SCIENTISTS WORRY ABOUT STUFF

Now the inevitable reports start appearing that the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti may be the beginning of a trend. Scientists are "concerned." That's usually the term they use when they have no friggin' idea, concerned. Now, after the fact, of course, we get word that one science guy issued a warning in 2008 that the fault in the earth's crust on the island of Hispaniola that contains Haiti and the Dominican Republic could blow soon. Only thing is, he predicted an earthquake several hundred miles away, on the Dominican Republic side of the island. Looks like the study of earthquakes is at about the same level of sophistication that medical science was in the Middle Ages, which makes a lot of the non-scientists among us "concerned," hoping they don't start bleeding the earth to eliminate ill humors and amputating perfectly good peninsulas.

Then there's the reports that the hole in the planet's ozone layer is mending itself, which on the face of it seems to be a major victory for environmentalists. Not so fast. There's a little concern coming our way from other scientists who fear that the closing of the ozone hole is contributing to global warming. Well, what's the story? Do we start belching black fumes from our factories again? Or maybe just take a little time out and realize that these sciences of studying the earth's tectonic plates, it's climate and volcanos and the like are in their infancy and at this point about as accurate as the Roman scientists who decided that Vesuvius would not blow after studying the entrails of a dove. We all know how that one turned out: not so good for Pompeians, great for archaeologists and travel agents.

What we don't know with anything resembling any degree of certainty, however, is whether or not the Haiti quake is the harbinger of things to come in say, Miami or Atlanta, or Caracas or Havana or Rio. Remembering the devastating tsunami in the Pacific in December of 2004, there was no shortage of predictions for similar events, a whole lot of concern, but no answers. Which is not to say that another Pacific tsunami won't happen tomorrow or next week, or that the Dominican Republic won't be stricken by a large earthquake soon. We just don't know. Why pretend?

Time passes differently for a planet than for the creatures that ride its back. What may seem like only yesterday to a planet could be thousands of generations to humans, so our records of these things is by cosmic timing standards brand new and pretty sketchy. We've only been using written languages for about 6,000 years, and we've only practiced widespread serious science for a few hundred of those years, so our understanding of the forces of nature is on the light side so far. Our ability to predict seismic events is pretty lousy. Hence the "concern."

We're not even 100% certain about global warming, even though we are proceeding as if it is a proven fact. When we say that this past 10 years was "the warmest decade on record," by definition that means it is the warmest decade that we know about. Our record keeping only started in the 1800's, about 5 plus billion years into the life of the planet. Hell, we didn't even start until a few hundred thousand years ago, a mere fortnight to a planet. For all we know for sure, the earth is cooling. Or that this warm decade is merely an acceptable fluctuation in temperature indicative of nothing in particular. The odd thing is that humans think we can finally stop talking about the weather and do something about it. Then a Haiti comes along to remind us that we have much to learn.

It's a great idea to stop poisoning the earth and the sky on its own merits. Whether or not we are affecting the planet with our activities, it's never a good thing to poison ourselves. Ideally, zero parts-per-million of any man-made toxin is the ideal number, but some of those toxins have provided the way of life that has enabled our other human sciences to flourish, thus vastly improving our short human lives. The science of medicine has progressed from using goose dung to dress wounds to replacing heart valves and curing polio. The science of aviation, in an incredibly rapid progression, went from a 12 second flight to putting a man on the moon in just 66 years. Our computer sciences progressed in a mere half century from computers the size of a house to laptops that outperform their huge predessessors. Hopefully, our earth and climate sciences will progress to the point where knowledge replaces concern. Until then, we'll have to live on this earth as we've always lived on this earth, very precariously.