Earth news

Ozone Hole Over Antarctica Bigger Than Ever

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Far from shrinking, the ozone hole over Antarctica is growing ever bigger. The international actions with controlling HCFC (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) hasn't been enough as an assortment of chemicals are now causing the ozone hole to grow ever larger. Increasing wind speed at high altitudes adds to the hole too.

The HCFC problem isn't getting better after all despite reports just three months ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — This year's Antarctic ozone hole is the biggest ever, government scientists said Thursday.

The so-called hole is a region where there is severe depletion of the layer of ozone — a form of oxygen — in the upper atmosphere that protects life on Earth by blocking the sun's ultraviolet rays.

Scientists say human-produced gases such as bromine and chlorine damage the layer, causing the hole. That's why many compounds such as spray-can propellants have been banned in recent years.

Everyone thought the ozone depletion problem ended with the Montreal Protocols. This requires everyone to cease using freon to refrigerate. This international treaty has helped somewhat except the loopholes exempt about 75% of humanity and in this case, a whole lot of them who live in hot climates like India and southern China are now using many airconditioners and other things which use this freon.

I have to admit, I once accidentally released freon into the atmosphere back in 1979 when I was trying to tear out and remove a very old natural gas refrigerator only to discover, when I disconnected the pipes, one of them was the freon circulator. It still bothers me.

And this is the whole problem. Dealing with old stuff like this causes a lot of this gas to be released. And many automobiles in many countries have the old gasses and these are very prone to breaking, all you need is a fender-bender that affects the copper lines!

Note the timeframe for phasing out these gases.

In September 1987, 47 countries (including the United States) agreed to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which first required controls on the world's consumption of ozone depleting substances. Over 160 countries have signed on to the Protocol, whose phasedown schedule for developed countries was accelerated twice and completely phased out Halon production at the end of 1994 and CFC production at the end of 1995. The Protocol's coverage has also been extended to include hydrochlorofluorocarbons and other chlorine- and bromine-containing substances such as some solvents and methyl bromide, a widely used soil fumigant.

At their meeting in Vienna (December 1995), the Parties agreed to phase down the use of HCFCs in developing countries and to phase out production of methyl bromide in

developed countries by 2010, to cap its production in developing countries in 2002. In 1997, the methyl bromide deadline for developed countries was advanced to 2005, and a developing country deadline was set at 2015. The 105th Congress enacted an amendment in October 1998 to adjust phaseout of methyl bromide to 2005.

In other words, it has barely been instituted in a handful of countries. Many appliances and other things using freon have been legally shipped to third world countries to be recycled or used. The recycling process releases a lot of gasses and obviously this is aggravating the ozone hole.

Freon is much cheaper than the subsitutes so many people try to smuggle it into the country from Mexico.

The 30-pound canisters looked harmless. The first in the row was a bubblegum color that might have been seen at a child’s birthday, inflating balloons. But if you crossed the Mexico-US border with it, you’d be smuggling one of the most environmentally dangerous products on the planet.

© Brittany Whiting/CEC
The United States was one of the world’s largest consumers of ODS gases.

That’s because each molecule inside these canisters can destroy an estimated 100,000 ozone molecules, and have a lifetime up to 100 years. They’re called ozone-depleting substances (ODS), and the illegal trade in them, including such products as automobile refrigerants, fire suppressants and industrial solvents in the United States can be nearly as profitable as the drug trade.

Of course, farmers release gases, too, as fumigants. And this is why all our strawberries are gigantic, for example. Small strawberries taste much better, I grow the old kind and the flavor is much greater due to the tasty part of the strawberry being concentrated in the smaller fruits. But everyone wants things super-sized. Well, the ozone hole is now super-sized.

And my dear hummingbirds, bats and bees are in the news again.

By Randolph E. Schmid, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — This is a story about the birds and the bees and reproduction. No, not that story. It's about plants. Most plants need to be pollinated by birds, bees, bats and other animals and insects to reproduce. And scientists say a decline in pollinators may spell trouble for crops.

