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We would have to go to the source data, as mentioned in the parent posting, to be absolutely sure. Even then, chances are that the data would only be useful for identifying a change in frequency of large earthquakes.

The following link to a USGS site provides some support to my comment: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php

It mentions that several million earthquakes hit each year, but most go undetected because they hit remote areas or are of small magnitude. It also mentions that as more seismographs are installed, worldwide, more earthquakes are being detected and located.

It then comments that large earthquakes, magnitude six and higher, have been relatively constant and it provides a link to a page titles 'Are Earthquakes Really on the Increase.'

Now, mankind induced earthquakes have been increasing in areas that have the activities you mentioned. But the magnitudes of those quakes tend to be small relative to the ones created by subduction zones and things like the San Andreas Fault system.

So were the 200,000 women in Taiwan? Don't you think a God would choose to have the quake target the people being indecent?

No. God's vengeance is indiscriminate.

Also there are earthquakes every single day.

And there are women showing cleavage every day. You aren't disproving anything.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/graphs.php

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/graphs.php

So were the 200,000 women in Taiwan? Don't you think a God would choose to have the quake target the people being indecent? Also there are earthquakes every single day.

"Don't let him drag you down with the bullshit - people have been raving about nuclear material coming out of the stacks for 40 years but nobody has been able to find anything yet despite it only being a matter of setting up an absorbion spectrometer to look at the flue gas."

????
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html

A team at my university did the same measurements with the same results. As you've said, it's a rather simple matter of taking and analyzing samples.

Unless they are going to put the Shuttle Indoors, this is a horrible decision. If you're ever in NY go check out Cleopatra's Needle, which has been in Central park since 1881, but were built in ancient Egypt in around 1450 BC out of solid granite.

According to the USGS:
The surface of the stone is heavily weathered, nearly masking the rows of hieroglyphs engraved on all sides. Photographs taken near the time the obelisk was erected in the park show that the inscriptions were still quite legible. The stone had lain in the Egyptian desert for nearly 3000 years but undergone little weathering. In a little more than a century in the climate of New York City, pollution and acid rain have heavily pitted its surfaces.

Good luck keeping the shuttle safe on an aircraft carrier, on the ocean from crumbling in a few years.

No, they are not immune to everything, the air filters have to be changed often when you deal with volcanic ash.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ash/trans/index.php#vehicles

Ahem.

Portland was covered in ash in 1980 when Mt St Helens went boom. Despite standard air filters and add-on jury-rigged filters (panty hose), many cars ended up with scored cylinders & pistons.

Cars take in a LOT less air than commercial aircraft piston engines.

As per the US Geological Service http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Publications/MSHPPF/MSH_past_present_future.html :

The fine-grained, gritty ash caused substantial problems for internal-combustion engines and other mechanical and electrical equipment. The ash contaminated oil systems, clogged air filters, and scratched moving surfaces. Fine ash caused short circuits in electrical transformers, which in turn caused power blackouts. The sewage-disposal systems of several municipalities that received about half an inch or more of ash, such as Moses Lake and Yakima, Washington, were plagued by ash clogging and damage to pumps, filters, and other equipment.

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2439&from=rss_home The number of 5+ mag earthquakes is well within the annual norm, as documented since 1900. In terms of the earth's history (I have a degree in Geology), the Iceland volcano is a flea fart. We're in status quo, trust me.

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/silicacrystalline/index.html

OSHA seems that exposure to silica in the crystalline form is bad stuff.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ash/health/#chronic

Volcanoes, like the one in Iceland currently erupting release large amounts of the stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera#Volcanic_hazards

Think of the air traffic delay if Yellowstone went off!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry_Ridge_Tuff

Or it could be more prosaic, like a release of toxic gas...

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php

I worked on a project with a different approach where you use crappy sensors but then a lot of them.

I heard on NPR that a group from UC Riverside and Stanford started Quake Catchers to take advantage of the accelerometers included in most new laptops. A sort of "quake@home." They distribute their sensor software to anyone who volunteers and then receive relevant quake data. They also have more accurate USB sensors that they sell, and provide at a discount to K-12 schools. If schools are willing to participate, it should create a geographically distributed source of data. And it doesn't hurt that kids get to learn a bit more about earthquakes too.

