We all have those moments we wish we could relive. They originate in an ongoing life, and almost all of them lie only in the memories of the dour doer. Those moments are fixed, and some of them have changed our lives significantly: Accepting or rejecting a proposal, responding to a circumstance, behaving in some self-destructive manner, missing an opportunity, rejecting or taking a risk—all such moments, in our personal perspectives, have had positive or negative effects.
The Younger Dryas was a period of rapid climatic cooling that began about 12,800 years ago in the Northern Hemisphere. Its significance is that it interrupted the warming trend that ended the last glacial maximum. Earth was heating up; the ice was melting. And then a couple of Dryas cooling trends intervened. Real cooling trends. Like eight degrees Celsius cooler for hundreds of years. The cooling slowed the rise of seas as less meltwater entered them. The Younger Dryas (named for an eight-petaled tundra flower) seems to be one of those moments with consequences beyond affecting nature and just making our ancestors shiver. North America’s Clovis culture declined and in the Middle East, people rather rapidly turned to agriculture.
Why did Earth suddenly cool? Answering that question for the distant past is just as difficult as answering the climate questions of the present. We live on a complex planet, and everything from solar output to shape of our orbit to tilt of our poles to volcanic eruptions to orogenesis to atmospheric and oceanic composition and circulation, have influence. And there’s another possible influence: Impacting fragments of a comet. At least, that’s the argument of Wendy S. Wolbach and co-authors of an article on “extraordinary biomass-burning” as a cause of the Younger Dryas. In short, Wolbach et al. say that there’s “considerable evidence” that “The radiant and thermal energy from multiple explosions triggered wildfires that burned ~10% of the planet’s biomass”(179).* How did they discover the fires of so long ago? Ash. Lots of it in ice cores dated to about 12,835 years ago, the time of the Younger Dryas.
So, what do impacting comet fragments have to do with you? The Younger Dryas appears to have given people in the Levant the incentive to become farmers, changing their nomadic lifestyle. Farms allow more people to survive, villages to sprout into towns, and towns into civilizations. The ash of the Younger Dryas, however “bad” the moment was for the Clovis and for other Northern Hemisphere people and possibly for the large fauna of the time, appears to mark a turning point. The ash also tells us that Earth was minding its own business when a chance encounter with fragments of a large comet radically altered what was going on. In other words, Mother Earth, if we could think anthropomorphically for a moment, didn’t make some regrettable mistake. The turning point came from an external source, and she just didn’t have the time to avoid the incident. Her reaction was instantaneous.
So, too, were some of those reactions that became turning points in your life. You might wish to go back and undo them, but the reality is that no one is prepared for all the circumstances into which life’s orbit takes him or her. Once the event occurs and precipitates a rapid change, the best tactic seems to lie in adaptation.
The record of the moment will be locked in the past like Younger Dryas ash deposits in Greenland ice. They tell of a moment when long-term warming trend stopped and a short-term cooling trend began. But those deposits won’t always be there; they will flow out with the meltwater with further warming that began a long time ago. And the deposits of ash from your embarrassing and life-altering moments will also wash away with the current trend of your life unless you insist on holding onto what you were instead of furthering what you are. Want it put another way? Don’t make an ash of yourself.
*Wolbach, Wendy S. “Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago.” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 126, No. 2, March 2018. Pp. 165-184.
The Younger Dryas was a period of rapid climatic cooling that began about 12,800 years ago in the Northern Hemisphere. Its significance is that it interrupted the warming trend that ended the last glacial maximum. Earth was heating up; the ice was melting. And then a couple of Dryas cooling trends intervened. Real cooling trends. Like eight degrees Celsius cooler for hundreds of years. The cooling slowed the rise of seas as less meltwater entered them. The Younger Dryas (named for an eight-petaled tundra flower) seems to be one of those moments with consequences beyond affecting nature and just making our ancestors shiver. North America’s Clovis culture declined and in the Middle East, people rather rapidly turned to agriculture.
Why did Earth suddenly cool? Answering that question for the distant past is just as difficult as answering the climate questions of the present. We live on a complex planet, and everything from solar output to shape of our orbit to tilt of our poles to volcanic eruptions to orogenesis to atmospheric and oceanic composition and circulation, have influence. And there’s another possible influence: Impacting fragments of a comet. At least, that’s the argument of Wendy S. Wolbach and co-authors of an article on “extraordinary biomass-burning” as a cause of the Younger Dryas. In short, Wolbach et al. say that there’s “considerable evidence” that “The radiant and thermal energy from multiple explosions triggered wildfires that burned ~10% of the planet’s biomass”(179).* How did they discover the fires of so long ago? Ash. Lots of it in ice cores dated to about 12,835 years ago, the time of the Younger Dryas.
So, what do impacting comet fragments have to do with you? The Younger Dryas appears to have given people in the Levant the incentive to become farmers, changing their nomadic lifestyle. Farms allow more people to survive, villages to sprout into towns, and towns into civilizations. The ash of the Younger Dryas, however “bad” the moment was for the Clovis and for other Northern Hemisphere people and possibly for the large fauna of the time, appears to mark a turning point. The ash also tells us that Earth was minding its own business when a chance encounter with fragments of a large comet radically altered what was going on. In other words, Mother Earth, if we could think anthropomorphically for a moment, didn’t make some regrettable mistake. The turning point came from an external source, and she just didn’t have the time to avoid the incident. Her reaction was instantaneous.
So, too, were some of those reactions that became turning points in your life. You might wish to go back and undo them, but the reality is that no one is prepared for all the circumstances into which life’s orbit takes him or her. Once the event occurs and precipitates a rapid change, the best tactic seems to lie in adaptation.
The record of the moment will be locked in the past like Younger Dryas ash deposits in Greenland ice. They tell of a moment when long-term warming trend stopped and a short-term cooling trend began. But those deposits won’t always be there; they will flow out with the meltwater with further warming that began a long time ago. And the deposits of ash from your embarrassing and life-altering moments will also wash away with the current trend of your life unless you insist on holding onto what you were instead of furthering what you are. Want it put another way? Don’t make an ash of yourself.
*Wolbach, Wendy S. “Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago.” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 126, No. 2, March 2018. Pp. 165-184.
RSS Feed