indigenous Aeta highlanders and 200,000 people in the surrounding lowlands.

Volcanic gases, according to Solidum, could also deplete the ozone, humanity’s protection from sun’s radiation.

Pinatubo eruption, for example, resulted in 15 to 25 percent ozone loss at high altitude, ozone depletion in the tropics, and highly elevated levels of acting chlorines in polar regions, Solidum said, quoting a report by the Volcanism and Climate Change American Geophysical Union.

Generally, carbon dioxide generated by volcanic eruptions enhances global warming. But the estimated 110 million tons of carbon emitted by erupting volcanoes into the atmosphere a year were much less than the 10 billion tons of carbon produced annually by human activity, Solidum said.

Not all eruptions affect the climate; only big eruptions like Pinatubo’s puncture the stratosphere, according to Solidum.

We shall see if this volcanic event is on the scale of these giant eruptions. I really don't want that, right now we have an artificial famine caused by commodity speculators, the Hubbert Oil Peak oil problems and biofuel use that diverts food from humans to cars. But if we have a global volcanic 'winter' this can turn into a catastrophe. This has happened before!

The massive eruption of Mount Tambora in Sumatra caused 'A year with no summer' here in the Northeast.

The unusual climatic aberrations of 1816 had the greatest effect on the American northeast, New England, the Canadian Maritimes, Newfoundland, and northern Europe. Typically, the late spring and summer of the northeastern U.S. are relatively stable: temperatures (average of both day and night) average about 68–77 °F (20–25 °C), and rarely fall below 41 °F (5 °C). Summer snow is an extreme rarity, though May flurries sometimes occur.
In May 1816,[4] however, frost killed off most of the crops that had been planted, and in June two large snowstorms in eastern Canada and New England resulted in many human deaths. Nearly a foot of snow was observed in Quebec City in early June, with consequent additional loss of crops—most summer growing plants have cell walls which rupture in a mild frost, let alone a snowstorm coating the soils. The result was widespread localized famines, and further deaths from those who, in a hunger-weakened state, then suffered disease as well in their less resistant condition.

In July and August, lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania. Rapid, dramatic temperature swings were common, with temperatures sometimes reverting from normal or above-normal summer temperatures as high as 95 °F (35 °C) to near-freezing within hours. Even though farmers south of New England did succeed in bringing some crops to maturity, maize and other grain prices rose dramatically. Oats, for example, rose from 12¢ a bushel the previous year to 92¢ a bushel—nearly eight times as much—and oats are a necessary staple for an economy dependent upon horses for primary transportation. Those areas suffering local crop failures then had to deal with the lack of roads in the early 19th century, preventing any easy importation of bulky food stuffs.

When we were trying to survive in our tent complex during that very cold two years, we read a lot of books about the 'Year with no summer.' Needless to say, work on the house went very, very slowly. The extreme foul weather is not good for digging and laying bricks or pouring cement! By the time the weather became cooperative, my husband was poisoned at work when the museum cut off his oxygen supply while he was working with chemicals.

So I ended up nursing my husband while living in a tent while trying to build a house. We succeeded which goes to show, determination and sweat can win out over great odds. Now, I am prepared for a possible bad winter! But this is the opposite side of global warming: we are always just one volcano away from a bout of Ice Age fun.

Vog — volcanic smog — casts haze over Hawaii
Crops, humans suffering from exposure to toxic gas

Big Island crops are shriveling as sulfur dioxide from Kilauea wafts over them and envelops them in "vog," or volcanic smog. People are wheezing, and schoolchildren are being kept indoors during recess. High gas levels led Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to close several days this month, forcing the evacuation of thousands of visitors.

Residents of this volcanic island are used to toxic gas. But this haze is so bad that farmers are thinking about growing different crops, and many people are worrying about their health.

This is exactly the sort of eruption that killed off half of the people of Iceland in the 18th century and possibly triggered food riots in France and Germany and caused, supposedly, the Queen of France to utter those immortal, fatal words, 'Then let them eat cake.'

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Geologists Warn San Andreas 99% Chance Big Quake Next 35 Years

May 1, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Two more earthquakes greater than 4 mag hit the lower end of the Californian San Andreas region. So we have had a good number of medium-hard shakes at both the top and the bottom of the San Andreas. The number of micro quakes has also grown much greater lately. Of course, the many millions of people in California living on top of this very restless earth are not supposed to be alarmed. My family has lived out there since the Gold Rush. We know these dangers and know that we must pay heed to them. Time to review earthquake preparations. Even the cautious geologists fearful of losing jobs are sounding a timid alarm.

California '99 percent' certain to have major quake by 2038: scientists

A powerful earthquake capable of causing widespread destruction is 99 percent certain of hitting California within the next 30 years, scientists said Monday.

A new model devised to determine the probability of major earthquakes has found that the chances of a 6.7 magnitude earthquake not hitting California by 2038 was one percent, the US Geological Survey said.
The chances of a monster quake, measuring 7.5 or greater, were predicted at 46 percent over the same projected period, with densely populated southern California most likely to be affected.

