MORE LAKE BAIKAL
Yesterday, at about this same time and place, we were discussing Lake Baikal's relative merits as to being the largest lake on Earth. There can be little doubt about it being the biggest in many ways.
I hesitated near the end of yesterday's piece, realizing that if I got started on another interesting feature of Lake Baikal, I might run on-on-on for pages! I decided to turn the Baikal faucet off for a time, and to save that talk for today with a little more space to point out some interesting facts and fancy.
The world's largest lake, located in central Asia in that part of Russia we have long called Siberia, just below the Mongolian border, is estimated to have come into being some 25-million years ago. For some year now, it has been getting ready for a change, and being an unusual feature in itself what is planned would, of necessity, be “big.”
Lake Baikal's tremendous fund of water - all the 6.200 feet depth of it covering an area four hundred by eight miles, is said to be on top of a fissure line in the earth's crust. Imagine what a bang it would make, if and when, the present hot springs at the bottom of the lake allow enough molten lava to ooze through to bring about an imbalance of present overlapping strata. The new weight may well cause cause existing plates to slide apart. If, and when, such at thing, occurs it is not difficult to think of the continent we call Asia being split apart and a new ocean formed between and East and West Asia. Some curious things are occurring a mile or so down on the bottom of Lake Baikal today with molten lava seeping through to form new lake floor and to cause uneven pressures to worsen.
Whatever Baikal does is big, so such a cataclysmic upheaval would most certainly have a series of costly changes affecting all climes and locations around the Earth. Such a major disturbance would , most likely, upset existing values. What may take place in Lake Baikal could have a marked affect on the rest of the world.. Unprecedented movement of sea water in waves high enough to inundate existing center of culture; are possible; high velocity winds, ash deposits, temperature changes and humidity and gaseous conditions unfavorable to human existence.
There is no way to “get ready” for such an event. The best we can do is to be aware of the possibility and to eschew worry.. It can be seen as a profound lesson telling us that we are, as we always have been, and continue to be subject to a higher power, a supreme Wisdom, Logos, Reason, or God.
Wherever might happen, we will all have front-row seats
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A.L.M. January 11, 2003 [c478wds]
