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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.

I agree completely, it's really cool regardless of the outcome. Some of this type of historical data has already been used: Records of bird migration in particular are useful because the date is known precisely and the record doesn't rely on a measurement, i.e., all you have to do is answer the questions does the bird in question migrate earlier or later than previously, and how much so? Some examples are the snow goose (pay link, sorry) from the Hudson Bay Company and other records. Here's a full article that shows that birds are migrating to and from the UK an average of 8 days earlier than 30 years ago.

Also, some evidence of hurricane patterns is from Spanish records of ships in the Caribbean from 1500 to 1600.

I was rather surprised to find this document at the USGS website. It calculates total sea level rise of 80m if we lose both Antartica and Greenland ice. 80m is a rather large number in this context don't you think? http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/

Let's take a look at ANWR...

Oil reserves are estimated at 5 to 10 billion barrels of oil, with the number of those barrels that are economically feasible to extract rising and falling in line with the price of a barrel.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.htm

Now let's take a look at our oil consumption...

We are the leading consumer of oil in the world, with a consumption rate of around 20 million barrels a day.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html

Hypothetically speaking, if all 10 billion barrels are extracted in ANWR, this gives us 500 days worth of oil. This is not something that will make a bit of difference to our reliance on foreign oil reserves, especially when you consider that it wouldn't be possible to add this oil to the market all at once.

"If I may be allowed to pursue the idea of 'addiction to oil,' I think the nation just reached the point where we sold our wedding ring for one night's fix."

It's not about 'not having enough water.' California is not like the midwest, or Texas, where water is removed from the ground; in California, the reservoirs are replenished every year with water from the mountains, and when that goes onto fields, it actually replenishes the water table.

I suggest you examine you reservoirs before you make that statement. Most of the ones in California are running around 60% full and dropping. As to your second point about replenishing the water table, it doesn't. Most irrigation techniques involve spraying the crops as opposed to root irrigation. Doing so involves approximately 8% evaporation. Following that, farms target irrigation volumes and timing to maximize penetration at the root level and minimize any further penetration. In short, they explicitly try not to replenish the water table.(Nebraska's water management recommendation - they're similar for every farming application with minor variations for indigenous soils & climate.)

The issue right now is that a lot of water from the reservoirs is being dumped into the ocean instead of onto fields in an effort to protect the delta smelt.

[sigh] What exactly will happen to the delta if the smelt die off? The general hint is that nothing lives in a vacuum. The smelt are relatively insensitive to salination changes. However the vast majority of the life in a delta are not. If you overdrain the open water sources - lakes, streams, etc - the delta is going to turn into a salt swamp. I'm absolutely certain that you'll appreciate living in the area then because areas undergoing swampification smell so nice. Oh, don't forget to add in the malaria issue due to the large pockets of standing water.

but either way you're not going to get a dust bowl in Central California.

The people of Owen's Lake would disagree with you.

Nor does it have anything to do with forest fires.

That you would state this indicates you have no understanding of the roles the natural aquifer plays in underbrush management.

In short, just because the water is there and free flowing, it doesn't mean that it's not already serving a purpose.

And aren't you aware that volcano activity was heightened during the Little Ice Age? Indeed, one scientist concluded with help from the weather records of Benjamin Franklin that a volcanic eruption was partially responsible for the cold weather during the period it was written, based on his description of clouds obscuring the Moon.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/glaciers/glaciers.pdf

Check it out in this PDF, page 13. I originally read the story in LiveScience, but I couldn't find the article again.

The USGS says that this claim is not true and that "The vast majority of coal and the majority of fly ash are not significantly enriched in radioactive elements, or in associated radioactivity, compared to common soils or rocks."

That doesn't necessarily mean it's not true. Even if there are only small amounts of radioactive material (enough to make it not "significantly enriched"), it could still be the case that when multiplied by the amount of ash released, the result is a larger amount than is produced by a nuclear reactor of the same size.

I don't know if it is, but it's possible. I'd like to see numbers.

The USGS says that this claim is not true and that "The vast majority of coal and the majority of fly ash are not significantly enriched in radioactive elements, or in associated radioactivity, compared to common soils or rocks."

You still have to deal with the non-radioactive emissions though. . .

Radioactive elements in coal and fly ash should not be sources of alarm. The vast majority of coal and the majority of fly ash are not significantly enriched in radioactive elements, or in associated radioactivity, compared to common soils or rocks.

Source

Although coal releases the joyous toxins of arsenic, mercury, and selenium, the radioactive components of coal are minor enough to be ignored.

