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Looking at Google's three-layered Mars map: dunno how they determined their 'zero' with the elevations, but it looks like there are significantly more meteor craters on the 'above zero elevation' parts of the map (Surface water = insulation from meteor impact).
A few thoughts:
(1) Arsia Mons - the enormous volcanic mountain - is almost exactly on the other side of the planet from the -9 km near-circular depression, Hellas Planitia (there's a map with geographic names linked to the the USGS astrogeology image gallery). I wonder if Hellas Planitia is the scar of a meteor that penetrated the planet's crust, and the volcanoes on the other side of the planet from the shock of the impact?
(2) Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Odyssey Mars radiation environment experiment seems to have focused on the impact of solar and other cosmic radiation, rather than scanning Mars for any naturally 'hot' spots? It seems as though Argyre Planitia might be a place to 'look' for higher-than-average radiation of planetary origin: according to Google's Map - the 'infrared' scans - it's thermally "hotter" than surrounding areas, could that be from radioactive decay? Was there a thermonuclear 'event' on Mars, millions of years ago???
(3) It seems that most ecologists do not think all that deeply about the overall and very powerful influences of 'life' on the ecosystem: moderating temperature, plant roots bringing water back to the surface and then transpiring water vapor into the atmosphere, etc., etc. The living ecosystem has a bigger role than most people realize, in maintaining an life-sustaining environment... but if was stressed beyond certain bounds, it would collapse.
Thermonuclear event??? Ecosystem stressed beyond life-sustaining limits??? Like the drifting dunes of what was once the Sahara Forest, perhaps we are looking at the consequences of a planetary ecological disaster, millions of years ago... and, how many 'signs of life' might a Rover find, randomly looking, on the arid drifting sand of Earth's deserts?

Yeah, I've been observing those numbers from the USGS. Agreed that
these are insane.

A couple of observations: The USGS page only lists M4.0+ quakes.

Late last year, we had a M5.6 quake in the Alum Rock area.
In California, this is just enough to get your attention.
One of the Sichuan aftershocks in the last hour just beat this quake.

There's a picture where the rescue workers are digging out a kid.
They gave him a helment while they're working on freeing his legs.

Wow, getting hit by a 7.9 sucks. An immediate aftershock of 6.0 sucks even more. Having an additional 32 (as of this post) aftershocks in the 4.5-5.5ish range?! That's just insane, I can't imagine the trouble rescue workers are having from them.

list and map from USGS.

Wow, getting hit by a 7.9 sucks. An immediate aftershock of 6.0 sucks even more. Having an additional 32 (as of this post) aftershocks in the 4.5-5.5ish range?! That's just insane, I can't imagine the trouble rescue workers are having from them.

list and map from USGS.

>aren't there any seismographs connected to the internet in china?
>that should have been faster than a human posting on twitter.

How about less than a minute? Compare the event and solution times on this page.

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2008/eq_080512_ryan/neic_ryan_cmt.html

http://quake.usgs.gov/prepare/factsheets/CO2/index.html

On a less sarcastic note if you have figured out that plants need CO2 to live, then there is probably hope that once you start looking at the so-called science of manmade global warming, you'll discover that it's not science at all.

To put the project in perspective Kiluea pumps out around 700,000 tons a year, and Pinatubo put out more CO2 in '91 than the entire output of all mankinds exisistence. As it turns out nature responds by (suprise suprise) increasing plantlife. So we are going to offset Kiluea for 1.5 ( to be generous) years by pumping it underground.

Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.
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)

Gerlach and others estimate that, in addition to the measured 17 Mt of SO2, the eruption of approximately 5 km3 of magma was accompanied by release of at least 491 to 921 Mt of H2O, 3 to 16 Mt of Cl, and 42 to 234 Mt of CO2.

On a less sarcastic note if you have figured out that plants need CO2 to live, then there is probably hope that once you start looking at the so-called science of manmade global warming, you'll discover that it's not science at all.

To put the project in perspective Kiluea pumps out around 700,000 tons a year, and Pinatubo put out more CO2 in '91 than the entire output of all mankinds exisistence. As it turns out nature responds by (suprise suprise) increasing plantlife. So we are going to offset Kiluea for 1.5 ( to be generous) years by pumping it underground.

Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.
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)

Gerlach and others estimate that, in addition to the measured 17 Mt of SO2, the eruption of approximately 5 km3 of magma was accompanied by release of at least 491 to 921 Mt of H2O, 3 to 16 Mt of Cl, and 42 to 234 Mt of CO2.

Name one plausible environmental damage scenario (other than full-out nuclear war) that would cause a significant proportion of human extinction.

What about Yellowstone?

Every 600 000 years, or so, this thing blows up and can potentially get pretty inconvenient for us bipedals :)

The USGS shows 3 earthquakes on the 18th. One in Indiana at 04:36:58 CDT. The two others in Illinois at 05:36:33 CDT and 10:14:17 CDT.

Earthquake lights.
The National Guard scrambled F-16's for "UFOs" and ended up waking people when one of their pilots freaked out and went super sonic. It makes much more sense than "training" and "flares" since flares aren't pseudo-stationary for 30+ minutes, and pilots don't go super sonic in that area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light
http://inamidst.com/lights/earthquake
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/faq.php?categoryID=8&faqID=103
http://geology.about.com/od/earthquakes/a/EQlights.htm

Do flares look like this?
http://www.wwki.com/Article.asp?id=661887&spid=21432
No aliens.

What, you mean like this?

In the 40's, Washington had at least two magnitude 7 or greater quakes. Alaska has had well over half a dozen magnitude 8+ quakes during the 20th century, including one 9.2 in 1964. Oregon had a 6.8 in 1910 and a 6.0 in 1993.

The above information is taken from:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/
and
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/state_largest.php

However, Alaska, Washington and Oregon all have faults capable of creating earthquakes larger than is possible in California.

For some context, no fault on the planet can create a 10.0. Alaska can have (and did have less than 50 years ago) greater than 9.0. California tops out at around 7.9-8.1. Oregon and Washington both have faults capable of reaching or exceeding 8.5.

In the 40's, Washington had at least two magnitude 7 or greater quakes. Alaska has had well over half a dozen magnitude 8+ quakes during the 20th century, including one 9.2 in 1964. Oregon had a 6.8 in 1910 and a 6.0 in 1993.

The above information is taken from:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/
and
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/state_largest.php

However, Alaska, Washington and Oregon all have faults capable of creating earthquakes larger than is possible in California.

For some context, no fault on the planet can create a 10.0. Alaska can have (and did have less than 50 years ago) greater than 9.0. California tops out at around 7.9-8.1. Oregon and Washington both have faults capable of reaching or exceeding 8.5.

I (OP) live in Oregon, but I've not experienced any strong quakes here, just a couple of 4 point somethings.

I was about 3 years old when a strong earthquake hit So. California where I lived and I remember it.
OK, I just looked it up 'cuz I was thinking it was 1969 but it was actually 1971, so I was four -- it was a 6.6. I lived in No. Hollywood.
I liked this sentence about that quake: "The newly built, earthquake-resistant buildings at the Olive View Hospital in Sylmar were destroyed - four five-story wings pulled away from the main building and three stair towers toppled."
Probably that sentence is one of those occasions where you could put "earthquake-resistant" in quotes, huh?

  I didn't think 5.2 was of NO significance but I thought it not a big one. I guess it is on the low end of being a big one.

I was interested by the map someone linked to a couple of posts up showing the difference in geographic range between two essentially equally intense quakes, in in So. Calif. and one at New Madrid. I wanted to mod that interesting, but I'd already commented.

How about this one?

HDIS stands for Hopedale, Illinois, a tiny town on the bluffs of the Illinois River north of Peoria. But apparently, they have a seismographic station. Weird.

Also interesting to note is the absence of seismographic stations immediately around the New Madrid fault zone, here

How about this one?

HDIS stands for Hopedale, Illinois, a tiny town on the bluffs of the Illinois River north of Peoria. But apparently, they have a seismographic station. Weird.

Also interesting to note is the absence of seismographic stations immediately around the New Madrid fault zone, here

Modern earthquake data is surprisingly easy to find online without much looking.

With the supplied link, you need to click through to the Illinois data set.

Or, just click this one: http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/cus/

The USGS is reporting 3 to 4.3 billion barrels are technically recoverable: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911&from=rss_home

Water levels in that aquifer are problematic without tapping it for use in extracting oil. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/FS078-03/ http://southwestfarmpress.com/mag/farming_ogallala_water_level/ plus thousands more citations.

