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Of interest: An inch of water over 1 acre is 27,154 U.S. gallons and weighs about 113 (short) tons.

I am wondering if you have a large population centre like say the Bay Area or L.A. if there would be a significant rain shadow like on the lee side of a mountain range. So areas to the east would see significantly less rain than they do now.

We know that a large city produces a localized heating effect. So I would bet it is possible. It is always hotter in a city due to the concentrated human activity than outside the city several klicks or miles. On the prairies in winter this is fairly noticeable and can be quite a few degrees C difference.

But let's see if this is real or just someone trying to advertise for investors on Slashdot.

Interesting!
I went hunting the web to back up my armchair theory - that the Yucatan impact CAUSED the India lava flows directly (think bullet thru a ripe tomato)..
India is currently about opposite the Yucatan, but I'm not sure where the two sites were located 65 million years ago (How much continental drift?). BUT on the way to try to track down some semblance of support for my pet theory I found this article about a very large potential impact crater right beside India that hasn't yet made the impact database (it's not been decided either way):

But Chatterjee believes the geologic activity in India is best explained by a massive meteorite impact. For further proof, he points to alkaline igneous rock spires that are encased in the Deccan Traps. These spires are rich in iridium, but the Deccan lava did not contain iridium. How else, he asks, could the spires have formed if not by a nearby meteorite impact?

        In addition, Chatterjee says there is an underwater mountain as high as Mount Everest within the Shiva crater. He says this structure has been dated to be 65 million years old, and he thinks it could be the central peak that is often seen within large impact craters.

              Finally, Chatterjee says the crater contains shocked quartz, a key sign of impact. And because the K-T clay boundary layer in India is one meter thick - the thickest in the world - Chatterjee thinks a meteorite impact must have been close by.

Astrobiology Magazine - http://www.astrobio.net/news/print.php?sid=1281

There is also mention of another impact crater in the Ukraine that is also 65 million years old.

So it sounds like we had more than 1 big meteor event, potentially cooking the atmosphere instantly, the shock waves might have instantly caused massive cracks in the earth's crust, and/or the kinetic energy absorbed from these could possibly warm up the earth's core enough to cause massive lava flows, the resulting gasses and or dust released in all these events would have yanked the temperature up and down, in short, the Dinosaurs had it from many interrelated sources effectively at the "same time" give or take a half a million years.

When you look at a cross section of the planet and see how thin the crust is, (http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100 /interior.html) it's like an eggshell protecting us from hot liquid rock. Lucky for us the outside radiates heat away fast enough to keep the crust from melting..(!?)

My question is, say the crust is 50 kilometers (30 miles) thick (on average?) http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/interior/
How much thinner will it get if we raise the temperature of the atmosphere by 1 degree C?
Good thing rock is a decent insulator!

The other baffling thing is why we need to use greenhouse gasses to heat our homes when we are living on a ball of molten rock with a wafer thin coating on it? Is geothermal heat really too expensive to compete?

There, feeling safer now?

"Uhhh, soooo, every 50 million years or so, the Himalayas appear or disappear?"

Not far off. Everest is about 60 million years old.

http://www.mnteverest.net/history.html

At one time, the Appalachians looked like the Himalayas, were eroded flat, and then were uplifted yet again.

http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/parks/province/appalach.h tml

Climate change? Change is the norm.

--
BMO

I have a background in this reality and would advise anyone reading the source of this thread to take a moment and look up the following 'word set' on any search engine:

Geothermal Injection Induced Earthquake

Due to increased seismic activity generated by injection (studies done in Colorado) Hawaii turned down geothermal power.

Here are a few links to get one started:

Man-Made Earthquakes & Press Coverage (Anderson Springs, CA, USA)
http://andersonsprings.org/

Anderson Springs is part of an USGS earthquake area known as "The Geysers"
http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/quakes0_fau lt.htm

Geothermal Power Plant Triggers Earthquake in Switzerland
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/geothermal _powe.php

Injection induced stresses in geothermal fields. (References)
https://pangea.stanford.edu/people/cv_nav.php?pers onnel_id=477

Since I choose to be anonymous and this will be marked down and to get something off my chest.

A number of years ago I provided information about a technology that only a hand-full of people are involved with and was called a troll by one of your moderators.