How ignorant you are... http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/us_damage_eq.php. If you're living you're life around avoiding natural disasters, which have not caused many deaths in the US (say compared to the weekly drive to the grocery store), you seriously need to reevaluate the risks and probabilities.

http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/habitat/climate/wind.htm

The data suggests that eastern parts of North Dakota have average wind speeds of ~12.9 mph, or 50% faster than the 8 mph cited in the UK study you cited. This would imply to me that 14 years is a VERY conservative estimate for breaking even on these projects.

Citation please.

First Google Result: Volcanic Gases and Their Effects. Quotation follows: Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002) Hope that helps... lazy asshole.

"..many other places in the world. " I suspect Washington State qualifies as "other places in the world."

It's one of them - there is a world map, too. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/

Like another poster said, in California, a 3.4 is boring. Barely noticed the several thousand times a year one happens.

To put it in perspective, here's a list of Magnitude 3.0 or higher earthquakes in the US in the last 7 days.

Here's a week of California quakes.

I think people in Basel, Switzerland are a bit on the jumpy side.

This one happened when I was working in California in Silicon Valley. At 5.6, that got people's notice. I, on the other hand, who was new to California and just knew that California had "lots of earthquakes", didn't realize it was out of the ordinary and actually caused some local excitement until I turned on the news. It was much weaker than the 7.6 that smacked Diego Garcia while I was stationed there in 1983; about the same as the aftershocks we had for months.

Nov 30 17 46 00.6 6.85 S 72.11 E 10 G 6.6 7.6 1.2 402 CHAGOS ARCHIPELAGO REGION. Ms 7.7 (BRK).
                                    Mo=1.1*10**20 Nm (GS). Mo=4.1*10**20 Nm (HRV).
    Some damage (VI) to buildings and piers on Diego Garcia. About a 1.5 meter rise in wave height in the lagoon
    and significant wave damage near the southeastern tip of the island. Forty-centimeter tsunami at Victoria,
    Seychelles. Large zone of discolored sea water observed 60 to 70 kilometers north-northwest of Diego Garcia.

It's a matter of what you are used to.

Like another poster said, in California, a 3.4 is boring. Barely noticed the several thousand times a year one happens.

To put it in perspective, here's a list of Magnitude 3.0 or higher earthquakes in the US in the last 7 days.

Here's a week of California quakes.

I think people in Basel, Switzerland are a bit on the jumpy side.

This one happened when I was working in California in Silicon Valley. At 5.6, that got people's notice. I, on the other hand, who was new to California and just knew that California had "lots of earthquakes", didn't realize it was out of the ordinary and actually caused some local excitement until I turned on the news. It was much weaker than the 7.6 that smacked Diego Garcia while I was stationed there in 1983; about the same as the aftershocks we had for months.

Nov 30 17 46 00.6 6.85 S 72.11 E 10 G 6.6 7.6 1.2 402 CHAGOS ARCHIPELAGO REGION. Ms 7.7 (BRK).
                                    Mo=1.1*10**20 Nm (GS). Mo=4.1*10**20 Nm (HRV).
    Some damage (VI) to buildings and piers on Diego Garcia. About a 1.5 meter rise in wave height in the lagoon
    and significant wave damage near the southeastern tip of the island. Forty-centimeter tsunami at Victoria,
    Seychelles. Large zone of discolored sea water observed 60 to 70 kilometers north-northwest of Diego Garcia.

It's a matter of what you are used to.

Like another poster said, in California, a 3.4 is boring. Barely noticed the several thousand times a year one happens.

To put it in perspective, here's a list of Magnitude 3.0 or higher earthquakes in the US in the last 7 days.

Here's a week of California quakes.

I think people in Basel, Switzerland are a bit on the jumpy side.

This one happened when I was working in California in Silicon Valley. At 5.6, that got people's notice. I, on the other hand, who was new to California and just knew that California had "lots of earthquakes", didn't realize it was out of the ordinary and actually caused some local excitement until I turned on the news. It was much weaker than the 7.6 that smacked Diego Garcia while I was stationed there in 1983; about the same as the aftershocks we had for months.

Nov 30 17 46 00.6 6.85 S 72.11 E 10 G 6.6 7.6 1.2 402 CHAGOS ARCHIPELAGO REGION. Ms 7.7 (BRK).
                                    Mo=1.1*10**20 Nm (GS). Mo=4.1*10**20 Nm (HRV).
    Some damage (VI) to buildings and piers on Diego Garcia. About a 1.5 meter rise in wave height in the lagoon
    and significant wave damage near the southeastern tip of the island. Forty-centimeter tsunami at Victoria,
    Seychelles. Large zone of discolored sea water observed 60 to 70 kilometers north-northwest of Diego Garcia.

