We had an earthquake in the Bay Area this week. It was in Berkeley, a couple of miles from where I live.<\/p>\n
Not a big one \u2013 I think the US Geological Survey finally pegged it as 4.3 \u2013 but it did rattle things enough to wake us up at 2:56 a.m.<\/p>\n
It was on the Hayward fault, which runs down the East Bay. There hasn\u2019t been a big earthquake on the Hayward since the 19th century, which is to say that we\u2019re overdue for one. I\u2019m grateful that the building I live in had a pretty thorough seismic upgrade awhile back, at least one that\u2019s good enough for smaller quakes. But of course, it hasn\u2019t been tested by the \u201cBig One,\u201d as we say in these parts.<\/p>\n
Quite a few years ago I listened to an audiobook in which the author \u2014 I\u2019ve forgotten both his name and the name of the book \u2014 said that one of the first stages of an advanced civilization was the ability to control the weather. And while earthquakes aren\u2019t exactly weather, I\u2019m pretty sure controlling them would come under that idea as well.<\/p>\n
Obviously, we humans here on Earth aren\u2019t anywhere close to that. In trying to find the book by searching online, I ran across other scientists analyzing where Earth might be in terms of attaining any level of advanced civilization.<\/p>\n
In general, we don\u2019t reach even Level 1 on most scales. Carl Sagan put us at 0.7. From what I recall of the audiobook, it also had us below Level 1.<\/p>\n
In my very cursory search, it appears that the core theory is called the Kardashev Scale, from the Russian scientist Nikolai Kardashev, who came up with it. It defines civilizations based on their control of energy, starting first on the planet, then from a star, and finally from the galaxy.<\/p>\n
When I read this, it makes me think of a lot of hype from the broligarch crowd, who are apparently convinced that if we just buy into their idea of creating artificial general intelligence by stuffing all the written works of the world into LLMs, we will magically create something that can harness the sun and leap to the more advanced levels.<\/p>\n
Even if the real scientists are right about what constitutes advanced civilizations \u2013 and I\u2019m not convinced \u2013 I\u2019m pretty sure the current crop of techlords are not going to be the people pull this off.<\/p>\n
At the moment, though, I\u2019m more interested in the belief that \u201ccontrolling\u201d the weather \u2013 and earthquakes \u2013 is the first step. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve recently read the last book from James C. Scott, which is called In Praise of Floods<\/i>. In it, he points out the folly of controlling rivers, focusing in particular on the Ayeyarwady, a huge river in Burma, though the Mississippi also comes in for a mention.<\/p>\n
The trouble with controlling rivers is that sooner or later the controls give way, and you end up with extreme floods that do a great deal of damage. The book leaves you with the idea that allowing the river to dictate its path is better in the long run, even though that means you cannot use large amounts of land on a full time basis.<\/p>\n
In addition to being prone to earthquakes, California gets a lot of fires. And, in fact, a great deal of the landscape around here actually needs to burn regularly to keep it healthy. The original human inhabitants figured this out, and developed ceremonial burning, among other practices.<\/p>\n
But over the last few hundred years \u2013 since European colonization, starting with the Spanish and magnified by the Americans who moved west \u2013 we\u2019ve had policies of suppressing fires. In the end, it has led to fires that are much more destructive.<\/p>\n
As with floods, the fact that we humans have settled in this landscape and tried to force it to serve our needs makes everything worse.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m starting to think that an advanced civilization isn\u2019t one that controls the weather, but rather one that understands it well enough to live in balance with the way the planet works.<\/p>\n
Earthquakes are necessary. Floods are necessary. Fires are necessary. Seasonal changes are necessary.<\/p>\n
What isn\u2019t necessary is widespread destruction and loss of life from such things. The more we understand what the patterns ought to be, the better we can set up human infrastructure that works with them.<\/p>\n
That is, instead of trying to control the natural forces of the planet, we figure out how to live with them.<\/p>\n
That includes earthquakes. There\u2019s an alert system for earthquakes these days. Your cell phone goes off when there\u2019s a big enough one nearby.<\/p>\n
A couple of years ago there was a 4 point something down closer to San Jose. I got the alert and then I felt the wave from the earthquake.<\/p>\n
The other morning, though, the alert came after the building shook. The warning system isn\u2019t good enough yet for something close by.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m pretty sure that if scientists can keep studying earthquakes \u2013 I hope that\u2019s not a big assumption in these days of assault on scientific research \u2013 the warnings will get better. But that\u2019s not going to stop earthquakes.<\/p>\n
And it probably shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We had an earthquake in the Bay Area this week. It was in Berkeley, a couple of miles from where I live. Not a big one \u2013 I think the US Geological Survey finally pegged it as 4.3 \u2013 but it did rattle things enough to wake us up at 2:56 a.m. It was on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[1123,321,1125,1124],"class_list":["post-4235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-earthquakes","tag-fires","tag-floods","tag-james-c-scott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4236,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235\/revisions\/4236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}