I am IEEE published in the area I mentioned in that post, your moderator obviously could not access, or did not take the time to access these records, and went into name calling.

I have waited for years for the following to show up on the Internet and somebody finally posted it. I believe all moderators should be required to read it (from 1981):

Fairwitnessing

The Case for a New Social Role

(From a talk presented at the FORTH Interest Group meeting, May 23, 1981.)

Four pages, starting here:

http://www.flyingsnail.com/missingbbs/ct15.html

Yes, we in the US do not have that much in way of heat Esp out here in the west.
They do it because they chose to and because it is one of their cheaper items.

"However, in the USA, a lot of electricity is made by burning coal, which is not exactly a clean process."

There, fixed that for you.

And the rest of the world? I can tell you about my country - we're less than 5 million people. We live in a long, thin and very rocky country with a coastline that lasts forever and the Atlantic giving plenty rain and wind. We should by all rights be the posterboy of renewable energy, delivering huge surpluses to Europe. Truth is, despite all the hydro plants we're not even self-sufficient on renewable energy. It's oil and gas and imported coal-based power that's covering the rest.

World energy production by source: Oil 40%, natural gas 22.5%, coal 23.3%, hydroelectric 7.0%, nuclear 6.5%, biomass and other 0.7%.
Source: United States Energy and World Energy Production and Consumption Statistics

Then again, staying on oil is a dead duck. You want to know the future? Then look at this graph of The world's oil production has peaked, quite simply. We have peaked. By 2020 most of our oil reserves are gone. Doesn't matter if the price is 50$/barrel or 500$/barrel, because there's no more to be had.

3. Is glacier ice colder than regular ice?

        No - indeed, all of the physical, thermal and electrical properties of "regular icebox ice" and glacier ice are identical: density, viscosity, heat of fusion, latent heat, heat capacity, dielectric constant, thermal conductivity, absorption, emissivity, etc. The few small differences in characteristics are solely due to grain size differences (see 3.1). NOTE: High pressure forms of ice with different properties have been produced in laboratory experiments, but none occur naturally on earth, not even at the base of the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets.

        3.1. But doesn't glacier ice last longer in drinks!!!???

                Yes - a little, but only because the ice crystals are larger. Crystals melt from the outside and large crystals expose less surface area per unit volume of ice; therefore, ice with larger crystals melts more slowly.

I believe this is one of those news stories that sits around waiting for a slow news day. The original paper was released in November. It's written by Kevin Lafferty and was published in Proc. Roy. Soc. B.

It's a really quite fascinating paper - I recommend tracking it down if you can get access. Here's how it goes: Toxoplasmia gondii is adapated to live in cats and reproduces in felid intestinal cells & is shed, encysted, in their feaces. Then it can directly infect cats who come into contact with the cysts, or it encysts in brains of smaller mammals, and moves up the food chain as they get eaten until it hits a cat, and can reproduce again.

Fascinatingly, T.g. appears to affect rodent behavior to increase predation risk - i.e. the rodents become more active, less fearful of cat/cat smells, and have increased dopamine levels (which supposedly leads to novelty seeking behavior and neuroticism-type behaviors, or at least, they do in humans).

Despite humans not having any major cat predators, it could still affect us as a byproduct type of thing. Particularly that whole dopamine increase - this is should increase neuroticism levels.

So - the big question - does prevalence of T.g. correlate with cultural variation in neuroticism in humans? Lafferty finds a fairly strong correlation ( r2 of 0.38 ) between population aggregate neuroticism (as measured by the fairly standard NEO PI-R personality inventory ).

Unfortunately I think the populations he uses for his stats are a little bit suspect (always the problem with worldwide analyses though), but it's definitely worth a read. You should also keep in mind that so far it's only an interesting correlation and not a direct demonstration that T.g. causes large scale cultural differences.

I was just thinking yesterday of doing a paranoia web page, aggregating warnings from various sources.

• US DHS terrorism threat level. ("Code Yellow, or Elevated." today.)
• DoD InfoCon threat level. ("INFOCON level 4, "Increased Vigilance in Preparation for Operations or Exercises." today.)
• California Office of Emergency Services warnings ("...FLASH FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT FROM TUESDAY MORNING THROUGH LATE TUESDAY NIGHT FOR THE NORTHERN AND CENTRAL PORTIONS OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA..." yesterday.)
• California Earthquake Monitor Not much happening today.
• NOAA Tropical Storm Prediction Center. Slow day, not hurricane season.
• California Independent System Operator power grid status. Warns of power shortages and incipient blackouts. No problems today.
• Our local threat monitor, the Palo Alto Creek Level Monitor. Water level low right now.

