EarthMonitor

Earth Changes Bulletin Update As Of November 20, 2002

You have heard of the Weather Report? Here exclusively is this week’s "Earth Report" - a short review of the "big picture" about how the dynamic changes in the Sun and the Earth are effecting our lives more and more intensely, with the latest prognostications and predictions for weathermen, farmers, investors, businessmen, and every man

Volcanic activity is up even more this week amidst a slightly weakening Sunspot Cycle. The inflammation of human emotions which the sunspot activity has caused this past 39 months will now slowly ebb. Mental mechanisms will begin to work more clearly. Judgments, policies, and actions may improve. But humans on all sides of all issues have created severe damage to our economic, political, and legal institutions. No problems have been resolved and it will take a generation for some of this latest round of damage to heal. In the short term of the next two or three years, the polarization’s and strategies which have been let lose in the world will continue to exacerbate our conditions and make some of them actually yet still worse. And all of this of course will collide with the terrible environmental and economic damage which Solar Cycle 23 has created. The reckoning for this is yet to come and indeed is still yet largely invisible.

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Program Thesis: What are we trying to do with the Earth Changes Bulletin?

Most news media do not handle technical and scientific subjects like geology and earth sciences very well. They don't understand the causes and effects of activities in the Sun and Earth. Accordingly, they often do not understand if, when, how, why to report earthquakes, volcanic activity, global warming effects The treatment often sounds absent-minded, poorly qualified, and frequently contains various technical errors. Seldom is the treatment entertaining and genuinely educational.

Based on new scientific principles which have emerged during the past thirty years, many of the dynamic activities of the Sun and Earth can be linked together to see how a range of effects are linked together. This makes it possible to paint "the big picture" into a perspective which explains many diverse events and processes, especially climate and weather patterns such as global warming and El Nino. From the "big picture", long range predictions can be made for weeks and even months ahead.

The result is sophisticated cutting-edge information which is objective, balanced, astute, relevant, and can be easily seen and appreciated by lay audiences. The perspective is generally global, seldom parochial.

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POLAR MOTION

What is happening to the motion of the Earth.

As report for the past few months, the current track of Chandler’s Wobble (the observed locations of the spin axis at the North Pole) continues to show a definite flattening of the spiral motion. This appears to continue to demonstrate that the location of chandler’s wobble is being displaced more rapidly than in previous years, indeed, this is becoming nearly certain. The recent acceleration in the shifting of the average location of the spin axis may be in the approximate range of 6.5%. FOR A DESCRIPTION OF THIS DISPLACEMENT, SEE THE EARTH CHANGES BULLETIN OF NOVEMBER 13, 2002.

We reported during the past week that a "bump in the night" in the Earth’s Axis may have occurred during the past two weeks, perhaps causing the recent round of accelerated Earth Quake activity. From the graph data, however, nothing is very obvious in this regard and I can’t make any further guesses until I analyze the raw (unsmoothed and uncorrected) data for this last few months. I don’t think this would be very productive at the moment so I will pass on this for the moment.

SUNSPOTS

The events in the solar atmosphere which impact weather and climate patterns, the magnetic field and auroras, including forecasts for the week, month, and year ahead.

The highest number of sunspots during the two weeks of the Venus|Earth Alignment was 260, with several sharp up and down oscillations as low as 115. The oscillations have been going peak to peak every four to seven days. I am not aware of any obvious correlate outside of the Sun for these oscillations.

The count is now down to 105 as of yesterday and I believe that they are going to sag even lower during the next few days. They may be even lower by next Wednesday, perhaps in the range of 60-100. To follow these numbers, view the Solar Cycle 23 Chart at

http://www.michaelmandeville.com/earthmonitor/topten_monitor.htm

As you can observe in the chart, the overall Solar Flux Index is still fairly high, even though it has dipped down this past few days. This Index measures the Solar Flare activity in a summary way and when it is going up, sunspot counts invariably rise above the line and when the Flux Index is going down, the sunspot count almost always drops sharply and then levels off before going back up a ways.

My hunch is that the Solar Flux Index will now fairly progressively sag down but not very rapidly. Accordingly for the next few months I believe that solar activity will be muted below the levels of the past two months.

REPEAT FROM LAST WEEK: The alignment is now breaking up and indeed Venus can already be seen in the morning sky again. According, the trend must now be ever downward. I expect the average count now to sag below 100 no later than January of next year, hopefully making Cycle 23 Peak (monthly averages over 100) a bit on the short side at about 41 months (the average is closer to about 48 months). BUT - how long this will take to take the monthly average count below 100 is anyone’s guess. There is no real sunspot average cycle. They all vary quite widely and so the average is definitely an illusion.