Interesting name, 'Pfafftown'. Seems like a name Daffy Duck would make up.

It looks like Bunting Lane is in both the Pennsylvania road database and the census bureau database (TIGER). You can see this using the tool at http://nmviewogc.cr.usgs.gov/viewer.htm -- note, it is rather slow even under normal conditions.

Do you mean these volcano's?Within 400 miles, you have over a dozen, of which there is plenty of heat still coming from these. Now, I admit 400 is a distance, but those would be capable of cutting your electric bill to a fraction of where it is at today.

Wow, Stanford. I hate to break it to you guys but the United States Geological Survey beat you to it. On the other hand, I would like to try out the seismograph software. On the other hand, the boys down at Berkeley have instructions on how to build your own seismograph. I think I'll try that out until the software becomes available.

Your information about H2 technologies is amazingly flawed. They're not made out of metal, they're made out of graphite composite. They can just about drop those things out of passing airliners without cracking them, and they don't have to be "several inches thick".

Pipe water using our existing system? most cities are already at or beyond capacity of their systems today, let alone adding this load.

You're obviously not grasping the scales involved here. The US uses somewhere on the order of 150 billion gallons of gasoline each year. We use three times that much water every DAY. I think that the system can handle it. Purification isn't nearly the problem you suggest it is. Existing filtration systems would be more than adequate to supply water to your typical hydrolysis system.

not only is parking a leaky tank in a garage a bad idea, so is any underground parking lot, dense parking area with low wind, or other places

This is amazingly poorly thought out. It's based on gasses that are about the same density as air. Hydrogen is much less dense than air (think twice as boyant as Helium), and doesn't require anything resembling a wind to disperse upwards. This stuff seeps through solid metal, you think a parking garage ceiling is going to stop it?

The entire logic of your argument is based on bad science and the idea that things will never improve. I don't buy it.

Good lord.

The NGS has been mapping the U.S. for 200 years. National Geodetic Surevy The U.S. Geological Durvey is an essential resource: Maps, Imagery and Publications

I work at a GIS company.
Keep in mind that there's USGS, and that's not the only source of public maps (though that particular source isn't really focused on making navigation easier).

Most states are now working on providing a unified system for people to put their map info into (currently the best source of maps is counties and property appraisers - both of which can easily be mandated to upload their data if it doesn't cost them much).

So give it time. In the US this will become something provided as a government service, and the only people selling things will be the ones writing software that analyzes the data.

First off, reserves don't work that way. Here's a writeup concerning how this concept applies to oil, but the same thing applies to lithium. Reserves don't simply "run out"; there's many thousands of cubic miles of the stuff in Earth's crust and oceans (Earth's 1.65e23kg crust is 20-70ppm lithium for a total mass of 3.3 to 11.6 quintillion kilograms). All that changes is how much is mineable at *today's prices* with *today's technology*. I.e., either higher prices or advancing technology put more lithium into play -- and not just a little more, but literally exponentially more. Example: the oceans have And on top of this, unlike oil, lithium is an easily displaceable resource -- most lithium is used in glass, ceramics, and greases, and can be substituted for in all of them.

The scare articles ignore these basic facts. They also ignore other things inconvenient to them -- most notably, tailings. For example, listen to this quote:

"This means there is less lithium per volume of water, so competitors have to process more water, explained Tahil, adding that there is also the issue of the lithium-to-magnesium ratio. The more magnesium, the harder it is to extract the lithium."

Yes, but that means that you get *more magnesium* out of the process, which also has sales value. Likewise, other mining operations that are seeking various minerals can (and do) get lithium tailings. Currently, these are typically discarded due to the low price of lithium. As demand for a mineral rises, recovery circuits get added where appropriate. This is "value added" mining -- no new mining is going on, but you just get more product out of it. Production from almost any brine pond in the world will give you lithium tailings, but almost none bother to extract the lithium salts from them; they're going after other, currently more valuable minerals.