A web page with a good-looking version of this info, suitable for display on large screen displays, would be useful.

There were actually 2 distinct quakes, one magnitude 7.1, one 7.0, that occurred about 7 minutes apart, and so far have been 3 aftershocks measuring from 5.4 to 5.6 (the 5.6 being just yesterday morning). All of the quakes were very shallow (7 miles deep and less).

You can get specific information on the quakes from the USGS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Ma ps/10/120_25.php

A real live scientist at the USGS noted that this story is blown out of proportion and that no new requirements were being placed on her work. Another response in this thread call this article 'damage control', but I am assured that it more fact than spin. The process has been in place for a long time, it's generally referred to as 'peer review'. I'd love to jump on the geeks-bash-Bush-bus, but this ride's got no gas.

USGS reply

The USGS release seems to be dammage control. I lack the skills to understand if the new rules are a reasonable way to manage an agency full of scientists (Although it is clear that at least one scientist doesn't like them.)

The USGS, the FCC, the DOE, and countless other government "agencies" derive their power directly from the president. If he tells them they need to wear only bright purple clothing every Thursday, they'd damned well better do so. Now, I will agree 100% with those suggesting the purely political motives behind this decree. But at least on this one, the asshat-in-chief does have the authority (if not the intellect or scientific understanding) to singlehandedly tell the USGS how to do their jobs.

The United States Geological Survey was established on March 3, 1879, just a few hours before the mandatory close of the final session of the 45th Congress, when President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the bill appropriating money for sundry civil expenses of the Federal Government for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1879. The sundry civil expenses bill included a brief section establishing a new agency, the United States Geological Survey, placing it in the Department of the Interior, and charging it with a unique combination of responsibilities: "classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain."1 The legislation stemmed from a report of the National Academy of Sciences, which in June 1878 had been asked by Congress to provide a plan for surveying the Territories of the United States that would secure the best possible results at the least possible cost. Its roots, however, went far back into the Nation's history.

Bullshit, this is not about peer review,

Recent news reports suggesting the Bush administration is trying to muzzle scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) by placing new controls on approval and release of research plans and products are off base and misinformed about the intent of the changes being formalized at the agency. Speaking as the senior biologist at the USGS, I am deeply concerned that longstanding legitimate scientific peer review processes that have been the basis of scientific practices at the USGS and other scientific agencies and organizations have been mischaracterized as inappropriate political controls on research. Peer review is the bedrock of processes in any credible science organization that ensures scientific conclusions or findings are robust, independent and objective.

For anyone else wondering where Anonymous Coward got this response:

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1588

The USGS is one of very few federal agencies that is actually useful to the people. Their research is valuable to all of us, and it should not be tampered with. I regularly check their seismic network web pages and read the Oat Mountain drum recorder. Why does the administration think it's bad for people to see this stuff?

What's the "fair market value" of a unique species? What's the replacement cost?

And it sounds like you're mostly afraid of getting financially burned by the "unknown", which is a reasonable concern. So, do the obvious fix: do an environmental impact study, including a field study of the flora and fauna, *BEFORE* you put up your money to buy the land, so that you *know* it isn't an issue. Think of it as insurance. You probably wouldn't think twice about a home inspection before buying it. Why not a "land inspection"? Especially in California, such an inspection can cover multiple risks and protect you from being hung out to dry because you bought a piece of land with a geological hazard on it that wasn't obvious either -- landslides are *really* common in California, for example, and have ruined alot of poorly-planned developments and killed unsuspecting residents, EVEN when there were warning signs preceding the deadly events.

Basically, don't get financially ruined (or worse) by the unknown. This is not rocket science. Some risks can be mitigated by a bit of study, and if that takes a bit of money and time, it is worth it if you are spending hundreds or thousands of times more on the land itself, and your financial neck is on the line. Make the risks known.

What's the "fair market value" of a unique species? What's the replacement cost?

