Geologic Change

"I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down."
-song lyrics, Carole King

When Charles Darwin was a naturalist, scientists were just starting to think in "geologic" time of million and later billions of years. Prior to that "church" time held sway with the idea that theh Earth was created ex-nihilo (out of nothing) by God for Adam about 4004 BC. It was a classic battle of Church vs Science and it would be nice to say that science won. Geologic time is the modern standard but there is still a very active Creationist movement that still believes the earth is only 6000 years old.

But a century after Darwin a funny thing happened. Science became closed minded and refused to accept any claim of "catestrophic" events- insisting only upon gradual change. But one geologist thought otherwise. In the Eastern half of Washington state is the channeled scablands, a region with valleys, ripples, potholes and other features not consistent with gradual river action nor glaciers. Geologist J Harlen Bretz hypothesized that a giant lake, created by melting glaciers after the last ice age, burst open and emptied in one massize flood creating the scablands. His fellow geologists thought he was nuts and a debate raged for over 30 years. Finally he as vindicated in the 1970's as being right and awarded the Penrose Medal in 1979, the highest honor in Earth Science.

Another example of fast change is the volcano Paricutin in Mexico. In 1943 a farmer noticed a glowing crack in his corn field. Within a week there was a volcanic cone 5 stories tall. By the end of a year the volcano was over 1o00 feet high and had destroyed several nearby villages.

In 2005 a volcano in Ethiopia created a 35 mile long crack in the earth in just as few days. If the crack continues to grow towards the Ethiopian Sea, one day we may witness an amazing flood as the Indian Ocean pours into this new rift.

Bottom Line

Many of us are fooled into thinking that change is something that occurs slowly. But a house fire can go from a spark to raging in just a minute with the right (wrong?) materials. A tornado or earthquake can strike without warning. There is no way to avoid these disasters but you can prepare for the aftermath with backup plans and offsite storage.

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