Before their very eyes!Aristotle recognized that the earth’s surface features are not permanent: lakes dry up, deserts become wet, and islands may form as the result of volcanic eruptions. Areas that were once sea may become land, and vice versa.
Aristotle wrote that most changes on the earth’s surface are not grasped by people, because they happen on timescales very much longer than a human life. (SEE HERE)
When This Boat Crew Realized What They Were Seeing, It Was Almost Too Late To Escape.
Land-Sea
Ethiopia's Danakil Depression has one of the most extreme climates found on Earth – yet even here, life has found a way
One day millions of years into the future, the plates will have moved apart so much that the salty waters of the Red Sea will spill over, creating a new ocean and drowning this strange landscape forever. Then, the Danakil Depression will be the birthplace of a new ocean.
The yacht traversing the birth of an island was fascinating. Their curiosity came close to being their last. Good thing they were able to photographically document the event, as few would have believed their tall-tale of the seas..."the one that got away".
ReplyDeleteHumans' hand-me-down history is full of cataclysmic earth changes that defy our current-day understanding. I was always attracted to meteor craters like the Barringer Crater in Arizona...outer space meets Earth.
It's unfortunate that we humans are now able to inflict tremendous harm and consequent change into the natural processes of Earth. The all-time record of 400 ppm carbon dioxide average content in the atmosphere was just attained several years ago. The news last week was that Antarctica had finally reached that level, too:
"Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4 Million Years"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-co2-hit-400-ppm-for-first-time-in-4-million-years/
This morning, I read that giant sink holes have formed and continue to enlarge in west Texas near Wink and Kermit, TX...they call them wink holes. They were caused by oil extraction. You Okies have your newly acquired claim to fame, with the greatest number of earthquakes than anywhere else. We now have vast areas in the oceans of plastic debris, along with the utter devastation of reefs that sustain all ocean life. Our ground and surface water that is becoming too toxic to utilize. There's always the Fukushima radiation disaster, et al, that seems to have disappeared from any media information source.
The yacht plowing through the newly forming volcano is a metaphor for us humans, but I doubt we'll be able to view it from a distance...the first row of seats is ours...we've earned them.
mike ~ We are doing terrible things to our planet Earth, yes! It's getting more scary with each passing year. As you point out, we or our soon to be successors, will be in the front row observing a set of catastrophic events - if someone doesn't wake the f..k up very very soon, to try to at least slow things down, and give humans another century or so in which to consider alternatives - if there are any (thinking sci-fi!)
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By the way, not sure if you'll have received notification of a new comment on the William Roberts Arty Farty post from a couple of weeks ago - you'll likely find it of interest:
http://twilightstarsong.blogspot.com/2016/06/arty-farty-friday-william-roberts.html
:-)