And it sounds like you're mostly afraid of getting financially burned by the "unknown", which is a reasonable concern. So, do the obvious fix: do an environmental impact study, including a field study of the flora and fauna, *BEFORE* you put up your money to buy the land, so that you *know* it isn't an issue. Think of it as insurance. You probably wouldn't think twice about a home inspection before buying it. Why not a "land inspection"? Especially in California, such an inspection can cover multiple risks and protect you from being hung out to dry because you bought a piece of land with a geological hazard on it that wasn't obvious either -- landslides are *really* common in California, for example, and have ruined alot of poorly-planned developments and killed unsuspecting residents, EVEN when there were warning signs preceding the deadly events.

Basically, don't get financially ruined (or worse) by the unknown. This is not rocket science. Some risks can be mitigated by a bit of study, and if that takes a bit of money and time, it is worth it if you are spending hundreds or thousands of times more on the land itself, and your financial neck is on the line. Make the risks known.

Simple enough for you to understand?

I admit that cow farts sounds more FOX than the old volcano lie. (volcanoes don't put out much CO2.)

Burning wood, cows eating grass, among other things are basically a balanced cycle.

Using stockpiles of chemicals to make CO2 quickly (hint: the reaction gives off heat.) They'd probably never turn into CO2 and it would take a long time.

It is similar to pumping the well dry before the rain has a chance to replenish it (oh, many places now limit wells because they can go dry.)

How about burning cows and letting the wood fart?

Simple enough for you to understand?

I admit that cow farts sounds more FOX than the old volcano lie. (volcanoes don't put out much CO2.)

Burning wood, cows eating grass, among other things are basically a balanced cycle.

Using stockpiles of chemicals to make CO2 quickly (hint: the reaction gives off heat.) They'd probably never turn into CO2 and it would take a long time.

It is similar to pumping the well dry before the rain has a chance to replenish it (oh, many places now limit wells because they can go dry.)

How about burning cows and letting the wood fart?

This has also been picked up by the major media.

On a side note, the HiRISE team is now posting new large images on the HiRISE Website every week on Wednesday. (A file size and format warning is needed. The full super high resolution photo of the Opportunity landing site is 677 MBytes in JP2 format)

Of course, there are some pics that I wouldn't mind a little more investigation on. I happen to be interested in something I call Gulliver's Golf Ball, something that looks like a perfect sphere, roughly 200 meters across.

I've lived in San Francisco and about the only movement that occured when a shake happened was:

Bookmarks -> Entertainment -> Recent Earthquakes - Map for SanFrancisco"

EO-1 was a technology demonstration in *many* ways. It has a couple new type of sensors, a new bus, and yes -- new heuristic detection algorithms, although I don't think those were in the original specs when it was launched. It was not by any stretch of the imagination a waste of money. It is likely to be the progenitor for the next generation of Landsat-type sensors, and the next generation would not have been possible if not for this technology test.

You may also be interested in knowing that EO-1's mission was just one year long; that's all they needed, just to get it into orbit and test the new equipment. The fact that it's still running after *six* years goes to show how marvelous -- and cost efficient -- this bird is.

Well, let's see what we know about all this:

From the following pages:
[1] http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/logs/2000/20 00-075a_eo-1_sumpub.shtml
[2] http://eo1.usgs.gov/index.php
[3] http://eo1.usgs.gov/products.php
[4] http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/st6/ABOUT/About_index.html

The Earth Observation 1 satellite was launched on the 21st of November 2001, to validate technology for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission. The satellite cost $193'000'000. As the mission approached its end, interest was expressed in keeping it up there to gather more pictures, and an agreement was formed between NASA and the United States Geological Survey to continue the EO-1 Program as an extended mission. Later, in early 2004, the group responsible for the original sending of the satellite decided to try a new thing called the "Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment". This is the what the article above is talking about. So, they beam their program to the satellite, and make more than 100 photos while the thing is autonomous, tweaking the program many, many times in between. One of them happened to be useful and noticeable, and NASA made an article about it for the sake of PR. Now, according to [3], taking a single photo costs at most 500$, and that's with a bunch of add-ons. If by "more than 100" they mean 150 shots, that's still only 75'000$. In short, they used a satellite that should have sunk into disuse years before to test and tweak some AI using real data and a real satellite. I'd say that's actually a very efficient use of money. I mean, compared to sending yet another satellite just to do these experiments.