SOLAR STORMS

That does not mean that there will not be storms with attitude coming off the Sun. The Sun is still fritzing and the U of Alaska Fluxgate shows that a major magnetic disturbance hit the Earth’s atmosphere several hours ago. The solar wind as of this date (UTC at 2353 November 20) shows a solar wind speed of 438.4 km/s, which is not unusual, at a density of 8.7 protons/cm³, which is on the high side. The Sun’s surface is still quite petulant with holes and many major storm foci each of which is several times larger than the size of all the planets combined. This heavy onslaught is no doubt causing the disturbances in the Earth’s atmosphere. You can see the Sun’s surface at

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/?

NASA reports that "a solar wind stream flowing from …a coronal hole will buffet Earth's magnetic field on or about Nov. 22^nd." NASA also reports that the chances of M Class and X Class flares during the next 48 hours are 55% and 10% respectively, which is pretty high. Accordingly, major weather disturbances could still appear fairly suddenly in the Earth’s atmosphere.

GLOBAL DROUGHT AND FLOOD WATCH

Stories and assessments about drought and flood conditions around the world; global information which provides the ability to assess the impacts to agriculture and the natural environment.

A new uptick in the energy in the atmosphere could quite easily and suddenly produce bigger weather patterns during the next two weeks with bigger badder attitudes. Melody in Ireland still reports a perfectly cold and often very wet, miserable fall. Floods struck the Island about ten days ago and more could strike at any time. (Think of Ireland as a bellwether for Northern Eurasia).

The Sunspot Cycle 23 is still emitting out a lot of ionic energy into the Solar System. But Venus is rapidly drawing away from the Earth and this will tend to disperse the Sun’s ions more and more randomly in places other than the Earth. Accordingly, the Earth’s weather should become more like traditional patterns,

AS PREVIOUSLY REPORTED: So anything could happen to the weather this fall and definitely expect chaos and some extremes to emerge in the weather suddenly fairly shortly after a major solar flare or appearance of a new coronal hole. But in the main, vis a vis solar activity, look now in the main for a long slow gradual return to more normal weather patterns.

EL NINO WATCH: The upsurge continues. As reported last week, there has been a sudden upsurge in warm water (above average in the range of 8 degrees F.) standing along a very wide expanse of the Equator in the Pacific. Thus there may indeed be El Nino Syndrome set in for the Pacific region this coming winter and spring.

BUT, the average temperature of the surface of the Pacific Ocean is probably very very close to what it was last year. Almost all of both the North Pacific AND the South Pacific water is close to the general average and this is not typical because generally one of the other or both will have large gyres (patches) of warm water in the middle of them, depending upon the season.

Accordingly, the warm water along the Equator can be seen as a simple displacement of the normal warm water. How this will work out in affecting the weather patterns for the Pacific and North America is beyond my ability to correlate at the moment.

This pattern could begin to break up and if so the El Nino will never really have set in, other than producing heavy falls of early snow in the Western Pacific and Rocky Mountains. But if this pattern does not break up during the next few weeks, this winter and spring should be a lot like the early months of 1998 – wet, very very wet. This will break the drought in the American Southwest, as indeed it has already brought substantial relief.

EARTHQUAKES

Around the world to see the current and potential patterns of seismic activity, with coverage of the windows of danger.

A summary of the 7.9 Alaska Quake can be found at

This quake ruptured completely 170 miles and moved portions of Alaksa some 26 feet horizontally. Now that is Tectonic Motion!

After record-breaking quaking during the New Moon Syzygy seismic activity muted down into the typical post syzygy low for 3.0 plus quakes. But at least two quakes last weekend sent us a lot to think about with a 7.5 quake North of Japan deep in the ocean bottom and a 6.6 quake below the tip of South America. As well, quaking continued quite strong in Alaska, averaging about two 4.0 plus quakes a day along the Aleutians, the Peninsula, and into Central Alaska. A modest quake even struck in the Yukon near the Pacific Coast.

At the beginning of this week, 3.0 plus quakes began to work their way up the Andes Chain and yesterday quake activity has stuck a few locations in or close to Central America on the Carib Plate. So far today quakes struck the oceanic ridge along the Antarctic Plate, in the South Seas, and in Central Chile.

So far frequency is still muted but size is not. Frequency should pick up suddenly for this Full Moon but since it is at Apogee (furthest distance it ever gets from the Earth) the frequency may stay on the low side compared to previous performances. As warned on Sunday, it appears more strongly than ever that major quakes are due at any moment along the West Coast of North America, from Central Mexico up through to the Queen Charlotte Islands adjacent to British Columbia. This is the only zone on the Pacific Rim of Fire missing the current round of seismic activity.

The next area to quake above 3.0 could very well be the Baja Plate zone and it may have struck even before you have the opportunity to read this Update.