Honeybees and bumblebees have been infected by the introduction of a parasite, while destruction of cave roosts has led to a decline in the bat population, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Research Council.

Other pollinator declines may also be associated with habitat loss but more research is needed to make sure, according to the council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

I do hope they study this problem. The problem with the bees, I am betting, have been tremendously aggravated by the shipping of bee hives across the country. This clusters hives from any places into new places where parasites and pests can bop back and forth, from one hive to the next and then truckers haul them to new places where there are even more opportunity for the parasites and pests who have spread like wildfire!

I have been farming bees a long time and have lost all too many hives to pests. I used to use pest strips and other things but gave up. One day, a queen and her huge family came flying into the garage and we put them in a hive where they have happily buzzed about for two years now. There are virtually no wild bees left except we still have some bumblebees. This is because I farm organically so the bumblebees, who live in holes in the ground or old dead trees, don't get poisoned.

Neither do my host of toads and small snakes as well as newts and snails. Everyone gets to live. This year, pests have ravaged my place and this is due to global warming and the importation of a bunch of pests with no predators. Grrrr.

Yet honeybees, which pollinate more than 90 commercially grown crops, are one of the most affected pollinators. Indeed, honeybees had to be imported from outside North America last year for the first time since 1922, the report said.

The report urged the Agriculture Department to increase research into pest management and bee breeding practices.

In addition, long-term studies must be done on the populations of wild bee species and some butterflies, bats and hummingbirds, it said.

The butterflies like my farm because I have 'weedy' areas where I mow once in a while so the wild flowers flourish. Green lawns are deserts to butterfies. They need flowers with lots of pollen and many garden flowers are cultured to not have lots of pollen unlike wildflowers that produce tons of pollen, ack-choo.

Bats pollinate flowers, I used to watch them at night in the desert. All animals and plants evolved together. I have many hummingbirds here in summer because I do spoil them rotten, there just isn't enough natural flowers now for their fat little tummies. I wish there were more fields here but they are fast disappearing due to the collapse of dairy farming out here.

This is all a very complex problem. All I know is, industrial farming is toxic.

Culture of Life News Main Page

The Great Crack In the Pacific Ocean And Hawaii

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The earthquake in Hawaii wasn't a volcanic event but rather a tectonic plate movement. There is considerable debate about the exact nature of the Hawaiian island chain and how it relates to the 'plume' effect.

When I saw the data, it looked like it wasn't a volcanic shake.

David Oppenheimer, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey, told KCBS' George Harris that there was was no tsunami because there was no significant displacement of the sea floor.

"The magnitude of the earthquake was pretty much below the threshold for damaging tsunamis. You typically don't see tsunamis until you get to magnitude 7.0."

Volcano Expert Margaret Mangan said the quake was not set off by volcanic activity.

"It appears that this earthquake is more related to deep structural trigger, rather than a more shallow earthquake that might be attributed to volcanic activity."

The data at the IRIS site showed the series of quakes were pretty deep and at varied levels. When volcanoes cause earthquakes, they tend to be shallow and not affect distant areas. This quake shook most of the island chain which is longer than Texas. To shake such a distance means the earth's plates were moving.

I often wondered about the latest research of anomalies like these. So today is a good time to check out some of the latest scientific research on the web.

This is a lengthy article in pdf format which discusses the possiblity the Hawaiian chain is forming along a break in the lithosphere.

Professor Norman H. Sleep, Dept. of Geophysics, Stanford University

(see page 11, paragraph 4,5)

the Hawaiian chain is on crack in lithosphere

"A crack propagates through the plate producing volcanism at its tip and causing the lower lithospheric mantle to delaminate on its flanks over a region perpendicular to the track forming the swell. Delamination to produce the swell and the volcanism has tesable implications that distinguish it from plumes....

