Apocalyptic Planet - Chapter 9: Seas Boil, Atacama Desert, Chile

Unfortunately for this Chapter, the COVID 19 brought a screeching halt to our class.  OLLI closed down the final week of class due to the virus.  So, the recap goes forward without any class input.

This chapter focuses on the driest non-polar region in the world.  Childs is once again wandering the planet with his buddy JT.  This trip he is looking for a place on earth that has been cooked to a crisp for 150 million years.  He has found it in the Atacama Desert. It is one of the oldest deserts in the world and remarks that there are parts of the desert where no measurable rain has fallen for centuries.  He was looking for a place that is uninhabitable and searching to experience what that might look like.  

He cites Jim Hansen, a NASA climate guru, as saying that the southern US will become almost uninhabitable if we proceed on the same path.  Other researchers were looking at how much climate change the human body could take.  They calculate that “like most mammals, humans would experience potentially lethal levels of heat stress with an 11-12 degree Celsius rise in temperature…”

It turns out that the Atacama is in large part a salt flat, or salar.  He goes into some depth explaining where the salt comes from….I leave it to you to read through that detail.  But, leave it to Childs and JT to decide to explore this salar.  “Ten miles wide at its thinnest and 60 miles long on its axis, we were crossing the salar on a diagonal.”   

The point being, as Childs says, “In the Atacama, I saw the future.”  He noted that the air was probably 87 degrees Fahrenheit, but the sun was burning through him.  He understands why the Southern Hemisphere skin cancer rates are much higher than in the Northern Hemisphere.  

They do find evidence of life via a flock of Flamingos and a mud patch presumably filled with microbes.  He shares that drill cores in both the Atacama and Death Valley turned up viable microbes dating 40 thousand years old.  

He leaves the chapter with one of his few optimistic views of life on Earth, “The earth is a seed planting itself over and over.  We are not the gardeners.  We are no benevolent being leaving the house every morning with a watering can and a trowel to dig up weeds, wiping our brows midday to marvel at our handiwork.  Instead, we are within the seed itself.  We are of its cells and the hardness of its coat, our place not to marvel at the futility and smallness of ourselves but to keep life moving.  What we do now, from the inside, determines the vigor of that seed, how long it might live and plant itself again.”

Well said Mr. Childs, well said.

Apocalyptic Planet - Chapter 8: Cataclysm Strikes, Hawaii

As a class we once again declared Craig Childs crazy!!  Going to Hawaii to celebrate New Year’s Eve on top of a quiet volcano to watch a moon rise and sun set at the same time is one thing.  To go to the most active volcano on the planet to observe as close as possible is an entirely different thing!

Of course, unbeknownst to us, the readers as we started this chapter, the main focus would be on meteors and volcanoes….but who knew, given how the chapter started.  He did start off with a bit of trivia that I for one did not know.  Mount Kea, where he was situated for his New Year’s observation is the tallest mountain in the world, contrary to popular belief regarding Mt. Everest.  It is 33 thousand feet when measured from its seafloor base.  

He quickly shifts the focus of his attention for the evening, the full moon and begins writing about the Late Heavy Bombardment…I must have missed a lot in my science classes!  “The Late Heavy Bombardment appears to have been caused by Saturn and Jupiter entering a gravitational resonance with one another, which drew their orbits out of whack.  As the two planets rapidly migrated farther out in the solar system, the asteroid belt was disrupted.” 

He describes the backside of the moon, that side which we never see, as covered with craters so dense they cover all evidence of earlier ones.  So, around 4 billion years ago the Moon was heavily bombarded with meteors and that bombardment last for about 20 million years, and according to his version, it’s a good thing the Moon was there to protect the Earth.  What did reach us reliquified large portions of the Earth’s surface into molten rock.  This is the beginning of time on Earth.  He claims that the Moon is the better storyteller of this event.  

Childs classifies volcanoes and bolide impacts in the same category….random, explosive, devastating events.  The biggest meteor impacts like the Chicxulub impact over the Yucatan Peninsula is credited with taking out the dinosaurs.  I shared with the class our own local impact site in Adams County, 5 miles in diameter its epicenter is the site of the Serpent Mound, a well known local archeological site.  Look up Serpent Mound Crater on Google for details.  