Some people have this silly notion of world mining operations as though the Earth was some big ball of "nothing" in the crust, and scattered around this "nothing" are little random deposits of one mineral (mixed in with "nothing"), and these couple deposits are all there are of that mineral. And, obviously, the real world doesn't work that way. *Everywhere* is minerals, and a given element can be found almost anywhere at least in *some* concentration, however minimal. All that changes from place to place is how cheap it is to extract (which can vary widely). Likewise, when you produce products from anywhere, you're going to get tailings that include all sorts of other minerals -- and you're mining, crushing, and concentrating them to boot, so half of the work is already done! But if the price of the minerals is low, it's not worth recovering further from the tailings. If the price rises, you recover them; it's as simple as that.

One thing to remember about lithium: it's cheap. It's currently very cheap. So? Well, people don't prospect for cheap minerals. Think for a second of how much oil our insatiable demand has continually turned up over the past century. Now imagine actual exploration for valuable lithium deposits. It's only reasonable to expect major growth in known lithium reserves, probably by orders of magnitude, should lithium suddenly gain any appreciable value.

Lastly -- and here's the real kicker -- lithium is only a tiny fraction of the cost of a lithium ion battery It's price could grow tenfold and you'd barely even notice it (and you better believe there'd be a *lot* of new reserves coming online with that much price growth!) 1 kWh of automotive li-ion batteries currently costs ~$300-$2000, depending on the type. This involves less than a kilogram of lithium carbonate, which currently costs about $4.50.

In short: Ignore the scare mongering. There's no world shortage of lithium, and never will be.

First off, reserves don't work that way. Here's a writeup concerning how this concept applies to oil, but the same thing applies to lithium. Reserves don't simply "run out"; there's many thousands of cubic miles of the stuff in Earth's crust and oceans (Earth's 1.65e23kg crust is 20-70ppm lithium for a total mass of 3.3 to 11.6 quintillion kilograms). All that changes is how much is mineable at *today's prices* with *today's technology*. I.e., either higher prices or advancing technology put more lithium into play -- and not just a little more, but literally exponentially more. Example: the oceans have And on top of this, unlike oil, lithium is an easily displaceable resource -- most lithium is used in glass, ceramics, and greases, and can be substituted for in all of them.

The scare articles ignore these basic facts. They also ignore other things inconvenient to them -- most notably, tailings. For example, listen to this quote:

"This means there is less lithium per volume of water, so competitors have to process more water, explained Tahil, adding that there is also the issue of the lithium-to-magnesium ratio. The more magnesium, the harder it is to extract the lithium."

Yes, but that means that you get *more magnesium* out of the process, which also has sales value. Likewise, other mining operations that are seeking various minerals can (and do) get lithium tailings. Currently, these are typically discarded due to the low price of lithium. As demand for a mineral rises, recovery circuits get added where appropriate. This is "value added" mining -- no new mining is going on, but you just get more product out of it. Production from almost any brine pond in the world will give you lithium tailings, but almost none bother to extract the lithium salts from them; they're going after other, currently more valuable minerals.

Some people have this silly notion of world mining operations as though the Earth was some big ball of "nothing" in the crust, and scattered around this "nothing" are little random deposits of one mineral (mixed in with "nothing"), and these couple deposits are all there are of that mineral. And, obviously, the real world doesn't work that way. *Everywhere* is minerals, and a given element can be found almost anywhere at least in *some* concentration, however minimal. All that changes from place to place is how cheap it is to extract (which can vary widely). Likewise, when you produce products from anywhere, you're going to get tailings that include all sorts of other minerals -- and you're mining, crushing, and concentrating them to boot, so half of the work is already done! But if the price of the minerals is low, it's not worth recovering further from the tailings. If the price rises, you recover them; it's as simple as that.

One thing to remember about lithium: it's cheap. It's currently very cheap. So? Well, people don't prospect for cheap minerals. Think for a second of how much oil our insatiable demand has continually turned up over the past century. Now imagine actual exploration for valuable lithium deposits. It's only reasonable to expect major growth in known lithium reserves, probably by orders of magnitude, should lithium suddenly gain any appreciable value.

Lastly -- and here's the real kicker -- lithium is only a tiny fraction of the cost of a lithium ion battery It's price could grow tenfold and you'd barely even notice it (and you better believe there'd be a *lot* of new reserves coming online with that much price growth!) 1 kWh of automotive li-ion batteries currently costs ~$300-$2000, depending on the type. This involves less than a kilogram of lithium carbonate, which currently costs about $4.50.