The guest on NPR also talked about the USGS testing early warning systems for earthquakes, using several forms of mass communication(sans the summary's laser-in-the-sky). XKCD is always relevant.

NASA has been collecting earth-observing data for five decades now, and in spite of the current wave of interest in climate related matters, little or no effort is put into examining this historical record. A small group of scientists within the US Geological Survey have heroically attempted to preserve this enormous treasure of historical climate data at a small data center in South Dakota. But hundreds of terabytes of irreplaceable data are at risk of being lost forever because no one seems to care. There are lobbyists galore for NEW satellite systems, but in many cases you might as well pour the data into a bit bucket, we spend billions of dollars collecting data, and pennies storing and analyzing it. Instead of relying on flawed computer models and bogus prognostications, the Global Warming debate could be based on real hard data, if anyone wanted to take the time to go look at it. http://eros.usgs.gov/#/About_Us

Ah, you're correct. this site shows 210Pb as 'naturally occurring', which I thought implied 'not a daughter product', but as you said this site describes the decay chain from U238.

"Buy land. They've stopped making it." -- Mark Twain.

Addendum: They're deleting it now too.

This is no joke. Much of the world's most valuable real estate is on the world's coastlines, which are now being eroded by global warming. We're talking trillions of dollars here. Who bears the cost? You perhaps? Governments around the world are spending a lot of money on sea walls, restoring beaches and buttressing cliffs.

I can see both sides, since beachfront property owners are no more personally responsible for global warming than anybody else is. However, since it is a slow process, I believe there should be a gradual (e.g. 10 year) transition from public to private liability. This will give global warming believers and doubters a chance to put their money where their mouth is by selling or shorting coastal real estate :)

In the next 50-100 years?

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/mcs-2010-raree.pdf
Consumption in the US
7,410

Reserves in the US
13,000,000

1754 years worth

Chinese mining
120,000

Chinese reserves
36,000,000

300 years worth.

Well, we don't even know how much of the rare earth minerals are in the US. Vast parts of the United States are either under surveyed or not surveyed at all.

I'm up in Alaska and there is a huge fight over expanding mines and new mines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dog_mine

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/mcs-2010-raree.pdf
"In 2009, rare earths were not mined in the United States."

but I'm not nearly chemist enough to know if there are messy details preventing a suitably evolved biological system from substituting one for the other.

Well for one, a great deal of biochemistry involves ATP in normal life forms that has little to do with energy transport. Proteins can be activated through phosphorylation by ATP. DNA is constructed using ATP and its base analogues. Glucose must be phosphorylated twice before it is done being biochemically broken down to reducing equivalents and CO2. These processes especially phosphorylation of proteins and DNA structure, all work because PO4 is the right size. A system based on AsO4 would have proteins and genetic structure much different than our own structurally speaking. Also, the triarsenate analogues could very well be markedly unstable.

The Times article is dreadful.
Ronald S. Oremland of the USGS has been researching this for years. He is a fascinating speaker on the subject.
He has shown that there are microbes in Mono Lake that have an arsenic based metabolism.He and his team have elucidated a good part of the metabolic pathways involved Similar microbes are found in soil as well.

For a brief over view of the metabolism see http://microbiology.usgs.gov/geomicrobiology_arsenic.html

I work as a contractor for the USGS and the projects I've been involved with host, archive and provide means for customers to access all our different satellite data products. We've got a Long-term archive method for tons of data products (digitally and tangible) and I can honestly tell you the first thing that always comes up is: how often will the data need to be accessed?

For the longest time (almost a decade) we used 3 big, STK tape silos for data archive and retrieval for custom orders. The problem behind that type of design is we used a archive in a completely wrong manner in the fact that we tried to use it as a archive and a quasi-online retrieval system into a caching filesystem. We had tape mount counts in the hundreds and thousands, constant mechanical tape issues because of the excessive use, ect. We actually decided to move it all to online storage using enterprise RAID (EMC Clarion) and moved to a small LTO-4 tape unit for almost permanent, maybe-once-in-a-great-while storage and the rest we leave completely on spinning disk and control the access to it via application layer network protocols as needed.

