Rumblings from Mother Earth

By Alan Caruba

As I predicted, news from Haiti in the wake of the Jan 12 earthquake that leveled Port-au- Prince has become a trickle. Even a catastrophe of such proportions, thousands dead, a city in ruins, et cetera, does not hold the world’s attention for long, but a month later, on February 11, a 4.3 magnitude earthquake hit Chicago and there was barely any notice taken in the mainstream media.

As February began, The New York Times took notice that, “Hundreds of Quakes Are Rattling Yellowstone.” My first instinct was (and is) to dismiss the Times as a source of science-based information. This is the same newspaper that, a few years back, declared that the North Pole was melting and, of course, it continues to publish utter nonsense about a non-existent “global warming.”

To his credit, reporter Kirk Johnson put the Yellowstone activity in context, noting that the second-largest ever recorded swarm of quakes “is more a cause for curiosity than alarm.” In fact, another swarm of more than 1,000 quakes had struck the park just over a year ago with the largest recorded occurring in 1985; over a three month period, there were 3,000 earthquakes.

All the quakes noted, however, are way down on the Richter scale, barely felt and noticed thanks only to sophisticated seismic detection equipment. In total, the February swarm was the 80th in the last fifteen years. Yellowstone, however, is special because it is the largest volcanic caldera in the United States and, should it erupt, the destruction would be unimaginable. Like Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, it could fill the atmosphere with so much material that it would likely alter the weather around the world for a while.

One, however, has to ask if there is a connection between Haiti, Chicago, and Yellowstone’s rumblings. Clearly there is movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates and it is occurring in our neighborhood.

We have been told for years that the San Andreas Fault is likely to deliver “a big one” again to San Francisco or Los Angeles, but it is the nature of people to push such things to the back of their minds and perhaps that is the best thing to do. No one can truly “prepare” for an earthquake.

There are, however, magnitudes of disaster. My friend, Robert W. Felix, author of books on the coming ice age and about magnetic reversals when the magnetic poles reverse—-your compass would point south instead of north—-says “I do know that smaller eruptions have occurred in sync with magnetic reversals and in sync with the beginning of previous ice ages.”

A magnetic reversal occurs when the protective magnetic field around the planet has a precipitous decline in field strength. “And since our magnetic field strength has declined by two-thirds during the past 2,000 years,” says Felix, “the rate of decline has been speeding up.” (Check out his website at www.iceagenow)

Despite the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming”, Earth has entered yet another cooling cycle that could last a decade or two, maybe longer. The planet is at the end of an interglacial period of 11,500 years and is due a new ice age. Maybe not tomorrow or next week, but the science says it is inevitable.

When you put together an increase in volcanic activity, a decline in the magnetic field strength of the planet, and the approach of a new ice age, it suggests that life as we know it on Earth is going to become a far bigger problem for all species.

All these rumblings are telling us something.

Deadly Earth, Deadly Humans

By Alan Caruba

The earthquake in Haiti is a perfect example of the arrogance of environmentalists who are always running around crying “Save the Earth” or making claims that any or all forms of life are going extinct.

For three decades we have listened to these charlatans claim that the Earth was heating up to a point where, if we didn’t cut back or replace all forms of energy, oil, natural gas and coal, it would become a vast desert devoid of life.

Then, in 1998, the Sun began yet another of its eleven year cycles of low sunspot activity, a diminution of magnetic storms on its surface, and the completely predictable result was a new, perfectly natural cooling cycle, a prelude perhaps to a predictable new ice age.

When I do radio, I like to remind listeners that Mother Nature has a message for humankind. It’s “Get out of the way. Here comes an earthquake, a volcano, a flood, a forest fire, a mudslide, a blizzard, a hurricane, et cetera.”

In an excellent book, “Devastation! The World’s Worst Natural Disasters” by Lesley Newson, she starts by noting that “The Earth is a rocky sphere nearly 8,000 miles in diameter. It is surrounded by a shroud of gases more than 60 miles deep. Sandwiched in between is a fragile layer, only a few miles thick, where humans are able to survive. It is perhaps not surprising that in this tiny zone of life there are occasional upheavals that make survival impossible.”

Haiti is the perfect definition of devastation. As bad as the earthquake’s damage has been, the aftermath will be testimony to the way those not killed in the initial quake will fall victim to the diseases that will ravage the area as well as the difficulty to provide immediate medical care. There are an astonishing number of ways humans can die and Mother Nature is utterly indifferent.

What makes matters worse, however, is the indifference of environmentalists who would deny everyone access to the energy sources needed to fuel a complex, technological, global society beginning with the provision of electricity. The Earth is not running out of coal or oil, only the right to mine it and drill for it.

The first thing to go in Haiti was its communications system. The next was the capacity to fuel means of transportation. The lack of a government was nothing compared to the long-standing failure to provide clean water and, worse, the failure to educate Haitians to compete in a world where literacy and modern skills are vital to survival.

Another factor that will kill many Haitian survivors is the spread of disease by insect and rodent pests. Environmentalists have striven to deny Americans and all others access to one of the greatest developments of the modern era, pesticides with which to control the mosquitoes, the ticks, the fleas, the rats and all the other creatures that constantly threaten humanity.

In April 2005, I wrote a commentary, “The Black Plague and its descendants” that was published in The Washington Times. It noted that the Black Death made its way from inner Asia and, in 1347, Yersina pestis arrived in Europe. What followed was the second greatest catastrophe in the human record. By the time it ended around 1352, a quarter of Europe’s population was dead.

Only World War II killed more people. And yet, as this is written, millions die of malaria in Africa and Asia because some bureaucrat in the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT.

History gives ample evidence that the Earth is a dangerous place, in addition to earthquakes, it is ringed by volcanoes and, in the U.S. the beloved Yellowstone National Park is one giant volcanic caldera which, when it explodes, will alter life as well as take it in the hundreds of thousands, if not more.

Scientists track the nation’s “hurricane season” and all manner of effort is made to anticipate them and warn residents, but even that was not enough when Katrina hit the Gulf States on August 29, 2005.

It is stupid to politicize this event, blaming former President Bush as if he either caused it or failed to respond effectively. No President and no government are prepared for a Category Five hurricane. It was just as stupid not to flee when told it was coming.

It is not for nothing that we call such events “an act of God”, but in reality they are an act of a huge planet, unique among all others in our galaxy because it has spawned all manner of life, including our own.

It is a planet subject to the action or inaction of the Sun. Nothing we do alters that simple fact. It is a planet that must hope to dodge any of the thousands of asteroids that threaten it. It is an Earth whose tectonic plates shift unpredictably. Its interior is unimaginably hot and whose circulation of molten rock carries the heat to the surface, allowing its mantle to keep the core stable.

What I am arguing for is a bit of humility, something that humans are not famous for.

There are six billion of us and the world’s intelligentsia scorns us and seeks ways to ensure as many as possible will die by thwarting the development of genetically modified crops to feed us, by stopping the building of more power generation plants, by making war in the name of a misguided belief in the superiority of a religion like Islam, or the evil desire to grow rich and powerful by ruling vast populations.

In Iran, ruled by certifiably insane ayatollahs, the people are in the streets to overthrow a brutal regime that is determined to create its own nuclear weapons and the world is standing by instead of uniting to destroy their means to do so. A so-called international organization, the United Nations, is shot through with corruption and both unwilling and unable to assert the sanctions to stop the inevitable outcome of doing nothing.

And here in the United States, we have fallen victim to a regime so dedicated to the destruction of the nation’s economy that we wait on the election process to save us from ourselves.