Plate cracking is evident along the Hawaiian chain. Soloman and Sleep (1974) pointed out the strike of the chain aligns perpendicular to the expected axis of intraplate tension (Stuart et al., this volume). En echelon lineaments of volcanic edifices align along the trends of the numerours chains including Hawaii (e.g., Jackson and Shaw, 1975). These features are compatible with a propagating crack, but also with plumes. Plume-derived melts need cracks to ascend to produce surface hotspots. These cracks preferentially align with the local intraplate stress.

The behavior of the seafloor after the passage of a hotspot provides information on the underlying process. The long-term subsidence of oceanic islands has been known since the time of Darwin....First, ponded plume material produces modest uplifts...a 100-km thick layer with a temperature contrast of 250 K produces 1060 m of uplift.

Hawaii should be added to the list (above) as a ridge-leaving hotspot.

Why is there a 'crack' in the center of the Pacific? The Pacific Plate covers more of earth's surface than any other plate. The runaway train of the Australian plate which is moving faster than any other plate, is relentlessly shoving up and over the Pacific Plate which is shoving northwards towards the North Pole. The mighty Aelutian islands are the firing line of this northwards push. The pressure from the massive Australian Plate must be causing some sort of buckling in the center because the North American continent is shoving towards the Pacific as the Atlantic rift, a much slower process, continues to relentlessly press outwards. In other words, the Atlantic has a long rift running down the center while the Pacific is buckling upwards at the center? Hmmm.

This scientist seems to believe that the chain of islands running west from Hawaii's main island aren't just eroding away but are subsiding, namely, falling lower and lower as the section of lithosphere they are part of experiences less and less pressure from the mantle. This makes on wonder what is pushing upwards on the mantle dead center in the Pacific.

He also talks about Iceland and how it is on a much slower moving plate so it is a much bigger island even though the amount of hot magma flowing upwards is less than Hawaii. Iceland is obviously on a crack, namely the planet-long rift running straight down the Atlantic Ocean which is moving Africa and South America further and further apart.

I suspect Australia's march north is grossly affecting the entire 'Rim of Fire' in the Pacific.

And Australia's climate is changing.

By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 14 October 2006

Australia is confronting its worst drought in a century with rampant fires devastating agricultural areas, rivers drying up, crops failing, and farmers forced to sell off their livestock.

The bushfire season has begun months early and the government has pledged financial aid for despairing farmers, already laden with debt after five straight years of drought. Some may earn no income at all this year, and there are fears that the suicide rate in the countryside, which is already high, will soar further.

As this continent moves towards the equator, it will be like some great Sahara. Unlike the many much smaller landmasses, the prevailing winds off the ocean won't turn it into jungle but rather, desert except along the coasts. What sort of havoc this will cause to Asia and India in a few million years is a guess but I would personally say, the prevailing tradewinds will be blocked especially since Australia is provoking a lot of volcanic mountain building.

Just like the Deccan traps caused huge volcanic eruptions as India collided with Asia at the beginning of the Mammalian Age, Australia's crash into Asia will certainly cause major changes in the world's flora and fauna.

Australia is a lovely place and it is sad watching people fall into despair as climatic events overtake hopes for the future. Australia is very much like Texas. This is why both places should be very strongly for controlling global warming. As we saw earlier today with the article about Texas building vast numbers of coal-burning electrical power plants, sanity is in short supply.

Suicide is a stupid solution. I have built many things and lived many places and even when reduced to living in a tent for years and years, even when my husband became too ill to work or help even, I still found a million reasons to live. Sometimes it was just sheer stubborness.

My farm is ideal for sheep. I was driven out of business by Australian sheep which were cheaper than mine. Just like my neighors are shutting down their cattle operations because of cheaper Texan cows, both places abuse the environment stripping it of vegetation even though it is a very fragile place. Overgrazing in order to make a profit leads to climate change. The ground dries up much faster if it is exposed to the hot sun and vegetation that catches the wind, if gone, the wind blows very hard indeed.