IMHO, I really think it's going to depend on the access frequency of your data. If that custom needs their data once, and maybe never again in case they lose it, put it on tape. If it's a requirement they can get the data from you any time they want and you've got the hardware and administrative resources, power and bandwidth, put it some RAID.

You say this to make fun of the global warming debate, but theoretically it's not completely impossible that underground nuclear testing has something to do with the specifics of any earthquakes since the 1950s or so. Earthquakes are undoubtedly chaotic, and a series of megaton explosions underground might have shaken things a little and helped them get where they're going faster (temporarily).

Mind you, I'm not claiming that's necessarily the case either (or even probably the case). Just that, much like a decent conspiracy theory,
it's not entirely nonsense or outside the realm of possibility. (I'd guess that overall seismicity remains the same overall but chaotic effects will change the locations of, say, half the aftershocks next century.)

USGS FAQ here.

You say this to make fun of the global warming debate, but theoretically it's not completely impossible that underground nuclear testing has something to do with the specifics of any earthquakes since the 1950s or so. Earthquakes are undoubtedly chaotic, and a series of megaton explosions underground might have shaken things a little and helped them get where they're going faster (temporarily).

Mind you, I'm not claiming that's necessarily the case either (or even probably the case). Just that, much like a decent conspiracy theory,
it's not entirely nonsense or outside the realm of possibility. (I'd guess that overall seismicity remains the same overall but chaotic effects will change the locations of, say, half the aftershocks next century.)

USGS FAQ here.

there is no such thing as global warming. ha we ve been warming up since the last ice age. its natural, and mans effect on the climate is negligable compared to the amount of methane put into the atmosphere by cows belching and tooting its a myth, perpetratrated by the government to cause panic, and allow government takeovers of the oil industry electrical companies and rule over our lives . we need to more scared of whats happening beneath the surface of yellowstone park out west. or does no one pay attention to national geographic besides horny teenage boys looking to see boobs on african women

You say this to make fun of the global warming debate, but theoretically it's not completely impossible that underground nuclear testing has something to do with the specifics of any earthquakes since the 1950s or so. Earthquakes are undoubtedly chaotic, and a series of megaton explosions underground might have shaken things a little and helped them get where they're going faster (temporarily).

Mind you, I'm not claiming that's necessarily the case either (or even probably the case). Just that, much like a decent conspiracy theory,
it's not entirely nonsense or outside the realm of possibility. (I'd guess that overall seismicity remains the same overall but chaotic effects will change the locations of, say, half the aftershocks next century.)

USGS FAQ here.

You say this to make fun of the global warming debate, but theoretically it's not completely impossible that underground nuclear testing has something to do with the specifics of any earthquakes since the 1950s or so. Earthquakes are undoubtedly chaotic, and a series of megaton explosions underground might have shaken things a little and helped them get where they're going faster (temporarily).

Mind you, I'm not claiming that's necessarily the case either (or even probably the case). Just that, much like a decent conspiracy theory,
it's not entirely nonsense or outside the realm of possibility. (I'd guess that overall seismicity remains the same overall but chaotic effects will change the locations of, say, half the aftershocks next century.)

USGS FAQ here.

there is no such thing as global warming. ha we ve been warming up since the last ice age. its natural, and mans effect on the climate is negligable compared to the amount of methane put into the atmosphere by cows belching and tooting its a myth, perpetratrated by the government to cause panic, and allow government takeovers of the oil industry electrical companies and rule over our lives . we need to more scared of whats happening beneath the surface of yellowstone park out west. or does no one pay attention to national geographic besides horny teenage boys looking to see boobs on african women

You say this to make fun of the global warming debate, but theoretically it's not completely impossible that underground nuclear testing has something to do with the specifics of any earthquakes since the 1950s or so. Earthquakes are undoubtedly chaotic, and a series of megaton explosions underground might have shaken things a little and helped them get where they're going faster (temporarily).