The predictions were the result of a new system that combines information from seismology, earthquake geology, and precise measurements from the earth's surface, allowing the probabilities of a major earthquake to be forecast.
*snip*
The group found that two of California's largest cities -- Los Angeles and San Francisco -- were more than 63 percent likely to face a 6.7 quake.

A 6.7 earthquake in Los Angeles in 1994 left 60 people dead and did an estimated 10 billion dollars damage, while a 6.9 quake in San Francisco in 1989 claimed the lives of 67 people.

Geologists say one of the biggest areas of concern in California is the southern section of the San Andreas fault in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, which is described as being "10 months pregnant."
*snip*
Geologists say the fault erupts with a large earthquake ever 150 years or so, but has not relieved tension in 300 years.

First off, there is a 100% chance of a 7+ earthquake. Hell's bells! These happen like clockwork! But the 9 mag deals: they are rare. They happen when a fault can't move for many years. There is a sector of the San Andreas that moved last when my great-great grandaddy crossed it. On horseback, of course. This newspaper article even mentions this sector! But don't show detailed maps, etc. Which is a shame. Many people and many water/transportation systems cross this sector and will see a probable sudden jump sideways of more than 45 feet in less than one second.

Click here for the official IRIS site maps:

This map shows clearly how quakes have moved from a heavy dose of shaking at the important Juan de Fuca plate and now, at the bottom of California where the San Andreas plunges into the Gulf of California. Nearly all of last year, there were no quakes above 4 mag in this sector of the planet. Sumatra was very active. Now, Sumatra is very inactive. All the action is along the leading edge of the Australian part of the Indian/Australian plate, the part pushing the entire Pacific plate into the Juan de Fuca plate and the westward moving North American continent. This three way mighty clash is a big geological force creating earthquakes, tsunami and volcanos. Along with Japan, Sumatra and New Zealand, California is one of the most geologically active areas on earth.

When populations are fairly low and people live in palm frond huts, earthquakes are no great matter. Tsunamis are terrible and few structures can withstand them and they sweep away all humans in their path. And volcanos: nothing can stop a volcano. One can only run like hell. Truly, volcanos are tools of the gods as our ancestors believed.

Here is the last week's worth of quakes in California and Nevada. It is very, very long this time, very long compared to the last several years.

Now, the section of the San Andreas the geologists mention in this short news story is not hard to find. Along one side of this fault rise the highest coastal mountains. In particular, this section has the highest of them all! These mountains aren't accidental. They are the result of violent earthquakes along here. My grandfather worked on and at the great observatories built on these mountains like Mt. Palomar and Mt. Wilson. I used to play there as a child. The mountains are so new, the sides are very, very steep. These aren't like the mountain I live on here in New York which is very rounded and fairly low, brought down by millions of years of erosion and glaciers. These mountains in California are very much teenagers and growing in spurts. Like teenagers, moody and prone to violence.

Let's look at the official 'probability maps from the geological survey: 24-Hour Aftershock Forecast Map

What Are Aftershocks, Foreshocks and Earthquake Clusters?

Aftershock Facts: In a cluster, the earthquake with the largest magnitude is called the main shock; anything before it is a foreshock and anything after it is an aftershock. A main shock will be redefined as a foreshock if a subsequent event has a larger magnitude. The rate of main shocks after foreshocks follows the same patterns as aftershocks after main shocks. Aftershock sequences follow predictable patterns as a group, although the individual earthquakes are random and unpredictable. This pattern tells us that aftershocks decay with increasing time, increasing distance, and increasing magnitude. It is this average pattern that this system uses to make real-time predictions about the probability of ground shaking.

Between Parkfield and just south of Los Angeles: this is the red hot danger sector. If you bookmark this web page, it lets you know what parts are the most active at this time. A good site to keep on the computer if living in California.

Click here for maps showing intensity of the 1857 quake along this section of the Sand Andreas that has not had any major quakes since then. This is possibly the most dangerous section of the San Andreas for it has not moved much since then and it is well over 150 years. The most serious mountain ranges on the coastal side of the Central Valley and Death Valley are along this fault line.

I took the official 'scenario' maps and linked them to the bigger map of California. If you click on the picture, it will enlarge and be much easier to read.

Below is an enlargement of the official government scenario maps for the sector of the San Andreas that is the least active this last 100+ years.

The nature of this beast is, if it is a 7 mag earthquake, it will be bad. If it is a 9 mag and that is quite possible, then it can cause landslides on the Los Angeles/Pasadena side of the mountains that rear up right over the Los Angeles basin. And if it is big enough, it can trigger other fault lines which can have secondary earthquakes at 7-8 mag levels. Like we saw very clearly in Sumatra with the Great Boxing Day Quake.

This map is from the USGS. I amended it to show the general location of the many water systems that carry water from the east to the biggest cities in California. All of these systems cross the San Andreas. If even half of them are severed, this will be a huge problem for LA. If LA takes damage in a major, 9 mag event along the eastern edge of the mountains, this can translate into a huge tragedy. This is why people in this sector should store a good supply of water in plastic containers that are stored on the ground. For example, I have a 250 gallon plastic storage tank with both a battery pump and a hand pump. But just gallon containers will be good. No one will want to drink from a toilet. But this is part of being in a major city that depends nearly 100% on water brought across some of the most active and dangerous fault lines on earth.