It's a matter of what you are used to.

Like another poster said, in California, a 3.4 is boring. Barely noticed the several thousand times a year one happens.

To put it in perspective, here's a list of Magnitude 3.0 or higher earthquakes in the US in the last 7 days.

Here's a week of California quakes.

I think people in Basel, Switzerland are a bit on the jumpy side.

This one happened when I was working in California in Silicon Valley. At 5.6, that got people's notice. I, on the other hand, who was new to California and just knew that California had "lots of earthquakes", didn't realize it was out of the ordinary and actually caused some local excitement until I turned on the news. It was much weaker than the 7.6 that smacked Diego Garcia while I was stationed there in 1983; about the same as the aftershocks we had for months.

Nov 30 17 46 00.6 6.85 S 72.11 E 10 G 6.6 7.6 1.2 402 CHAGOS ARCHIPELAGO REGION. Ms 7.7 (BRK).
                                    Mo=1.1*10**20 Nm (GS). Mo=4.1*10**20 Nm (HRV).
    Some damage (VI) to buildings and piers on Diego Garcia. About a 1.5 meter rise in wave height in the lagoon
    and significant wave damage near the southeastern tip of the island. Forty-centimeter tsunami at Victoria,
    Seychelles. Large zone of discolored sea water observed 60 to 70 kilometers north-northwest of Diego Garcia.

It's a matter of what you are used to.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/quakes_all.php

Also you fail to note that those "daily occurrences" are only there because of other, much smaller, geothermal plants next door.

Do you have a link to back that claim? Earthquakes in the 1-4 range really are a natural daily occurrence all across CA and many other places in the world. Check out the USGS real-time map:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/

Well under a 10th of a percent of one, in all likelihood.

"Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually...the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes." (link to source, and so you can see that I didn't do anything sneaky with that elision

Look at how roundly and thoroughly Alfred Wegener was attacked when he first proposed plate tectonics

I can't comment on Wegener's personal story, although I may see about tracking down a biography. Plate tectonics, however, is a perfect example of an extreme (but true) scientific inference that required extreme evidence, ie., evidence the gathering of which required not only submarines but sensitive magnetometers unavailable to Wegener: http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/developing.html.

Somehow the creationists still manage to interpret this as evidence of Noah's flood: http://creationwiki.org/Geomagnetic_reversal. This slavish adherence to a single preselected position is precisely why creationism is an "ism", not "creation science".

The walls of the Columbia Gorge consist of multiple 50 ft. thick lava layers - just saying. IANAG

As do the walls of the Deschutes River Gorge. But never fear. Those layers came from shield volcanoes near the Idaho border, not the Cascade mountain range. Of course, the basaltic lava flowed like water to cover most of Oregon and large parts of Washington, so it was really a cascade, or rather a series of them.

I like to think that a similar event occurring in my lifetime would get someone's attention, even if it didn't have all the dramatic explosions of a more traditional volcano.

Oh, I know -- it's hard for me to believe, too, since I live at 10,000 feet and feel the effects heavily.
Here are a bunch of reports about flocks of birds at 25,000-27,000 feet (including flocks of migrating geese.)
I can't find an easily linkable cite to the 37,000 foot case, but here's a pdf, from which I quote:
"Collision between a vulture and an aircraft at an altitude of 37,000 feet. -- On 29 November 1973, a Ruppell's Griffon (Gyps rueppellii) collided with a commercial aircraft at 37,000 feet ofer Abijan, Ivory Coast, western Africa. The altitude is that recorded by teh pilot shortly after the impact, wichh damaged one of the aircraft's engines and caused it to be shut down. The plane landed safely at Abijian without further incident. The remains of the vulture consisted of five complete and 15 partial feathers from the wings (secondaries, lesser, and underwing coverts), tail, neck and breast."

It goes on to cite other over-25,000 ft collisions and observations.

I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude.

According to http://www.nationalatlas.gov, the driest parts of Colorado get about 7" of rain annually (average rainfall is about 15"). that comes to 190,080 gallons per acre and would provide the total (drinking, washing, etc.) annual water usage (approximately 100 gallons per day per person, according to the US geological survey) of 5 people.

That would be part of 50%. Do you always get heads when you flip a coin?

