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I guess it would work better as a link.

Cascades Volcano Observatory

Very difficult: DigitalGlobe (then EarthWatch, with EarlyBird), Space Imaging (Ikonos), Orbimage (Orbview) all lost high resolution satellites before they became operational - these early high-res satellites were in fact based pretty much on off-the-shelf (but space qualified) parts. Landsat 6 was lost on launch and Landsat 7 suffered a crippling failure about a year ago. (BTW the EarlyBird launch on a Russian Cosmos, was said to have cost about $7 million, not 50 thousand). Having got it up there, and got it working, you then need a ground segment too, which is decidedly non-trivial.

According to you, according to the FA lava is firmly ruled out because these have clear undisputed characteristics of a much more mobile fluid.

Wow, you *REALLY* see what you want to see, don't you?

"Murray's team [ed: i.e., one group] says a lava flow does not fit their observations. These plates are up to two times larger than known lava plates on Earth, and they leave behind smooth, straight lanes when they ram into craters and islands [ed: this happens even on Earth]. These observations "imply an extremely mobile fluid, with similar characteristics to water," the researchers write." [ed: so is pahoehoe, for example, which forms details as crisp as any river]

They ruled out lava because it decidedly does NOT look like lava.

They did no such thing!

"Also, similar plate formations have been seen on Mars before but attributed to solidified lava."

If you look at a path in sand made by molasses and then another made by water there is very distinct difference in the marks they make.

And if you saw the channels, and had no clue what fluids were tested (because they flowed eons ago), you'd have absolutely no idea which was made by which - especially if you couldn't even get access to the sand in which these phenomina were occurring. However, if water was in violation of your "known things that could flow on sand", you'd be pretty doubtful of it.

Especially when your basis for comparison was made in the same sand, on the same beach.

Wow, that's news to me! When did Earth and Mars merge?

a list of facts which lean TOWARD this being water but are far from conclusive.

Ah, so one team stating that it might be something in violation of model of mars with no other scientific input on the subject makes it so? Great, then let me overturn the Big Bang for you - I've got a rather large team of people with PhDs in relevant fields who would like to talk to you...

Just a wild guess here: you were one of those people clambering over the "life found on Mars due to Methane" thing the other day, weren't you? Regardless of whether you were or not, in case you didn't hear, it all turned out to be extreme extrapolation from things overheard at a party. That's what you get for buying into uncorroborated one-sided reports. This here is no different. It is way too extreme of an extrapolation which violates known models of how "things work" on Mars. Ice at the equator, if buried shallow enough to be discernable from above, should have sublimated long, long ago.

There is a path of erosion indicating the water traveled from the ancient wetspot to the exact spot where we have found what appears to be ice.

You obviously know nothing about Mars; channels lead all over the planet. You can say that about almost any low point on the planet.

We can clearly tell the formations were made by a highly mobile liquid and have little to no chance of being made by lava.

Oh really?

The depth of craters in the area indicates there is ice beneath.

Says one team. Do you know anything at all about craters? A wide variety of factors determine their end shape. Being "consistant" with impacting ice hardly means that it hit ice; it just prevents them from ruling ice out.

It is impossible for anyone to form a substantiated opinion on whether or not this is ice based on the existing evidence.

Says the pot to the kettle.

Further, it is important to remember that being in violation of a THEORY does not make something less likely. A theory is a guess that we believe fits the evidence we have

Yeah... so, if a small team of people in an as-of-yet un-reviewed paper suggest that gravity is caused by magical gnomes, should we suspend the theory of gravity?

A scie

Oh be quiet, nation of immigrants from elsewhere. Actually, sorry! I take it back, there are some really hot native american women aren't there?

stfu.

I saw a documentary about oil and energy efficiency a while ago that stated that solar power would required 1/3 of the world's land in solar panels in order to meet the world's energy needs. Hmm...

http://www.jc-solarhomes.com/solar_energy_facts.ht m

Assume each square metre can receives 1 KW hr per hr. Assume 20% efficiency for photovoltaics. So 0.2 KW hr per hr per metre.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001729.html says a kw hour is 3412 BTUs, so photo voltaics produce 0.2 * 3412 = 682.4 BTU/hr per square metre.

http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/energy/stats_ctry/Stat1. html says the 1998 U.S. energy consumption was about 94 quadrillion BTUs Assumong 8 * 365 hours of decent sunshine in the desert year around. So that's 100 * 10^15 / (8 * 365 ) = 34 * 10^12 BTUs/sunshine hour.

