[Shadow_Group] Fw: What We Now Know

[Dean HICKAM]

From: What We Now Know <wwnk at publishers-mgmt.com<mailto:wwnk at publishers-mgmt.com>>

What We Now Know
Week of 1/3/05 

IN THIS ISSUE

Imagining the Unimaginable
Cell Phones to Flowers
Mr. X: Back in Iraq
Puritan Past, Puritan Future: Reader Feedback

**********************************************

IMAGINING THE UNIMAGINABLE

In what might have been exceptional foresight, Japanese priests named
2004 "the year of disaster." Indeed, it was heralded on December 26, 2003
when a large earthquake in Iran destroyed the city of Bam, killing 30,000
and leaving around 70,000 homeless; to the day one year before the
cataclysmic undersea earthquake in Sumatra. Let's take a look at 2004.

More than 52 tornadoes struck Illinois and other Midwest states,
devastating Utica, IL and killing 8 people in the basement of the
Millstone Tavern. The NASA Ames Research Center found that bug
populations that have multiplied unchecked due to extremely mild winters
have devoured huge swathes of forest in western Canada and Alaska since
1995. The damage had gone unnoticed because the region is largely
uninhabited and not harvested for timber. An exceptionally strong monsoon
flooding in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh left 15 million homeless. Six
hurricanes struck the U.S., drove Floridians out of their homes and left
350,000 people without power for days. Charley was deemed the second
costliest hurricane on record. Jeanne delivered a hard blow to already
poverty-stricken Haiti, and the Philippines saw the worst storm season in
13 years. Unprecedented numbers of locusts ravaged Africa and made it as
far north as Portugal and the Canary Islands. According to the UN Food
and Agric ulture Organization, one ton of locusts can eat as much as 10
elephants or 2,500 people in one day. The San Andreas Fault ruptured near
Parkfield, CA, producing an earthquake of 6.0 on the Richter scale. Mt.
St. Helens was spewing huge clouds of steam. A record ten typhoons hit
Japan, killing more than 100 people and causing estimated $6.7 billion
damage. Typhoon Tokage, the deadliest to hit Japan in over two decades,
produced a wave eight stories high and was followed three days later by
the deadliest earthquake in one decade, which destroyed more than 6,000
buildings and caused more than 1,000 landslides. 

And, to top it off, On December 26, a 9.0 earthquake shook Sumatra,
causing a tsunami that devastated the shore lines of 12 countries in the
Indian Ocean and, at last count, had killed over 140,000 people from 37
different nations (and counting).

Are there more such cataclysmic events waiting to happen? Unfortunately,
yes. Consider, for instance, a warning that was issued by a group of
researchers at University College London in 1999. 

There is a strong possibility, the scientists warned, that the Cumbre
Vieja volcano on La Palma, one of the Canary islands off the North
African coast, could erupt with such force that it would virtually split
the island in two. That would cause a tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean of
such force that tidal waves up to 160 feet high would strike the North
American East Coast, destroying large parts of Boston, New York, and
Miami. "Following an eruption in 1949, scientists found a fracture
running through the western side of the volcano," states an article in
last week's Republican. "The land mass-a half trillion tons of
rock-appeared to have slipped 13 feet toward the sea during the eruption,
but friction apparently stopped the slide."

A new eruption, warns the team from University College London, could
cause the entire land mass to slide into the sea, creating the feared
mega-tsunami. J. Michael Rhodes, a volcanologist at University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, is skeptical. He says there is no way to
predict if and when such a landslide will occur-and what effect it would
have. "[It] really depends on how big the landslide is and how rapidly it
moves. It also depends on whether the land slides all at once or whether
it goes in pieces. And there is no way of knowing that," he told the
Republican.

Then there is America's pending super-volcano in Yellowstone National
Park. In 2004, it showed an alarming rise in sulfuric gases and water
temperature, killing fish and wildlife and causing park rangers to close
some sites to tourism. When (note, we didn't say "if") a mega-eruption
happens, say scientists such as Bill McGuire, professor of geohazards at
the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre at University College London,
"the explosion would be the loudest noise heard by man for 75,000 years."
Falling ash, lava flows and the sheer blow of the eruption would
eradicate all life within a radius of a thousand kilometers, according to
McGuire. 

Or in the New Madrid zone, for example. This earthquake-prone fault runs
through parts of Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas.
The three earthquakes-each an estimated 8.0 or higher on the Richter
scale-that occurred in 1811 and 1812 near New Madrid, MO are among the
Great Earthquakes of known history and affected the topography more than
any other earthquake in North America. Large pieces of land sank into the
earth, new lakes were formed, the course of the Mississippi river was
changed. so strong were the quakes that they reportedly rung church bells
in New England. Casualties were few, however, since at that time, the
Mississippi river valley was sparsely settled. A similar earthquake today
would cost hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lives. 

Then there is the fault associated with the meeting of the African and
European tectonic plates that run through the British island of
Gibraltar. Some earth scientists forecast that this is the one most
likely to go, triggering a massive tsunami that would devastate the coast
of Portugal-as it did in 1755 when an estimated 100,000 people were
killed by the disaster.

A recent NY Times editorial titled "The Year the Earth Fought Back"
compares 2004 to 1906, a year of major earthquakes-including the "Great
San Francisco Earthquakes"-volcano eruptions and other natural disasters
around the world. "Given these cascades of disasters past and present,"
wonders author Simon Winchester, ".might there be some kind of butterfly
effect, latent and deadly, lying out in the seismic world?" He speculates
that "the movement among the world's tectonic plates may be one part of
[an] enormous dynamic system, with effects of one plate's shifting more
likely than not to spread far, far away, quite possibly clear across the
surface of the globe." 

What to do? First and probably most important, don't take Mother Nature
for granted. No amount of modernity can tame the earth. If you live in an
area that has been devastated in the past, or that is at risk, take what
steps you can to be prepared-including keeping a stash of long-lived food
and try to secure a source of clean water (or, the water purification
materials need to create same). Then go about your business. 





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