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5.2 Earthquake In Northern California

April 30, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The latest earthquake to strike the US is, like most of them, associated with the Juan de Fuca plate. This one is the biggest so far and was very near to Mt. Shasta, an active volcano of the Cascades system. There are no fault lines near where this latest shake occurred. But if we look at earthquake maps, we can see clearly over time that the quakes are growing rapidly in number and violence. The section of the San Andreas between LA and San Jose is nearly totally frozen and doesn't even have micro shakes: a very bad sign. The Juan de Fuca plate is directly responsible for volcanic activity as well as a springboard for great quakes to the south. Also, the hinge between North and South America has been hammered by significant but sub-7.0 mag quakes this past month. The chances of a major event rises.

Magnitude-5.2 earthquake hits mountainous area of California

A moderate earthquake has hit a mountainous region of Northern California. There are no immediate reports or injury or damage.
The U.S. Geological Survey says a magnitude-5.2 temblor struck at 8:03 p.m., centered about 11 miles southeast of the town of Willow Creek in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Shasta County Sheriff's Detective Mark Haslam says the department has received no calls about the earthquake.

The fact that this happened where there are no faults is problematic. I suspect the stresses caused by the North American plate overriding the Juan de Fuca plate is causing these things to jerk violently. Even if we see the Juan de Fuca plate going under at the subduction zone where the plates meet, the plate going under doesn't vanish, it actually probably folds and flops under the continental plate. It trails downwards through the mantle according to recent research. This under-the-continent folding process destabilizes the geology of the continent and thus, we get volcanoes. I suppose this is due to the folds causing flexing below the 10 km level of the continent and the fissures and cracks created by this opens up space for lava to gush out. This is due to a classic 'between a hot mantle and a hot ocean plate' situation.

Volcanoes have this habit of snoozing for long, long times. Then, they shake and rattle. Sometimes this fades. But all too often, it ends with a loud roar or a terrible blast. Some of the richest lands are around volcanoes which process new mineral wealth into the continental plates or onto islands. But the turnover in life forms is severe. Everything is destroyed and then life creeps back in, bit by bit.

I went to Mount St. Helen's two years after the eruption there. The landscape was as barren as Antarctica and just as dazzlingly white. Today, trees and animals have slowly returned and will build their lives there until they are all wiped out yet again.

The coast adjacent to the Juan de Fuca plate is scoured of all life, too, regularly. These tsunamis are caused by underwater changes in the landscape as the North American continent lurches over the plate being squeezed ruthlessly by the Pacific plate which is being shove northwards by an out of control Australian/Indian plate. Even as the Indian half slows down as it plows into Asia, Australia is still shooting forwards faster than any plate on earth, by far.

‘Sonic boom’ preceded 5.2 quake near Burnt Ranch

“It was sort of like a sonic boom,” said Brenda Simmons of SkyCrest Lake resort in Burnt Ranch. “It was a very loud noise before the house started shaking. It was pretty scary, the biggest thing I’ve ever felt here. (It) lasted 10 seconds max. I didn’t feel the aftershock.”

I have been in quakes before and never heard any 'boom' sounds. I wonder about this. It wasn't a quake due to two plates grinding on each other. This was more like the New Madrid Quake where people reported loud booms like distant cannon fire. I wonder if this is due to a drum-like effect of the earth rising and falling? Interesting subject.

Is Mount Shasta a potentially dangerous volcano?

Our studies tell us a lot about how Mount Shasta has behaved in the past, going back as far as an older volcano that was destroyed by an enormous landslide about 300,000 years ago and coming up to our own experiences of recent debris flows. Have we come to some conclusions about whether Mount Shasta is dangerous? Yes, we have.

It seems fair to assume that Mount Shasta's most likely future activity will be similar to its past behavior. We know that it has undergone periods of major cone building; these were periods of nearly continuous lava-flow eruptions and associated explosive and other disruptive events that lasted for centuries or millennia. If some of these events were to occur in the future, they are likely to affect nearby communities, air routes and other transportation corridors in the area, and rivers that head on the volcano. Clearly, future eruptions pose a potential danger to people. We also know the volcano generates debris flows every now and then and these are capable of causing serious damage along streams draining the volcano even without an eruption. At the same time, we think that repetition of the most drastic past event that we know about—a catastrophic landslide that destroyed ancestral Mount Shasta—while possible, is rather unlikely.

Finally, we know that Mount Shasta is an active volcano—it erupted only about 200 years ago and has erupted many times in the past few thousand years. According to our studies, the volcano has erupted on average at least once every 600 years in the past 4,500 years. With such an active record of recent volcanism, we have every reason to think it will erupt again.