(34 * 10^12 ) / (682.4 ) = 49 * 10^9 square metres = 49 * 10^9 / 10^6 = 49000 square kilometres = 223 KM by 223 KM or 140 miles by 140 miles.

If you "want" the entire world to consume energy at per-capita rates like the USA, then assuming the US population is 300M, and the world population is 6B, then 6*10^9/(300*10^6) * 49000 = 980000 square km. The Earth's land surface area is claimed to be 148,300,000 sq km, so 980000 / 148300000 = .006608 or less than 1% of the Earth's land surface area.

Mind you, for infrastructure that huge, you have to build roads, support buldings, etc. So even if a factor of 3 off, that's still about 2% of the surface area.

Also, once demand for photovoltaics reached 1% of the above, I imagine the industry would drive efficiency from 20% to higher levels. So 1/3 of the land surface area is way too high.

The real problem with photovoltaics is the cost. http://store.yahoo.com/sancor/50w.html will sell you a 502mm x 939mm panel for $588, or 588 / (502 * 939) * 1000000 = $1247 per sq metre. Let's be hopeful that in quantity, wholesale lots, we could buy this for $1000 per sq metre. 980000 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = $980 trillion. Note that the annual GDP for Earth, according to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print /xx.html is $51.48 trillion. That figure is at purchasing power parity. I'll leave it others to speculate whether photovoltaics can be manufactured cheaper in third world countries or not. If you don't think so, then considering that the U.S. economy is about $11 trillion, and that it is blamed for consuming about 1/2 the world's resources, the non purchasing power parity world GDP is probably closer to $22 trillion.

There needs to be a 10X reduction in the price/energy ratio of photovoltaics. Do that, i.e. reduce the cost of the solar energy to meet the world's needs to an investment of about $100 trillion, amortize it over 30 years, and I'm sure we can find the money and land to do this.

Coal is much dirtier. There has been more radioactivity released into the atmosphere from coal than all nuclear disasters combined. People think coal is all carbon and sulpher. They need to think again.

Coal contains trace radioactive elements, and when thousands of tonnes of coal is burned, trace amounts add up to significant amounts. And those radioactive elements can go right up the flue stack and into the air.

Radioactive Elements in Coal and Fly Ash: Abundance, Forms, and Environmental Significance
U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet FS-163-97
pdf
archive.org cache

Karl S Kruszelnicki, What else might be in your Ceiling Dust?
link
archive.org cache

There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity.

If the above were completely true, humans would produce about 1 TRILLION tons of C02 each year. according to http://www2.biotech.wisc.edu/jeffries/faq/carbon%2 0dioxide/CO2.html and http://www.mindfully.org/Air/CO2-US2000-DOE.htm US CO2 production is about 1.3 to 1.5 Billion tons each year. Given that the US produces about %25 of CO2, that means that Global CO2 production is at most 6 Billion tons or about 55 times as much as volcanic eruptions. Hardly anywhere near the 10,000 number you and they throw out.

Using the USGS All of humanity produces 22 Billion a year and volcanoes 130-220, that is 100-170 times the volcanoes, still much less than 10,000.

Now for large volcanic explosions such as Mt. Saint Helens and, Krakatoa? Still trying to find info on them, but has to be much more than their average.

the "make it open" mantra is also very popular in science, especially academia. I was at the American Geophysicist Union meeting in San Fracisco this december, and open data was the name of the game. Infact, open data is one of the main tenents of science. More and more data is becoming open and available. The USGS make data available. As does the professor i used to work for (i'd link you, but he's in the middle of an interstate move and the server doesn't have a new domain name yet). There was a whole undergraduate research project that i helped with making hydrologic data available to anyone who wants it. Many scientists post gathered data on their project sites. It's happening, simply for the good of the community. Details about equipment are usually either included, or corrected already in the data. All of the "real problems involved in actual implementation" are usually tackled by undergrads in a basement computer lab on campus, or as government interns, or as an algorithm with real time data. It's doable and it's being done.