Quickly Childs and his companion JT moved to Mauna Loa for a close up look at fresh-lava surfaces.  He then switches back and forth between fresh lava and asteroids.  He told the story of one that passed between the Earth and the Moon on Nov 8, 2011 and of another projected to arrive in 2029 is about 885 feet across and projected to pass Earth by just 29,000 miles.  And then again in 2880 a 4000’ wide asteroid has a 1 in 3 chance of hitting the earth.

He is making a connection between asteroid hits and volcano eruptions.  He states that there about 200 extremely active volcanoes presently so that we are better off looking beneath our feet if we are looking for natural disasters.  He does mention the super-eruption brewing beneath Yellowstone that is just waiting to happen.  I’ve known of this one for a while and can work myself into a frenzy over it if I let my imagination go wild.  He notes that volcano activity during human history has been shown to bring on cold spells leading to failed agriculture and starvation.  Childs notes “If volcanoes change the world, asteroid do the same, only more rarely, on a much grander scale and much more swiftly.”  Food for thought.

He then shifts to how the Earth reseeds itself after a cataclysmic event.  One theory is that microbes do survive and can stay long periods in outer space.  Falling back to earth, if they survive reentry they could reseed the earth.  “That is a lot of ifs, but it is at least hypothetically possible to reseed the earth from a cataclysm of asteroids and meteorites.”  

 “An open lava, biotic succession generally starts with crickets and spiders.  And then you see small green flames of crack ferns.  Moisture gathers a little rainwater in hairline factures where rhizomes break down glass and iron to pockets of primitive soil.”

He and JT wandered to active lava flows, noting that 10’ was as close as you could get.  He did get within 3’, but was quickly pushed back by the extreme discomfort.  

“The heat inside of the earth, which drives both tectonics and volcanism, as well as our protective magnetic field, reaches temperatures nearing 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  This heat exists because of earlier bolide impacts, mostly a by-product of the Late Heavy Bombardment.  These impacts triggered nuclear reactions, and unstable elements formed deep within the earth where their half-lives are slowly burning out.”

He finishes out the chapter with a visit to a forest that has recovered from previous lava flows.  It is an area managed by the National Park Service that is typically visited only by scientists or NPS employees.  Childs and JT are given a hard time regarding their desire to visit the forest by a Park Ranger, but they do gain access.  They find some biodiversity.  You need to read the chapter to get the full description of what is possible after a lava flow.  His note is, “It is one of the possible futures, abundance returns, the earth lives on, and we are not there to see it.”

Apocalyptic Planet - Chapter 7: Mountains Move, Northeast Tibet

This class started off with my proclamation that this is my favorite chapter.  It’s not that I’ve done a lot of river rafting, but I have done a few rides that were thrilling and I loved each one.  I’ve rafted on the Colorado and a couple of times in West Virginia.  Not sure, I may have missed by calling by not moving to Colorado in my youth and becoming a guide…but that’s a whole other story.

Anyway, in this chapter Childs takes us to Northeast Tibet with himself, his step-father (whom he lovingly calls Old Pola) and a group of seasoned, well-experienced river rafters.  The challenge on this trip is rafting a river that has not been run before and for very obvious reasons….it is a wild ride that cannot be scouted in advance.  Not sure when this trip took place.  It could have been years before the book’s publication date of 2012 and I question it because I wonder why they didn’t take a drone and scout by drone.  But, the trip could have been before drones, or, maybe they loved the suspense…who knows??!!

The science in this chapter focuses on plate tectonics and land mass.  Again, as usual for Childs, there is much to be discovered.  Like, who knew that the Tibetan Plateau is so large that it has a direct impact on global weather?  One example given is that for this trip the timing was planned for after the monsoon season.  That particular year the plateau held the heat, the heat pulled moisture from all over and as a result the monsoon lingered, meaning that for their trip instead of the water level lowering as they expected, water level was still rising from the prolonged monsoon; something of a crisis for the planned trip.  