When Mt. St. Helen's blew up, the geological survey didn't take it all too seriously until much too late. The State of Washington was furious when the geologists tried to remove park visitors. Quite a few tourists died when this one blew up. Not to mention, scientists. These volcanoes are not like Iceland or Hawaii, these tend to blow their tops.

Here are a list of volcano web cams in the Cascade system.

Click here to see Mt. Shasta Live.

Here are some USGS government maps:

This is a map of California and Nevada, screen shot taken today. I have watched this map for several years. I have not seen, even ONCE, so many micro quakes at once, across the entire region! Not even close! Nevada is shivering as if this is January and the top and bottom of the San Andreas is trembling like an aspen in a violent windstorm. Seen close up or from afar, it is striking how shaky things are this month.

2.0 2008/04/29 22:08:14 40.875N 123.445W 17.3 21 km (13 mi) E of Willow Creek, CA
2.4 2008/04/29 20:54:38 40.838N 123.490W 26.3 18 km (11 mi) ESE of Willow Creek, CA
2.0 2008/04/29 20:08:05 40.899N 123.390W 5.0 25 km (16 mi) E of Willow Creek, CA
5.2 2008/04/29 20:03:06 40.837N 123.499W 28.5 18 km (11 mi) ESE of Willow Creek, CA

Here is a close up of the latest quake as well as the data. These quakes are all at the very dangerous 10 km level. There is no evading this fact: the biggest quakes are generated at this vital level!

We can see from the bigger planetary map, the Aleutian Islands have had some major quakes. And all of Asia has been incredibly active since the Boxing Day Great Quake.

And this map shows how the quakes are creeping northwards from Panama. Geologists are finally beginning to issue some warnings. But as usual, California is snoozing and won't wake up unless Mother Nature gives us a huge shaking. And we know that this usually happens at a bad time. If we think we are seeing housing problems now, just wait until a quake renders a huge number of homes worthless! And in the most expensive sector of the US economy outside of Manhattan's Tri State Region and DC!

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Life After People and How the Earth Was Made

April 27, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Recently a History TV publicist contacted me and asked if I would write a review of two of the shows they sell online, 'Life After People' and 'How the Earth Was Made.' They kindly sent me two DVDs and my husband and I sat down and enjoyed both shows immensely. Of course, I love any science or history shows from the get-go! Call me unbiased! These two productions utilize a number of scientists, experts and writers to explore their topics. And as I keep on saying, to understand the future, we must understand the past! And imagining a different world is good for the mind, it forces us to face reality. I do recommend these two DVDs, they make great presents.

Here is a one of the more dramatic scenes from 'Life After People' via You Tube:

Even if one can see this on You Tube, it is like looking at a movie through a pin hole. Watching this on our widescreen TV, on the other hand, was quite dramatic as well as clear as a bell. It is worth seeing it full screen, of course. As we watched 'How the Earth Was Made,' we discussed the science behind the show. Most of the time, television has to show 'mainstream' science and cutting edge information is either too recent or too controversial for inclusion in a project meant to be viewed for a number of years. But today's radical notion is tomorrow's consensus. The History people told the story of the creation and development of the earth and all its many life forms via dramatization as well as showing the history of human discoveries that led to understanding the forces of nature and the past of this planet.

Of course, this in itself is worthy of a long epic movie. I was a child when the issue of plate tectonics was being heavily debated by geologists. I got to sit unobtrusively in the room as they discussed these matters with my father and his colleagues. My father spent a lot of time with geologists as they sought out appropriate mountains for building observatories. It was not uncommon for younger geologists to be very excited about plate tectonics and the elder professors were reluctant to accept this and spent much of their energy trying to deny it existed or trying to explain it away.

This was a very hot topic by 1959 due to the rising need to understand the geology of the moon. For the space race was very hot for political reasons and no one had the faintest idea what the moon was like! There was a huge debate about the possibility that it was very thick dust that would cause any craft to sink into it and not be able to make a return flight!

Then there was Mars: my grandfather, Edison Pettit, spent a number of years at Mount Wilson, studying Mars. When I was a child, I used to assist him in his last years, building spectrographs. This began a lifelong love of machine shops [where I have taught in the past]. The geology of Mars was very much Terra Incognita. And to understand Mars we had to understand the earth. This is why geologists and astronomers socialized and debated a great deal, as they still do today. I remember my grandfather telling me, 'The Earth is just another planet.'

For starters, here is the Wikipedia entry about the creation of water on this earth:

Water in the development of the Earth

When the earth was at the planetesimal stage, there was probably already water present. This water and other lightweight, fluid constituents such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrogen (N2) originated mostly from eruptions or outgassings of the primal earth and formed a young, water-vapour free primal earth atmosphere. These were, according to present models and simulations, carried away by the solar wind that at the time of the formation of the Earth was much stronger than today, and so escaped the Earth until it had about 40% its current radius (and gravity could retain the atmosphere).[1] Later through volcanism came the creation of a newer atmosphere, which may also have contained water-vapour released from the earth’s interior. With the development of a solid earth’s crust and further cooling down, the water vapour condensed and hence formed the first oceans.

