18 replies to this topic

[Bruce Klein]

It Is Time To Cast a Worried
Eye Towards Yellowstone
YOWUSA.COM, 22-August-2003
Larry Park and Marshall Masters

Yesterday afternoon, a 4.4 magnitude earthquake occurred just 9 miles southeast of the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park. According to the USGS, “It is unlikely that there is a connection or triggering mechanism of the earthquake with the increased hydrothermal activity at Norris Geyser Basin, which is about 35 miles from the epicenter or with hydrothermal features in Yellowstone Lake that have received recent publicity.” However, given the shallow depth of this quake, the volcanism model developed by Larry Park has suddenly lurched us a huge step towards a worst-case eruption event.



So What Can I Do?
The amount of time for complacency has past. Now, you need to make a personal commitment to become informed and continuously aware of this building threat – especially if you live within 600 miles of Yellowstone Park. This is because in a worst-case scenario, the hot ash could bury you alive, as it did to the residents of Pompeii.



http://www.yowusa.co.../volcanism4.htm

[Lazarus Long]

Having lived for a time under the smoking tower of a glaciated active volcano I suggest that only a fool ignores these things but I see people moving closer and closer to danger all over the world.

While not the same type of risk, we face these issues even with flood zones and the idea that the Federal Government should "insure" the private property of individuals that move into these known hazardous regions.

The best response is not to try and prevent nature but to adapt in these instances and allow these regions to focus the risks. In my life I have observed volcanoes from Mt. St. Helens to Mt. Pinatubo, I have walked in the crater of Haleakala and climbed on the slopes of Popocatepetl looking over to Ixtacihuatl. I didn't climb to the crater in this case as it was dangerously active and spewing fumes. The threat is not the same in all cases and the threat level increases as a direct consequence of foolishly allowing and worse, encouraging development closer and closer to these very well identified regions.

I was living on the slope of Xitle which happens to be a dormant volcano inside Mexico City and whose lava beds are the source of the building material commonly used through out the area since Pre-Columbian times. That the risks are real is evidenced by the ruins of Cuilcuilco in that same neighborhood which was buried like Pompeii under ash and lava a little over two millennium ago by the volcano Xitle.

Ironically the disadvantage of living on lava beds provided a significant advantage when compared to the even higher risk of living in the softer terrain that suffers horribly in earthquakes. While I was there I got to experience a few of those too for comparison.

This is the case in various parts of the world at this very moment but economics also forces people to move to where the land is less expensive, less populated, and were the risks are not the same every day. Slope and fault zone dwellers are gambling that the events which can kill them will happen after they have already died from other, or natural causes.

Actually in relation to Yellowstone the studies are fascinating because we have been seeing some serious signs of growing tectonic activity and this should be understood as an inevitable aspect of the regional tectonics.

What is interesting is that some people theorize that we could be facing a super blast, like what happened in Krakatoa but we have no real idea of when yet, or even a very accurate measure of how much subterranean force has developed and where it is specifically concentrated. But we are getting much better at this every day.

[Lazarus Long]

Add this article from today's worldwide press:

Iran's Capital Should Be Moved, Says Quake Expert

[Lazarus Long]

Well by now you should all have heard the news. We have had an event that demonstrates a very real hazard that our growing coastal populations face, tsunamis. It also has demonstrated the importance of early warning systems that could have been in place but were never put in place in the Indian Ocean.

The statistics speak for themselves, twelve countries, over 40K dead, possibly millions dislocated and homeless all in a single day. It is time to stop assuming these things can't happen or that we in America are unaffected. These are precisely the most destabilizing events that will foment the most hatred toward the US depending on how we respond. We have tied up many assets in Iraq and yet it should not be forgotten for example how much of that war on terrorism is being waged in all the countries impacted by this tsunami.

The greatest weapon in the arsenal now is our technological ability to contribute aid and shelter, to assist in the recovery and to help prevent the possible incubation of multiple vectors for pandemic that can and often will be a dangerous part of the aftermath of these events. This much more than phoney staged elections is our opportunity to win hearts and minds.