Mind you, I'm not claiming that's necessarily the case either (or even probably the case). Just that, much like a decent conspiracy theory, it's not entirely nonsense or outside the realm of possibility. (I'd guess that overall seismicity remains the same overall but chaotic effects will change the locations of, say, half the aftershocks next century.)

USGS FAQ here.

"A magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck central Chile at 03:34 local time (07:34 CET) on Saturday 27 February 2010. The epicentre was 115 km north-northeast of the city of Concepción and 325 km south-west of the capital Santiago. The earthquake has caused significant casualties and damage in the country.

ESO expresses its deepest condolences to the families of the victims, and its sympathy and support for all those affected by the earthquake.

No casualties among ESO staff have been reported. At present, power cuts and network interruptions mean that communication may be limited. Disruption to staff travel plans within, to, and from Chile should be expected. We urge Visiting Astronomers with observations planned at ESO observatories to put their trips to Chile on hold until further notice. International flights to and from Santiago International Airport are currently either cancelled or diverted. Information about observing programmes will be provided at a later date.

Despite being the 7th strongest earthquake ever recorded worldwide, the ESO observatory sites did not suffer any damage, partly as they are engineered to withstand seismic activity and partly due to their distances from the epicentre. At La Silla, a power cut caused observations to stop during the night. Paranal Observatory, the APEX telescope and the ALMA Operations Support Facility and Array Operations Site were unaffected."

A 7.8 quake struck Antofagasta (120km north of the telescope site) in 1995 (http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso9517/).

Various other quakes in the area : http://www.eso.org/gen-fac/pubs/astclim/earthquake/his-paranal-58.html (Historic times to 2000.)

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/epic_circ.php allows you to get at historical quakes map up to 1994 ; 1973 to present and various other formats ; there has been plenty of data for planning quake likelihoods and the engineering responses that would be required.

"Biological fragments floating around in space" would not find their way into the warm environment under ground.

I don't think you have a grasp of the time scales we're talking about. We're talking about BILLIONS of years. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. While I don't know the age of Enceladus, I think it's safe to assume it's contemporaneous with the Earth. This means that's even incredibly improbable events may have indeed occurred.

Think about this: I don't think anyone knows for sure about where the initial organic compounds arrived on Earth, but organic compounds (i.e. molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen) are exceedingly common throughout the universe, so let's say for sake of argument that the compounds on Earth, initially came from some place else. (Which in a sense they have to since, atoms heavier than hydrogen only form in stars). In the ensuing 4.5 BILLION years. It's improbable that these compounds would come together and form more complex compounds, but yet they have. These compounds in turn, formed more complex compounds, and so and so, until eventually we're here. We're talking a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters writing the greatest novel known to man. ("'It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times.' 'The BLURST of times'? You stupid monkey!") Given enough time, it WILL happen.

Now has it happened? I don't know. You don't know. No one knows. None of us will know until we send a probe with sensitive enough instruments down into one of those fissures. My point is, that you're thinking to small. Humans don't have an intuitive idea of the scale of the universe, either in size or time. We think still think 100 years is a long time, even though people live that long. We think a 2000 years is the distant past We only recorded the last 5000 years. Let's go back further. As a species we're only 500,000 years old. That's .0000500 billion years. In other words, nothing. You're thinking too small.

"The fact is that the CO2 that humans put into the atmosphere is infinitesimal compared to volcanoes and the oceans." Complete and total lie.

Before anyone else mods this guy up without doing any reading at all, I would like to point out that this guy is a liar, and is quoting lies. You can read here to see why. I'll quote the relevant section:

Over 95% of total CO2 emissions are non-anthropgenic. For example, the natural decay of organic material in forests and grasslands, such as dead trees, results in the release of about 220 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide every year. In 1997, Indonesian peat fires were estimated to have released between 13% and 40% of the average carbon emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels around the world in a single year.[6][7][8] The initial carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the young Earth was produced by volcanic activity, but modern volcanic activity releases only 130 to 230 teragrams (0.13-0.23 gigatonnes or 145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year,[9] which is less than 1% of the amount released by human activities.[10]

Emphasis mine.

