I bet Gov. Jindal feels like an idiot.

[White Eagle]

I love it when Kuli opens his class on science. We can learn so much from it. No need to go to college, just read JUB.

 

[Kulindahr]

There is no power on earth that can stop a volcano from erupting. When a volcano decides to explode, there's nothing we humans can do about it. The purpose of monitoring volcanoes is to gain some insight when an explosion is imminent and thus to give the surrounding population time to evacuate and thereby save lives, a very worthwhile expenditure of funds. While magma doesn't generally travel at high speed, the same is not true for pyroclastic flows which can exceed 100 mph and devastate everything in their path.

Humans have managed to turn lava flows aside, when it's a kind of lava susceptible to the methods we have -- bulldozers, earthmovers, jets of icewater, and such tools of brute force. That's the limit, though: if we could conceivably, somehow, 'put a cork' in a volcano, it wouldn't stop the eruption, it would just delay it and make it come out somewhere else -- somewhere unpredictable and probably more dangerous. To employ a very gross analogy, corking a volcano would be like corking your ass when you have diarrhea... knowing that it will pop out somewhere in your body during the next day, and jet from your skin with greater force than if you'd left it alone.

A volcanic eruption can be viewed as analogous to a fart: it's going to come out, one way or another. If you just let it out, it will hopefully come quietly and be no big deal -- but if you try to hold it back, there's a good chance that when it breaks out past your best efforts it's going to be a nasty loud obnoxious thing.

The best we might ever hope to do with volcanoes is figure out ways to keep them erupting constantly, evenly, gently, because there's no way on God's green earth to tame them. Just to give an idea of the energy involved, if Yellowstone blew as other such calderas have blown in the past, not all the munitions of all the world's militaries plus all the explosives for construction and other work, including nuclear weapons, would hold a spark to it. Even eruptions like St. Helens or Pinatubo involve more explosive release of energy than the entire combined force of everything that went "Boom!" in World War II.

Thanks to the monitoring we have done, geologists are learning to distinguish, albeit rudely, between some of the different possible eruptions. In Hawaii, they can often tell whether the rumbles on the sensors are announcing a burst of cinder-cone activity or a rush of aa lava; in the Cascade region of the western U.S., they can make good guesses as to whether there's going to be just gas, ash, or a bit of billions of dollars worth of damage in the event of an eruption, and thousands of lives saved. As we learn more, and get better at it, that will improve. It is not inconceivable that we could get to the point where geologists could say, "Mt. Belch is going to have an explosive eruption about six months from now", and engineers could look at the situation and say, "If we drilled into the mountain and put a pile of explosives just so, we could send the blast across the ranch land and save that city". And it's already nearly within reach to be able to say, "Mt. Spurt's going to be throwing out lava that will flow at 50kph", along with a flux measurement, so authorities could look at that, and start three months ahead of time putting up berms and dikes to make the lava go in the least damaging places possible -- or even send it somewhere useful!
And even if what the volcanologists had to say was, "We're looking at super-hot lava that will come down the slopes at 120kph and slow to half that on the flat", we could at least ask, "When?", and get things moving, so when the unstoppable flood rushed forth and baked everything it didn't flash to ash, people could be sitting at safe distances sending live pictures to friends a continent away instead of screaming in panic and trying to decide what armload of possessions to throw in the SUV and still have time to drive to safety before the tires melted from ground heat.

 

[Kulindahr]

Ah, I see, although you failed to mention how the initial ash clouds would hit the Canadian border.

That was part of ruining "half the continent".

 

[Kulindahr]

blah blah blah we have always had warnings in place for natural disasters but eventually the warnings became preety standard while being embedded in our local evening news from meteorologists im not saying do not try to predict them & warn ppul im saying stop fronting like volcanic activity is so rare & foreignh that an over abundance of money has to be allotted for a simple 'its erupting warch out' & there lil warning neverstop the extreeme devistation it may cause

wasrefull spending

Prediction and warning of volcanic eruptions right now is about on par with weather forecasting around World War I -- sort of like....