They were having a drought. There were water restrictions. The lake next to the place I was staying at showed severe signs of drought. I went back a few years later, and there was plenty of rain and things looked back to normal.

Not all parts of the state were in drought. Perhaps your area wasn't. There's plenty of coverage on the web. Just one example: http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2006/1295/

"Lower than normal precipitation1 caused a severe statewide drought in Florida from 1998 to 2002. Based on precipitation and streamflow records dating to the early 1900s, the drought was one of the worst ever to affect the State. In terms of severity, this drought was comparable to the drought of 1949-1957 in duration and had record-setting low flows in several basins. The drought was particularly severe over the 5-year period in the northwest, northeast, and southwest regions of Florida (fig. 1), where rainfall deficits ranged from 9-10 in. below normal (southwest Florida) to 38-40 in. below normal (northwest Florida). Within these regions, the drought caused record-low streamflows in several river basins, increased freshwater withdrawals, and created hazardous conditions ripe for wildfires, sinkhole development, and even the draining of lakes. South Florida was affected primarily in 2001, when the region experienced below-average streamflow conditions; however, cumulative rainfall in south Florida never fell below the 30-year normal. The four regions of Florida (fig. 1), as referred to throughout this report, are defined based upon U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data collection regions in Florida."

It is limited to geological, environmental, and weather datasets

So, in other words, a re-branding of USGS and NOAA?

Doesn't even appear to have half the stuff you can get directly from either of those two .gov websites.

See: USGS

I wonder how relevant it would be to add that information to this web page? http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/ Nathan

Although TIGER/ZIP does not contain information outside the US, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency does maintain a database of place names which are available for search/download at http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/namefiles.htm. The USGS also publishes a database available for download for place names for the US. It is located at http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/download_data.htm. To create a format that would be meaningful to any viewer from any country, I believe you are faced with the "esperanto" concept. Esperanto was supposed to be a universal language that everyone would learn in addition to their native tongue so we could all communicate. However, objections arose when it was discovered that the language was heavily related to the romance language group and was written with the Roman alphabet. So it is mainly a curiosity now rather than useful. In a geospatial context, if you are Chinese, it would be hard to try to figure out the Pinyin equivalent of the whatever place name on the map so you could translate it back into the your native character set. The same for other scripts as well. So maybe a monster wiki is needed for each cultural/linguistic context, but it would never be authoritative in the classic sense of the word. And then there is the question of regional boundaries which can shift from time to time and how would you specify the time/historical parameters? I think a foundation should be built which can accomodate any context in terms of region/culture/language/historiography so that it can be useful to anyone who views it.

I am a geology student, studying seismology, and it is a personal pet peeve when someone says that a small earthquake will relive the pressure of a large fault. The force of an earthquake is measured on the Richter scale*, which is a logarithmic scale. A difference of one magnitude on the scale is equivalent to 10 times the force. Lets say we had a fault that had built up the pressure for an 8.0. Let's also assume that with a single nuke you could create a small earthquake at a force of 3.0. This is a difference of 5 orders of magnitude, so 100 000 times the force, and you'd need 100 000 3.0 earthquakes to equal one 8.0 earthquake. Do you really wish to set off that many nukes?

Please do not say that a smallish earthquake is going to prevent a large one. To a geologist, this makes you sound about as stupid as the people who believe that California is going to fall off into the ocean the next time we have a large earthquake. http://www.usgs.gov/faq/list_faq_by_category/get_answer.asp?id=152

*We use the moment magnitude scale for the most part these days, but most non-geologist are more familiar with the Richter scale. MMS is 30 times the force for one degree of magnitude.

Ok, here we go - someone check the math.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs095-01/
Tells me the mean amount of mercury in US coal is 0.17ppm.
We will assume 100% of said mercury enters the air.
We will also talk about 100 watt incandescent bulbs to make the math easier.

450 grams of coal are burned to deliver 1 KWh to your outlet.

http://www.amazon.com/Incandescent-Light-Shape-Frosted-100A19/dp/B000273TEA
100 Watt bulb, 20,000 hours.
2,000 KWh in its lifetime.
900,000 grams of coal burned for this light bulb over its 20,000 hour lifetime.
153mg of mercury in said coal.

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf
tells me the average CFL has 4mg of mercury in it.

I was going to work out a full hour-by-hour comparison - but there is not need. I the case is B/W enough, unless someone can convince me less than 4% of mercury makes it up the stack.

Yeah me and the 10 million or so people on the west coast who live near active volcanoes will get right on that. Maybe we can all move to Florida in trailer parks, that should be safe.