As far as NASA planetary datasets go, try the Planetary Data System

Some of the USGS topo datasets are available from the EROS Data Center. Some free datasets are available for download.

Tim Cahill discusses this in his short book Lost in My Own Backyard : A Walk in Yellowstone National Park (which is a great book, BTW). The Yellowstone caldera is believed to be 30+ miles wide. It has exploded several times, and in more recent times has been erupting about once every 600K years. The fact that the last explosion was 640K years ago can lead to some sobering thoughts.

Some claim that the next eruption is overdue, a fact that the USGS disputes.

I know that Slashdot was bringing down websites regularly when I first made my account, if that helps (found this amusing, and it dates from around 1999). But it'd be interesting to see a monthly tally of hits over the last five years.

Another link
http://seamless.usgs.gov/ has the global data for free.

That isn't a link, that's a URL. This is a link.

Note that you can turn a URL into a link by typing just six more characters: "<URL:" immediately before the URL, and ">" immediately after the URL. Thus, "<URL:http://seamless.usgs.gov/>" becomes "http://seamless.usgs.gov/". A template for how to do this is shown right there underneath the comment box. All you have to do is look (and type). There is really no excuse not to type those six measely characters, unless you are incredibly fucking lazy.

Another link
http://seamless.usgs.gov/ has the global data for free.

That isn't a link, that's a URL. This is a link.

Note that you can turn a URL into a link by typing just six more characters: "<URL:" immediately before the URL, and ">" immediately after the URL. Thus, "<URL:http://seamless.usgs.gov/>" becomes "http://seamless.usgs.gov/". A template for how to do this is shown right there underneath the comment box. All you have to do is look (and type). There is really no excuse not to type those six measely characters, unless you are incredibly fucking lazy.

If I'm looking at the right data -- a big if -- it looks like the dataset includes some underwater topography, at least to a certain depth. Or is it just that the radar reflects differently from the water, giving the illusion of depth?

I went to http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.p hp, and zoomed in on the local fishing hole (Cedar Creek Lake, near Gun Barrel City, Texas). After picking the appropriate layers (Elevation/SRTM 30m Shaded Relief, turn off the bogus GTOPO60 layer), I could see a pebbly texture where the lake was. The texture looked more realistic on the mud flats on the north end of the lake. Turn on Hydrography/Streams, and you can see where the creek used to be (more or less). Turn on Hydrography/Waterbodies, and the lake is filled in (good for getting your bearings).

Interestingly, though, there are some dropouts visible in the elevation data under the lake. They don't seem related to depth. I wonder if a party barge on water causes a strange echo?

Works on coastal areas, too. However, since the pebbly texture looks the same for the whole area of Matagorda Beach that I looked at, I suspect I'm not seeing anything but a false echo a few feet below the surface.

The data is available here: http://srtm.usgs.gov/

What if all the ice on Greenland melts? It doesn't float, so it will make the sea level rise. By seven meters, according to current estimates

To make matters worse, greenland is on the far end of the
North American plate.

If the downforce of all that ice disappears into the oceans, the tectonic plate might start to balance itself, causing giant earthquakes while lowering the US and Canada.

The same thing happened to Scandinavia after the last ice age.

It's difficult to predict exactly what will happen and how strongly, but it's a dangerous possibility you don't hear much about.

Greenland ice cap: around 2,750,000 Km^3

Recent 9.0 quake off Sumatra: about 1,200 Km slipped, with a width of about 100 Km affected. That's about 120,000 Km^2 of ocean floor which was "uplifted by several meters". If there was an average of 10 meters of uplift (a value not yet measured), 1,200,000 Km^3 of water has now shifted around the world's oceans.

Perhaps the "100 Km affected" which the USGS refers to is 100 Km DOWN along the fault line; the phrasing is ambiguous whether it refers to the surface.

While this reply is off-topic in regards to the story, I feel there is some stuff that should corrected.

The recurrence interval for large scale eruptions at Yellowstone ranges from 600Ka to 800Ka. That's a 200,000 year range. The last major eruption was ~640Ka ago.