The Sahara once was prime grazing and huge herds of animals roamed there and this is where humans learned how to domesticate animals. Now, it is bone dry and virtually uninhabitable.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Hawaii Has Significant Earthquake

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The largest island in the Hawai'ian chain just had a series of significant earthquakes. Many people are aware of its history as one of the world's most active volcanoes, but for some reason, people tend to forget it is also not exactly stable. What is going on?

Here are the stats:

Time---------------------------------Mag---Depth
15-OCT-2006 20:35:21-------------4.4----9.9 km---HAWAII
15-OCT-2006 17:14:09-------------5.8----4.6 km---HAWAII
15-OCT-2006 17:07:48-------------6.3----24.0 km--HAWAII

This event was dangerous but not as deadly as previous major quakes in Hawaii.

HONOLULU, Hawaii (CNN) -- Sunday morning brought chaos to the normally serene and lush Big Island of Hawaii as it shook with the state's biggest earthquake since 1983.

Registering 6.6 on the Richter Scale, which classifies quakes above 7.0 as "major," the temblor brought down hospital ceilings and hundred-year-old homes. It sent huge rocks and landslides into roadways and knocked out power to thousands.

But miraculously it did not set off a much feared tsunami or, officials said, cost anyone their life.

Like California, Hawaii has a long history of medium to large earthquakes. An excellent source of information is the official USGS webpage. The geologists running this site are very good and they have lots of useful information. Anyone living in an active zone should spend a good few hours reading this entire, very big and complex site. And bookmark it.

One thing everyone must do is educate themselves for obvious emergencies. Just as costal people should understand hurricanes or people living in cold climates, blizzards, so must everyone in dangerous earthquake zones pay attention to their hazards.

From the very beginning, the first invaders after the Polynesian people colonized Hawaii noticed there were regular earthquake events.

Much of the early record of Hawaiian earthquakes comes from the diary of Mrs. Sarah J. Lyman, a missionary's wife at Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii. Mrs. Lyman began her account in 1833 and continued it until her death in 1885; this record was then continued for eleven more years by her descendants. About four or five earthquakes per year were reported.

On February 19, 1834, a strong shock threw down stone walls, stopped clocks, upset bottles, and sloshed milk out of half-full pans. Standing and walking were rendered difficult. A similar earthquake occurred on December 12, 1838. No volcanic activity was noted for either event.

There are also tsunami events. Hawaii is very vulnerable to such events even when they happen very far away. The majority of residents of the island chain live within the tsunami destruction belt.

Here is some more information about past earthquakes in Hawaii.

Each year thousands of earthquakes occur in Hawaii, with the majority of them too small to be felt except by highly sensitive instruments. The movement of molten rock within Kilauea or Mauna Loa causes the majority of Big Island earthquakes.

Big Island earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater tend to occur in clusters with reoccurrence intervals of 10-12 years. Two regions on the Big Island have the potential for a large earthquakes: East Kona and South Kona.

The vast majority of earthquakes happen on the leading edge of the island, the spot where the Pacific Plate hits the stationary plume that has spawned many islands in a long, jagged trail. As the plate moves towards Alaska and Siberia, it grinds over this hot spot and causes eruptions that form new islands. Already, a new island is forming to the east of the biggest island and eventually all the volcanoes on the main island will cool and go dormant and the island will begin eroding away. Eventually, all the previous islands will dissappear under the waves.

And again, the best information is at the official government site, courtesy of taxpayer dollars.

Earthquakes occur for similar reasons beneath Mauna Loa's southwest and southeast flanks. The Kealakekua fault zone on Hawaii's Kona coast was the site of an earthquake of about magnitude 6.9 in 1951 that may have been related to the 1950 eruption of Mauna Loa's southwest rift zone. The largest Hawaiian earthquake in recorded history occurred in 1868 beneath the Ka'u district on the southeast flank of Mauna Loa; it had an estimated magnitude of between 7.5 and 8.1. The 1868 earthquake caused damage across the entire island and was felt as far away as the Island of Kauai. The devastation was greatest in the Ka'u district, where an earthquake-triggered mudflow killed 31 people and coastal subsidence produced a tsunami that destroyed several villages. At least 79 people perished during this earthquake; most of these casualties resulted from the landslide and tsunami.