Well, let's see what we know about all this:

From the following pages:
[1] http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/logs/2000/20 00-075a_eo-1_sumpub.shtml
[2] http://eo1.usgs.gov/index.php
[3] http://eo1.usgs.gov/products.php
[4] http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/st6/ABOUT/About_index.html

The Earth Observation 1 satellite was launched on the 21st of November 2001, to validate technology for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission. The satellite cost $193'000'000. As the mission approached its end, interest was expressed in keeping it up there to gather more pictures, and an agreement was formed between NASA and the United States Geological Survey to continue the EO-1 Program as an extended mission. Later, in early 2004, the group responsible for the original sending of the satellite decided to try a new thing called the "Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment". This is the what the article above is talking about. So, they beam their program to the satellite, and make more than 100 photos while the thing is autonomous, tweaking the program many, many times in between. One of them happened to be useful and noticeable, and NASA made an article about it for the sake of PR. Now, according to [3], taking a single photo costs at most 500$, and that's with a bunch of add-ons. If by "more than 100" they mean 150 shots, that's still only 75'000$. In short, they used a satellite that should have sunk into disuse years before to test and tweak some AI using real data and a real satellite. I'd say that's actually a very efficient use of money. I mean, compared to sending yet another satellite just to do these experiments.

Teeth are an interesting problem, but someone could always offer crazy interpretations of them as capable of plant eating. I'd rather see them explain the A) huge, probable T. rex coprolite with crushed up bone in it, B) the stomach contents of the Coelophysis found at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico -- the rib cage area contains bones of their last meal (originally thought to be of the same species, but maybe a type of crocodile-like creature instead), C) the stomach contents of Compsognathus from Solnhofen in Germany (probably a type of lizard), or D) the bite marks on dinosaur bones found at a site in Madagascar.

It's fine (though crazily unlikely) to hypothetically propose T. rex and other sharp-toothed dinosaurs could have used their teeth to eat plants, but when the stomach contents, bite marks, and their poop imply a meat-eating diet, then that hypothesis is quickly negated by the evidence.

Actually, there is quite a bit of arsenic in Michigan water http://mi.water.usgs.gov/splan2/sp07800/dwiarsenic .php

Most researchers never bothered looking for deep ocean impact craters because they assumed the craters would be covered in sediment. In fact, they probably *are* covered in sediment, and it's only because of the new gravimetric technology that we can see them at all.

Another picture of the chevrons is here. Features like this are visible all over the world, as the graphic accompanying the NYT article shows. Pretty spooky...I just never realized before how much scar tissue the Earth has on her.

What about not making the earth deserts bigger, for practice? I don't think anyone would complain.

"It is, however, on a different tectonic plate, arguably not really part of Asia at all."

Continents are very different than tectonic plates. For the first example, remember that all of the State of California is in the continent of North America.... despite the fault that splits the state. This map should prove useful. Note that a large chunk of eastern Siberia and much of Japan are on the North American tectonic plate, but are not part of the North American continent. Ever hear anyone say that Siberia and Japan are in North America? Going the other way, Nicaragua is part of the North American continent, but is actually on a different tectonic plate from most of the rest of North America.

Finally, there is no tectonic plate called "Asia". The plate you are thinking of is the "Eurasian Plate", which only contains some of Europe and Asia.

This fits in well with the widely acknowledged past cycles of ice ages vs greenhouse eras. By some mechanism, (probably Life on Earth), greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere faster than they are removed by natural processes. Eventually, temperatures rise and the icecaps and glaciers melt. The crust adjusts to the loss of lots of pressure on it, causing widespread adjustments in the crust, accompanied by the release of volcanoes that have been corked up for a very long time.

Take the Yellowstone caldera, for instance -- a mega-volcano that has erupted in the past on a roughly 650,000 year cycle (last eruption was 640,000 years ago, the previous 1.3 million years ago, and the one before that 2.1 million years ago). Such an eruption would spew enough dust into the upper atmosphere to block the Sun for a long time, plunging the planet into an ice age as the accumulated atmospheric carbon leaves the atmosphere over several decades and most of the Life on Earth dies off. That would, of course, include me and thee.

Eventually, Life reasserts itself and starts putting carbon back into the atmosphere, after the dust has fallen back onto the planet, and the cycle begins anew.

