Nature has had eons to develop and refine her techniques for creating disasters. Man is quite new to the art. Nonetheless, some manmade natural disasters - both proven and suspected - are fully as spectacular as anything Nature can create.
One example would be the mud volcano of Java. On 28 May, steaming mud began erupting from a gas well near Surabaya. Since then, daily eruptions of between 9,000 and 13,000 cubic yards of mud have flowed, dispersing the residents of 11 villages and earning the eruption the name of the Lusi Mud Volcano.
The operators of a nearby mine, the Lapindo Brantas, insist the cause was an earthquake. Independent geological studies cast doubt on that theory. The most recent study, by Mark Tingay of the University of Adelaide (Australia), suggests that the Yogyakarta earthquake was too seismically insignificant to start the mud flowing, and that the real cause was a blowout at the Banjar Panji-1 well nearby.
Similar events are likely taking place all around the world as gas and oil field operators inject highly toxic fracturing liquids at tremendous pressure into open holes in the ground to crack underground rock formations and release the trapped fossil fuels and their gaseous byproducts. The pressure, from 2,000 to 5,000 cubic meters per minute (m3/min) into a hole about 15 inches in diameter, is enormous, rather like hooking up a drinking straw to an industrial air compressor. This extreme pressure is necessary to prevent a well blowout, which results when internal pressures (like gas) exceed external pressures (fracturing fluid). Unfortunately, the pressure that keeps a gas well from blowing may create fissures in the underlying strata which may not be geologically stable.
The case of the disappearing lakes, from Lake Jackson in Florida to lakes in Russia, Chile and even Canada (mainly Alberta and Saskatchewan), may be the result of global warming or subsidence in limestone formations. In the Canadian provinces, these disappearing acts are as likely the result of oil and gas operations which create subsurface fissures that allow the water to flow away underground.
If you're still not convinced man can - and does - make his own disasters, consider the recent Midwest flooding, which wiped out homes and businesses and devastated crops to the tune of $8.5 billion or more. This June 2008 flood is being cited as a vivid example of the effects of global warming.
No one has mentioned cloud seeding as a cause, even though government officials and climatologists both know that North Dakota's cloud modification project (pdf), which began on June 1 this year, is an experiment in weather modification via seeding clouds with hygroscopic flares. The now-legendary Midwest flood began on June 12, less than two weeks after cloud seeding began, and was preceded by eight days of unusually heavy rain in Minnesota - rain which weather experts describe as "substantially exceeding the historical average".
In the Twin Cities in early June, even those who normally fail to see what's in front of their eyes remarked on the unusual quantity and persistence of contrails. North of the Cities, in Canada, similar reports came out, many of them specific to Winnipeg. In the province of Alberta, to the west of Winnipeg, programs involving cloud seeding aimed at hail suppression are ongoing, and were so prevalent this spring observers filmed them.
In North Dakota, the cloud seeding program is administered by a private company, Weather Modification, Inc. Located in Fargo, this private firm is the government's long arm into weather modification. The U.S. government itself has largely gotten out of the weather modification business, first because it needs to keep a low profile, but mostly because the United Nations (of which the U.S. is a part) forbids environmental modification techniques of this sort.
Not that the military, and the government, aren't still trying. In 2006, Senate Bill 527 and HB 2995 both aimed at permitting experimental weather modification. Fortunately, both failed.
But back to the main story, which is that cloud seeding activities from northern Canada south to the Midwest may have had some (considerable? overreaching?) effect on rainfall in Minnesota, which ultimately led to major flooding both in that state and as far south as Missouri. Unfortunately, cloud seeding has such random and indeterminate effects that we will never know if the cause was global warming or weather modification.
Floods aside, consider hurricanes and Project Cirrus, which took place on the 13th of October, 1947. A U.S. Navy plane, under the direction of scientists from General Electric, flew into a developing hurricane and dropped 176 pounds of dry ice.
Before the experiment, the hurricane was still safely offshore. After the drop, the storm changed direction and hit shore near Savannah, Georgia, leaving 1,400 people homeless and two dead. Property damage was incalculable.
The U.S. military later classified the operation to prevent litigation, but hasn't really stopped trying to control Mother Nature. In the wake of a few more tragedies like Katrina, future hurricane modification will likely involve dispersion of soot particles, which would refract sunlight and create regional cooling that would alter the hurricane's path, since temperature is the primary inducement of hurricane activity. But don't expect the government, or its military arm, to ‘fess up if things go wrong.
On a final note, David Booth of the British Geological Survey cites the inherent dangers of dams, which - by holding enormous volumes of water in one place - increase pressure on subsurface formations that can trigger earthquakes. To make his point, Booth cites the Koyna, India quake of 1967, which triggered a magnitude 7.5 seismic event that killed 200 and injured thousands of others.
In Africa, residents near the Katse Dam in the highlands of Lesotho - where the $8 billion Lesotho Highlands Water Project has erected a series of dams - listen for the rumbling sounds that presage another earthquake. This project, which has been surrounded by corruption and mishap since its inception, has done little for the people of South Africa but displace them, village by village.
There are many instances where we can lay the blame for disasters squarely on Mother Nature's broad shoulders, but more and more - as man refines his technology and extends his reach - the fault is our own. When poet Robert Browning said, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp...", he clearly wasn't referring to gas drilling, weather modification or mega-dams. HAARP (the High Frequency Active Aural Research Project) probably has him rolling in his grave and simultaneously biting his tongue.
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Written in April 2009