The large amount of water that is present on the Earth in comparison to other earth-like bodies cannot be alone explained by that released from the earth’s interior. The planetesimals formed in a period of the early Solar system, when there was relatively little water around. The closer to the sun one was, the higher the temperature and the less water present. First, outside the solar ‘snow line’, which lay roughly where the Asteroid belt is today, water could be found in considerable abundance. Carbonaceous chondrites, which it is generally agreed formed in the outer reaches of the asteroid belt, indicate a water content of sometimes more than 10% of their weight, whereas common chondrites or enstatite chondrites from the nearer regions of the asteroid belt comprise less than 0.1% of their weight in water.. Moreover it can be supposed that during the accretion of the planetesimals into planets and the loss of the primitive atmosphere would result in the larger proportion of the originally present water being lost. Hence it is in many cases assumed that the majority of the water present on the Earth today came from the outer regions of the Solar System.

The DVD discusses the beginning of the earth and how water was created. As I watched, I said, 'Impossible. It couldn't possibly all condensed out of the formation of the mantle and the continental land masses! There is far too much water!

And this reminded me of my grandfather: He hoped that Mars had water locked in the ice or under the dirt via permafrost. He could see it had a thin atmosphere. He said, 'If our atmosphere was a little more colorful, we would look more like Jupiter or Saturn.' This is, our atmosphere is virtually invisible. We see it as a soft glow from space. Venus has a colorful, dense atmosphere and it conceals the hard core just like the gas giants.

So I presume that we had a ball of gas or maybe, even a ring like so many of the gas giants seem to have, 600 million years ago or more. And the gases that enclosed the earth were nitrogen, hydrogen and even dioxides and sulfurs. Some came broiling out of the hot planet but a lot of the gases were part of the huge gas cloud that gave birth to our sun. As granddaddy liked to say, 'The Sun is just a mid-sized star!' Here is an older story I did about the possibility that the earth may have had rings that were a mix of the components for our present oceans:

Saturn's Rings Are Made From Ice Pulled From Moon, Encaladus

The source of Saturn's rings seems to be one of the moons which is mostly H2O. The side of the moon facing Saturn has water volcanoes that shoot out a fine mist which is why the rings are so etheral.
*snip*
One of the most beautiful sights in the solar system. As one can observe here on earth, fine ice crystals light up so brilliantly, when it is below zero at night and only stars are shining, the sparkling ice crystals light up dark fields so much one can walk around safely in the faintly lit snow.

I always wondered how the rings, so thin and fragile, keep going and it probably is because of the feed coming from this moon. All the moons near the giant planets seem to be very active due to the intense interaction with the planets that hold them captive. One wonders if the moon did this with the earth when it orbited much closer. Did the moon, too, have water? Did this water fall to the earth over a billion years and during that time, did the earth, too, have a lovely ring around it? Questions like these are quite an interesting concept because we can only guess what went on so long ago. The fact that our planet has successfully captured a great deal of water and manages to keep it is most amazing when considering the probabilities of this happening. All the accidental happanstances of our good forture is why we were able to evolve into water consuming, water retaining life forms!

Much of 'How the Earth Was Made' is a good chronicle of how life altered the planet immensely. There is a lot of speculation about the great temperature changes the planet goes through. Many astronomers are beginning to think much of this is the sun being a variable star. So the many Ice Ages are a combination of the location of the floating continental land masses being in various key locations. For example, if they all collide at either pole, this causes a huge Ice Age and if they are strewn along the equator, it warms up the planet. But the suddenness of many of the Ice Age events probably have to do with changes in the sun's energy output. Scientists are still amassing information about this. Often, from ice cores.

I am glad this show talks about this business as well as leaving the door open on the topic. For it is very much unsettled! The change in the atmosphere's gases are significant. But the bellweather here remains the sun itself. It rules the roost. Here is another story I published in the past:

Global warming has several elements three of which are key: relative distance from the sun, composition of the atmosphere and how much energy the sun is producing.

For example, if the sun shuts down sunspot activity, it gets mighty cold here. The more active the sun, the hotter it gets. Add a lot of fresh CO2 to the atmosphere and you get really serious global warming. The summer of tremendous solar activity we had several years ago knocked out electricity across the planet. It also disrupted communications and it withered the trees, I know my oaks didn't like it one bit.

The causes of the great ice ages are still very sketchy. The more we learn the less we can pin down the exact causes. Since this planet and the sun are both very dynamic systems, this means there are so many variables, it is hard to know what the trigger is, exactly. All we know is, there is a definite rhythm and this pulse is probably triggered by the interaction of the sun and the seas.

One quibble I have about this show and nearly every show about dinosaurs: the mania to show dinosaurs as 'active' have gotten totally and stupidly out of control. They show long-necked, huge beasts rearing up on their hind legs, for example, as if they were ballerinas. I have handled quite a few very big mammals including a pair of oxen who were one of the biggest in America, Chip and Dale.