That means it might erupt tomorrow, or it might erupt 120,000 years from now. Chances are, we won't be alive to see it when it finally happens.

It's also entirely possible that it might not have a major eruption ever again. The 600-800Ka recurrence intervals are based on only three large eruption events that have occured in the past 2 million years.

Currently, seismicity in the region is at relatively low background levels and there really isn't anything to worry about. We see the same sort of situation at Long Valley Caldera as well.

Regarding the grandparent's theory of how to use geothermal power: I have to say that I disagree with it. Just because there is magma down there doesn't mean it will be economically feasible to drill through the rock that the plant will sit on.

As the parent poster states, there are also possible drawbacks and consequences as well. It has been proven that earthquakes in The Geysers region of California (northwest of San Francisco) are caused by the injection of water into the ground. Whether this could lead to some bigger event in certain areas, we don't know.

While this reply is off-topic in regards to the story, I feel there is some stuff that should corrected.

The recurrence interval for large scale eruptions at Yellowstone ranges from 600Ka to 800Ka. That's a 200,000 year range. The last major eruption was ~640Ka ago.

That means it might erupt tomorrow, or it might erupt 120,000 years from now. Chances are, we won't be alive to see it when it finally happens.

It's also entirely possible that it might not have a major eruption ever again. The 600-800Ka recurrence intervals are based on only three large eruption events that have occured in the past 2 million years.

Currently, seismicity in the region is at relatively low background levels and there really isn't anything to worry about. We see the same sort of situation at Long Valley Caldera as well.

Regarding the grandparent's theory of how to use geothermal power: I have to say that I disagree with it. Just because there is magma down there doesn't mean it will be economically feasible to drill through the rock that the plant will sit on.

As the parent poster states, there are also possible drawbacks and consequences as well. It has been proven that earthquakes in The Geysers region of California (northwest of San Francisco) are caused by the injection of water into the ground. Whether this could lead to some bigger event in certain areas, we don't know.

Some links about the site...

• Topographic Mapping at the SETI Radio Telescope Observatory (UC Berkeley)
• Topographic map of site (Topozone.com)
• "The big idea in SETI: Think small" (MSNBC, Feb 8, 2004)

Or, more precisely, the geometric object that crated on mars:

The mars golf ball.

At a guess, it's a glob of molten rock that condensed into a sphere in orbit before hitting the surface again. But that still doesn't make me want to see more detailed photographs and information about it so very, very badly. It would probably be one of the most impressive sights on the Martian surface.

Yes, 10 times in amplitude, far more in energy, but in this case it is the amplitude that counts.

It was easy for anyone connected with earthquake science to know that there was a devastating tsunami. They could just check with populated areas near where the earthquake occurred, such as Aceh Province. There is an Airport near there with a phone. English is the standard language in aviation.

Knowing that there was a significant tsunami, it was easy to know that other areas, still an hour or more away, would have huge waves also.

To me, it's shocking that no one in the government did anything effectual to warn people.

Any magnitude 9 earthquake 10 KM under the sea, as was the one that did the damage, must be presumed to cause a tsunami. Remember that a magnitude 9 earthquake is 10 times more powerful than a magnitude 8 earthquake.

Your point number 2 was already answered. Have a manager look at the USGS web site to verify that there was a huge earthquake.

If you are one of the people on the tsunami warning team, you would probably select your hotels in advance, and get to know the managers. You would teach them how to verify the size of an earthquake, and its location. Even my own friends are impressed when I call them from another country. It might go like this:

"Hi, Sandeep, remember me, it's Michael from the United States. Remember last year we talked about earthquakes? Well, there's been another one. If you don't have your notes, the site to check is http://earthquake.usgs.gov/. Remember we discussed the fact that all .GOV sites are official U.S. government web sites."

After more than 100,000 people have been killed, I think the people still alive would take a tsunami warning seriously. It should not be imagined that people outside your own country are irresponsible and have no education.

in the last seven days here. The Andaman and Nicobar islands has experienced more than 60 aftershocks !
In related news, the tsunami split one of the islands in Andaman & Nicobar into two. Here is what one of the officials say ..

Another island, Trinkat, appears to have been split in two, said S.B. Deol, inspector-general of Andaman and Nicobar. "Part of the island has been submerged, while one half is visible," he said.

Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:04:31 -0200
From: Futurepower [futurepower_usa (-AT-) yahoo.com.br]
To: "U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center" [sedas (-AT-) neis.cr.usgs.gov]
Subject: NEIC: Why didn't you warn about the Tsunamis?

Question:

I haven't seen this discussed anywhere.

Why didn't the NEIC call the U.S. State Department, so that they could warn people about the Tsunamis?

The earthquake position and magnitude was known 6 hours before the waves arrived in Thailand, I understand. Wouldn't almost every person's life have been saved if Thailand, for example, had had warning?

Michael

_____________


Reply:

Michael,

Phone calls were placed to the State Department operations center, the White House situation room, the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, as well as several other organizations within 90 minutes of the occurrance of this earthquake.

The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace.

Stuart Sipkin
USGS/NEIC

_____________


Stuart,

I have a suggestion for a local tsunami warning system. There continues to be an enormous amount of earthquake activity in the area around Indonesia. It seems likely that there will be another big earthquake. Next time there is an earthquake that is likely to cause a tsunami, call me, any time of night or day. I will promise to call at least 30 hotels within 2 hours. I will promise to get 10 friends involved. They will promise to call 30 hotels each, also. We would each take a different country.

My suggestion is that we would use Google to find hotels, for example in Sri Lanka. This is one of the hotels I found there, a 5-star hotel with more than 400 rooms:

Galadari Hotel
The Businessman's Home in Sri Lanka
64, Lotus Road,
Colombo 1.
Sri Lanka.
Tel: 94-1-544544
Fax: 94-1-449875
E-Mail: galadari (-AT-) sri.lanka.net

"The Galadari Hotel is in the heart of the city in Colombo, over looking the beautiful Indian ocean."

Big hotels answer their phones 24 hours a day. Presumably there is a staff of at least 200 at that hotel, for three shifts. I think if one person were told, everyone else would know soon. They don't want their family and friends and neighbors near the water to die, and they know how to reach them, even if they have to ride a motorbike to those who don't have phones.

There are two easy ways to prove that a call about an earthquake is not a hoax. I would tell the person who answered the phone that it is an emergency and I need to talk to a manager. I would tell the manager to check the USGS web site at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/. Any 5-Star hotel, and most others of any size, have internet access. I would also tell the manager that, if the water at the beach receded, people had only a few minutes to get to safety. I would ask the manager to get staff members to call radio and TV stations in their area.

You said in your message, "The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace."

It seems to me that this is a workable plan for a local tsunami warning system. It wouldn't cost much. Using Skype, a two minute call to any land line phone in Sri Lanka is about 40 U.S. cents, for example. Using iConnectHere's most expensive service, a two minute call is 80 cents.

Science, reason, and logic are your friends.

Yellowstone Volcano Observatory FAQs

" The least likely but worst-case volcanic eruption at Yellowstone would be another explosive caldera-forming eruption such as those that occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago. However, the probability of such an eruption in any given century or millennium is exceedingly low- much lower than the smaller eruptions..."

and

"Is it true that the next eruption of Yellowstone is overdue?

No. The fact that two eruptive intervals (2.1 million to 1.3 million and 1.3 million to 640,000 years ago) are of similar length does not mean that the next eruption will necessarily occur after another similar interval. The physical mechanisms may have changed with time. Furthermore, any inferences based on these two intervals would take into account too few data to be statistically meaningful. To say that an eruption that might happen in ten's or hundred's of thousand's of years is "overdue" would be a gross overstatement. On the other hand we cannot discount the possibility of such an event occurring some time in the future, given Yellowstone's volcanic history and the continued presence of magma beneath the Yellowstone caldera."

Not on this planet.

Measuring Earthquake Magnitudes: 'It seems that earthquakes on Earth simply can't get bigger than around Mw = 9.5. (That means the whole premise of the TV series 10.5 is bogus.) A piece of rock can store up only so much strain energy before it ruptures, so the size of a quake depends strictly on how much rock--how many kilometers of fault length--can rupture at once. The Chile Trench, where the 1960 quake occurred, is the longest straight fault in the world. The only way to get more energy is with an asteroid impact.'