I have heard many are donating to Oxfam and I am looking to do something similar through the Buddhist temple near my residence. I will be sending clothing and medical supplies directly.

http://news.bbc.co.u...fic/4129371.stm

Care International
International Federation of the Red Cross
Medecins Sans Frontieres
Oxfam
Save The Children
Unicef
World Vision


http://news.bbc.co.u...ter/default.stm

http://www.nytimes.c...l?oref=login
A Third of the Dead Are Said to Be ChildrenBy SETH MYDANS
Published: December 28, 2004

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Dec. 28 - Survivors of the gigantic undersea earthquake on Sunday that swallowed coastlines from Indonesia to Africa - which officials now describe as one of the worst natural disasters in recent history - recovered bodies today, hurriedly arranged for mass burials and searched for tens of thousands of the missing in countries thousands of miles apart.

The reported deaths from the disaster - which climbed today to about 44,000, with many still unaccounted for, as Sri Lanka and Indonesia increased their confirmed tolls - came into sharper relief on a day when it seemed increasingly clear that at least a third of the dead were children, according to estimates by aid officials.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and government officials here, as well as those in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, the Maldives and as far away as Somalia, warned that with hundreds of thousands of people stranded in the open without clean drinking water, epidemics of cholera and other waterborne diseases could take as many lives as the initial waves.

Images from around the region presented a tableau of unrelenting grief. Fathers and mothers wailed over drowned children. Bodies were arrayed in long rows in hastily dug trenches. Villagers sat by ruined homes, stunned. Hotels in some of Thailand's most luxurious resorts were turned into morgues.

"This may be the worst natural disaster in recent history because it is affecting so many heavily populated coastal areas," said Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, speaking at a news conference in New York.

"Usually a natural disaster strikes one or two or three countries, not eight or nine enormous coastlines like they've done here," he added. "Bigger waves have been recorded. But no wave has affected so many people." Nearly half the reported deaths were here in Sri Lanka, where estimates jumped Monday to more than 12,000 killed, and where more than a million people were reported to have lost their homes.

Today the estimate of deaths jumped even higher, with an official with the state-run National Disaster Management Center, D. N. Wanigasooriya, telling Reuters, "At the moment they have recovered 18,706 bodies."

The realization began to emerge today that the dead included an exceptionally high number of children who, aid officials suggested, were least able to grab onto trees or boats when the deadly waves smashed through villages and over beaches. Children make up at least half the population of Asia.

On the western tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the destruction was doubly fierce, caused by both the earthquake itself 150 miles away and the tsunamis that followed.
(excerpt)

[jaydfox]

Lazarus, good job noting the U.S.'s otherwise militaristic presense in the region of the tsunamis. That, and the fact that we've crushed our economy--by overextending our military reach and incurring the wrath of those who would trade in and thus support our currency (*cough* Western Europe *cough* Asia *cough*)--puts us in a situation where we are not fully able to provide the relief that we should.

The response that I would have expected from the U.S. ten or twenty years ago would have been to send massive (i.e., tens of billions of dollars' worth of) relief--money, food, water and water purification equipment, shelters, heavy and light construction/demolition equipment, clothing, fuel, aid workers, military peacekeepers, etc.--to the affected regions. Instead, I suspect that U.S. aid will be an order of magnitude less than this. And this from the "Christian/Moral Conservative"-elected President. Ironic, don't you think?

And yes, the reduced ability to provide aid, combined with an already unwanted military presense, will only continue to foment hatred against the U.S., making us far less safe than if we had taken a far less militaristic approach over the last three years. Less hatred, fewer and less potent terrorist breeding grounds, AND we'd still have that 200 billion dollars to play with in our economy, minus whatever tens of billions we could have provided in relief for this disaster.

Lazarus: Can we add the current Republican Party under George W. Bush and Karl Rove as a "Threat to Life", possibly near the top of the list? Between this and the medical research issues, I think they've demonstrated their worth on the list.

[Lazarus Long]

Lazarus: Can we add the current Republican Party under George W. Bush and Karl Rove as a "Threat to Life", possibly near the top of the list? Between this and the medical research issues, I think they've demonstrated their worth on the list.

We have already.

I coined the phrase *The Orwellian Threat to Life* to refer to the political conundrum. It overlaps now with the threat of pandemic if we do less than our best to deter what is coming.

[Lazarus Long]

BTW my perspective on those that seek immortality is that we should be the peacemakers not the warmongers. We should be the healers not the killers. Of course at times the defense of life might call for extreme measures but that level of violence should be understood to be the last resort of incompetence.

