It Really Is a Small World

By Alan Caruba

There is a flood in Australia of biblical proportions though it must be said there is little news of it in the U.S. media. Much of Queensland is under water which would be comparable to saying that much of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and a large portion of New York is under water. Australia is very big.

If that news was not disturbing enough, on Tuesday, Krakatau volcano in Indonesia erupted, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands in its vicinity as ash rained down on two large provinces. Meanwhile, the Kizimen volcano on Kamchatka is erupting as well.

England is passing through the worst winter in the last hundred years of recorded history. Its heavy investment in clean energy, specifically wind turbines, has turned out to be a bad idea since they tend not to turn much when the weather turns cold. Having shut down most of its coal mines, England is experiencing a lack of electrical power that is killing some folks.

No, it is not the Apocalypse, but it might as well be for people fleeing or trapped by these huge events.

No doubt some people are trying to organize efforts to save the kangaroos and koala bears in Australia while others are worrying about indigenous animals in Indonesia. If this sounds like they have idiotic priorities, they do. The same indifference Nature shows to these critters applies to you as well.

The anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, January 13, will occasion a flurry of articles and analysis of what has happened since (not much) but will fade by the weekend. Haiti hasn’t had a good day for centuries.

Meanwhile, snow has fallen in 49 of the U.S. States including Hawaii! It covered 69% of the lower 48. The northeast just experienced its second blizzard since Christmas.

Time to panic? Hardly.

So when should we panic? I would suggest a good time would be when we in America wake up and discover that the current administration has forced enough coal-burning utilities to shut down and there’s no electricity or just not enough to go around. Coal provides fifty percent of all of the electricity we use in the U.S.

We might begin to panic when we realize that the government remains steadfastly in the way of building more nuclear plants to generate electricity, despite its rhetoric stating the opposite.

Most Americans will begin to get angry when a gallon of gasoline hits $4 or more and will wonder why without wondering what happens when the U.S. government shuts down much of the drilling in the Gulf of Mexico by simply not issuing permits and forbids exploration or drilling off the long East and West coasts where billions of barrels of oil are believed to exist. Brazil is doing it. Why not us?

Oil is a global commodity which means that its price is determined by supply and demand. Right now, as China’s economy continues to surge and ours continues to stagnate, China is buying up as much oil as it can get its hands on. It is drilling for it off the coast of Cuba, a mere 90 miles from the tip of Florida.

Due to the floods in Australia, a major producer of coal, China is looking to purchase coal dug out of the mines in Appalachia, precisely where the Obama administration has done its best to shut down mines.

So, you see, it really is a small world after all.

The last great eruption of Krakatau actually lowered the temperature worldwide by throwing so much “schmutz” into the atmosphere it interfered with the Sun’s warming rays.

No matter where you live, it helps if the government doesn’t behave in a totally irrational and stupid way in the name of some bogus notion like global warming.

By the way, where is Al Gore these days? I hear China is experiencing some monster snow storms and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear he’s over there.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Troubling Global Volcanic Activity on the Rise

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

If (When) Yellowstone Erupts

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.