They never reared on their hind legs. They never had to bother. Their long tongues and huge size meant they could hook their sweeping horns over tree branches and bring them down and chomp on them. Elephants do this, too. In the circus, malicious humans can force elephants to squat or rise up on their hind legs but this is very unnatural. They much prefer to use their long noses. Just as giraffes like to simply use their long necks. They don't jump like kangaroos! The larger dinosaurs probably ambled about, taking their sweet time. The smaller ones scuttling aside to avoid being trampled. And trust me, big animals will trample underfoot. Chip and Dale, when confronted by say, a small car, would playfully hook a horn under the car and try to flip it over. And if they really wanted to chase something or someone, they could pick up quite a bit of steam but they much preferred to run downhill. And they are warm blooded animals!

Even warm blooded dinosaurs of huge size would not be very inclined to overexerting themselves. But this is a silly fad and I hope it fades in a few years. I can't wait.

'Life After People' is a great fun to watch. Seeing the Brooklyn Bridge or Golden Gate snap and fall or the Eiffel Tower tumble is very much like knocking over blocks or watching the ocean sweep away sand castles on the beach. I loved building these and then running around in excitement as the waves smash everything to smithereens. Or like the time my mom made us a gingerbread house in Arizona. It became hard as a rock in the 1% humidity climate. We couldn't gnaw it even if we were starving children eating the Wicked Witch's house! So we blew it up with firecrackers and then burned it! Fun, fun, fun!

We also liked the speculation that cats in Manhattan would evolve into Flying Cats just like we have Flying Squirrels. The battles between these aerial felines and rodents would be immense fun to watch. I know my cats would love to fly. Best way to hunt birds! Then there is the topic of cockroaches: will they rule in our stead? That is something we don't enjoy thinking about.

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Quakes Increasing In Western US

Map from IRIS
April 25, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Now there is an earthquake cluster slightly to the west of Reno, Nevada as well as more microquake clusters off shore of Oregon. A reader kindly gave us some more links to quake data which show clearly that the junction of plates offshore of Oregon are very active and I feel this indicates the potential for a large plate movement. The tectonic plates in this region tend to move with quite violent jerks because it is three, rather than two plates. Also, land subsidence in the West is another ongoing story.

We can see from the maps put online by IRIS, the US geological survey, the US is undergoing a series of earthquake events. Below the radar here are the many smaller earthquake clusters. All of California is being shaken nearly constantly by micro earthquakes. But these are increasingly showing up elsewhere, nearby. We notice over time that the Asian/Australian side of the Rim of Fire has been tremendously active with many, many earthquakes that have ranged from 9+ mag on down. Up until this month, the North American side has been totally quiet. Only the smallest of tremors. But this wasn't due to our continent being geologically stable.

It was due to everything being frozen in place. The West USA is very, very geologically active. It is one of the more geologically active regions on earth. Like Italy and the Himalayas or Sumatra or the African Rift Valley, it is not a quiet zone but the exact opposite. So when it went totally silent as the other side of the planet erupted with lurches and violent changes, this simply meant, the West USA is building up energy for the next Big Push Northwards of the Pacific and Juan de Fucas plates. The Juan de Fucas plate is nearly totally under the North American plate by now. It has crawled northwards starting down by Central America over the last several million years. And since this is in opposition to the movement of the North American landmass, this meant that it moves northwards in very violent jerks. North America inches westward very slowly in comparison.

Today, there was yet another cluster of earthquakes to the east of California's Central Valley. Reno, Nevada, had a series of micro quakes at the 5 km level. I notice that there have been a number of quake clusters very near the surface, all of which are at key points to the western side of the Rocky Mountains.

The government has been releasing some good reports about the quake clusters off the shores of Oregon. They sent out a ship and loaded it with monitors to set on the sea floor. All my life, I have supported funding for geologists and their very, very important research just as we need better and better monitoring of the weather and astronomers who can track the universe for us. The deadliest forces we face are natural: meteorite strikes, variations in solar energy, solar storms, earthquakes and volcanoes, etc. One of the problems with the people who need a childish belief system is, the fundamentalists undermine these scientific observations of nature. They want a cardboard universe ruled by capricious gods who pick and choose who to protect.

We also have greedy people who want to ignore or misunderstand natural processes just like they willfully ignore the truth and reality of money making. They gain personal power and wealth by building rickety housing right on top of major fault lines or next to active volcanoes. Mother Nature laughs at this but the victims tend to be the poor people who are conned into buying property and then living in fatal situations.

2008 Oregon Offshore Earthquakes:

4/24/2008 Update:
R/V Wecoma returns to Newport. 11 CTD casts are being analyzed for final results in NOAA Vents laboratories. Hydrophone remains on seafloor to continue monitoring seismic activity. Figure 1 (below) updated to show final cruise track and seismicity at both sites. Northern Gorda seismicity histogram chart and time vs. latitude plot now available.

Click here for a movie showing how the earthquake cluster began off shore from Oregon;

It is worth while to watch these little movies. They show how the quakes suddenly start and then rattle onwards.

Click here for the Gordo cluster of earthquakes that are south of the first quakes:

Queen, Arizona, fissure warning tire.

