There are times when “positive feedback” is a bad thing. This is one of them. The is the scariest freaking headline I’ve read in a long time:

Yet again, this past week Utah geologists warned that a big earthquake is due along the 220-mile, active Wasatch Fault. The warning isn’t new. It’s due, it’s due, we keep hearing. This time, the warning comes not after minor tembling but after the digging of a deep trench along the fault. The history of the fault becomes more clear as geologists dig through the slipping layers. Five big earthquakes in the past 6,000 years, they say. When I look at the USGS map of most recent five big quakes (magnitude 6.5+), it looks like activity is moving southward. This would put the epicenter south of Provo.

When I look at the Utah Geological Survey map of specific fault zones, I’m in a clear area. I realize that doesn’t mean no earthquake damage. I did mention to my spouse last week that I remember a lot of earthquakes growing up in Hunter (now West Valley City), and I wasn’t sure whether I am less sensitive now, there aren’t so many earthquakes, or we just live in an area where we don’t feel them. Looking at the map, I hope it is the last one. I hope it isn’t just a matter of geologists not caring enough to place a seismograph station nearby. Apparently, there haven’t been any earthquakes in the past week closer than 15-20 miles away.

Resources:

• 29 things to help you survive an earthquake from the Davis School District.
• What to do after an earthquake from the American Red Cross.

FREAKY UPDATE:

Monday night, May 28th, I felt an earthquake. I heard it coming, sounded like a faraway train. It lasted ~2.5 seconds, during which the shaking and creaking of my house moved from the southwestern corner to the northeastern corner. Quite mild. I immediately went to the USGS map above of earthquakes in the past week, didn’t find this one listed (yet), then followed the link for “Did you feel it?” I filled out their “Did you feel it?” form in detail.

So, I guess I have to take back what I wrote about not feeling earthquakes. The key is to be sitting alone in the quiet, with children far far away.

It was a 2.3 magnitude micro earthquake.

Rob Hopkins, of the amazing Transition Culture in Ireland, lead a recent meeting on energy descent in Lampeter, Wales.

I talked about peak oil and the need to begin preparing for it at a community level. I talked about the experience of Cuba and of the process which gave rise to the Kinsale Energy Descent Plan. 

I happen to know a little (very little) about this town.  My mother’s grandmother was born near there, a fact which drew me to hike up and down the green hills to find my people in my mid-20s. I didn’t find many people, but I found the overgrown foundation of a house and a sense that these small towns didn’t have much need for the technology that shaped my life.

One of the points Hopkins makes fairly frequently is: older structures are already prepared for power down.  This is true for buildings as well as for human structures like governments.

Hopkins mentions the Cuban experience.  My local Post Carbon group recently showed “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.”  Wow.  What a film.  An article last summer in Yes! Magazine compares the post-Soviet power down in Cuba and in North Korea.  Guess who survived best.  How and why Cuba was prepared offers very interesting lessons to those of us who will meet (or whose children will meet) peak oil in the near future.

When I’m contemplating the many ways civilization, and even humanity, might collapose, it doesn’t help to be nudged along by NASA scientists telling me I’d better freak out about the likelihood that one of about 20,000 asteroids will fall to Earth and destroy a major city. (Is that all?) They spend more than $4 million a year at NASA already looking for asteroids, but they want at least a billion dollars to find them all by 2020.

Robert Reich’s article in The American Prospect on NASA’s asteroid report is very well timed, since I also happened to have just finished reading the latest in my series of apocalyptic novels this week — a newish young adult novel by Susan Beth Pfeffer called Life As We Knew It.

See that looming moon on the cover? In the fictional world of the book, scientists told the people of Earth that an asteroid would hit the moon, but they made a little miscalculation.

Last Fall I read another novel of teen post-apocalyptic survival, Into the Forest by Jean Hegland. Life As We Know It is nowhere near as bleak, if that can really be said of such a desperate situation. Through the main character Miranda’s diary, we see her make the gradual switch from superficial teen focused on boards on a fan site to becoming an essential member of her own family as they work to survive a nearly impossible situation.

A lot of reviews of Life As We Know It mention that the readers want to run out right then to buy canned soup and collect firewood. The focus on remaining resources definitely makes it clear that planning helped some survive. Whatever it takes to get people to prepare themselves for catastrophic disaster or more common emergency.

I am keeping my library account on notice to find the companion novel recently finished but yet to be published.

Play the game before you face the reality.

On April 30, 2007, with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (as in PBS), a new alternate-reality game will be launched. Apparently, this is the first game meant to do good for society and backed by a nonprofit. There will be interactive storylines, which sounds like Second Life. Will it be like Second Life?

The game:

“. . . will ask players to imagine the U.S. without oil and envision how Americans would respond to such a crisis.”

It’s all part of the happiness hacking movement, according to the game developer. Technology that no only makes you feel good but urges you to do good.

Games for social good. Yay. When I need to face up to the future, I like to do so by plugging into virtual reality. Every day I’m already playing the game where I imagine what the world will be like without oil. I guess the fun of this will be to join the anticipated 100,000 others in my projected responses.

Meet you there?

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report from January predicted a conservative 28 – 43cm rise in sea level within the next 100 years.

This week, a scientist points out that the UN report doesn’t consider rapid advances in science. The assumption was that polar ice would stay frozen, keeping the sea level rise minimal. The UN consensus report may be too conservative. Even the conservative projections create a picture of faster change, “more devastating than previously thought.” Experience of the past two months doesn’t bear out the assumption of minimal sea level rise.

“All indications are that it’s going to get faster,” said Eric Lindstrom, head of oceanography at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Will you be a climate refugee? If sea level rise is inevitable, you probably want to know how high the water will go. I do. Several of my family live only a few feet above sea level, so I searched far and wide (from my screen) for the best sea level rise map available.

Firetree’s Mr Strange looked for a map, didn’t find one, then created an overlay of sea level rise over Google Maps. Because, it is estimated, the melting of the Greenland ice shelf would result in a 7m rise, the map is parked at that level, but there are controls to change the level from 0 – 14 meters. It’s a pretty cool hack.

But. . .

What if our conservative estimates are too comforting? If the polar ice caps melt, we could see a 20-meter rise. Well, WE wouldn’t see it, but our 13th-Great-Grandchildren might in 500 years. The flood map only goes to 14 meters maximum, but maybe Flood Map 2.0 will include the worst case scenario.

• Gorilla of Sea Level Rise, Living on Earth. Listen to the public radio program.
• Sea Level Rise, Greenpeace.  Includes likelihood of 13m rise.
• Flooding Oahu, University of Hawaii.  Includes 70m maps.  Bye, bye Honolulu.
• The Canary Project is collection “persuasive visual evidence of climate change.”