Earthquakes in the Kaoiki region, centered between Kilauea and Mauna Loa, are also thought to be related to stresses in the earth's crust that are produced by the activity of the two volcanoes. In the last half century, earthquakes with magnitudes from 5.5 to 6.6 have shaken the Kaoiki region about once every 10 years. The latest large earthquake in this area had a magnitude of 6.6 and occurred in 1983. This event caused substantial damage to structures in Ka'u, Puna, and North and South Hilo districts. Ground cracking and settling led to temporary road closures, and landslides occurred on steep slopes. The financial losses caused by the earthquake were estimated at $7 million. Fortunately, there were only minor injuries because the earthquake struck early in the morning when most people were still in bed.

Across the Ring of Fire in most lands before 1600, most people built very flimsy houses thanks to these earthquakes. When a frond and paper hut collapses on oneself, there is little injury. When more and more people used gas fires for cooking and other, similar burning substances, when added to mass aggregations of people rather than disbursed populations, huge firestorms accompany earthquakes.

Today, we live in complicated structures with many very heavy elements. Many lands with earthquakes build with mud and stone and earthquakes take terrible tolls when they occur. But in modern civilization, the dangers of fires is greatly amplified because usually the water systems fail and the gas lines blow up at the same time.

This is why American cities out west have to have frequent drills and training sessions for turning off the gas systems when an earthquake happens.

Hawaii doesn't have the same reputation as California for earthquakes. This is due to their desire to make people happy and gay. But one thing is certain: beautiful places are also often dangerous too. This is why it pays to be alert and knowledgable.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Earth's Wobble Causes Many Extinctions

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Many forces work in concert with each other to create long term weather cycles and waves of extinctions. The great extinctions happen when several forces converge with catastrophic events such as meteorite strikes. There is no 'steady state' in nature but rather a see-saw effect. This is why humans are now tipping it increasingly in one direction is so dangerous.

Our planetisn't all that stable in its orientation relative to the sun as well as wobbling on its own axis.

BEIJING, Oct. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Wobbles or variations in the Earth's orbit and tilt are associated with extinctions of rodent and mammalian species, Dutch scientists said on Wednesday in a study published in the journal Nature.

Dr. Jan van Dam from the Utrecht University and colleagues reached this conclusion after studying the fossil record of rodents from central Spain over a 22-million-year span, showing a link between rodent extinction events and the climate record.

"Extinctions in rodent species occur in pulses which are spaced by intervals controlled by astronomical variations and their effects on climate change," said van Dam.

They found two cycles corresponding to the disappearance of rodent species. One lasts 2.4 million years and is linked to variations in the Earth's orbit. The other is a 1.2 million year cycle relating to shifts in the tilt on the Earth on its axis.

The fact that our planet's moon is very large relative to the size of the planet as well as the fact that our planet is set at an odd angle to the sun and is rather shaky, one wonders if the cataclysmic event 3 or more billion years ago, the collision that created our moon, is still causing our planet's instability.

The instability of the earth is part of this planet's creative process. If something never changes, nothing ever changes. The dynamo which powers evolution is the constantly changing environment interacting with the ever-increasing interaction of all living things as creatures struggle to overcome constant changes.

Humans developed huge brains just to cope with the difficulties of a wildly swinging climate that switches from hot to cold with brutal suddeness.

As scientists study this dynamic system which is our planet, they discover more and more things influence the climate and these changes have varying effects on life forms and it is endless, how many things affect each other.

For example, dust changes the climate in many ways.

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer 2 hours, 22 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Dust storms swirling out of Africa's Sahara Desert may help reduce hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean, a new study suggests. The findings aren't conclusive, but researchers led by Amato T. Evan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that years with more African dust had fewer tropical storms and years with less dust had more storms.