In short: Ignore the scare mongering. There's no world shortage of lithium, and never will be.

Ok let's not be paranoid here people, and apply a bit of the critical thinking class everyone took in college. Five Separate locations, with one reporting power problems. A bit of detective work using the following data will lead to the most simple and likely conclusion for geological activity.

Map of affected areas:
http://www.ilovebonnie.net/cablecuts.jpg

Map of undersea cables:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg

Seismic activity report for the past 30 days from the IRIS Consortium:
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/last30.html

Seismic activity report from the USGS NEIC (Shared with IRIS):
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/

Add a little third party analysis and study from when the first effects were seen:
https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean
"Bear in mind that the fact the outage did not start until around 6:00am, and re-routing traffic before the end of the day will both dilute the effect. Also the effects were not uniform on all hosts in a country."

Statement denying ship anchor involvements:
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hTi5wNwTD66nvWdTAQw20SaFI_GQ
"'A marine transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area, 12 hours before and after the malfunction, where the cables are located to figure out the possibility of being cut by a passing vessel and found out there were no passing ships at that time,' said the statement. The ministry added that the location, 5 miles from the port of Alexandria, was in a restricted area so ships would not have been allowed there to begin with."

Correlating the affected locations, dates and above analysis dates we can find the following.

For the January 30th time frame cuts, the following seismic activity was in the region on the following dates:
DATE LAT LON MAG DEPTH REGION
31-JAN-2008 00:01:23 39.97 33.27 4.8 10.0 TURKEY
29-JAN-2008 15:16:55 37.63 23.39 4.3 42.0 SOUTHERN GREECE
04-FEB-2008 22:15:41 38.13 21.95 4.9 30.8 GREECE

For the February 1st and (1st) 5th cut, the following seismic activity was in the region on the following dates:
DATE LAT LON MAG DEPTH REGION
02-FEB-2008 05:33:21 26.42 52.96 4.8 10.0 PERSIAN GULF

For the (2nd) February 5th cut, the following seismic activity was in the region on the following dates:
DATE LAT LON MAG DEPTH REGION
04-FEB-2008 08:26:54 -8.83 107.99 4.9 35.0 JAWA, INDONESIA
30-JAN-2008 11:03:20 -9.80 108.06 4.8 10.0 SOUTH OF JAWA, INDONESIA
30-JAN-2008 10:31:59 4.27 96.60 4.5 39.3 NORTHERN SUMATERA, INDONESIA
27-JAN-2008 12:48:00 -8.65 110.69 4.6 35.0 JAWA, INDONESIA
26-JAN-2008 06:08:02 1.08 97.23 4.5 35.0 NORTHERN SUMATERA, INDONESIA
24-JAN-2008 12:03:39 -3.95 101.63 5.3 35.0 SOUTHERN SUMATERA, INDONESIA
23-JAN-2008 19:23:34 -2.89 101.12 5.1 50.0 SOUTHERN SUMATERA, INDONESIA
23-JAN-2008 13:03:21 1.37 97.22 4.8 29.0 NORTHERN SUMATERA, INDONESIA

We can look at this data and conclude the simplest explanations is likely to be undersea damage associated with seismic activity. Rock slides and underwater stresses aren't limited to the specific time frame for an earth quake either. There are afters

The USGS compiles a large quantity of useful information about mineral production and consumption, including helium:

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/helium/

You can buy helium from the US government at $2.037 per cubic metre, whilst the commercial price is nearer $3 per cubic metre; adjusting that would seem to make some kind of sense, since the US has 600 million cubic metres of the stuff in Amarillo.

There are plants at Skikda in Algeria and somewhere in Qatar which aim to extract 25 million cubic metres from natural gas a year, but there have been some issues in getting them to work; both Algeria and Qatar's natural gas reserves contain about as much helium as the US total reserves do.

It is impossible to substitute for helium for cryogenics; nothing else stays liquid at that low a temperature, and the ultra-refrigerators that get to liquid helium temperatures use helium as working fluid.

I did my PhD at Nottingham University, which uses a fair amount of liquid helium; the arrangement there is that it's delivered to the MRI building at the top of the hill, and the boil-off passes through a liquifier and is used by the theoretical physicists at the bottom of the hill. I don't know what the theoretical physicists do with their boil-off; there are obvious practical problems with running piping from lots of separate labs to a central liquifier, and liquifiers are bulky and vibrating enough that you don't want to have them in the same lab as your delicate semiconductor-physics experiment.