Which maths are the liars using to turn 5% into the majority? Multiple people have lied here claiming that man puts more CO2 into the air than volcanoes and the ocean. It's clear after some very minor investigation that that is a lie, and in fact nature itself puts 95% of the CO2 into the air; leaving humble man responsible for a meager 5%.

"The fact is that the CO2 that humans put into the atmosphere is infinitesimal compared to volcanoes and the oceans." Complete and total lie.

Funny how the scientists don't agree.

"The fact is that the CO2 that humans put into the atmosphere is infinitesimal compared to volcanoes and the oceans."
Complete and total lie.

I'm with you re: Venus vs. Mars for terraforming. In addition to all the points you raised, the gravity of Venus is about 90% that of earth (according to http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/BrowseTheSolarSystem/venus.html). Mars' gravity is approximately 1/3 that of earth. This is important because less gravity == less atmospheric pressure on the surface of the planet. Consequently, the density of the Martian atmosphere is 1% that of earth. That's really freaking thin, even if you are trying to breathe pure oxygen. This site shows that the density at 100,000 feet is roughly 1% that of sea level at earth, and from what I remember reading as a kid who thought the SR-71 was just the coolest airplane ever, pilots above 60,000 feet had to wear pressure suits because a simple oxygen mask couldn't provide enough pressure to sustain consciousness at those atmospheric pressures.

In other words, Total Recall notwithstanding, humans will not ever be able to breathe the atmosphere unaided on a terraformed Mars without some radical genetic engineering.

Scenario 1: Asteroid strike. I defer to NASA JPL, the Tunguska event (100-meter class = ~ 15 mil tons TNT) asteroid occurs once or twice / 1000 years. A 1000-meter class is 1 in 15 million years. An 8000-meter class (dinosaur killer) is 1 in 50-100 million years.

Scenario 2: Earthquake. San Francisco has an annual forecast of earthquake probabilities, and they predict a 68% probability of a 6.7 Magnitude or greater in the next 30 years. Wikipedia gives a probability scale for earthquakes, where a Magnitude 7 (similar to what struke Haiti) occurs 18 / year. A single 6.7 earthquake (P = 120/year) is equivalent to 16 kilotons of energy, or about 1 Tungaska event (P = 0.004/year).

Given the disparity in the probability of asteroid strikes (on populated areas, no less) vs earthquakes, it should be no surprise that the world governments believe money is better spent on earthquake prediction and evacuation relief, not on asteroid strike detection. The "bang for the buck" is clearly higher in earthquake spending.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Iceland a geologically unstable land with an high rate of volcanoes because traversed by a fault line and thus subject to seismicity?

Right, someone could object that also some other place as well filled with important datacenters and nodes has far more seismicity or happens to be under water level in times of sea level rise, but still.

Although geografic spreading like in Akamai make a non-problem of this, at least for big data providers who can afford them: how do we confront the problem of nodes like AMS-IX and other Internet Exchange Points of NAPs potentially vulnerable, and not only to the force of nature?

Would the Net Transit survive a Big One, and then be useful as emergency service too and for communications, the reason it was initially made for, or would it miserably fail by the falling of one of its major nodes? So then does it really make sense to concentrate too many resources in the same place other than from an economic point of view?

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Iceland a geologically unstable land with an high rate of volcanoes because traversed by a fault line and thus subject to seismicity?

Right, someone could object that also some other place as well filled with important datacenters and nodes has far more seismicity or happens to be under water level in times of sea level rise, but still.

Although geografic spreading like in Akamai make a non-problem of this, at least for big data providers who can afford them: how do we confront the problem of nodes like AMS-IX and other Internet Exchange Points of NAPs potentially vulnerable, and not only to the force of nature?

Would the Net Transit survive a Big One, and then be useful as emergency service too and for communications, the reason it was initially made for, or would it miserably fail by the falling of one of its major nodes? So then does it really make sense to concentrate too many resources in the same place other than from an economic point of view?