Just an idea, but it seems to fit the current circumstances. And while we may or may not be responsible for the latest increases in atmospheric carbon (the current warming cycle began 30,000 years ago), we are most certainly contributing to it.

The question is, does this represent a credible notion of what is happening, and if not, what's a better story that fits the historical record?

And if this IS a credible story, what can we do to interrupt the cycle? Greg Benford seems to have several reasonable notions.

And as for Consequences -- consider the incineration of most of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, with surrounding states including the agricultural areas in the mid-US covered with a meter or so of ash. And with an instant Ice Age in the wings -- now THAT's consequences!

Of course, as a democratic nation, it's our Right to sit around and blather over whether there is a problem of not, and who's to blame, and what SINGLE SOLUTION must be taken to deal with it, or if we should do anything at all, since we cannot prove (until the balloon goes up) whether or not there is anything to this.

Sentient beings would not approach this situation in that manner. Maybe in the next spin of the great wheel of Darwin, some actual sentient beings will come to exist on this planet.

Usually, it isn't so easy. We know where the floodprone areas are. We've got FIRMettes [1], flood insurance rate maps that show where the floods are known to happen, and they show the high water marks for the design flood. The problem is that the design flood occurs more frequently now. The spread of suburbia means less agricultural and sylvan land for infiltration, and very efficient storm water management systems that dump right into the river at speed. The weather over the short term seems to favor concentrating precipitation into shorter periods of time. There are more floods of the design flood magnitude and thus the big floods are worse. As an aside, I have a feeling that there will be sweeping changes in what we're required to design for as previous high water events are classified as 50-year and 25-year floods instead of the 100-year tag they carry now.

Your second guy probably had a building on a river that used to wet the basement every twenty years or so. Now, he's gotten slammed with three 100-year events in less than 2 years and he's lost everything on the first floor down to sruds and foundations. The probability of these events occurring is very small, so the insurance people play their numbers game, assuming the hydrologists and statisticians know their stuff, and they write Guy 2 a check each time. Even if the hydrologists and statisticians are exactly up-to-date on their stuff, the probability is still small.

Where the real problems happen is when we have a historic structure or a thriving business. On the one hand, it sucks to fund constant money sinks. On the other, we shouldn't hinder the economic growth of the area or demolish our physical history. If the federal flood insurance program were more common-sense, we'd have a situation where an analysis determines the feasibility of rebuilding, relocating or rebuilding with floodproofing. I don't think the feds will pay for relocating or rebuilding with floodproofing, but they will pay for returning it to its pre-event condition. We're stuck in a cycle, and it's hard to make the choice about whether a building is historical enough to warrant moving or drastic renovation, as that's often a subjective choice (Lafayette slept here twice, so is it worth less that the place down the street where he spent a week?).

You are correct in saying that new construction should be held to stricter standards both in structure and location. Most places will make sure that new construction in a flood zone isn't an unreasonable drain on flood funds, even at the expense of additional tax revenue. In most places, that effectively means Guy 1 isn't building there, because if pimpin' ain't easy, floodproofin' is hard.

This network from the article seems redundant for the US. We've already got mostly real-time flow data from the USGS [2], posted to the web and freely available. The data's there, and using a hydrograph with the USGS data, rainfall data and Google Earth, you could do it all from a desk. The trick is to ensure that the all the localities along the river work together with a comprehensive plan to mitigate downstream problems. They're trying to do that on the Delaware, but you've got many large organizations that have to be forced to cooperate, like the New York City Water Department and the Army Corps of Engineers. They usually don't pay much attention the county and municipal governments along the lower river.

[1] http://msc.fema.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/info ?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&content=f irmetteHelp_0&title=FIRMette%20Tutorial
[2] http://water.usgs.gov/waterwatch/

Dream a little...

Recently we have seen a flood of publicly available satellite imagery on the web and this has greatly improved the possibilities of small NGO's and local communities to improve their lives - who couldn't otherwise afford expensive geographic information services. Unfortunately infrastucture projects such as roads, bridges, agricultural and water works all need accurate elevation data rather than fancy looking satellite imagines. Areas with no existing infrastucture could be provided for examaple with modern telecommunications using low-cost radiolinks if the topography of the area was known well. Things like irrigation and flood prevention could be planned by volunteers if such data was freely available. Maps, aerial photos and satellites images get old very quickly and thus are a waste of limited resources. Topographic information does not change in centuries and would thus make a valuable one time investment for our global community.