The study is reported in Tuesday's issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

I hope they figure out the obvious: dust has a very big role to play in how storms form and what kinds of storms form. I remember one year, I think it was 1996, it was September and the sun was shining in the sky and the wind wasn't blowing from the north yet it was very cold for that time of year. So I put my hand over the sun and noted the sky had a very soft, pinkish color to it.

Looking at the news online, I discovered there was a huge dust storm in the Gobi desert. What I was seeing was the fine dust in the jet stream. Soon afterwards, we had some very ferocious snow storms. Last year in Asia, they had very ferocious snow storms and some of them had so much dust from the Gobi the snow turned pink.

Dust usually lowers temperatures. It is hard to see because the thin layer of dust is nearly invisible unless someone knows how to look for it but this dust does cut down on the amount of sun falling on the surface. We don't quite understand the dynamics of this except to say, dust can change climates such as during the Ice Ages when huge blankets of dust blew across the planet increasing the coldness. The great loess lands in Asia and much of the farm belt in the Midwest were built up by blowing dust.

This is probably how the planet regulates the environment: the dust from the deserts foils global warming by cutting down on sunlight.

Scientists still worry about runaway global warming without realizing this may switch off to global cooling suddenly due to dust from deserts and volcanoes.

That’s how the West works today: The monsoons cool the desert, as does the snowpack in the high country and the moisture transpiring from plants.

Shut off that mist and crank up the heat, and your lunch break may resemble the West of 2056.

That’s the word from University of Arizona climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck, who, along with other scientists from all over the West, made some thirsty predictions about the future of western Colorado in a series of speeches Wednesday and Thursday at a Mountain Studies Institute climate change conference at Fort Lewis College in Durango.

“Things are cooking in the West, and they’ll continue to cook even more,” Overpeck said.

The problem with the settlement of many millions of humans in desert environments is this is not a good idea in the long run. I lived in Arizona during my childhood and it was a lovely place, one which I am very fond of and whenever I visit, it sickens me, now humans are rapidly destroying the place.

It is not a good long-term place for humans to live as if they are in London or Manhattan. London and Manhattan are surrounded by or in close proximity to oodles of water and a culture of using this water wastefully has developed and then exported to places that are totally inappropriate. As I keep noting, the existance of toilets is a tremendously bad thing and alternative ways of dealing with human waste should have been instituted years ago except the hardest thing to change in a culture is customs.

Desert dwelling humans took few baths but would slather the body with oils to protect the skin and hide the scent of humans from game they were stalking just like dogs roll in the manure of their prey in order to hide the scent of the dog. But with modern styles of living, people use lots of water to hide the scent of being a human. All these factors means cities shouldn't exist in the desert. They are by their natures, inappropriate.

As for the various extinction cycles: without this, if we had a more stable environment, I doubt we would have had the long and amazing history of evolution. Especially for us humans. The incredible multi-level cycles within cycles that have created the present Interglacial/Ice Age events is what made us what we are today.

That and sexual selection.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Volcano Ejects Fine Ash Into Stratosphere

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Last weekend, a volcano in New Guinea exploded suddenly and ejected a plume of fine ash that is now spread across the entire stratosphere. This changes our sunrises and sunsets and more onimously, our weather.

This eruption was totally unexpected.

Rabaul Volcano Tour, November 12, 2006 -

A large eruption occurred at Rabaul volcano on Saturday 7th October 2006, with ash to 60,000 ft.
The eruption shattered windows in the town, and lava flows reached the sea.

Rabaul has had major eruptions 3500 and 1400 years ago. An eruption of Rabaul in 1994
forced the evacuation of Rabaul city, the largest town on New Britain Island.

This is a tall ash plume. Volcanic eruptions that aren't explosive create local ash conditions but ones that have 'ooph' behind them end up blanketing the world with fine white ash, microscopic in size. This eruption has altered jet flights because the fine ash can cause serious problems being sucked into the engines as well as sandblasting the windshields.

More descriptions of this event from the Courier Mail of New Zealand.

