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TFA is a CNN story? Here is a better source.

I love the idea of a mission to Europa or Enceladus. The best support for life existing there is right here on earth, on geothermal vents deep in the ocean. Life already exists in total darkness and feeds on hydrogen sulfide, under extreme pressure in water that's hotter than its boiling point on the surface.

The U.S.has the second largest installed wind capacity - nearly all of it onshore. Offshore wind farms in the U.S. are complicated by geography. Winds in the Northern hemisphere blow predominantly from the west, so the strongest offshore winds are to the west of land masses (which slow the wind down). Europe is blessed with an extensive continental shelf to its west. So it's relatively easy to build an offshore wind farm there several tens or even a hundred kilometers from shore, before the winds are slowed down by land.

About half the U.S. West coast (California) has practically no continental shelf. You go a kilometer offshore and the water is already deeper than the European continental shelf. Go a few more kilometers offshore and the water is 1-3 km deep. Northern California to Washington does have a slight continental shelf, but (1) practically nobody lives along the coast north of San Francisco, and (2) the bulk of U.S. hydroelectric power is there giving the region the cheapest electricity in the country. So in the geographic region of the U.S.which is most analogous to Europe in terms of strongest winds, offshore wind farms are unfeasible due to underwater topography, (lack of) population, or economics.

The U.S. East coast has a large continental shelf, but due to the direction of the prevailing winds, you have to go far offshore to find winds stronger than what you'd find onshore. The focus of most offshore wind in the U.S. has been just south of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, where the shoreline turns almost directly east-west, allowing wind speeds to pick up relatively close to shore. It's still nowhere near as good as the offshore winds west of Europe though. The wind farms off Scotland enjoy some of the highest capacity factors on earth - higher than 60%. Typical offshore wind capacity factor in the U.S. is closer to 30%-35%.

But what do I know. I'm just an ignorant American.

For that sort of thing, bacteria are a much better bet. Much more hardy than higher Earth-evolved species and proven to survive in suspended animation over the geological time-scales involved in interstellar travel.

Secondary question - could a chunk of that be sent off to the Gliese 581 system (~20 light years away)?
If ejecta had a velocity of 1 million mph, then it'd take 13,411 years to reach its destination.
Asteroids are a bit slower, say 70km/sec => 156,521 mph so...

Transit time would be 85,000+ years.
Some bacteria can be revived after 250 million years.
Whether they can be revived by naturally occurring processes is another story.

    Really? 37,000 feet deep?

    I did a quick look with an online calculator, and that would be 16,055 psi.

    According to This story, the deepest spot in the ocean is about 36,000 feet deep. But hey, if you're going to take a ride down to the bottom of the Marianas trench, I'd prefer to know that the sub is rated for more than it could possibly do. Maybe he's doing some advanced planning for global warming, so people can visit the ancient underwater city previously known as "New York". :) (ya, ya, I know, not enough water on the planet, ice or otherwise, blah, blah, blah.)

    I do wonder about decompression. 24 hours may seem like a long time, but ascending from that kind of depth is bound to cause some pretty serious problems. I'd bet 16k psi is bound to squish the hull at least a bit.

Seriously, black smokers are your argument? And life doesn't live *inside* them, but does just outside. Yeah, life does live just fine there. And all over the bottom of *every* ocean. Even 25,000 feet down:
http://www.extremescience.com/zoom/index.php/life-in-the-deep-ocean/44-deepest-fish

And to prove my point, life at the bottom of the Mariana Trench:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0203_050203_deepest.html

Even radiation doesn't seem a real problem for life, bacteria live ON radiation rods in nuclear power plans:
http://genome.jgi-psf.org/kinra/kinra.home.html

A couple orders of magnitude too young to claim that crown, according to this site

Here you go.

Global cooling often has been linked with major volcanic eruptions. The year 1816 often has been referred to as "the year without a summer". It was a time of significant weather-related disruptions in New England and in Western Europe with killing summer frosts in the United States and Canada. These strange phenomena were attributed to a major eruption of the Tambora volcano in 1815 in Indonesia. The volcano threw sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere, and the aerosol layer that formed led to brilliant sunsets seen around the world for several years.

I had thought that the material thrown into the atmosphere and spread around the world by the rotation of the earth simply reduced the available sunlight that could warm the ground, but that link says it was sulfur dioxide gas, not just particulates. I remember the Mt. St. Helens aircraft warning, so they would not sustain damage from solid material blasted airborne from the volcano.

Didn't we have some effect from the material thrown into the atmosphere from Mt. St. Helens as far as overall global temperatures is concerned? That link refers to the "haze effect", resulting in very red sunsets.
So we would have 2500 times the 600 cubic miles of material (If all the force of the volcano results in material in the atmosphere) if the Yellowstone Supervolcano has a major eruption.
Would that not result in a lowering of temperatures worldwide, the Sun not able to warm the earth, and that meaning "a period without summers", perhaps years long, with no crops being able to be grown due to the cold?
Famine, freezing to death, or what.
Have to remember that these things are on a geological time scale, don't expect Yellowstone to appear on the evening news anytime soon. That said, there have been lots of big volcanos in the last century or so, plenty of them on film or television.
But that is volcanos worldwide, not for one that has been "asleep" for so long.