Geographic information services (GIS) typically utilize a digital elevation model (DEM) datasets which define a grid of elevation values over an area. On top of this one is then able to lay down a map or image of any type using free publicly available software and perform calculations in three dimentions typically involved in civil-engineering. Currently the only publicly available global DEM is the GTOPO30 compiled during 1993-95 by an internation efford involving USGS, NASA and UNEP among others. GTOPO30 is a global 30-arc-second grid (rougly 1 kilometer squared) with a mean accuracy of about +-30 meters in elevation but in many poor areas of the world much worse than this. This is way too rough for most practical applications. More accurate datasets are commercial and extremely expensive or simply impossible to obtain.

Much more accurate data should be available from numerous recently launched satellite systems by government agencies (NASA, ESA, JAXA) as well as commercial satellite vendors (DigitalGlobe, Geoeye, Spot). If the right people would just talk to other right people, the whole thing could be handled without exchange of huge monetary commitments. Selling elevation data for these companies isn't a huge cash cow due to the longevity of the datasets ones sold.

USGS hosted GTOPO30:
http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/gto po30.html

USGS Full specification of GTOPO30:
http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/REA DME.html

Sincerely

Miikka Raninen

Dream a little...

Recently we have seen a flood of publicly available satellite imagery on the web and this has greatly improved the possibilities of small NGO's and local communities to improve their lives - who couldn't otherwise afford expensive geographic information services. Unfortunately infrastucture projects such as roads, bridges, agricultural and water works all need accurate elevation data rather than fancy looking satellite imagines. Areas with no existing infrastucture could be provided for examaple with modern telecommunications using low-cost radiolinks if the topography of the area was known well. Things like irrigation and flood prevention could be planned by volunteers if such data was freely available. Maps, aerial photos and satellites images get old very quickly and thus are a waste of limited resources. Topographic information does not change in centuries and would thus make a valuable one time investment for our global community.

Geographic information services (GIS) typically utilize a digital elevation model (DEM) datasets which define a grid of elevation values over an area. On top of this one is then able to lay down a map or image of any type using free publicly available software and perform calculations in three dimentions typically involved in civil-engineering. Currently the only publicly available global DEM is the GTOPO30 compiled during 1993-95 by an internation efford involving USGS, NASA and UNEP among others. GTOPO30 is a global 30-arc-second grid (rougly 1 kilometer squared) with a mean accuracy of about +-30 meters in elevation but in many poor areas of the world much worse than this. This is way too rough for most practical applications. More accurate datasets are commercial and extremely expensive or simply impossible to obtain.

Much more accurate data should be available from numerous recently launched satellite systems by government agencies (NASA, ESA, JAXA) as well as commercial satellite vendors (DigitalGlobe, Geoeye, Spot). If the right people would just talk to other right people, the whole thing could be handled without exchange of huge monetary commitments. Selling elevation data for these companies isn't a huge cash cow due to the longevity of the datasets ones sold.

USGS hosted GTOPO30:
http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/gto po30.html

USGS Full specification of GTOPO30:
http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/REA DME.html

Sincerely

Miikka Raninen

Not quite a fortune:

http://seamless.usgs.gov/

Or do they not offer the data you are looking for there?

Better link here directly comparing emissions and no wikipedia queasiness: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volg as.html

It's not a nuke.

Compare the purported "nukular test":
http://aslwww.cr.usgs.gov/Seismic_Data/telemetry_d ata/INCN_24hr.html

Notice how long this lasts.

To a _real_ nuclear test
http://can-ndc.nrcan.gc.ca/recent/980528_e.php

It's a different event:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Ma ps/10/120_20.php

the depth of 0 km makes it pretty clear this wasn't a natural quake.

Before someone decides to "liberate" North Korea based on this intel, please read until the bottom of that page where it says "location uncertainty: depth fixed by location program", and read what this means here.

the depth of 0 km makes it pretty clear this wasn't a natural quake.

Before someone decides to "liberate" North Korea based on this intel, please read until the bottom of that page where it says "location uncertainty: depth fixed by location program", and read what this means here.

Interesting. But, ...

