MILT THOMAS

Dr. Robert Ballard may be forever remembered as the man who found Titanic, but virtually everyone who attended his talk at the Emerson Center on February 8, learned so much more about the world we live in.

He gave two sold out presentations that seemed more like college lectures, except they were entertaining and informative, often funny, well beyond simply educational.  For a review of Ballard’s background, please refer to the Inside Vero February 4 story, “Sightseeing at 20,000 leagues under the sea.”  (See earlier story) 

Here are some of the highlights of his presentation:

“NASA’s budget is 1,000 times larger than for ocean exploration. Our budget is $23 million.”

We’re not going to escape this planet. “do you really want to live there (photo of Mars)? That’s ridiculous.”

“We only live on 18% of our planet.”

Ballard discussed and demonstrated Continental drift, where continents slowly move apart, with a map showing the mid-ocean ridge that runs virtually the entire width of planet earth that causes drift. He compared the relationship of the earth’s crust to the entire planet as like an eggshell to an egg and though oceans cover most of the earth’s surface, they are no deeper than  dipping a basketball in water and  leaving it wet.

“Plate tectonics give us this beautiful picture of the earth as a living creature.”

His discovery of thermal vents (“black smokers”) more than four miles below the oceans’ surface, where superheated water comes up from within the earth, demonstrated the constant circulation of water from the surface, that comes from rivers and carries surface material to the earth’s interior, and returns carrying important minerals which are then deposited as towering thermal vents surrounded by life that exists far below the furthest reaches of sunlight. That explains why the ocean’s salty composition is so different from fresh water rivers. It could explain that life began on earth far below the surface.

Ballard’s mission to find the Titanic was actually a cover-up of his real mission, which was to find a sunken nuclear sub, the Scorpion, so the Russians would not be curious.

President Reagan, in 1983, signed a bill that claimed for America all land extending 200 miles out into the ocean as an exclusive economic zone. In so doing, he doubled the size of our country. We further extended that out to the edge of the continental shelf adding another twenty percent, so 70 percent of the U.S lies under water, yet little of it has been explored. Mapping that land is Ballard’s mission.

Regarding global warming, the earth has gone through many warming and cooling phases, but humans are accelerating the curve too much. The northern hemisphere polar region is thawing out releasing a massive amount of methane, which is starting to accelerate. Storms more violent, extreme weather has intensified. According to Ballard,  “the earth is fighting back. Wait until you have hurricanes with 400 mile an hour winds.”

Regarding overpopulation, “It’s us that is at risk – the human race. Anyone who thinks exponential growth flattens, doesn’t know exponential growth. We are headed to collapse.”

“The single most important thing the human race can do to save itself is the empowerment of women.”

We cannot have exploding growth without a cybernetic rebound. “We’re not going to live on Mars, there’s no escape.”

“Do you think a 14-year old girl in Afghanistan wants to start bearing children? It’s cultural rape.”

He advocates microloans ($100, $200) to women in the third world to create small businesses and make them productive in society, rather than strictly reproductive from youth. It will curb population growth and help save the planet.