California activity is finally picking up after being muted for a couple of weeks. For all quakes of all sizes in California /Nevada, the USGS plots a running total of 318 quakes for the past seven days. THIS SHOULD UNDERSCORE THE POSSIBLE DANGER IN CALIFORNIA DURING THIS LUNAR CYCLE.

Despite the increase in California, the USGS charts for the Pacific Northwest reveals the a muting of activity with only 24 micro quakes (two week sum) widely scattered through the Cascades and Eastern Washington.

YELLOWSTONE: The USGS chart for the Yellowstone Area reveals a running total for the past week of 5 small quakes within the cauldera, centered near Old Faithful or just outside the rim. This is down from the 38 reported three weeks ago. The "weak zone" of the Rocky Mountain Plateau, which runs through the valley of the Great Salt Lake and central Utah, showed only 3 quakes for the past week, about the same as last week. Even so, the Teton region to the South of Yellowstone experienced a 3.2 quake today.

LONG VALLEY CAULDERA IN CALIFORNIA: The USGS chart for the Long Valley Cauldera (quakes of all sizes for the last week) shows 57 microquakes in the vicinity, up substantially from last week. Second to Yellowstone and the volcanoes on the Alaskan Peninsula, this is currently the most active volcanic area in North America. This Long Valley area is THE AREA TO WATCH as it is the MOST LIKELY TO BECOME ERUPTIVE in North America below Alaska (Alaska has several restless and occasionally eruptive volcanoes).

VOLCANOES

Around the world with the most interesting and relevant volcano stories; briefs on the likely eruptions as well as coverage of on-going activity.

Hood remains completely quiescent but El Popo gave us a nine puff day today, up three from last week, which suggests that volcanic activity is increasing this week. Centrapred reports for OCTOBER 23 (16:00 GMT) that "In the last 24 hours 9 low intensity exhalations were observed accompanied by steam and gas, and some times small amounts of ash. Also low amplitude harmonic tremor was detected for about 30 half an hour."

And indeed it was so. In the wake of the intense quaking early last week during the New Moon Perigee Syzygy, worldwide volcanism continues to pick up significantly, especially today. The Southwest Volcano Centre reports 46 volcanoes on the alert status list (up three from last week), 8 volcanoes on the restless list (up three from the last report), and 29 on the active eruption list (up two from last week).

Rabaul seems quiescent but Etna and Kilauea and are still active with the first two spilling lava continuously as they have for a few weeks now. Stromboli appears to be giving the most spectacular fireworks. No one knows if and when they will quiet down. Montserrat is actively growing a new dome and this week the activity has increased. A vigorous new eruption commenced today in PITON de la FOURNAISE, which is located in the Indian Ocean, and many new rounds of activities for volcanoes in the Active List were reported to the catalogs today.

AG INDUSTRY WATCH

Because of the high load of stress which the current peak in the sunspots have placed on the Ag industry, we alert on the changing scene in agriculture and how these are likely to effect the broader economy.

REPEAT FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS: Subscribers have sent me a large number of reports from the internet from various governments or other institutions around the world which tell of the terrible consequences of this year’s weather (floods and drought) on agricultural crops. Keep the reports coming in. It will take some serious time to wade through them but continue to send references in. It is highly important and no one person will find the diversity of info which your are sending, so I am going to be able to put together a fairly penetrating summary. I will wait until just after Thanksgiving as we may be able to "call" the sunspot cycle towards the end of the month, perhaps somewhat sooner, so that the assessment will be even more comprehensive.

GEO-POLITICAL WATCH

How the sunspots are likely to most effect human affairs during the weeks and months ahead?

SIGN OF THE TIMES: Ken Lay, just a good ole boy Texan, the Presiding Officer of the rape of California Consumers, otherwise known as Enron, is still scott free with his crooked billions while the Bush administration harasses a liberal democrat funder, Marsha Stewart, for alleged but unprovable "insider trading" of a minor amount of stock.

AS PREDICTED: Sadam Hussein’s regime has acted to cooperate with the United Nations.

AS PREDICTED: The American right wing is suddenly beginning to realize that the Europeans have taken charge of the situation in Iraq and have placed the U.N. arms inspectors between American military forces and the people of Iraq.

THIS IS WHY THE UNITED NATIONS WAS CREATED, TO COMBINE THE FORCES OF MANY NATIONS TO PREVENT A MANIPULATIVE CABAL IN ANY ONE NATION FROM CREATING INTERNATIONAL VIOLENCE.

Agitprop will be sharply increased and I predict that the internet will be awash with a new round of dis-information about what is really going on inside Iraq and the United Nations. Maximum effort will be made to cause misinterpretation of information about whether or not Iraq is complying with the U.N. arms inspections.

