By Alan Caruba
The news is all about the Tuesday’s U.S. elections, but some of us are concerned about the news on Monday regarding a possible eruption of the Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland. Never heard of it? You will.
Grimsvotn is the most active volcano in Iceland. The one that made a lot of news earlier in 2010 was Eyjafjallajokull that, while relatively small, generated such a huge cloud of ash that it disrupted air travel across western and northern Europe for six days in April.
Here’s why volcano watchers around the world are on high alert.
This past week, in Indonesia, after a tsunami killed several hundred people, Mount Merapi rumbled to life forcing thousands to flee back to evacuation centers as 38 lava avalanches occurred with pyroclastic flows down the south and west slopes running outward for seven kilometers. They incinerate everything in their path.
In August, a volcano on Sumatra erupted for the first time in 400 years.
There is a “Ring of Fire” that stretches approximately 25,000 miles in a horseshoe from eastern Asia to the western shores of North and South America. It has 452 volcanoes of which 75% are the world’s most active or dormant.
On August 25, Italy’s Etna volcano and Columbia’s Galeros volcano both erupted.
In the U.S. the last major volcanic eruption was Mount St. Helens in 1980, but it is just one volcano in Washington State that includes Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, Mount Adams, and Mount Rainier, all part of a Cascade Range that reaches down into California. Mount Rainer is a massive stratovolcano located just 54 miles southeast of Seattle.
In June 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines sending millions of tons of ash and dust into the Earth’s atmosphere. It caused the global temperature to drop at least a degree or two for a few years.
Why talk about volcanoes in the aftermath of a historic election? Because there has been a significant increase in volcanic activity of late. That is never a good thing.
In his book, “Not by Fire but by Ice” the foremost authority on ice ages and magnetic reversals, Robert W. Felix, quoted Peter Vogt of the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office who warned that, “Almost all tectonic movement can be linked to magnetic reversals. Seafloor spreading, sea level changes, mountain growth, earthquakes, and volcanism all seem to speed up whenever the frequency of reversals speeds up.”
Magnetic reversals are part of the cycles scientists have determined existed over the 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s existence. They range from the most ancient, the Devonian, to the Holocene, from 10,000 years ago to the present. “At least twelve (magnetic) reversals can be linked to extinctions and climatic deterioration during the last three million years alone,” says Felix.
Significantly, the aftermath of magnetic reversals are linked to the emergence of new species in ways that Charles Darwin never knew or dreamed of. What we call “evolution” is far more likely the result of magnetic reversals.
“Mass extinctions have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on this planet,” says Felix.
One of those species is Homo sapiens, human beings, and we have existed for a mere 200,000 years. Civilization as we know it is about 5,000 years old; a blink of the eye in terms of the age of the Earth.
Thus, all this volcanic activity occurring around the world may be signaling the advent of a new magnetic reversal and, as bad as volcanoes are, a magnetic reversal is the very definition of a cataclysm on such an order that it defies the imagination. Think of the sudden end of dinosaurs.
I tell you this because of all the blather of biodiversity, predicted species extinctions, and similar nonsense that is now following in the wake of the corpse formerly known as “global warming.” It is the new deception.
The real action is that of the Earth and the Sun. Though a predictable solar cycle, the Sun has gone “quiet” of late with few sunspots, the popular name for gigantic magnetic storms seen on the surface of the Sun. They almost always precede cooling cycles of shorter or longer duration and the worst of these are ice ages.
We are at the end of the latest interglacial period of 11,500 years and the next ice age will come on with blinding speed.
When you tie volcanic activity, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural events together, it behooves the human race to be far more humble about our so-called affect on the Earth’s environment. Our home is a small planet in a very large universe.
Editor’s Note: For more information, visit http://www.iceagenow.com/ and read Robert W. Felix’s books, “Not by Fire, but by Ice” and “Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps.”
© Alan Caruba, 2010
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6 comments:
Alan,
I thank you for this post as I follow such events myself, however quietly.
I wish more people actually paid more attention to what the Earth, our Solar system, Galaxy let alone the Universe does as opposed to us minuscule bags of water known as Homosapiens do.
The former is much, much older and entirely more powerful than the latter.
@Christopher. Yes, events well beyond our control may prove very destructive. People need to know about them.
I heard George Bush was responsible ...
The real question here is if the observed volcanic activity at present is any different from that observed at any other time in the recent history, say, the last 500 years. Volcanoes always erupt, and the reasons for this are mostly mechanical (continental plates plunging under each other or pushing, that kind of thing). I'd be skeptical about any connection to magnetic field reversals. The last reversal occurred about 780,000 years ago, but no great calamity accompanied it. Our bipedal ancestors were already present, and clearly had survived, of which we are a walking proof. However, it is possible that the magnetic field itself may be affected by the plate tectonics--the are papers about it.
Excellent blog, Alan.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry anymore. Some Eco-whacko fools posting that we should stop "raping the forests" in Indonesia . . . "Save the trees", those trees which are about to be destroyed in great numbers by volcanic ash and great fires caused by volcanic activity in Indonesia.
Mind, I am greatly in favor of harvesting trees in our own forests, which are huge, in the old fashioned way, that of selecting the largest, cutting them down, and snaking them out to be turned into lumber.
I am not one, usually, to wish harm to, well, other than my worst enemies.
It would sure be nice about now, I think, if Katla erupted as it did in 1788. Our Marxist enemies in the EU would have something real to deal with and die from. And it would be too large of a disaster to consider giving all that much aid to them, with money we don't have.
Just saying . . . we strenuously yammer and argue about what is not even real, forgetting that it is natural forces which have caused humans by far the most grief, natural forces which are far beyond any human control, or even for humans to have a noticeable effect on.
@Gustav: I am posting your comment, but I disagree with the opinion and facts you express. Magnetic reversals are always associated with mass extinctions.
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