Geologists like to say we are living in a new geological eon, the post-Holocene, in which humankind affects the planet by deliberate actions as much as if not more than natural processes do.
A case in point: Indonesian land, livelihoods and wildlife is being destroyed over an exponentially increasing area by Lusi, a man-made, unexpected mud volcano , thought to have been caused by unregulated drilling for oil and gas in a tectonically active area. Perhaps not the best idea ever.
Time magazine has a very informative article with excellent graphics:
The destruction is total. At the eruption’s epicenter — known to workers at the site as the Big Hole — a 100-ft. (30 m) plume of white smoke billows into the sky, obscuring the sun and spreading the sulfurous odor of rotting eggs. On a narrow causeway leading to the caldera, dozens of trucks idle in a queue, waiting to deliver soil for the massive earthworks meant to contain the mud. Already, they have transported more than 88 million cu. ft. (2.5 million cu m) of dirt to build eight miles (13 km) of levees around the site. Dozens of cranes work late into the evening piling the dirt atop bulwarks nearly 65 ft. (20 m) tall in places. As the mud rises, so must the levees, but so far Lusi seems to be outpacing human engineering. Twice the earthworks have been breached — most recently on Jan. 4 — flooding more houses. On Nov. 22, 2006, the weight of the soil ruptured a natural-gas pipeline, causing a massive fireball that incinerated 13 workers. According to an International Monetary Fund estimate, Lusi has already cost Indonesia $3.7 billion in damage and damage control. And things are likely to get worse. As mud spews up from the ground, the area around the eruption is gradually sinking. Eventually, Porong could become a giant sucking wound in the Earth.
I find it hard to get my head around the sheer volume of mud that Lusi is vomiting up, millions of cubic feet of it per day. It’s the inexorability of it that’s so impressive; everything they’ve thrown at it so far has failed to plug it or contain it and Lusi just keeps on pumping out vast acres of corrosive goo.
The geology of the region is so volatile and so complex that there’s no telling what reaction from other regional active tectonic features (as pressure is released far below) will be.
