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Date Line September 30, 2007
The various studies, peer-review papers and monographs, contain inferred information – things which are not expressly stated, but are obviously taken as a premise or given.
WATER: The relationship between glaciation and desertification has, or reveals, an inverse ratio of available vegetation to glaciation. The system infers a finite and balanced ratio of water to climate condition. Thus when there are glaciers there is desert and low vegetation.
As each takes time to develop, it follows that there is a timescale for any change from desert to forest which exceeds the life-span of any one tree.
More important, since there is a fixed quantity of water under all conditions, it must be located somewhere at all times. Seems obvious. If deserts are increasing, and glaciation is decreasing, the amount of surface and sub-surface water must increase.
Sub-surface water is a lubricant – as has been discovered in oil drilling regions – which releases fault-lines locks. That is, where two earth plates meet, seeking to overlay, friction holds them against pressure from systemic movement. Add water, and the plates will slip, the straining pressure will be violently relaxed through an event defined as an earthquake. (Gas and magma pressure cause same affect in volcanic regions.)
If sub-surface water is not allowed to accumulate, and so does not allow for lubrication of the tectonic plates, eventually the plate pressure will grow to the point where the slightest lubrication will cause a major slippage.
If sub-surface water is not allowed to accumulate, accumulation will still occur in the atmosphere or surface reservoirs – lakes/oceans. The atmosphere has a limited absorption capacity, made more limited by those conditions associated with desertification.
Ultimately the seas take on the job of retaining the balance, and levels rise while land area becomes dryer, or is submerged.
One can easily see how the preservation of natural balance serves to eliminate elements of life which might be disruptive to that balance. Desertification forces life to consolidate into a narrower habitats; and to consume food while restricting opportunity for its replacement.
Curiously, this could favor modern humans. There would be an obvious division between those who lived in remaining habitat and those who created desert habitats. The deserts would require the creation of closed environmental systems to be maintained over a minimum of multiple centuries, and possibly several millennia.
The result could be genetic drift, and mutation toward creation of several new and separate species of hominid.
Conversely, humanity could move into currently uninhabited areas. A population decrease would be necessary; and thus an increase in disease would be anticipated (necessitated by natural balance and mutation opportunities for microbes which have not been exposed to human hosts prior to occupation of the empty territories).
Reproductive success remains, as it has in the past, the only criteria for general accomplishment. Reproductive success will be defined as both the ability to produce children, and the intellectual ability to adapt the needs of humanity to the natural world.
Given history, as defined by the past five thousand years, and as also evidenced in the record for the past two hundred thousand years, about fifty-percent of the world population will die with one generation. When the count for, the first day of, that generation will begin cannot be defined now; but it will be sometime in this century.
Sea levels are rising, a northern-passage has opened in the arctic, and the deserts are expanding. In addition, ground water reserves in those regions prone to earthquake activity are being steadily depleted, and expelled water is being contaminated in all regions.
Dates – years – which are cited, on a recurring basis, include 2012, 2030 and 2050. There is a convergence of actions emerging around, and involving, these time frames. We are, by current projections, one generation away from the onset of a new era of mankind.
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