A Satellite Image of Europe at Night. Courtesy C. Mayhew & R. Simmon (NASA/GSFC), NOAA/ NGDC, DMSP Digital Archive

You have to wonder what effect was of the recent?viral campaign to reduce France’s power consumption.? Lights Out! was the brainchild of France’s Alliance for the Planet. Online groups and e-mail forwarding helped propel the campaign into somewhat of a world-wide boycott on energy use — if only for five minutes.?

The plan was to reduce a significant portion of our energy consumption from 6:55 PM to 7 PM GMT on Thursday, Februrary 1st. It coincided with the release of a major report that includes findings from scientists and representatives of 113 governments.

What was the overall effectiveness of Lights Out? Don’t forget, we’ve tried similar schemes to reduce gasoline consumption and induce an artificial drop in prices. The BBC says it best: “During the switch-off, the power grid operator RTE observed a fall of 800 megawatts, representing just over 1% of France’s total consumption. ”

Ironically, this leads credence to the report’s findings. At one point, the report categorically states that temperature changes and rises in sea level “would continue for centuries” no matter how much we try to control our pollution.

This isn’t to say that conservation isn’t good, but the Lights Out! campaign is just one indicator that people won’t make positive changes towards climate change in the future, unless it is more economically beneficial to do so.? Technology like cold fusion, nuclear energy, and new clean alternatives are a step in the right direction, but we need to kickstart research into clean-burning fuels and higher efficiency standards — hopefully by doing so, we will decrease the cost of energy all while helping the planet reach homeostasis.

The underwater topography of Mavericks is what creates monster waves. The large reef known as “The Thumb” helps propel walls of water as high as 100 feet or more. Image courtesy The San Francisco Chronicle.

In 1994, legendary big wave surfer Mark Foo died while riding an 18-foot wave. The location was at Mavericks; and he will be remembered as the first and only surfer that Mavericks has claimed. Foo once said: “If you want the ultimate thrill, you must be willing to pay the ultimate price.”

Today’s Chronicle has a fascinating story on the waves themselves and what makes Mavericks such a big-wave factory. About halfway into the article is a harrowing tale of two rescue patrollers on a jet ski, who out-ran a deadly 100-foot wave in 2001, raced up the gigantic crest only moments before it could have killed them, and jumped over the top. Said rescuer Shawn Alladio:

“Normally, when you go over a big wave, you get pelted with the spray, like raindrops, on the other side,” Alladio said. “But these clots of water were huge, the size of your fist, and they exploded like you were getting pounded by water balloons. And on the wave fronts, each time we went up I could see all these fissures or ravines in the surface, and there was some kind of crazy light energy vibrating inside the wave like electricity, and I remember thinking, ‘Those are the fingers of God.'”

Obviously the physical crests and ridges, particularly the reef with the moniker, “The Thumb” is what creates the waves, but what created the ridges? We have to look back as far as the Miocene to Pliocene age, when sediments of mussels and other such crustaceans formed a hard, erosion resistant body of rock known as the Purisima Formation. Top it all off with the Seal Rock fault line, and you’ve got unique wave geography — so unique, that only three places in the world can claim 100-foot kahunas.

All of this is compounded with drop in depth from about 18 feet at “Mavericks” to well over 70 feet as you get less than 1/4 of a mile out, and you have the power of thousands of miles concentrated into some awesome, surely tubular — in all senses of the word — waves.

Inside Berkeley’s Bevatron, a particle accelerator. This is the type of complex that is getting Iran in trouble now, but obviously on a much larger scale. Though plutonium was never produced here, it was the site of the discovery of anti-matter.

In 1986, the world became aware of the meltdown at Chernobyl. The principle flaw resided in the RBMK design of the Soviet reactor and its dangerously high “positive void coefficient.” The design meant that, as the core’s surrounding temperature increased, the core itself produced more heat.

The results were devastating. Though the Soviet government never released any official “body counts” it’s estimated that as many as 9,000 have died indirectly as a result. The incidences of thyroid cancer have also increased, especially in Belarus, where much of the fallout ended up due to wind patterns. Many children were affected — National Geographic’s April 2006 issue contains vivid accounts of the disaster itself, along with some incredible photos by Gerd Ludwig.

Today, what remains is an abandoned city. What looks like post-apocalyptic grid of soviet-era apartment structures, school buildings, and hotels. The central square is eerily full of a ferris wheel and other fairground equipment. Doctors offices still have the dead plants sitting on their desks (20 years later), and schools are full of miniature gas masks, handed out to children in the haste of the disaster.

An incredible look into the abandoned city of Pripyat is in Robert Polidori’s book, Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl. Once a city of 6,000, it has become a dead zone. Full of radioactive fallout, where, on the day of the disaster, children splashed water from fire hoses used to spray down streets full of radioactive cesium 137.

It’s a beautiful look at a soviet city. And yet, 20 years later, we have to ask ourselves if nuclear power is a very viable option. Technology like cold fusion may someday help save us from the deleterious effects of global warming. Maybe, some day, we will thank Uranium. But today, with Iran knocking on nuclear’s door, and North Korea building up its arsenal, we see why Einstein — who once supported nuclear research to fight off Nazi agression — changed his tune after the devestating bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.