US Geological Survey: 'The idea of a "Mega-Quake" - an earthquake of magnitude 10 or larger - while theoretically possible--is very highly unlikely. Earthquake magnitude is based in part on the length of faults -- the longer the fault, the larger the earthquake. The simple truth is that there are no known faults capable of generating a magnitude 10 or larger "mega-quake."'

Not to be alarmist, but Missouri has had it share of earthquakes though. What is probably the largest in the continental US:

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/usa/1811-1812.h tml#february_7

"Manhandled" meaning men using machines, of course. We already routinely move millions of tons of earth and rock around every year, so doing something about LaPalma (and there's another big fracture on Hawaii waiting to dump into the Pacific) IS possible.

First, we drill hundreds of cores from the surface THROUGH the slippage fault and insert temporary steel beams. This holds ("pins") the overall mass in place.

Second, starting at both side-edges of the loose region, we start removing the beams and digging up the material and dumping it into the sea. (Or, if we trust the "pins" enough, we can use explosives for this part.) Each dump is thus just a tiny tiny landslide, and after enough have been done (after a few years, probably), there will be nothing left to cause a disaster. Yes, a fair part of the work may require underwater equipment. So? Different tasks in different places require different machines. Nothing new there.

Here you go: bq mailing list
You can do it yourself next time, I got the first email at 6:15 PM PST that it was an 8.5, the quake happened at 5:00 PM PST so you would have still had time to call around after getting the email. I hadn't finished my parser for the emails to send really big ones to my phone yet, so I didn't see it till a few hours later.

Not all the preparation required is that specialized. You could have a team in charge of handling/anticipating natural disasters. And then establish formal channels and methods of broadcasting warnings to the population. The bulk of these systems and procedures can be useful for other scenarios.

Just monitoring seismic info on the Internet, and then notifying the population would have saved lots of lives. Given the latency (1 hour) - some countries still would have had 1 hour plus warning, which would still have been very useful.

These sort of things are what Governments can be useful for.

I have a suggestion for government officials of countries with a shoreline - watch USGS Earthquake Hazards web site. When you see a quake that is over Magnitude 6.5 in your ocean basin, consider a possible tsunami threat.

We used to enjoy walking and relaxing on those beaches regularly. I don't think we will ever be able to do that again in a free state of mind. :-(

Still small compared to the 22 gigatons of a magnitude 8.9 earthquake.

See this page on the US Geological Survey for some figures on earthquakes.

Sumatra:
12,000+ deaths (and rising).
Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 00:58:50 (UTC) - Coordinated Universal Time
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqinthenews/2004/usslav /

Bam:
Approx 31,000 deaths.
Friday, December 26, 2003 at 01:56:52 (UTC) - Coordinated Universal Time
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2003/eq_031226/

Sumatra:
12,000+ deaths (and rising).
Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 00:58:50 (UTC) - Coordinated Universal Time
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqinthenews/2004/usslav /

Bam:
Approx 31,000 deaths.
Friday, December 26, 2003 at 01:56:52 (UTC) - Coordinated Universal Time
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2003/eq_031226/

And in 2002 same day exactly to the year also Japan suffered a large quake killing hundreds more non christians

And in 2002 same day exactly to the year also Japan suffered a large quake killing hundreds more non christians

Ah, no. You can look here and see for yourself. The number of major earthquakes isn't even above average. Of course the average they give for earthquakes over 7.0 is only based on observations since 1990, so you can look here and do your own comparison. You'll see that the average number of major earthquakes was actually lower for the first four years of the new millenium than for quite a few other four year periods.

(A friend in Madras mentioned the quake as soon as he felt it; I've since seen the estimates go from 650 dead to 1500, 3000, 4500, 6300, and now 7000.)

Hiroshima = 15 kilotons

So 10,000 hiroshima bombs = 150 megatons.

The Richter scale is logarithmic in energy; each point represents approximately 31-fold increase in energy. 1,900 megatons of TNT corresponds to your Richter 8.6 earthquake plus another 0.7, or Richter 9.3.

That would make it #2 on the largest earthquakes of the 20th century.

Of course, the energy release of an asteroid strike may have a very different effect than the energy release of an earthquake. And everybody on earth will have decades of warning (for this asteroid at least).