You are right, the scariest thing about this story is the fact that he was forbidden to speak. As already mentioned by others, earthquake prediction is not an exact science (yet), so it wouldn't have warranted evacuating a whole city. But I think it wouldn't have hurt too much if because of his 'scaremongering', some people would have been reminded to review their emergency plans. If he would have given such warnings every month without anything happening, people would ignore him in the end. The irony of the gag order is that because of his predictions of a medium level earthquake last week that didn't happen as predicted, he was forbidden to tell anything in the last 3 days when his detector went "ofscale high".

It was also reported in the Italian media that the seismic was so high in the last month that people had trouble sleeping and some people were actually sleeping in their cars. This event was thus hardly a 'thunder from a clear sky'. Interestingly, there was a reasonably strong quake (magnitude 4.6 on Richter scale) a few hundred kilometers to the north near Bologna at 10 pm, followed half an hour later by a medium one (magnitude 4.0) pretty close to the big one that followed at 3 am (magnitude 6.2).

    That really depends on where you are, and what is available.

    I found This Reference at the USGS. Los Angeles uses groundwater (river), and I know they have reservoirs, but they also use groundwater to supplement the groundwater.

    If you happen to be sitting on a nice mountain, with a good sized lake, fed by snow melt, and the snow level remain enough to keep the lake fed, then you'd be doing very well.

No, the Federal government owns the rights to waters offshore.

State waters extends out 3 miles.

Falcon

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/avo/webcam/redoubt-2.jpg

As I said last time, this info is available freely from our own US Government.

You can search and retrieve with Lat/Long a list of these "soft targets" using the US Governments own Geographic Names Information Services (GNIS) system.
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/

"Only 15% actually know how much of the planet is covered in water (47% if you accept a rough approximation of the exact number)"

"15% got it right, 47% came close."

Wait... seriously that's what that meant? I misunderstood too, the way it's worded it sounds like 47% of the earth is water.

So what did the other 15% do, round it up to the closest 4 significant digit? If someone said 75% or 70% that should be right without saying nonsensical "74.3242112%".

Sounds like this article was created on hype. "OMG 85% of US adults don't know (exactly) how much of the earth is covered in water! Sound the alarm! Americans are stupid!"

FTA: "The approximately correct answer range for this question was defined as anything between 65% and 75%. Only 15% of respondents answered this question with the exactly correct answer of 70%."

Really? 70%? Guess that means the quiz at the US Geological Survey's website is wrong, because they say the answer is 75%.

Sounds like the scientists aren't sure how much of the world is covered in water either.

Advancements in motors has been pushed hard, and is still coming, same with batterys, that was my point.

Your point was that they're rapidly improving? I thought you were trying to argue just the opposite.

Expecting some huge cost reduction because the tech suddenly becomes used in "volume" because of cars is crazy,

No, it's not. You know how much ICEs would cost if produced in the volume that today's EV motors are produced in? EV drivetrains today are produced in very small volume. You need to quit pretending that, say, mass production of air conditioner blower motors or industrial hoist motors or whatnot has anything to do with electric vehicle drivetrains. They are completely different things. Most EV drivetrain components available on the market today are literally built by hand. If you don't believe me, contact, say, Manzanita Micro or AC Propulsion and ask them how they build their equipment.

Just because they work on the same principles (and often, not even that, depending on how much detail you want to go into) doesn't mean they're mass produced. Example: scientists mainly prefer to do microwave research with 2.45GHz magnetrons. The difference in price between a 2.45 GHz magnetron and one of a different frequency at the same power output is typically one or two orders of magnitude. Why? Because 2.45GHz magnetrons are what microwave ovens use. Exact same principle of operation, but one is mass produced and the others generally aren't.

From a raw component perspective, electric drivetrains should cost *less* than gasoline drivetrains. They're far simpler.

lithium is currently $300 / pound

Hahahahaha!!!! Oh, that's rich.

Um, no. About one to two kilograms of lithium carbonate goes into a kWh of li-ion batteries, and it's price has fluctated in the past year or two generally between $5 and $8 a kilo. Just a couple years ago it was 4.50 a kilogram.

You can search and retrieve with Lat/Long a list of these "soft targets" using the US Governments own Geographic Names Information Services (GNIS) system.
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/

That information is in the public domain, it is not going anywhere.

"the Mythbusters have busted this whole sugar in tank myth."

