Time Understood

It is worth pointing out that only Astronomers and Geologists understand time properly. No other field needs to keep it is proper perspective, to professionally recognize its scale. Most people learn what they need to get paid or avoid ridicule in their jobs and substitute religion for science the rest of the time. When I worked with biologists, I learned just how ignorant and superstitious they were. I expected better, like all serious scientists being proper atheists with some understanding of all the other sciences, like I have. That's my failed Optimism, right there.

 

Time to a geologist, begins with the planets accreting together after the sun ignites. Most prefer to focus on the earliest rocks, found in Pennsylvania oddly enough, which are 4.5 billion years old. To a geologist, we find things like that worth knowing, and get interested in features and discontinuities which suggest weathering, then being covered over by later events and environments. I've stood on the seashore and looked at the cliffs by the sand and found proof of a series of powerful hurricanes over a thousand miles from their usual tracks. How did they get there? A change in winds from Alaska meant the sea remained warm in the summer, enough to sustain a hurricane rather than dissipate its energy with cold water, and allows them north towards Oregon. This is a hugely important deal because these events pre-date human beings, so you can't blame us for climate change since these are proof that climate changed before we were around. And that it can change back. In proper time scale, there's all sorts of butterfly wings moving around, changing the courses of hurricanes. Sufficient heat in the arctic ocean could release sea water to form clouds and dump lots of snow on the high northern Rocky Mountains by the Arctic Circle, reform the glaciers, shifting water out of the ocean and putting it on the land again, like during the last 3 ice ages. Two of which happened before we were around. That shift of water also lowered sea levels 80 meters, around 300 feet. Not rise, lower. So higher temps can lower sea levels. Once that goes on long enough, the Bering Straight goes dry and the arctic ocean influence of the North Pacific stops, allowing the Pacific Ocean temps to rise further, allowing way more hurricanes to climb the Pacific Coast to Washington State, and moisture flowing inland can produce glaciers on the Sierras, Cascades, and Rocky Mountains. Also, it can refill the salt lakes and get rivers down there going again.

 

During the last Ice Age, California was getting 120 inches of rain a year. That's as much as you see in the Olympic Peninsula, and produces some seriously huge redwood forests and major flood events and the current "islands" of the San Joaquin Delta near Stockton and Antioch were actually serious floodlands filled with millions of migratory waterfowl: ducks, geese, etc. The interior deserts of California weren't deserts. It is entirely possible the coastline would have been lashed heavily by hurricanes, so the liveable places were inland. Much of the California Coast is crumbly chert and mudstone, and any mechanical attack by waves when the ground is saturated makes for landslides. We've seen that in normal Pacific storms. Badly sited million dollar homes falling into the sea. Big deal. Rich people paying for hubris.

 

This is not to say you can't build homes to survive direct hits from hurricanes. Get above the storm surge. Stay off the cliffs. Build windbreaks. Avoid overhanging roofs so they won't catch the wind, and bolt down the roof. Use strong enough materials that don't lift off in 150 mph gusts. Lots of houses on the Atlantic Seaboard follow this rule. And lots don't. I studied architecture before I studied Geology. There's a fussy bunch. Lots of CYA in that field. Most home building qualifies as wooden tents. It keeps the rain off, and the heat in, but structurally not that durable compared to good old 4 foot thick stone walls or concrete wrapped adobe, houses of which are around after 500 years. Wood frames don't last that long. Post and beam lasts better, but they're illegal in California because they collapse in earthquakes. Ironically, the light tent structures of stick lumber is strongest in quakes and least likely to fail in shaking. The upside is these stick houses are cheap to put up and safest in quakes, but the downside is there's no value to building quality to last, so people don't. We don't have to stay in one place since we just don't have that much invested in our wooden tents. Its cheaper to rebuild after a hurricane knocks it all down that to build a structure that will survive it because the earthquakes are a much more common threat. Again, the sense of time is responsible for the outcome.

 

Earthquakes are another issue of time. To an Easterner, quakes are so rare they only happen in California, except that's not true. The East gets quakes too. Really big ones. Charleston was completely leveled by a quake before the Revolutionary war. The New Madrid quakes (plural) in Tennessee flattened or tossed cabins, erupted pockets of methane and arsene gas and coal, changed the course of the Mississippi River, and if it happened now, would cause around $2-3 trillion dollars in damages to homes, businesses, and most importantly, public utilities. It would knock down the powerpoles and shatter the water and sewer lines and sever the levees and bridges and natural gas pipelines. Picture that. It would devastate everything within about 500 miles. From the Great Lakes to New Orleans, from Savannah to Omaha, to Pittsburgh and possibly Buffalo and Philadelphia and certainly Washington DC and New York City. Serious disruption on the fringes, serious damage and devastation in the center. 100 million people homeless. This is NOT something the USA is prepared to deal with, not at all. The Mississippi River would almost certainly shatter the levees and finally crash through the Atchafalaya Valley to the Gulf, leaving New Orleans without its usual shipping income. And to a geologist, Earthquakes are NOT an "If" question but a When. It is incredibly rare for the energy to result in pure deformation and lockup of a faultline. Most often, prior quakes indicate future quakes, 99% of the time. So the stresses that made the last quakes, and destroyed the Mound Builder Culture before that, are due for the next hit. Now that the region is heavily developed and mechanically fragile. Memphis will be leveled. The St. Louis Arch might survive, but the rest of the city will fall. To a geologist, this is the inevitable consequence of people insisting on living in the way of natural, inevitable disasters. Its just as foolhardy as building a house in the path of a hurricane on the Barrier Islands in North Carolina. Or swimming in shark infested waters. You're going to pay the price. Do something stupid enough times for long enough and eventually you get smited for it. That's a function of time.

 

Someday the Yellowstone Caldera will erupt again. The lava chamber was recently mapped in 3D and its 100x bigger than previously believed. It is capable of far larger and longer eruptions than we realized. Its not a simple shape either. When that goes, there should be weeks of warning, and its heavily watched. And yes, it is possible for earthquakes to trigger eruptions and eruptions to trigger earthquakes. A quake a few months ago was on a faultline leading directly to the magma chamber of Lassen Volcano, which had a powerful eruption a century ago and remains active today. Someday that will go off again. Same with Mount Shasta, which is the largest stratovolcano in the lower 48 states. Its very pretty, but its serious as a heart attack, and a major transportation route goes right past it. An eruption would probably close I-5 to truck traffic, and the major rail route runs beside it. We built our infrastructure in a very scenic by dangerous place. Such is life in the West. We mostly move away from disasters, if there's time, but the entire town of Weed burnt to the ground over the last couple days in a major wildfire. A shame too. Looked nice on Google Earth, and having driven past it, it has a lovely view of the Shasta Volcano. So few things make proper sense, but when life is so short, and views of time even moreso, people don't think "I should not build a house and town on the side of a volcano or surrounded by trees that catch fire." Just saying. Yet more evidence that human beings are self destructive.