Those that seek immortality should before all others appreciate the sanctity of life and do all within our power to nourish and protect it. If we were to achieve immortality by costing the lives of others then we have crossed the line into vampirism and while it might seem an attractive route to some, it is one that will inevitably lead to disaster and the lowest common denominator of behavior. We would have become less than the beasts rather than nobler.

Gathered among our numbers are true healers, let them be the role models we hold forth as exemplary. Let them be our leaders and let us examine how we can be most effective at contributing not only to the prolongation of life but to the quality of that life, to a healthy world of peace and beauty. A world where every intelligent being can find a manner of unique expression and constructive challenge equal to their ability.

In the most hypocritical and venal manner the likes of Kass speak of *Psychic Energy* and the need for death to give meaning to life when it is merely the covert and overt exploitation of the weak that gives them the power that they seek to ensure through the continuation of the status quo.

If they truly valued life now would be a good time for them to not only put their money where their mouths are but it is a good time for us to step and and steal their thunder in secular manner by showing that not only do we care but we do not need some atavistic moral imperative to appreciate what is good and noble and right. Lets make this a competition to the top instead and we can leave them behind in the hellish pits of their own creation.

Of course they too could come to understand that it is our standards and direction marking the true path to higher goals and they have been misguided for too long. Maybe we can demonstrate that rational spirituality is not an oxymoron by demonstrating rational compassion and pragmatic altruism.

[jaydfox]

Great, Bush offered $15 million dollars. That's about three orders of magnitude below what I would have expected, in order to secure the respect and goodwill of a region/society of the world that is bent on destroying our region/society of the world. Oh, and I guess relieving the suffering of millions of people and several economies might have been a good reason too.

Bush has since been shamed into raising the aid to $35 million, still two and a half order of magnitude too small. Even if his shame pushes him to up the ante to $500 million, it would still be a pathetic gesture. Billions of dollars are needed to resecure the economies of the affected countries, and to prevent massive water- and air-borne disease outbreaks that could kill more people than the initial tsunamis.

This is the guy that half of America thought was a "moral", "Christian" man.

Reports are already coming in that Al Qaeda, ever the clever group, is actively casing the region for recruiting huge numbers of new "members". Even if Bush is a tightwad, a grade-school student can do the math necessary to figure out that a billion dollars in aid now will save us ten billion dollars or more in the war on terrorism.

In fact, this disaster could have been the tipping point, if you look at it from a chaos theory point of view. Had Bush responded with over a billion dollars, the war on terror could have become nothing more than a nuisance by 2015. However, Bush's $35 million response could mean hundreds of thousands or millions of American lives lost to terrorism in the next decade.

[DJS]

Jaydfox:

In fact, this disaster could have been the tipping point, if you look at it from a chaos theory point of view.  Had Bush responded with over a billion dollars, the war on terror could have become nothing more than a nuisance by 2015.  However, Bush's $35 million response could mean hundreds of thousands or millions of American lives lost to terrorism in the next decade.

Chaos theory point of view? [huh] [lol]

I absolutely agree that the US must recognize the direct relationship between world opinion and terrorist recruitment rates, but let's keep our rational minds ever vigilant for the slippery slope, shall we?

[Lazarus Long]

OK folks this is not the thread we intended to discuss the Orwellian threat to life in and before I ask everyone to return to issues related to volcanism and tectonics I would like to add a quote from a simple observer perhaps more eloquent than myself that was made elsewhere in response to the following comment. Maybe this will help put this countries actions in the *global perspective*.

America is giving more than any other country in actual dollars in relief aid to the stricken nations. However I once heard a phrase that made a lot of sense to me: "It's not about equal giving, it's about equal sacrifice."

What does it means when a wealthy man compares his $200 donation to the $80 donations of 3 poor men and says that he is the most generous. The real question is who has given more in proportion to their ability/willingness to sacrifice for another's well being.

Here is a bit more perspective:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl

The U.S. Pledges $35 Million in Relief Aid; 1/4200 Amount Spent in Iraq
Humanitarian groups have launched what is believed to be the largest relief effort in the world's history. Billions of dollars will be needed in the coming weeks.

While the Bush administration has pledged to play a major role in the relief effort, it is already coming under criticism for its handling of the crisis.

On Monday, the Bush administration pledged an initial $15 million for the effort. After a top UN official described the donation as "stingy", the US pledged another $20 million bringing the total offering to $35 million.

