Earthquakes
April 20th 2010 05:11
We humans are constantly digging holes in the earth, mining minerals of all sorts and removing oil. What if we are upsetting the balance of the planet by doing so? Are we creating danger for ourselves we know nothing about yet? Perhaps earthquakes or volcanic eruption and tsunamis are is some way tied to our everlasting digging for something or other. Can we sustain these practices?
We cannot match the power of an earthquake, a volcanic eruption or even the power of water freely moving. A tsunami is merely water moving, floodwater in rivers is another example of water moving. The tsunami in Indonesia about four years ago was sparked off by a large earthquake. Some 280 thousand people died. Since then there has been a major earthquake about one every six months or so. Why? I don't know, but I wonder if we are being warned by Nature that worse is to follow. Our planet is changing all the time, ever so slowly, but it is changing. We humans are absolutely powerless to do anything about it. On the rim of the Pacific Ocean there is an almost continuous fault line where continental plates meet; also a ring of volcanic activity closely aligned to the fault lines. We have tsunami warning centres established throughout the Pacific but if a really violent earthquake set off a tsunami reasonably close to shore there would be little time to flee. Tsunamis travel at around 700 kilometers an hour.
Volcanoes have been around our planet for millions of years, yet, no matter how much our science studies them we do not know what causes a volcano to erupt, we do not know how big an eruption may be, nor do we know how long any eruption may last. It stands to reason we have no idea of how much damage an eruption will do to the surrounding landscape or to the atmosphere we breathe. So what do we do? We watch, we wait, we record everything and we hope to survive
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We cannot match the power of an earthquake, a volcanic eruption or even the power of water freely moving. A tsunami is merely water moving, floodwater in rivers is another example of water moving. The tsunami in Indonesia about four years ago was sparked off by a large earthquake. Some 280 thousand people died. Since then there has been a major earthquake about one every six months or so. Why? I don't know, but I wonder if we are being warned by Nature that worse is to follow. Our planet is changing all the time, ever so slowly, but it is changing. We humans are absolutely powerless to do anything about it. On the rim of the Pacific Ocean there is an almost continuous fault line where continental plates meet; also a ring of volcanic activity closely aligned to the fault lines. We have tsunami warning centres established throughout the Pacific but if a really violent earthquake set off a tsunami reasonably close to shore there would be little time to flee. Tsunamis travel at around 700 kilometers an hour.
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