Now on to the business of water extraction out West and how it is increasing subsidence which I fear ends up causing other greater geological problems. The abuse of water out West is legendary. Water use is far above the sustainable levels Nature allows. More and more people pour into the dry West seeking to live water-logged lives as if they are living in wet England or Northern Europe. The lifestyle of desert people is disregarded. Instead of dry toilets, we have water flush systems, just for example. All my life, when I grew up out there and beyond, I have warned that this is totally inappropriate for the region. Arizona was named 'dry area' for a good reason! Our ancestors considered the Great Plains to be a desert and the Arizona desert to be hell. But during the Great Depression, the government built giant Hoover Dam. And the west burst into flower. But we knew this was temporary. As more and more dams were built, cities also pumped water out of the earth below.

When my great granddaddy rode his calvary horse about Arizona chasing after Apache raiders, desert grasses grew half the year. I remember when we got hay from farmers in my own childhood. But today, the desert is amazingly dry. The water table that supported many a stream like the Santa Rita or the Tanque Verde has collapsed so far down, these year-round sources of water in my mother's youth are dry as bones and only flow during storms and that, only for a few hours.

I remember my own childhood when they still flowed and we used to build rafts and pole up and down the streams in winter.

Hazardous Cracks Running Through Arizona
Ray Harris and M. Lee Allison

The fissures were not news, however, to geologists. For more than 40 years, geologists have warned people about the hazards of earth fissures in Arizona, but until recently the warnings often went unheeded. In the past, earth fissures were considered an interesting phenomenon, but because they occurred mostly in undeveloped areas where few people lived, they were not perceived as a problem. But with the population expanding in recent years into areas known to have fissures, the potential for damage to property has increased, particularly with old fissures being filled in, concealing the potential risk.

New residents may be completely unaware that earth fissures lurk below their yards or under their homes, but with new mapping efforts and education, short-term solutions are possible. The issue today is less a problem of earth fissures forming where people have built houses than it is of people building houses on or near fissures without knowing it. Making people aware of the issue is the first step. In the long run, however, people may need to change their groundwater usage habits to curb the problem.

Earth fissures occur not only in Arizona, but also in other basins where the groundwater table has dropped precipitously due to overpumping. Fissures are a serious problem in the Las Vegas area, occur in southern Utah, California and western Texas, and have been recently reported in the small province of Aguascalientes in Mexico, where 200 homes and a hospital are reported damaged.

An earth fissure at the surface results from large quantities of soil or sediment being washed down into a crack that may initially be only a few centimeters wide, but a hundred meters or more deep and a kilometer or more in length. The longest fissure zone mapped in Arizona has a length of more than 11 kilometers. The condition that leads to the fissures is sinking land.

All over the West including California, of course, land is subsiding. California pumps water INTO the earth to keep this from getting worse, but this is yet more water taken from overtaxed river systems. Salmon fishing is collapsing due to the change in river flow rates and temperatures due to this meddling in water tables. The rise and fall of the land due to water use is so striking, it is making it more difficult for geologists to track earthquakes, for example. The land heaves and sighs.

Las Vegas Valley: Land Subsidence and Fissuring Due to Ground-Water Withdrawal

John W. Bell
Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology

Rapidly growing populations in the semiarid to arid regions of the southwestern United States require water. The water is used not only for basic needs (drinking, sewage systems, etc.), but also to maintain lifestyles transferred from wetter areas of the country (suburban lawns, golf, backyard swimming pools). These uses can be met either by purchases of surface water in an already over-allocated water-supply system (e.g., the Colorado River) or, most readily, by tapping ground water. However, ground-water withdrawal can adversely affect the sedimentary deposits that fill typical ground-water basins in the desert. These effects include differential compaction, reactivation of old faults, and surface fissuring, and can have considerable impact on human infrastructures

In Arizona and Nevada, this drop in the land is more problematic. It causes the earth to flatten out more and more and compress more and more. So less and less water can accumulate even in wet years. I did a lot o digging in Arizona as well as the Northeast USA. Up here, the land is riddled with water channels. This is why we have 'spring'. Literally, the water springs out of the sponge-like earth in spring as the frozen ground melts. One can actually see the channels if you carefully cut away a hillside.

In the dry deserts, the ground has far fewer such holes. It never freezes but it has to let water soak in more like a heavy towel than a sponge. And if it is totally dry, the caliche which is the mineral side effect of water soaking in and leaving lots of mineral content behind, is more like cement. This forces water to run downhill rather than soak in. Thus the mighty floods. The opening of cracks during floods shows that the water is very desperate to find some way into the soil.

Pumping of groundwater spurs surge in earth fissures

The number of earth fissures spreading across Southern and Central Arizona due to excessive water pumping is approaching 300, a top state geologist said Monday.
The Arizona State Geological Survey's office released maps showing that earth fissures are proving an increased safety risk to homeowners, as development expands into areas where fissures date back to the 1940s or '50s and in some cases to the 1920s.