 “The Tibetan Plateau is why there is a deep rainy season throughout Southeast Asia.  But its climatic effect is much larger than monsoons.  It is a planet changer, this massive, high-elevation presence responsible for the multimillion-year cooling phase the earth has been in place since not long after dinosaurs perished.”  Childs noted that one of the earth’s big clocks is changing. 

The river they planned to run was the Salween, third sister to the Yangtze and Mekong.  The river cuts through the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, “exposing the impact of the Indian subcontinent driving into Asia.  This collision jacks up the highest landmass on the planet,” (think Mt. Everest). These thrusts are driven by mega-thrust earthquakes that tend to happen at plate collisions.  

And beyond that, “Over the geologic history of this earth, climates have heaved one way and the next in response to the changing shape of earth’s surface.  The 50 million year rise of the Himalayas and its mother mass of the Tibetan Plateau is what has ultimately allowed for ice ages and the singsong climate of the world as we know it.”

He goes on to say “This planet has a restless heart, its interior swollen with heat turning over itself, crumpling and uncrumpling the surface over tens of millions of years, constantly unleveling the playing field.”  But, without that heat the Earth would look more like Mars or our Moon.  Not sure we want that!!

Other new information that I at least was not aware of before reading this chapter is how newly exposed rock inhales CO2.  Evidentially, whenever new rock is exposed to the air (think earthquakes rising up mountains, or landslides shifting rock exposure) this is what happens.  There is also the mechanism of tectonic forces pushing up from below while gravity pushes down from above.  The process ultimately creates sediment through soil erosion which has increased since the appearance of humans on earth.  It’s kind of like the yin and yang of the earth!!!  Childs notes that “Tectonics does not end at the ground beneath your feet.  It is a dynamic system from the earth’s interior all the way to the sky and back.”  He also notes that we are the only planet in our solar system that has plate tectonics which is no small coincidence is also the only planet with life.

Add to all this science information the telling of the tale of their rafting adventure and you have a chapter that, at least for me, was mesmerizing.  I sat there reading wishing on one hand that I was with them on this trip and on the other, so glad I wasn’t.  

One point made by a class member was how did they get through all the ups and downs, turnovers and tossing about and not lose a single piece of gear.  Good question!!!!

Apocalyptic Planet - Chapter 6: Species Vanish, Grundy County, Iowa

Chapter 6 turned out to be not as exotic as some of the other chapters.  No ice covered terrain, nor remote seas, or South American mountains in this chapter; no, this chapter focused on a mid-American corn field.  In this chapter Childs looks at biodiversity and its role in the health of the planet.  He approaches concerns regarding GMOs and both the health of soil and the role it plays in the health of the planet. 

Childs expresses concern regarding how the mid-western corn fields have moved in a century from fields of priceless soil to fields consisting mostly of high-yield petroleum products.  These fields feel more like dirty shoe polish than the fields of our ancestors.  Childs notes how the fields that once hosted 300 species of plants in tall grass and 60 mammals plus 1000s of species of insects now support only a few crops and those only with a lot of help from man.  It is called genetic exhaustion.

And it isn’t just the fields that are affected.  Soil and chemical runoff saturate creeks, then streams, then rivers, rivers that flow to the Gulf of Mexico in this example; this contamination has led to a 50% reduced plankton count in the last 40 years.  Childs notes “ Considering that plankton is one of the primary oxygen producers on this planet, this kind of loss has far-reaching ramifications if it fails to rebound.” 

Moving from the quality of the soil and its far-reaching impact he also looks at the loss of bio-diversity within our current farming practices.  He quotes Edward O. Wilson, a premier sociobiologist who wrote, “The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats.”  Mr. Wilson notes that it would take millions of years for the lost biodiversity to regenerate itself…we don’t have that much time. 

Then looking at the actual chemicals used in farming today, another layer of destruction is added.  Atrazine, one of the most commonly used herbicides on fields today has been found to cause reproductive dysfunction across species.  And that is just one of many chemicals. 

Iowa represents the epitome of human impact, the world completely changed on a landscape scale.  Childs notes that “this is the first time in the history of the earth that one species has dominated and altered all the ecosystems in the world causing global crisis and extinction.”  “Destruction and degradation of habitat are the leading causes of extinction, followed by completion from introduced species, making a modern cornfield a shining example of a worst-case scenario.”