There's a storm coming.
How strong?
Not sure.
How soon?
Not sure.
Where's it gonna hit?
Not sure.


All the money spent to get from there to "Winds forty to sixty miles per hour hitting the valley between ten and twelve tonight, bringing two to three inches of rain over the next thirty-six hours" was most certainly not wasteful -- and neither is the money spent monitoring volcanoes, because it's that monitoring that makes learning possible.

Considering that if Mt. Rainier were to go off without us knowing it was coming, it could take several million lives and potentially upwards of a trillion dollars of destruction, and that the mountain keeps showing little signs that it isn't altogether asleep, money spent getting from "Mountain's rumbling -- might blow" to "An eruption with moderately viscous lava and pyroclastic features, centered in the southeast face of the mountain, can be expected in the next ten days" can't be counted as wasted except by the most foolish. Subjectively, having family living in the potential devastation zone there, my urge is to say that they should spend $100 million just to learn more about Mt. Rainier; objectively, I know that so much funding so fast would be pointless (for a number of technical, academic, and political reasons -- for example, you'd be amazed at the innovations in monitoring devices that have come from a grad student team saying, We need $1200 for device X, and they're told, You have $500... so they invent device X+' that turns out to do a better job for less money).

It would be nice if we could slip into parallel universes where there aren't people, and observe these same volcanoes erupting dozens of times over millions of years, and compile a nice data set suitable for crunching by computers and scouring by intuitive researchers probing for patterns, but we don't have that luxury. Like those grad students on a budget, we must work with what we have -- and in this case, that means a limited set of mountains doing things on their own schedule, which in turn means monitoring every last one possible to get all the data we can: heat, tilt, uplift, rotation, outgassing, seismic activity, sound, even radio and magnetic phenomena, so that maybe, hopefully, with luck and brilliance, we'll be able to not just yell "This is it!" into the radio before the pyroclastic flow incinerates us, but to say, "We have three months: this area has to be evacuated, this ridge has to be moved, and if we set off an underground 10-kt nuke just here, we'll have $400 million in property loss instead of $700 billion".

BTW, you said something about volcanic activity being rare. Maybe where you live you can feel safe saying that, but from the place I'll be moving to in the next couple of months, there are a half-dozen volcanoes visible, every one of which has shown some activity in the last three decades -- one of which, St. Helens, is currently listed as active, and another (the Three Sisters complex) is capable of wiping out a large portion of the state... and just over the horizon sits another that in historical times leveled forests hundreds of miles around, scorched multiple valleys with pyroclastic flows which incinerated everything organic, scorched the soil, and boiled lakes, and buried thousands of square miles in ash hot enough to sterilize the ground a meter or more deep, while raining boulders beyond the visible horizon and out to sea. The odds are that one of those mountains will do something nasty in my lifetime -- and I don't call that "rare".

 

[Kulindahr]

I love it when Kuli opens his class on science. We can learn so much from it. No need to go to college, just read JUB.

LOL

Just keep in mind here that I haven't been in a geology lab in a dozen years, and don't keep up with the journals. But I try to keep up on the Pacific Northwest, since its hazards are part of my living conditions.

Thinking in science and spending terms, though: monitoring the volcanoes is a good thing, but we need a handful of millions to spend on monitoring the Cascadia subduction zone out here -- the evidence shows that we're overdue for a quake in the 8.2 to 9.1 range, and a little warning would be nice.

 

[Glafna]

blah blah blah we have always had warnings in place for natural disasters but eventually the warnings became preety standard while being embedded in our local evening news from meteorologists im not saying do not try to predict them & warn ppul im saying stop fronting like volcanic activity is so rare & foreignh that an over abundance of money has to be allotted for a simple 'its erupting warch out' & there lil warning neverstop the extreeme devistation it may cause

wasrefull spending

First off, Learn to spell and use punctuation... your coming across as a 6th grader here.