I wonder why the Taipei, Inchon and Japan stations, which are also quite close, don't show any seismic activity.

Also, the seismographs for the Pakistan test in 1998 look different than the Guangduong station data.

Interesting. But, ...

I wonder why the Taipei, Inchon and Japan stations, which are also quite close, don't show any seismic activity.

Also, the seismographs for the Pakistan test in 1998 look different than the Guangduong station data.

Interesting. But, ...

I wonder why the Taipei, Inchon and Japan stations, which are also quite close, don't show any seismic activity.

Also, the seismographs for the Pakistan test in 1998 look different than the Guangduong station data.

Interesting. But, ...

I wonder why the Taipei, Inchon and Japan stations, which are also quite close, don't show any seismic activity.

Also, the seismographs for the Pakistan test in 1998 look different than the Guangduong station data.

Yes, here are the details from the USGS. As someone else already pointed out, the depth of 0 km makes it pretty clear this wasn't a natural quake.

USGS says the quake was at 41.294N, 129.134E. According to Google Earth, it's a fairly mountainous region, at an altitude of about 4800 feet. It's within a rectangular region, about 31 kilometers north to south by 17 km east to west, that's at much higher resolution than its surroundings; I'm guessing that means somebody was already very interested in that particular area.

I've been trying to figure out the yield from the quake magnitude. One site says a 1 kiloton nuke could produce a 4.0 earthquake -- but the magnitude of the quake can be reduced considerably if the nuke is set off inside a large hollow chamber. North Korea had previously said they were going to use an abandoned coal mine. On the other hand, they obviously weren't trying to hide it.

The NK test results were recoded in South Korea. Your Pakistan test results were taken in Canada! Gee, I wonder if a seismic event might not last as long, or be as strong when measured from across the frickin' world as opposed to a couple of hundred miles away.

Well then, how about we take a look at the measurements recorded at a similar distant station, say Corvallis, Oregon?
Other than a reduction in the magnitude, they don't look all that different to me.

If I had the time to poke around the USGS website, I would dig up the results as reported at Corvallis for the two pakistani tests in 1998 to really have like compared with like.

The Guangduong Province Station definately shows action measured at 0141 UTC and it was quiet for most of the day. It also doesn't show the rapid vibration you'd expect from an earthquake, but instead a slow displacement I think would be expected from a single pulse of energy. The station is located at 19.03 N, 109.84 E. The 4.2 earthquake event was measured at 41.311N, 129.114E at 0135 UTC. Using a great circle calculation (which is an overestimation, since the energy travels under the Earth's surface--but not that bad since the distances are close) I get 3076 km. Using a rough estimate of 8 km/s for a P-wave I get a travel time of 384 s, or about 6.5 minutes. Since the earthquake was measured at 0141 UTC, the USGS report of 0135 UTC is consistent.

Disclaimer: I'm not a geologist, but I watched one on South Park.

The following is deduction based on the following information:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Qu akes/ustqab.php

That page puts the event at 41.311N, 129.114E, with an error of 9.3 miles.

That exact location is extremely mountainous. Most tests are conducted in flat areas for a number of reasons, but mainly NK will have wanted us to see this clearly.

A review of the area provided by a circle starting at the estimated coordinates and with a radius of 9.3 miles finds this location:

4123'8.07"N 129 5'51.38"E

Enter this location into Google Earth (Fly To), it is approximately 5.4 miles north west of the estimated location and is a plateau which shows heavy scarring from past bomb craters.

I have no idea how long it will be before we see an updated sattelite image of this area, but it will have a huge new crater as of today.

GE is free and available here: http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html

-Ian

It's not a nuke.

Compare the purported "nukular test":

http://aslwww.cr.usgs.gov/Seismic_Data/telemetry_d ata/INCN_24hr.html

Notice how long this lasts.

To a _real_ nuclear test

http://can-ndc.nrcan.gc.ca/recent/980528_e.php

Again, notice how long this lasts. Hint: look at the scale of both graphs.

One of these things is not like the other.

I'm sure that you can figure it out for yourself.

--
BMO

Anyone want to explain why the seismic station at Inchon, South Korea appears to be quiet at the time of the blast (1:35 UTC)?

Here's the raw seismic data at Inchon.

I see an event at Inchon at about 14:30 UTC on Sunday, but it's 11 hours earlier than the reported blast.