Thanks. No really, I pride myself on the skill of scientific skepticisim and I have learned something from you about sugar in the tank that I didn't know. I will be more carefull with my slashdot car analogies in the future. In an effort to redeem my geek credientials I will repay your genuinely appreciated mythbusting in kind with the following...

"Did you all know the sun is going into a magnetically very quiet period?"

Yes, early last year the 11yr sun spot cycle was indeed out of wack with historical records and AFAIK nobody has a clue why. However climatologists have already accounted for historical measurements of solar irradience. For further information on the data, methods and findings behind the radiative forcings portrayed in that graph have a look here. For a more reader-friendly general overview check here. If you don't like the IPCC or WP then you could always try the USGS

"We will know within a few years if the sun is the more important climate driver or CO2."

The physics that underpins the greenhouse effect has been known for ~180yrs. As can be seen from the link it was "discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824, first reliably experimented on by John Tyndall in the year 1858 and first reported quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in his 1896 paper". Future hypothisized variations in the sun's output may indeed affect the climate but it won't make the observed effects of our greenhouse gasses and areosols disappear, the only thing that can do that is a radical rewrite of fundemental physics and chemistry.

You may also want to check out a list of common climate myths that do not so much debunk George Will as inform you of the things he is forgets to tell you, coincidently they rank the "it's the sun" myth at the top of the list.

1986: A deadly cloud of carbon dioxide sweeps down the slopes of an African volcano, smothering more than 1,700 people.

Volcanoes can kill in many ways, but this one is pretty weird. A volcanic lake in the West African nation of Cameroon degassed violently (you could say it burped, or worse) in the middle of the night. Carbon dioxide is odorless and heavier than air. Most of the victims died in their sleep.

Lake Nyos sits in the crater of a volcano that hadn't erupted in centuries ... and probably didn't actually erupt the night of Aug. 21, 1986.

Swath bathymetry is how the high resolution mapping is done.
http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/operations/sfmapping/swath.htm

I believe you are confusing Abyssal plains with the more generic term seafloor.

Obligatory Wikipedia link

USGS page detailing the mapping of the SEAFLOOR of the CONTINENTAL shelf around Monterrey Bay, CA

Dude...you've got what appears to be about a 50px kinda round thing in a crater, and your first assumption is a man-made biosphere? Well, I've got about a hundred pictures of alien spacecraft for you to look at then....

Seriously though, different planets have vastly different conditions, so it's no surprise you don't see things like this on Earth. I'd say it's essentially a sand dune. There's a _lot_ of similar formations on Mars. In fact, there's a few more on the string of pictures that original is from:
http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/html/m15012/m1501228.html

There's one in the first image, there's some somewhat similar phenomenon in the second and third, there appears to be one in the fourth, two in the fifth, and part of one in the sixth.

http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/m15012/m1501228a.jpg That is a NASA picture from Mars. Can anyone come with a good explanation what it shows?! To me it looks like some bhuman built biosphere, yet from sci-fi literature. .

Human activity typically puts out some 130 times more carbon dioxide than all the world's volcanoes combined. Neither come close to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by rotting foliage in the autumn - but that is cancelled out by the carbon dioxide absorbed by growing foliage in the spring. That's why the concentration in the atmosphere oscillates up and down, but maintains a continuous upward trend.

looks like Ballmer's been reading MiniMicrosoft :>

The real irony is the idiot that wrote the original paper this stuff is based on (look on ornl if you really want to read it) did not consider gravity. Pollution controls were modelled as a black box that let a certain percentage of everything through. Real pollution controls even remove gasses such as nitrogen and sulphur oxides - what do you think happens to the heavy metals? They end up in the ash dam.

And where does this "slightly radioactive" fly ash end up again?

Better yet I'll do you one better and point you to a USGS study which doesn't even try to answer the question about how much fly ash escapes to atmosphere (a small amount with scrubbers but still non-zero). The result is that even the radioactivity put out by coal plants is not a concern. And this is the coal plant radioactive output which is higher than a nuclear plant.

Good catch! I didn't even pay any attention to where it linked to! I was more concerned that the source page didn't actually list the joule estimate. USGS lists "24 megatons thermal energy (7 by blast, rest through release of heat)" which is 1.00416e+17, which is actually less than than the ICR estimate.

That said, I'll take the USGS estimate over some random dude's uninformed opinion. Especially since you grossly overestimated estimate the volume involved. Only .67 cubic miles was actually moved via the landslide, with .046 cubic miles of lateral blast, .26 cubic miles of ash, and .029 cubic miles of lava.

Just curious, where did you get this info? The USGS thinks differently.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ash/health/index.php