All that corn requires lots of fertilizer, and that fertilizer, which eventually finds its way into the Mississippi River, doesn't make matters any better for the big-ass hypoxia off our coast.

As opposed to using it for jewelery and circuitry. I miss those days when a rise in demand for jewelery would cause your economy to slow down because people would rather save their now-appreciating gold than spend it today. I miss those days when, during hard times, the only way for government to stimulate the economy was to increase government spending, leading to an increase in interest rates at a time when it would hurt most, to say nothing about the issues of gratuitous government spending that arise.

Having fake money gives governments the useful tool of monetary policy, which lets governments exploit inertia in the economy to increase production, without having to spend (as much of) your hard-earned taxes. It also has the nice effect of making money *only* useful for measuring value, leaving other precious materials to be put to better uses than padding bank accounts.

You'd have to be stupid to put $30,000 in a bank account that doesn't pay interest. Sure, in 10 years time the value of a single $1 may be much reduced, but if you put your money in a variable-interest account (or a fixed-interest one if you want to gamble with your savings), you'll be able to buy (slightly) more with the $30,000 + interest than you could with the original $30,000. Contrast that with putting 1 metric ton away in 1910. According to the US Geological Survey[1], 1T of gold in 1910 gave you as much buying power as $10,600,000 would in 1998. 10 years later, that same 1T you put away would give you almost half the buying power ($5,370,000 in 1998 dollars). Pick another 10-year span and you might get the opposite effect. The point is, even putting away precious metals won't guarantee you the same buying power 10 years later. With real currency, you're subjecting your savings to the market.

This all shows there is no absolute measure of value. The value of something depends on what you can do with it, which changes as society and technology changes. At least with fake money, you're not tying measurement of value with the results of market forces for the commodity backing the currency.

Lastly, inflation doesn't make having debts any more attractive since you'll have to pay interest in the future anyway. Any serious lender will factor inflation into the interest rate. Inflation just makes things more uncertain, since a drop in the inflation rate means you'll have to give up more restaurant dinners to meet your interest payments.

-----
[1] http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/

They just need irrigation

Given the rapidly diminishing aquifers and the increasing demand for surface water, saying land "just needs irrigation" to be fertile is sort of like saying I "just need to grow wings" to be able to fly.

"Buy gold and land because they're not making any more."

Obviously those people have never been to Hawai`i, or Iceland.

That's up in Clinton. It's just that burning coal releases more radioactivity into the air than a nuke plant. Plus that's not the only thing Groening got wrong; not everyone here is bugeyed (althogh a lot of them are). There are other cartoon characters here like Popeye, Olive Oyle, and Betty Boop, only like the linked diary mentions, the Springfield Betty's head is bigger, Springfield's Olive is flatter chested, and she isn't with Popeye.

The day before yesterday I saw Santa Claus tooling down the street in a motorized wheelchair with a set of golf clubs on his back, I shit you not! Come to se the Lincoln Presidential Library, stay for the 3-D cartoons.

http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/energy/factshts/163-97/FS-163-97.html

Or this.

You still havent read the article have you?

If you had read my post you'd realize I did read it. Maybe you didn't comprehend that.

Maybe we will use a transporter to get it out... or... wait... what else could we do? Oh, I know! We can DRILL... DEEP! Sorry about the sarcasm... but I even quoted the article and bolded the relevant sections...

"Deep within" is NOT "Deep Drilling".

with today's technology, is a deep drill reservoir/plant combo. There isnt ANY other way. I provided a BUNCH of links in my other posts.

And elsewhere I provided links showing deep drilling isn't necessary. Another example that shows deep drilling isn't needed is Iceland. The same can be said of Yellowstone, Hawaii, and I'm sure there are many others such as along the Ring of Fire and near Hot Springs. One person used geothermal produced electricity for a resort. Here are more examples where geothermal can be used while drilling less than 10,000 feet, that's no where near the depth of the Mariana Trench. Maybe you have a different definition of "deep drilling" but that's not too deep to me. Here's a page showing 14 places in California that produces geothermal electricity.

Try again.