Wrong, and your statement itself is ad hominem. Go read the definition, please. Example, from wikipedia: "An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") is a logical fallacy consisting of replying to an argument by attacking or appealing to the person making the argument, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument." Any time your retort's subject matter is your opponent in the debate, that is ad hominem. Ahhh, but in this case, it wasn't the person that was being attacked. It was a filter that that person had chosen to apply to their perception with demonstrable effects on his ability to draw logical conclusions *in certain situations* which was being attacked. His stated belief that the earth is 14,000 years old demonstrates this filter applied to his ability to deal with many sciences such as geology, paleontology, etc. Therefore, his chosen belief system does have a bearing "on his own ability to objectively evaluate the evidence concerning global warming," as the OP said, since that evidence is science-based as well. That's a perfectly valid argument.

How old is the oldest tree?

However, I fail to see how this is relevant. If you're trying to make a point that there are no living creatures that are older, then you are very wrong.

The point is, however, that your tree argument makes absolutely no sense. You happened to find an old tree that happens to be within 25 or so % of what (some) creationists argue is the age of the earth.

Now, suppose the tree had bee older? Would you have changed your "theory" like a real scientist would do? Most likely not. You'd argue that god created the living tree that way. I'm sure you'll use the same argument when explaining away the 250 million year old living bacteria.

The entire South Island is apt to be rocked by quakes from an extraordinarily mobile fault line that runs the length of the island.

BTW, in the first of the quakes in 1848 caused much damage to the fledgling capital. The inhabitants noticed that the wooden houses tended to survive whereas all the brick and stone dwellings fell down. Accordingly, the city was rebuilt in wood, except for one Baron von Alzdolf, who declared that the previous stone buildings were simply not built strongly enough---and was the only (or one of very few) person killed in the 1855 magitude 8.2 quake when his new, strong, brick building crashed on top of him.

There was a earthquake in Chile on monday, it was 7.9 on the Richter scale

bulletin with some more details.

Remember, there is a connection of these kind of events along Pacific coasts, mostly due to interactions between Nazca plate (north of Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia) and the Pacific Plate (Japan, EEUU west coast)

(obligatory IANAG disclaimer, G = Geologist)

...for orcas http://www.extremescience.com/orcavshark.htm

http://www.extremescience.com/orcavshark.htm

Actually I think that this is the "worst case" for a volcano.

Hayabusa, which is Japanese for "falcon",...

Specifically, a peregrine falcon, which is the fastest animal in the world. It can reach speeds of 440 kph (275 mph) when diving for its prey. This also accounts for the name of the fastest road bike in the world, the Suzuki Hayabusa. Impressive stuff...

Nevermind, I am amazingly stupid, it was the FIRST result from google when searching for "largest living creature earth fungus oregon"

http://www.extremescience.com/biggestlivingthing.h tm

I saw "Pando" a grove of Aspen that is now acknowledged as the largest living creature on earth. It is in the mountains in central Utah, where I used to work as a tour guide.

"Map" of location of Marianas Trench
Wikipedia entry for Challenger Deep
The Trench is located east of the Matianas Islands

Hope this helps you find it.

Challenger Deep got its name from the British survey ship Challenger II, which pinpointed the deep water off the Marianas Islands in 1951. Then in 1960, the US Navy sent the Trieste (a submersible - a mini-submarine designed to go really deep) down into the depths of the Marianas trench to see just how far they would go. They touched bottom at 35,813 feet. That means, while they were parked on the bottom in the bathyscaphe, there were almost seven miles of water over their heads!

The complete write up is here. The Mariana Trench is a fairly large subduction feature; the Challenger Deep being the deepest point.

BTW, 35,813 / 5,280 = 6.7827 miles (which would be somewhat shy of 24).

Challenger Deep got its name from the British survey ship Challenger II, which pinpointed the deep water off the Marianas Islands in 1951. Then in 1960, the US Navy sent the Trieste (a submersible - a mini-submarine designed to go really deep) down into the depths of the Marianas trench to see just how far they would go. They touched bottom at 35,813 feet. That means, while they were parked on the bottom in the bathyscaphe, there were almost seven miles of water over their heads!

The complete write up is here. The Mariana Trench is a fairly large subduction feature; the Challenger Deep being the deepest point.

BTW, 35,813 / 5,280 = 6.7827 miles (which would be somewhat shy of 24).

In 1960 the most powerful earthquake of the 20th century moved the Chilean coast 60 feet in 5 minutes.
http://www.extremescience.com/GreatestEarthquake.h tm
http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/chile/

In 1998 Hurricane Mitch pushed rivers 100's of feet up mountains, created brand new rivers, caused landslides which changed the shapes of mountains and covered entired cities, and left parts of the land covered in water over a year later. (if you're in Nicaragua look for the "Las Casitas" memorial - the distant mountain which caused the landslide shows obvious changes in its shape).
http://www.osei.noaa.gov/mitch.html
http://www.acerca.org/ejd1_results1.html

Volcanic eruptions can be so great as to cause the birth of islands. There was a well-studied one in the Pacific in 2000, i believe. Also in Nicaragua is an interesting series of small islands caused by a nearby volcano loosing its top - large pieces of land were blown miles away and landed in a lake creating these islands. I dont remember the name of the lake or volcano, though i have some photos at /home.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_7 62000/762047.stm

Natural Disasters are called "disasters" for a reason. 6000 years seems plenty for the earth to move a small bit of land a couple hundred metres.