DESPITE ALL OF THE AGIT PROP YOU WILL HEAR FROM AMERICAN RIGHT WINGNUTS ABOUT THE UNITED NATIONS, the United Nations has worked perfectly to perform the function which the Americans hoped it perform. Ironically, we have seen this made to work on an extremist-bent American government.

Hans Blix, a neutral Swede at the top of his life ability and at the end of his career, is as cool and as neutral as they come. He has the entire historical moment in his hands and it hardly seems that destiny could have picked a better person for the job.

PREDICTION: I suspect, and this is purely speculation based on some psychic hunches which have been made available to me, that the Right Wingnuts will attempt to maneuver out of the U.N. trap by conspiring to create a coup d’etat in Iraq, "purchasing" as it were, locals to do the job in place of an American invasion. Then of course, Iraq’s old fields will need contracts for "updating" with new investment from Western Oil Companies.

AS PREVIOUSLY REPORTED: With the U.S. pre-occupied by Iraq and various right wingnut fantasies of using Republican domination of the U.S. Congress to continue to dismantle 80 years of progressive legislation, the U.S. continues to ignore the Palestinian issues which it promised to address and deal with last March. The U.S. even welches on its promises to help set up an international conference this fall to begin creation of a Palestinian State. Instead, Israel continues to destroy all Palestinian governance forms, turning several million Palestinians into prisoners inside concrete canyons, unable to do much of anything except receive whatever charity happens to be sent to them.

As if this were not enough, the evidence is steadily mounting that the Bush Administration has badly stalled out on its handling of Afghanistan. After engineering its "victory" in Afghanistan with $70 million in CIA payments to buy opposition to the Taliban, the Bush administration has failed to consolidate a stable political position for those who would bring Afghanistan into the modern world. This increasing failure of American largess and arms by two-faced American policies (promise the moon and catch the next war train out of town) can be seen in both Palestine and Afghanistan.

Some people say, well, it is just the oil….that’s all "they" are after.

I wish it were that simple and devilish. That would be easier to expose and defeat politically. But I am afraid the real problem is far more difficult. How do you deal with multiple layers and sources of just plain stupidity and callous incompetence which are busy hiding thousands of irrelevant career and wingnut agendas quite apart from grand issues like oil?

How much longer will it take for the American public to wake up and realize that its vastly overpowered war machine is vastly underbrained? Did you catch the story line about the old Pakistani who got caught up a year ago in the first sweep for Alqaeda? After a year of physical, emotional, and mental abuse in the Cuba Pens, they let him go after coming to the conclusion that the guy actually knew nothing and was not involved. The Pakistani government gave him $100 and the U.S. did not even apologize or offer condolences after keeping him penned for a year like a dog.

If was for this sort of thing that George Washington and the boys told the fat old King of England to stuff it. They made sure to make that sort of thing illegal by creating a Constitution enforced by the courts to scare bureaucrats and politicans into obeying the law.

If the media reports are to be believed, the old Pakistani was treated by the War Machine in ways which break international treaties and legal standards which have been evolved since the Napoleonic Wars, including the League of Nations and United Nations protocols. Some one in the Pentagon can be charged with War Crimes.

How are we to tell the difference between the guards at the Cuba Pens from a collection of Sadists playing bondage games?

Should we continue to believe that American activities, policies, and war personnel are morally superior to the general run of Homo Sapiens? Should we continue to believe John Ashcroft that we should trust him to do the right thing?

Or perhaps we should send to Europe for a "care package" of new brains for our military-industrial complex?

Unfortunately, the key determinative player in the world today is Osama Bin Laden. Upon the actions of his minions, the mass actions of the nations are doomed to react futilely in ignorance. Seeking protection, the nations will do much in reaction but without real hope because no one can build "security" against the terrorists. In the determinative sense, all they can do is hope and wait for Bin Laden to over-reach and destroy himself. Beyond this, the wild card of Alqaeda cannot be predicted.

The inflammation of human emotions which the sunspot activity has caused this past 39 months will now slowly ebb. Mental mechanisms will begin to work more clearly. Judgments, policies, and actions may improve. But humans on all sides of all issues have created severe damage to our economic, political, psychological, and legal institutions. No problems have been resolved WHATSOEVER and it will take a generation for some of this latest round of damage to heal. In the short term of the next two or three years, the polarization’s and strategies which have been let lose in the world will continue to exacerbate our conditions and make some of them actually yet still worse. Indeed, some Euro sources even hint darkly of suitcase atomic bombs. And all of this of course will collide with the terrible environmental and economic damage which Solar Cycle 23 has created. The reckoning for this is yet to come.

But in the end it would appear that reason is working better than ever to overcome the worst polarizing tendencies among ever larger groups of people who are struggling for genuine cooperation. This is the main lesson of the month, given at the insistance of the French and the Russians. This may be the main ray of hope.

EarthMonitor