So, What's to Worry?

I know that some of you have experienced anxiety over certain current events.  If we watch the news, it’s all mayhem and mass destruction.  From global warming to the local drought and non-vetted Syrian refugees to home-grown jihadists, it seems there is peril around every corner, clouds forming to darken every sky.  Hillary is a liar and Trump is a clown.  The U.S. Department of Justice can’t seem to find a handle with which to grasp Server-gate or Clinton Foundation irregularities: And Wednesday, Loretta Lynch (U.S. Attorney General, in case you’ve lost your program) admitted she didn’t know the whereabouts of one Noor Salman (the wife of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen) who may be charged as a co-conspirator.  Medical insurance premiums skyrocket as the industry struggles to provide all the services mandated in the Affordable Care Act (i.e., Obama Care) and many insurance providers have elected to pack it in and withdraw from the California market.  The Democrats are staging a sit in (yeah, real mature; that’s what you get when you elect a bunch of over-the-hill hippies to Congress) to force a vote on gun control measures that will make us safe while the NRA collects money to influence the other representatives to vote to preserve our natural right to self-defense.  Tumbleweed doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life and my tap water is so mineral laden my InSinkErator has frozen solid.  I can imagine that many of you not only perceive the glass as half empty, but also recognize that there’s a hole in the bottom!

Well I, for one, will not be defeated.  There is no need to surrender.  After all, the mosquitos infected with the Zica virus can’t bite us all!  Now I know from time to time your little voice tells you to pack it in.  To just give up and stay in bed with the covers pulled over your head (although with the temperatures we’ve been experiencing lately that might lead to heat stroke) and hide from the big bad world. But I say let’s take a positive approach, after all none of this stuff will kill us. Okay, maybe the terrorists or the mosquitos or the lack of medical attention may kill us, but my malfunctioning garbage disposal won’t.  I say to really alleviate our fears of today’s issues, let’s take a look at somethings that could really ruin our summer.

Volcanism – No, this is not a society dedicated to a broader understanding of the philosophies Mr. Spock.  It is the branch of geology concerned with the study of volcanic activity.  Oh sure, there is always some relevant risk of a localized eruption like that of Mt. Saint Helens (Washington, USA) in 1980.  But that killed hardly any people at all, only fifty-seven, more or less.  It’s sort of hard to identify ashes.  But such an event is hardly a pimple on the butt of the one that’s coming.  The Yellowstone Supervolcano has generated a succession of eruptions over the last 18 million years.  Most recently 2.1 million, 1.3 million and 630,000 years ago. If you have any talent for trend analysis, you should be able to extrapolate a due date for the next big-boom as “any day now”.  I know what you’re thinking, “Well then, a volcano.  That’s not so bad.  They’re pretty localized events.  I wasn’t planning a trip to Wyoming anyway.  Rather desolate place, that.”  Well think again. Poindexter.  We’re talking something in the order of 240 cubic miles of rock, dust and ash ejected into the sky.  To put that in perspective, the Mt. Saint Helens 1980 eruption launched about 0.3 cubic miles of junk, and that had measurable effect on worldwide temperature trends. Scientists assure us that this would not be a life-on-earth ending event.  Hey, maybe the cooling will offset the deleterious effect of global warming!

Tectonics – No, this is not a fancy name for electronic game design.  It is the phenomenon which describes the formation of the earth’s surface.  It seems the earth is like an onion, it has layers.  Okay, maybe it’s more like a parfait, but let’s not get bogged down in similes.  There is a solid inner core, a liquid outer core, a stiffer mantle (I don’t know, maybe every time we reach perigee with Venus the earth gets a little excited.) and a rigid mantle.  And finally floating atop all of this is the crust, which is what you are currently standing (sitting, whatever) on.  This crust is not solidly connected like an egg shell but is broken up into plates.  With the boiling action of the mantle supporting it, these plates are in constant (on a geological time scale) motion.  Where plates meet, there are two types of action.  Plates either gnash laterally against each other (like the San Andreas fault) or one is subverted beneath the other where it melts and becomes part of the mantle while the ascending plate crumples like a dented fender to create new mountains. So where’s the peril?  Although these plates move very slowly (incher per year} you must remember that this solid rock we’re talking about which does not give up its structure easily. Great amounts of potential energy build up at these seams which on occasion releases itself in the in a phenomenon we call earthquakes.  And as with most geologic action, we are way overdue for some major shifting along the San Andreas fault as its been over 150 years since the last major quake (Magnitude 7.9).  Emergency planning professionals project 50,000 deaths.  “So Dale, why don’t we just move to the Great Plains?  Can’t we just let the illegal immigrants have California?” you ask.  Well, as advances in research techniques allow us to develop a more complete model of the crust’s structure we learn that there are plate intersections and fault systems everywhere.  And no one can reliably predict when any of these systems will become active.  Perhaps the solution is to buy that Bakersfield lot now, beach-front property always retains its value!

Near Earth Objects (NEO) – No, this is not the study of little persons (sorry, Frank).  It is the science of identifying and tracking asteroids and comets whose orbits around the sun bring them in close proximity to earth’s orbit.  Why do we do this?  Well it seems that on occasion one of these rocks or ice balls tries to occupy the same position in space-time as our humble planet.  Now for the pea sized wanderer that provides us with a dazzling light show as it burns up in our atmosphere this is of no great concern.  But every 100 million years or so a really big one comes along and smacks hell out of us.  The most fully documented event was the impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs (known as the KT boundary in geology parlance) and caused the mass extinction that marks the end of the Mesozoic Era.  This occurred 65 million years ago.  So while we are not in the imminent window statistically, we are on the short end of the cycle.  That event resulted in the extinction of 16% of marine families, 47% of marine genera and 18% of land vertebrate families.  But I know what you’re thinking, “Dale, what are the odds?”  Well, I just happened to have that information.  According to a study form 2012, the odds of dying in the United States in a human lifetime from a global NEO impact is 1 in 75,000.  That may seem pretty slim but if you compare it to some other selected causes of death: Earthquake; 1 in 130,000: Lightning; 1 in 135,000: Food Poisoning (Botulism); 1 in 3,000,000: Shark attack; 1 in 8,000,000.  (Well T’weed, I guess South Africa isn’t looking so bad after all.)  It seems if you’re partial to standing outside, naked, in the rain, you should be more worried about being stuck down by a meteorite than a lightning bolt.  But my money in on the risk that you’ll be arrested by the local cops, tased and hauled off to the looney bin.

So there you have it.  A little information and bit of calculated analysis, plus an optimistic outlook helps us put things in perspective.  I think we have proven here that no matter how bad things seem, it can always get worse.  I hope I have helped brighten your day.