PNG's mining department today reported doors slamming, windows rattling and ash falling as far away as Kokopo across the harbour from Rabaul.

"People are spontaneously evacuating from areas of heavy ash fall and those exposed to the worst of the air blasts. These are quite alarming," the report said.

A PNG Mining Department statement said the ash column was around 5,000m high with thunder and lightning within it.

In 1994, large eruptions of Tavurvur and nearby Vulcan destroyed much of Rabaul.

'Spontaneous evacuation' is a cute term for 'run for your lives.' This sudden blast was not expected.

Mt Rainier just had an interesting 4.5 quake that was most onimously at only 3.5 km deep which is above the regular 10 km deep of the average earthquake.

There was a small earthquake at Mt. Rainier, and the question that leaps immediately to mind is whether we will all soon be flash-cooked alive like the residents of Pompeii or something.

The last major geologic event at Mt. Rainier was about 5,000 years ago: the Osceola Mudflow, when the top 1,600 feet of the mountain went on a day trip to Puget Sound. If such an event happened again, Wikipedia doesn't like our chances:

This week's eruption in New Guinea should give everyone in Seattle pause. There was no warning at all. Not even a concerto buildup of microquakes and minor eruptions. The New Guinea one was very similar but in a smaller fashion to the mighty Krakatoa explosion: lightning, the borometer drops suddenly and doors slam and ears pop, repeated loud blasts as the gases violently eject matter.

Unlike the recent eruptions in the region, this one didn't have most of the ash billow downwards. Instead, it shot high, straight up. and according to the pictures, there was no powerful prevailing winds that could cut it off at the top so the dust poured into the stratosphere.

Yesterdat evening, as Chris and I drove home from picking up huge logs for chopping up and turning into firewood, I noticed the sky was very different. It was a pellucid, clear day yet the sky, instead of being a brilliant azure was milky white. 'Hey, it looks like the dust from that volcano has reached the northern hemisphere!' I said.

Then, as the sun set, it was a classic volcano event: the whole sky lit up more and more. The East was a brilliant, mother-of-pearl glossy curtain and the lower horizon was a dark, shadowy blue and the dividing line was very stark. In the zenith, it was lit up so bright, my husband thought the truck headlights were broken because even though the forest was dark, the ambient light was so bright, the road reflected this.

The west was buttery golden and the brilliance went all the way up to the zenith. As the sun set, the lower horizon turned blood red.

The picture above today shows how, at sunrise, the sky is completely white. We do have local fog but that is sitting in the valleys, the white sky is due to the volcano.

For some bizarre reason, the news never talks about the other side of this equation: volcano shoots fine dust into the higher stratosphere=sunlight cut down=cooler temperatures+ lots of snow and rain. One would think such information is important. You can bet, my husband and I are now stepping up the cutting and storing of firewood! I am now going to spend the next two weeks moving forwards, all my 'bad winter' projects.

When the volcano in the Philippines blew up in similar fashion back in the early 90's, I was living in the tent. The previous two years were hysterically warm. We had butterflies in March. When the volcano erupted, within two months, the weather totally changed. We have a video of my son and I running around the mountain with the sled dog (thank god we had a sled dog!) in late June wearing winter coats!

The following winter was very brutal and we had so much snow on the ground, the tent was totally surrounded by snow to the top of the roof. The National Guard had to dig out the mountain people. My son's school used up all the 'snow days' and had to extend the school year.

This eruption wasn't as long as the Philippino volcano so I don't think we will have a dramatic 2 degree drop in world temperatures. But this is a warning shot. As I said before, after Great Quakes, volcanoes waken. And this process takes about five years.