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Iceland a geologically unstable land with an high rate of volcanoes because traversed by a fault line and thus subject to seismicity?

Right, someone could object that also some other place as well filled with important datacenters and nodes has far more seismicity or happens to be under water level in times of sea level rise, but still.

Although geografic spreading like in Akamai make a non-problem of this, at least for big data providers who can afford them: how do we confront the problem of nodes like AMS-IX and other Internet Exchange Points of NAPs potentially vulnerable, and not only to the force of nature?

Would the Net Transit survive a Big One, and then be useful as emergency service too and for communications, the reason it was initially made for, or would it miserably fail by the falling of one of its major nodes? So then does it really make sense to concentrate too many resources in the same place other than from an economic point of view?

The unit of measure of tritium in water is the tritium unit (TU). One tritium unit equals 1 tritium atom in 1018 hydrogen atoms.

10^18?

Also, it's polite to cite the sources you copy large blocks of text from

Yes, 10^18 hydrogen atoms. Apologies for the blatant copy and paste, but it was short, concise, and factually relevant.

The unit of measure of tritium in water is the tritium unit (TU). One tritium unit equals 1 tritium atom in 1018 hydrogen atoms.

10^18?

Also, it's polite to cite the sources you copy large blocks of text from

Even better: DEM data of any given area, cropped especially for you, in the forrmat of your choice.

"ASTER Global DEM (GDEM) data are subject to redistribution and citation policies. Before ordering ASTER GDEM data, users must agree to redistribute data products only to individuals within their organizations or projects of intended use, or in response to disasters in support of the GEO Disaster Theme."

Part of what makes SRTM data so great is that anyone can use it for any purpose. That makes a huge difference. I wish government agencies (especially state and local in the US) would follow the lead of NASA and USGS on this. You can create far more value by making the data available to the general public than by trying to control it. Sometimes I think the bureaucrats are afraid that someone will actually make something useful or (gasp) profitable from it.

My project I work on at the USGS used to host this data until we turned it over to the USGS long-term archive project in late 2009. And just clarify so it doesn't sound like as though you need a special NASA contact to go get this, go to the SRTM website and more importantly, go download it from here

It's just perfect use for games

Probably if you could find the data being talked about. Hard to imagine what I'm going to do with it if I don't have it!

The raw data, as well as data from multiple other sources can be downloaded from NASA's Earth Explorer http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/EarthExplorer/. The article doesn't really address the fact that the Google data has been cleaned up a lot. SRTM has a lot of voids and areas of poor quality, especially over mountains. The resolution of the data is worse for anywhere outside of the USA.

Hell, here's a map of the earthquakes that happened this week in California.

http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/

Hell, here's a map of the earthquakes that happened this week in California.

http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/

Ahh, I think you're right - like I said, I find it hard to follow that ever-changing bill (just in the time since I posted it's apparantly not "medicare at 50" any longer - does anyone voting on this know what's in it?).

Here's one analysis of the Antarctic temperature record stuff. Several people around the web are trying to make sense of the data. It looks like the one climate station they liked wasn't near Mount Erebus, but on the peninsula (there are a couple of volcanoes out there, but I don't think they're active).

There's been an amazing surge in amature interest in science over the past month, as people plunge into the raw data and do their own analyses to see if the numbers are cooked as badly as they seem to be from the climategate emails. Whatever else comes of that, the renewed interest in science is wonderful, especially from the right. Climategate may eventually kill intelligent design!

BTW, if you haven't seen this data, you should. Ignore the blog poster's blathering and skip to the charts. You can validate all the data if you doubt it, but I've been following the Vostok ice core data for years now. There's a reason few geologists buy into the global warming panic (of course, a geologist may be thinking "meh, in 100 million years it will all blow over, blink of an eye really").

according to the usda's own website, in the pacific northwest salmon are doing very poorly.

The first reason they list is logging, which causes silt runoff into rivers and streams. This is just one example of many problems caused by logging.