Authorities have warned for decades that continued land subsidence from groundwater pumping can open up huge fissures. The warnings have increased in intensity in recent years as more homes are built atop old fissures, particularly in rapidly growing Pinal County between Tucson and Phoenix.
*snip*
Joan Etzenhouser of the Queen Creek area first thought the cracks on her property were "just part of the landscape" when they started to appear in 2004 and 2005, one to two years after she moved into the home.
Then, in August 2005, heavy rains left behind openings in three fissures, one running under her home and all three running across a wash.

Etzenhouser is suing the real estate agent and family that sold her and her husband the home on the grounds that they didn't disclose the fissure problem.

"I'm angry. I'm frustrated. I feel like I trusted people … the owner that sold me the home had to have known, known that there were weird things on this property other than scorpions and coyotes," said Etzenhouser, who lives on 3.3 rural acres.

Realtor John Richins, who represented the family that sold this home, declined to discuss the suit except to say that there were no fissures at the time the ground was sold: "I'm 66 years old. I've been a Realtor 25 years and I've never been sued in my life until now."

In Arizona as well as the entire West, basic weather and geological systems are studiously ignored when builders are given permits. So they build houses on flood plains that get totally destroyed in the inevitable 50 or 100 year floods. They build on fault lines. They build where there isn't enough water. They built too much and too many where it can't be supported by natural conditions. They love to ignore things. The West's landscape isn't very forgiving. Now, there are no more farms in West Tucson, there are no canals flooding orchards in Scottsdale like where I used to swim as a child. The green revolution there is turing into a Dust Bowl nightmare. It takes time but the green golf courses that dot the desert are doomed.

Most of the realtors out West should be sued. And the builders. And the politicians. And the voters who wanted everyone to ignore reality. Reality always wins in the bitter end.

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More Significant Earthquakes Rattle Coast Of Oregon

April 24, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

It is now quite clear that there will probably be a major earthquake event in the West. In the last 2 days, the Juan de Fuca Plate triple juncture with the Pacific Plate and the huge North American Plate has had a series of 4+ mag earthquakes and they are all definitely along the subduction complex lines. Since they are all at the same, very dangerous depths of 10 km and since they are all under 5 mag, this means there has been hardly any real movement, just creaking and shaking. These look increasingly, due to their uniformity and constant action, to be a precursor for a significant movement of the plates which are stuck, right now. Land masses can shoot in various directions quite suddenly, in a matter of seconds. These are the 9+ quakes we all must brace ourselves to expect. Pretending this is a remote possibility is not recommended.

Click here for the IRIS global maps:

Several things jump out from this chart: the massive number of earthquakes in the tri-focal point off the Oregon coast is moving relentlessly southwards towards the dangerous San Andreas fault system on land. Also, two 4 mag earthquakes occured in Nevada which is offset to the east, and Baja California where the San Andreas continues. Both of these were at only 5 km deep which is very shallow. Not as shallow as the 4 mags that hit Canada and the most geologically dangerous place on earth, Yellowstone Park. This mighty caldera is matched only by the super giants in Sumatra.

There now have been over 20 4+ magnitude quakes along the Pacific/Juan de Fuca/North American subduction zone juncture. This is very significant activity. Before the Great Boxing Day Quake, we saw a series of such 4 mag quakes along that subduction zone. The fact that these events are happening along a long line is very, very troubling. It means this is not a local adjustment and then all is well. It means that the entire length is under tremendous stress. The fact that these quakes are fairly uniform and at the same level is a sign that this sector will suddenly move. The quakes are NOT moving anything right now, this is like when we shove something until it snags on a rough spot on the ground so we redouble our pushing and it suddenly shoots forwards.

So the Juan de Fuca plate which has the longest name for the smallest plate on earth, this will continue to be shoved under the North American continent but we know it isn't that simple. It is riding SIDEWAYS and is being shoved NORTHWARDS as it is also being ridden over by the North American continental plate which is moving relentlessly eastwards as the Atlantic plate continues to grow in the center.

Map of tectonic plates from Moorland School:

There are two major drivers in global plate tectonics: the fast moving Australian plate which is shooting northwards at a strange, mad rate and the Atlantic rift zone that runs from the north pole to Antactica. This is widening at a very fast rate compared to say, Africa's movements northwards. The oddity of the Indian/Australian plate that is wrapping itself around Asia is shoving the Pacific Plate northwards and is riding up over it rapidly. Eventually, Australia will cartwheel into Siberia crushing Japan and Manchuria and Korea into mountains even higher than the Himalayans.

Anyone living along the San Andreas complex must consult with government agencies to see what one should do in case of the inevitable. Reviewing civil defenses and preparing the National Guard for this situation is of high importance. Homeland Security, run by an alien Israeli who doesn't care if we die, should be working on this. But of course, our National Guard is in Iraq or in tatters. So I must warn everyone out West: you are on your own just like New Orleans. NOTHING has been fixed since that disaster. Nothing has been changed, Chertoff goofed off then and wasn't arrested. He is goofing off now. And so it Bush, our media and the candidates for President. Do NOT forget that while New Orleans was dying, McCain was celebrating his wretched birth with Bush and they were sing