The side issue is the suddeness of this eruption: Mt. Rainier could easily and probably do the exact same thing. It has not only a history of violent eruptions vs the kind Hawaiian volancoes have, for example. It is also one of the 'great volcanoes' which means it is very tall and very tall volcanoes have this habit of suddenly blowing off their tops and becoming calderas. It might not for the next 50,000 years but this is all about gambling. We are already in the timeframe for such an event.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Earthquakes Drop Water Levels In Maine Wells and The Need To Preserve Dunes in Great Lakes

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Wells in Maine suddenly dropped when a series of small earthquakes fractured the continental shelf somewhere. It seems the geologically quiet East Coast is not so quiesent after all. Also Facti and Arthur, two of the readers of this blog, begin a crusade to save their favorite sand dunes. It seems scientists agree with them.

A series of small earthquakes defracted the rocks in Maine causing wells to drop.

LiveScience Staff

LiveScience.com Tue Oct 3, 5:45 PM ET
A minor earthquake that shook parts of Maine at 8:07 p.m. local time Monday caused water to drop 2.5 feet at a U.S. Geological Survey monitoring well.

Nearly 17 hours later, the water level was still dropping, scientists announced today.

Hydrologists call the change in the well “dramatic,” and said well-water users might notice changes in their drinking water.

When we were digging our well on this mountain, the drillers went down a whole 350 feet yet the water didn't have enough pressure. Then we hydrofracted the rock by injecting a high powered stream of water which made fissures in the rocks below. To our amazement and the riggers wonder was, the water then poured forth with such volume, it turned our well into an artesian well which still overflows today, ten years later.

The landmass on the upper East Coast is very old. One doesn't find dinosaur bones in the dense rock. And even though it is pretty geologically stable, there are earthquakes up here. An ancient faultline runs along the little stream less than a mile from my house. The Rensselaer Plateu rises in straight up in the west on the other side of the stream.

The St. Lawrence valley is an active fault zone and off of it lies assorted earthquake sites. It strikes me as rather odd that all the earthquakes we have been having lately are on the east side of the Mississippi divide. The Pacific plate has been very active yet California has been strangely quiet. Not that this is a good sign, it is the opposite.

The fact that the earth on the opposite side of the intense activity triggered by the Boxing Day Great Quake is now busy is a mystery but also makes one wonder what is going on here. One of the most violent quakes ever was in the earliest years of the 1800's when the New Madrid Fault rearranged the Mississippi River.

Arthur, one of my canine readers, and his manager have emailed me about the insidious plans to destroy the dunes in their community.

By JOHN FLESHER, Associated Press Writer Tue Oct 3, 7:32 PM ET
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - Known as Pigeon Hill, the Lake Michigan dune towered 30 stories high on the south side of Muskegon. Formed over thousands of years, it disappeared in three decades as its sand was mined for industrial use in the mid-20th century.

"You can only see Pigeon Hill in a museum now," said Tanya Cabala, an environmental consultant from Whitehall who has studied its history.

Michigan has regulated sand mining since then, although environmentalists want stronger controls. But Great Lakes dunes also face other threats, from invasive plant species to abuse by all-terrain vehicles, scientists and government officials said Tuesday.

Facti, an intreped explorer and sceptic and her dog, the Mighty Hunter, discovered a golf course is going to be built on the dunes in her neighborhood. They got on the case right away.

The attorney representing the golf course promoters and their government enablers claims that not "one grain" of sand will be moved to build their playground. Never one to believe everything I read, I climbed the dune - not easy - and like Natty Bumppo, scoured the terrain for signs of corruption.

Too much fun. The land underneath the grass is, um, sand. Essentially they want to take all the dunes, leaving the beach proper for when the golf course fails and they have to, oh, gee whiz, build more super duper luxury "housing units". Yes, they are referring to the residential part of their dream development as "housing units".

As we all know, people lie all the time and being sceptical pays off.

Sometimes one gets in big battles in what seems to be small matters but looking over all this carefully, one can see that every grain of sand does make a huge sand dune eventually. The wild birds in particular need a varied environment and golf courses have some big problems namely due to excessive mowing and the use of poisons and fertilizers as well as non-native grass species.

This is why preserving nature so the wide variety of lifeforms can live is so important for our own life forms. Good luck with your battles, Facti and Arthur!

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