{"id":9714,"date":"2018-06-15T04:59:32","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T09:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=9714"},"modified":"2021-06-14T07:26:18","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T12:26:18","slug":"skipping-an-earthbeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/06\/15\/skipping-an-earthbeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Skipping an Earthbeat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reading Bill McGuire<\/a>‘s 2012 book\u00a0Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes<\/a>, I came across this description of the annual “pulse” called an “Earthbeat,” which is supposedly responsible for Earth’s preference for volcanic eruptions between November and April (also known as “volcano season”):<\/p>\n

rather like a beating heart, the Earth changes shape systematically and repeatedly with each ‘Earthbeat’ taking 12 months. During the course of a single ‘beat,’ the\u00a0northern hemisphere contracts, reaching a peak in February and March, at the same time as the southern hemisphere expands. This is followed byexpansion of the northern hemisphere, peaking in August and September, while the southern hemisphere goes into contraction. The scale of the changes involved is miniscule . . . the North Pole moves downwards by just 3 mm while points near the equator are pulled northwards by just half this amount.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He continues:<\/p>\n

The cause of the cycle is fascinating. Throughout the course of a year, a vast wave of ephemeral weight travels across the planet — a conspiracy of changes in snow cover, soil moisture and atmospheric mass. During the northern hemisphere winter, the extra load exerted by lying snow, rainfall-recharged groundwater, and a cooler, denser atmosphere, squashes the crust, the same effect heading south as winter transfers to the other hemisphere. The mass of water shifted from one hemisphere to another during one cycle is colossal, totaling around 1016<\/sup>\u00a0kg . . . or more than one and a half thousand times the weight of all the coal mined in a year. (p. 110)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McGuire’s detailing of the many connections between geological forces, volcanic and tectonic events, and global climate and hydrological systems make for fascinating reading. <\/span><\/p>\n

If there’s an overall message to the book, it’s that\u00a0<\/span>the Earth is a delicately poised system of tectonic and biogeochemical forces that have historically alternated between relative stability and rather dramatic instability, and where the “stabilities” have themselves teetered between wildly varying forms.\u00a0<\/span>The most recent epoch, the Holocene (of the last 11,700 years), appears increasingly fated to be a brief post-glacial period of relative stability that has happened to be extremely conducive to the spread and flourishing of human cultures, but which is looking more precarious by the minute (or by the carbon part-per-million).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading the book reminds me of Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky’s early 1980s research on social perceptions of nature<\/a>, where they distinguished between those who see nature as benign, as tolerant, as capricious, and as fragile, and found associations matching each with a political outlook. (For a helpful critique, see here<\/a>.) <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Turns out that the Earth sciences seem to be suggesting that the capricious and fragile interpretations — i.e., those of the fatalists and the egalitarians, respectively (with environmentalists generally found among the latter) — may be empirically on the more correct track.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Bill McGuire‘s 2012 book\u00a0Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes, I came across this description of the annual “pulse” called an “Earthbeat,” which is supposedly responsible for Earth’s preference for volcanic eruptions between November and April (also known as “volcano season”): rather like a beating heart, the Earth changes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688615,520594,4437],"tags":[520546,123667,520542,520544,520548,520543,16834,520549,25101,619,520545,520547,443],"class_list":["post-9714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","category-climate-politics","category-science","tag-aaron-wildavsky","tag-anthropocene","tag-bill-mcguire","tag-dynamic-earth","tag-earthbeat","tag-earthquakes","tag-environmentalism","tag-fragile-earth","tag-gaia","tag-geology","tag-mary-douglas","tag-risk-as-culture","tag-volcanoes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2wG","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8211,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/04\/25\/trembling-yet\/","url_meta":{"origin":9714,"position":0},"title":"Trembling yet?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The New York Times\u00a0reported this week\u00a0that \"The United States Geological Survey on Thursday released its first comprehensive assessment of the link between thousands of earthquakes and oil and gas operations, identifying and mapping 17 regions where quakes have occurred. [...] \"By far the hardest-hit state, the report said, is Oklahoma,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8265,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/07\/21\/bandwagocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":9714,"position":1},"title":"Bandwagocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"These days, it takes a course release for an academic to keep up with the avalanche of books\u00a0being published with titles that feature the word \"Anthropocene.\" To read them would take a sabbatical. Doing anything approximating a \"slow read\" would require, well, retirement. But that's no reason not to try.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7754,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/08\/18\/anthropocene-too-serious-for-postmodern-games\/","url_meta":{"origin":9714,"position":2},"title":"Anthropocene: Too serious for postmodern games","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The following is a guest post by Clive Hamilton, professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia. It continues the Immanence series \"Debating the Anthropocene.\" See here,\u00a0here, and here for previous articles in the series. (And note that some lengthy comments have been added to the previous\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"040325_hmed_iceberg_1130a.grid-6x2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/08\/040325_hmed_iceberg_1130a.grid-6x2-275x163.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7413,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/03\/13\/kants-quaking-subject\/","url_meta":{"origin":9714,"position":3},"title":"Kant’s quaking subject","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Emil plunges us further into the inhuman nature of tsunamis, earthquakes, ethics, and modern subjectivity,\u00a0over at A(S)CENE. \u00a0 \u00a0","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sumatra_tsunami","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/03\/sumatra_tsunami-275x196.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10194,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/08\/22\/sobering-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":9714,"position":4},"title":"Sobering up…","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 22, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Peter Brannen's Atlantic article \"The Anthropocene is a Joke\" provides a helpful cold shower for those who've gotten a little too drunk on the concept of the Anthropocene. The entire article is worth reading. Here are a few snippets: \"What humans are doing on the planet, then, unless we endure\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8908,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/07\/30\/anthropocenic-sublime\/","url_meta":{"origin":9714,"position":5},"title":"Anthropocenic sublime","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 30, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll be giving the following talk at the \"Popular Culture, Religion, and the Anthropocene\" workshop\u00a0at the National University of Singapore this coming week. Navigating the Zone of Alienation: Chernobyl and the Anthropocenic Sublime Abstract: This two-part talk will interpret the Chernobyl nuclear accident and its \u201cZone of Alienation\u201d (Zona vidchuzhennia)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9714"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9721,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714\/revisions\/9721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}