To put the figure in perspective, President Bush plans to spend between $30 and $40 million for his upcoming inauguration celebration.

And the amount pledged to victims of the tsunami is dwarfed by the Bush administration's war effort in Iraq.

The U.S. has spent an average of $9.5 million every hour on the war and occupation of Iraq. With a current price tag of $147 billion, the U.S. has spent an average of about $228 million a day in Iraq. In other words, the U.S. spends what it promised on the tsunami relief effort in less than four hours in Iraq.

Just what are we sacrificing and to what purpose?

[jaydfox]

No one has mentioned anything in the Threats to Life forum, so far as I've seen, concerning today's 8.7 quake, centered very close to the 9.0 quake last December. Interestingly, it comes barely three months later, and some scientists had recently reported that such large followup quakes were to be expected.

So far, no reports of major tsunamis though there are preliminary indications that tsunamis were sent southward from the quake, away from populated areas. We can only hope that this will further ease the strains on the faults in that region, making any further quakes/tsunamis unlikely for decades at least (aside from aftershocks, of course).

[Lazarus Long]

I have been hearing 8.2 but the early warnings went out and you are correct no wave has been sighted. But it is not just a quake that causes a tsunami it is also a displacement or relative shift in the sea floor that causes it.

I have read reports that in some areas the sea floor rose several meters and as much as 10 to 16 meters in the immediate fault zone during the December quake. It was a large scale shift of so much mass that the Earth's rotation was altered in the same way a skater can change rotational velocity by moving their arms in and out.

[Lazarus Long]

Yep now I am reading 8.7 too.

I wonder if they will settle on that number or revise it upward again?

Apparently Sumatra experienced a lot of damage on the ground again.

[marcopolo]

What is interesting is that some people theorize that we could be facing a super blast, like what happened in Krakatoa but we have no real idea of when yet

Actually, it would be much, much more worse than Krakatoa or any other historic volcanic eruption. In fact the last Yellowstone eruption was about 1000x as large as Mt. St. Helens. I grew up in Washington state and witnessed the May 18, 1980 eruption of St. Helens(the big one that blew the top off the mountain) and that was bad enough. If Yellowstone were to erupt with 1000x that magnitude it would have horrible consequences for the country and the world. Nothing will stop it or any other volcano. At least with a Mt St Helens sized volcano you can get the heck away from it once an eruption is predicted. The only thing humanity can do against a Yellowstone sized volcano is to develop and use advanced technology to mitigate the effects on civilization. If technology doesn't advance, sooner or later a Yellowstone scale eruption WILL destroy civilization, or at least come very close.

[orbital]

A bump for this topic...

I think the risk from the largest scale volcanic eruptions should get far more research discussion or at least brought back into the consciousness of anyone who has influence over research direction and funding. The problem is probably widely ignored because working technology doesn't yet exist which would have an effect on the problem. It would possibly require nanotech to make a difference.

[Luminosity]

Is anyone else thinking about the Earth Changes? The storms and earthquakes? It's been intensifying for at least a decade, but something is definitely up. Not many are arguing anymore. I vacillate between obsessively watching news coverage and seeking out earth changes information, and trying to ignore it and live my life, such as it is. It's sick but I kind of get a thrill from thinking the world will end because my life has been so difficult. That would bring everyone down to my level and relieve me from trying to solve my problems. Then I try not to think that way and be more positive and try to pick up the threads of my life and live them. You have to live affirmatively.

How do you respond to the Earth Changes and climate events? How much time do you spend on it? Have you done anything special to prepare yourself or are you just going to live your life and trust that everything will work out?

[robomoon]

\\quote shortened\\ ... but I kind of get a thrill from thinking the world will end because my life has been so difficult. That would bring everyone down to my level and relieve me from trying to solve my problems. ... Have you done anything special to prepare yourself or are you just going to live your life and trust that everything will work out?

There is something special to create for people of different ages who are afraid about a global destruction event.

Tell no tales to people above 10: http://www.longecity...ght-kill-us-all

Invent educational strategies for people above 20: http://www.longecity...post__p__472444

Compute a presentation for people above 30: http://www.longecity...post__p__472397

Mix a drink for people above 40: http://www.longecity...post__p__476098

Warn people above 50 who are giving wisdom to the younger ones: http://www.longecity...post__p__474712