Second, Could you PLEASE reiterate your arguments... your making barely any sense here.

 

[Kulindahr]

Do you know what the name of it is or when it happened? I want to look up more infomation on it.

I sent an email to the OSU geosciences people, and the guy who answered it isn't aware of the event. I don't recognize his name, which means he hasn't been there long -- I was hoping to get someone who was in the department at the time of the eruption.

Now I'm debating whether I want to go to the effort of finding a library with newspaper archives old enough... and wade through them.

 

[HenryReardon]

First off, Learn to spell and use punctuation... your coming across as a 6th grader here.


Second, Could you PLEASE reiterate your arguments... your making barely any sense here.

Pot calling kettle black perhaps?

It should be you're making barely any sense..... etc. He who lives in a glass house....

 

[Glafna]

Pot calling kettle black perhaps?

It should be you're making barely any sense..... etc. He who lives in a glass house....

Feeling a bit trollish today are we????

 

[Glafna]

I sent an email to the OSU geosciences people, and the guy who answered it isn't aware of the event. I don't recognize his name, which means he hasn't been there long -- I was hoping to get someone who was in the department at the time of the eruption.

Now I'm debating whether I want to go to the effort of finding a library with newspaper archives old enough... and wade through them.

It might be worth it, depending on what allergies you have .

 

[Kulindahr]

Pot calling kettle black perhaps?

It should be you're making barely any sense..... etc. He who lives in a glass house....

That's reaching, Henry....

"Your" instead of "you're" is a common typing error that can occur because of tiredness, absentmindedness, having something else on your mind, rushing, or some other things.
The material to which Glafna was referring barely qualifies as literate.

It might be worth it, depending on what allergies you have .

Well, I'm allergic to newsprint....

 

[TX-Beau]

Plus "your" won't trip your spell check. Personally, i don't like to correct people's grammar, or bring it up. I don't know who's a native English speaker, or who's using some other dialect. Maybe he's foreign - maybe not, but since I like diversity, I'd rather err on the side of caution, than discourage someone.

 

[TickTockMan]

I sent an email to the OSU geosciences people, and the guy who answered it isn't aware of the event. I don't recognize his name, which means he hasn't been there long -- I was hoping to get someone who was in the department at the time of the eruption.

Now I'm debating whether I want to go to the effort of finding a library with newspaper archives old enough... and wade through them.

That’s too bad. I was hoping they would give some good information. If you do go to an archive let me know what you find. I think this stuff is fascinating, even more so since it is so close to me.

 

[Kulindahr]

That’s too bad. I was hoping they would give some good information. If you do go to an archive let me know what you find. I think this stuff is fascinating, even more so since it is so close to me.

I emailed back and told them I'd been in the volcanology sequence at OSU, and was hoping some senior faculty from back when were still around to respond. I also mentioned reports that were made of activity on Mt. Hood, which exhibited bulging and increased heat.

Maybe I'll get something better back.

 

[Kulindahr]

It seems to me that 140 million is a reasonable amount to provide warning to millions of Americans and their billions of dollars in movable property. Anyway, some volcanoes that are not altogether destructive to property can and do cause severe respiratory problems. The ash that spews from Alaska's volcanoes is such an example, like having microscopic razor sharp rocks tear up your lung tissue.

I'm sure Jindal isn't embarrassed at all by that statement he made. That is what he believes in, bare bones government that provides minimal services. People who vote Republican must realize that's what conservatives stand for.

It is undeniably hypocritical for Jindal however to expect disaster prevention and relief after making such a statment.

In a sensible world, government wouldn't have to do the monitoring. Insurance companies looking to serve their customers would offer volcanic event insurance, and a chunk of the premiums would go to monitoring those zits on the earth's face. A clause in the insurance contract would require evacuation in case of a monitoring team declaration of probable imminent eruption. Universities would be good to have in on the monitoring, to provide an unbiased assessment.