This isn't to say we shouldn't cut down trees, but to replant entire forests as tree farms and call it unaffected is disingenuous. Just because there are deer and eagles doesn't mean there are the same levels of diversity and same types of animals in farmed forests as there would be in the native forests of that area. In fact the two animals you mentioned are probably a result of the ecosystem being out of whack. Deer love farmed forests because they have large straight runs to travel and plenty of underbrush to hide in. The eagles love to nest in the couple large trees that get left and like to be well above their surroundings.

Many slower growing fungi and other vital parts of the ecosystem are destroyed by clear-cut operations and can take hundreds of years to reestablish themselves. If the forest gets cut every 15 to 25 years they never have a chance and the ecosystem is permanently changed. Mosses, Fungi and Lichens don't just go across the road to another patch of land and then hop back when the cutting is done like deer and rabbits (especially since logging companies often spray pesticide and herbicides to keep the paths between the trees clear), but believe me, we'd all be in a heap of trouble if all of them were wiped out.

By the way, it is Weyerhaeuser, not Wyerhauser. At least get the name right if you are going to use them for your argument (by the way, I've seen Weyerhaeuser lands, they are no forest by any stretch of the imagination' i've seen more wildlife in a corn field.

Is there even a Tungsten mine in Africa?

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/tungsten/680398.pdf

According to the US government most of it comes from China.

I can't be bothered checking the other minerals but I doubt they are any different.

Check it out: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

Data is available from USGS online regarding the Aquifers. This one http://pubs.usgs.gov/ha/ha730/ch_c/jpeg/C011.jpeg might be helpful to you.

CARB "scientists" aren't really considered as scientists by real scientists.
Shoot, even one of the "scientists" from CARB faked his credentials.

CARB's also behind MTBE which nationally was mandated by the Federal Clean Air Act of 1990 but was predated by California's own state law, California Clean Air Act of 1988.
And as early as 1986, there was a scientific report that stated that MTBE was a "bad cookie" (finding the exact copy is a tad difficult but it is referred by the USGS in a 1993 report)

A major local (to the Bay Area) opponent to CARB is Dr. Bill Wattenburg (an older version of his site is here)

And apparently, CARB wants to require particular" paints (PDF) and barring any scientific/engineering breakthrough, that probably means dark colored cars (black, dark blues, etc.)

And dang, CARB's budget for 2009-2010 is over 600 million, just the imagine how many teachers would have been spared lay-offs...or how many professors, TAs, faculty at UC/CSU schools would have been spared from furloughs.

Not to forget the CARB vs Diesel fiasco

I'm sure coal power kills more per year than nuclear ever has. Enjoy.

Hell, coal releases more nuclear materials into the biosphere than nuclear powerplants. Cite.

Actually, that isn't quite true. All of the Landsat data is available in the public domain as it was produced with resources and funding from the U.S. government. This can be found here:

http://eros.usgs.gov/

Unfortunately, the data isn't packaged and set up to be convenient to folks who want to use it. The copyright information about this satellite data can be found here that does confirm it is in the public domain. Some folks have obtained this data and then charged fees and "copyright" for their modifications to make it accessable, but the raw information is still in the public domain. It just takes a determined set of volunteers to be able to extract the mountains of data and turn it into something usable. Also, some of the higher resolution images found on places like Google Maps are made from commercial imaging satellites, which is protected by copyright.

There are also photographic surveys that have been done by the U.S. Geological Survey that are technically in the public domain, but because some of those photographs were done by contractors working on behalf of the U.S. government and not necessarily government employees, the copyright status is at best dubious. In a few cases, some early aerial photography has entered the public domain due to the copyright expiring, but that is some incredibly old photography. Many of the geological survey maps of the USA were made from these aerial maps... and there have even been map made by the Defense Maping Agency (the branch of the U.S. military that maps maps for military planning purposes) that have aerial photography which was used in their creation. Some of that photography has been collected with coverage of decidedly non-USA areas... with of course emphasis on places like Russia, Poland, and Eastern Germany. Some of those photos are still classified, but I'm sure that a strong effort to get some FOIA requests to have some of the older photos released might get some results. If it is released at all, it would be in the public domain in terms of copyright.