USGS simply can't predict when eruptions of the magnitude that you are talking about will occur. So they are never going to say something as alarmist as "Yellowstone is due to erupt". To draw that conclusion from a mere three data points was extremely irresponsible of whatever journalist was the source of this meme. In fact USGS says this about Yellowstone's potential for a catastrophic eruption (ref)

Thanks for the link. However I'm left wondering how much this was affected by the Bush admin, who has been cited a number tymes for altering science they didn't agree with even though they didn't have the qualifications, suppressing it, or totally ignoring science.

USGS simply can't predict when eruptions of the magnitude that you are talking about will occur. So they are never going to say something as alarmist as "Yellowstone is due to erupt". To draw that conclusion from a mere three data points was extremely irresponsible of whatever journalist was the source of this meme. In fact USGS says this about Yellowstone's potential for a catastrophic eruption (ref):

USGS simply can't predict when eruptions of the magnitude that you are talking about will occur. So they are never going to say something as alarmist as "Yellowstone is due to erupt". To draw that conclusion from a mere three data points was extremely irresponsible of whatever journalist was the source of this meme. In fact USGS says this about Yellowstone's potential for a catastrophic eruption (ref):

USGS simply can't predict when eruptions of the magnitude that you are talking about will occur. So they are never going to say something as alarmist as "Yellowstone is due to erupt". To draw that conclusion from a mere three data points was extremely irresponsible of whatever journalist was the source of this meme. In fact USGS says this about Yellowstone's potential for a catastrophic eruption (ref):

USGS simply can't predict when eruptions of the magnitude that you are talking about will occur. So they are never going to say something as alarmist as "Yellowstone is due to erupt". To draw that conclusion from a mere three data points was extremely irresponsible of whatever journalist was the source of this meme. In fact USGS says this about Yellowstone's potential for a catastrophic eruption (ref):

Perhaps HD is in the eye of the beholder? The Clementine program mapped the moon about 15 years ago using a combination of UV IR and visible light cameras that were good to 125 m/pixel. That was all digital of course. You can get more information here http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/Clementine/ and see some pretty cool photos at 1Km - 32Km per pixel resolution here: http://www.cmf.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/clib/

Coincidence? I think not!

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2007jnaf.php

Bert

I was thinking that a practical collector would need to be in geostationary orbit, which means it would be over the equator. Such a collector would lose light for at least part of the day. That said, the radius of GEO is much larger than the radius of the earth, so the daily eclipses would be short, and the amount of shadowing minimal. (In other words, I'm largely agreeing with you, with a minor caveat.)

Based on the numbers on this page, the entire world's energy consumption rate is just shy of 13 TW. If we beamed in 13 TW of electricity and ceased all emissions due to energy production, I think you'd see a rather dramatic drop in the rate of climate change. Rather than releasing terawatts of energy that already arrived here (which is what burning fossil fuels accomplished) AND increasing how much solar energy the Earth absorbs from the Sun, we'd merely be beaming that energy in while letting the atmosphere take a breather from our pollution.

Well done! Nuclear energy has little alternative at this moment and the near future. I hope more people will start realising that as the energy crisis becomes more severe.

I heartily agree. There are certainly issues with mishandling nuclear material, but it's the only viable, scalable option for the nearterm to address the combined hurdles facing us in energy and environment. It won't do us any good to worry about nuclear waste disposal if we're all dead due to climate change long before. As a general theory, I would like to see more nuclear reactors, not fewer.

However, given that I am quite concerned about the possibility of climate issues, I do wish they would not build these things in places that are vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding. Houston is pretty close to sea level. Do we know for sure that the targeted places are not vulnerable in that regard? Or at least that they have planned for this as an eventuality?

I don't know the answer for all of those glaciers in the 1930s, but here are a few examples of before-and-after photographs: Boulder Glacier 1932-2005, Swiftcurrent glacier 1930-2002, Mendenhall and Hugh Miller glaciers 1937-2005 and 1940-2006, Mount Stanley in Uganda, 1906-1958-1992.

The US Geological Survey web site linked above has similar photos of eleven glaciers in Glacier National Park, Montana, many from the early 1900s. They say that only a few glaciers there have not significantly changed since the 1930s, and that there were 150 glaciers in 1850, only 26 of which remain today. You might also check out the Wikipedia article Retreat of glaciers since 1850.