Alaska's volcanic ash (especially Redoubt) is much like that of St. Helens: Imagine taking three dozen blades for an exacto or utility knife, merging them into one random ball -- not crumpling, but sliding them into each other, so the nasty sharp points stick out every which way. Twist and crinkle them a bit, for an extra touch of wickedness, then shrink to a size about 1/10th of a grain of ordinary beach sand.

The result is a tiny particle that, wherever it lodges, can't not slice things -- it can't sheath its claws, can't pull in its fangs. What they do to your lungs is like filling a MacDonalds play pit filled with balls, and replacing the balls with full size razor-clumps that I described... then doing a belly flop, followed by trying to climb out again: every time you breathe in, they slice little microscopic lacerations; every time you breathe out, they do it again. As they cut, they shift position, so the tiny, tiny blades cut in new places. As your lungs try to cough them out, they cut; if you hold your breath, they cut because the pulsing of your blood stream is sufficient to apply pressure, tissue to blade. Get them in your clothes, and they're like demonically-efficient sandpaper, shredding your epidermis. Get them in your eyes... well, I'll leave it at saying that they will substantially degrade the surface of the lens.

As for them getting into machinery, when parts today have so much aluminum and plastic, which are as warm cheese before a Marine's KBar knife to these little beasties... well, they'll screw up anything without a seal tight enough to keep flour particles out.

 

[HenryReardon]

That's reaching, Henry....

"Your" instead of "you're" is a common typing error that can occur because of tiredness, absentmindedness, having something else on your mind, rushing, or some other things.
The material to which Glafna was referring barely qualifies as literate.

Which is hardly the point.

He was chastising someone else for poor grammar/spelling, and doing so with poor grammar/spelling, thereby opening himself to criticism.

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't believe in a fend-for-yourself society. There is a moral belief in my book that says you should help people who can't afford such a thing. All told $140million represents less than 50c for every person in the US, not too much to ask of me or you.

You said two different things in there:

1. people with means should help those without
2. it's okay to take money from people without their consent (or more accurately, in this case, borrow money and put someone in debt without their consent).

See the contradiction? If I decide to throw in fifty cents for volcano monitoring, I've done a good thing. But if someone makes the decision to take fifty cents of mine and throw it into the pot, it's entirely different.

 

[Spensed]

That's true. But less true, if the someone has been duly elected by you and/or by an elective process, and within a constitutional framework, to which you subscribe.

The someone-else-taking-your-property-away-concept is a primitive fear filled notion used for political advantage.

Most of the people so afraid of having stuff taking away from them have little, if anything, to be taken away from them. Joe the Plumber springs to mind.

 

[pmpinla]

You said two different things in there:

1. people with means should help those without
2. it's okay to take money from people without their consent (or more accurately, in this case, borrow money and put someone in debt without their consent).

See the contradiction? If I decide to throw in fifty cents for volcano monitoring, I've done a good thing. But if someone makes the decision to take fifty cents of mine and throw it into the pot, it's entirely different.

I agree with JockBoy87, and there is no inherent contradiction in what he says, assuming you wish to live in a civilized society. Those with means do have a moral imperative to help those without, otherwise it's the law of the jungle or social Darwinism at its most cruel. As to your point of taking money without people's consent, isn't that a good description of taxation? We don't agree to it but are resigned to it. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. succinctly put it, "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society," and in this case a minute portion of the taxes we pay goes to the monitoring of volcanoes, hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters, even though some individuals may not have made the conscious decision that that is where they want their tax dollars spent. So people with means pay taxes and some of those taxes go to support disaster monitoring. There is no inherent contradiction.

 

[TickTockMan]

I emailed back and told them I'd been in the volcanology sequence at OSU, and was hoping some senior faculty from back when were still around to respond. I also mentioned reports that were made of activity on Mt. Hood, which exhibited bulging and increased heat.

Maybe I'll get something better back.

Thats cool. I hope they have some info.