Reply #8: Immanent Disasters [View All]

[Dogmudgeon]

There has never been a time in human history when some natural disaster or another hasn't threatened our survival. We've been lucky for quite some time. The last "biggie" probably occurred around 13000 years ago and ended the last ice age, although the meteor strikes of around 2350 BCE were spectacular to the people living under the estimated track of the swarm's fall, roughly from Iceland to Iraq.

These days, though, we know we are facing the following impending disasters. The first set is natural:

- Eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano

- Little Ice Age (from the collapse of oceanic thermohaline convection -- see www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/ct_abruptclimate.htm)

- Collapse of the western part of Grand Canary / Las Palmas, generating a huge tsunami (1500 ft+ breakers at Miami, possibly 500 ft+ breakers at Long Island)

- Collapse of brittle rock bed off the East Coast, causing huge tsunamis AND releasing an enormous amount of methane into the atmosphere, enough to cause catastrophic global warming.

Then there's the human disaster we're creating by using as much oil as we can as fast as we can without preparing for prices to skyrocket and production to stall, as the easily-pumped oil close to the surface is exhausted. We should be at the critical point of oil use Any Day Now, but by 2030 at the very latest. And in spite of coal industry P.R., there is not enough coal to last 500 years. It's more like 50 years at 1970 rates of consumption.

The Powers That Be probably do understand these things, and that has prompted the recent swing toward fascism. But I personally think we'd be a lot better off if they just came clean, so we could prepare for problems now instead of reacting in pain and dread when things do get bad.

Chances are that none of the natural disasters will happen at all any time soon, but the human disaster will arrive on schedule, or even early. For one thing, Iraq's oil supply may have been overestimated by 50%.

A new Ice Age, supervolcanoes, megatsunamis, or not, the future will be darker and colder than necessary if we don't take control of our "leaders" soon.

--bkl