I lived through a Richter 7.0 earthquake. The building I was in stood up, but it was condemned afterwards.

Actually, they look much like certain lava flows on earth. Here's the URL of a primer on vulcanism with some examples:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/volc/types.html

Mars igneous rocks are mafic -- rich in iron and magnesium, low in silica and volatiles (e.g. water). Mafic magmas are low viscosity and have a better chance of reaching the surface in a liquid state. Since they are also low in water, they don't explode.

You are probably thinking of more sialic magmas on earth -- ones richer in silica and water. They move through the crust more slowly and once the pressure gets low enough, the water boils explosively.

On earth, we also have big sheets of mafic lava flows -- the Deccan Traps in India, Watchung Mountains in New Jersey, Grand Mesa in Colorado just to name a few.

Actually, they look much like certain lava flows on earth. Here's the URL of a primer on vulcanism with some examples:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/volc/types.html

Mars igneous rocks are mafic -- rich in iron and magnesium, low in silica and volatiles (e.g. water). Mafic magmas are low viscosity and have a better chance of reaching the surface in a liquid state. Since they are also low in water, they don't explode.

On earth, we also have big sheets of mafic lava flows -- the Deccan Traps in India, Watchung Mountains in New Jersey, Grand Mesa in Colorado just to name a few.

Proof has been constantly cited since the 70s and yet all the dire predictions have come to naught.

True perhaps for parts of the mass media, but not at all for scientists.

Most of the climate models have been predicting that, under even the most extreme industrial-output scenarios, the Antarctic ice cap will last for many centuries. The Arctic ice should last at least a few centuries, though in the past decade its thinning has accelerated past what most of the models predicted, and it may only last another century now.

But it doesn't take melting of all polar ice to get a disaster. Estimates are that Antarctic melting could raise the oceans by at least 60-80 meters. Even a 10-meter rise would flood out most coastal cities, and that would be disaster enough for most people.

Some models show Antarctic ice producing a drop in sea levels. The explanation is simple: Antarctica is basically a high, cold desert. Precipitation is very low, and the ice cap exists basically because the little snow that falls never melts. Most climate models predict that rising temperatures will increase evaporation, and thus will increase precipitation in most areas. If Antarctica sees an increase of precipitation but stays below freezing, its glaciers will start growing in thickness. But the models are rather weak in this area, and you'd have problems finding any climatologist willing to put money on this outcome.

Note also most of the Arctic ice is sea ice, so its melting won't raise ocean levels by much. Only the ice on land (Greenland, Antarctica and many smaller islands) will do that. The Greenland ice corresponds to about a 5-meter rise in sea level, and it is melting fairly quickly now.

You can see one (moderately conservative) estimate at this USGS page. Google can find more, though it takes a bit of digging. (And you'll learn a lot about the science in the process.)

My favorite example of a "disaster" from warming is the impending loss of one of my favorite geography trivia questions: What are the two places in the world where there are glaciers on the equator? Most people guess one place fairly quickly. (They usually say Mt Kilamanjaro rather than Mt Kenya/Kirinyaga, but that's close enough.) They usually don't get the other place for some reason. Anyway, current predictions are that the glaciers in both of these places will be gone in 2 or 3 decades. So you'd better visit them while you still can.

whoops.. messed up my links. Guess I should use preview. Here are the ones I wanted to throw in..

I was reading about volcanoes a couple months back when Mount St Helens http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/News/framework.htmlcame back to life and thats what I learned of Yellowstones history and how absolutelly massive it is.

Here's an image http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/volcanoes/vyelupli ftmap.html marking the rise in Yellowstone's surface over the past year.

Bullshit.

Volcanoes: 145-255 million tons of CO2 per year, total.
Humans: 24 billion tons. About 150 times the amount of all volcanoes combined.

History repeats itself - during the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 the soil under the Marina District of San Francisco liquified and down came the buildings. Damage there was much more severe than in neighbouring areas of the city which were built on more solid foundations.

Best wishes,
Mike.

New Madrid eathquake of 1811-1812

3 times larger than the 64 AK quake and 10 times larger than the 1906 quake...

It's real.

Displacement during the 1906 earthquake was upward of 20 feet in some places.