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For Northern California I've heard numbers closer to 90-95% for the next 30 years.

62% chance for a M6.7 or greater striking the San Francisco Bay area in the next 30 years.

There was a small earthquake near New Madrid, MO just yesterday. It was only 3.7 (I think), but it still serves as a reminder that its there and active. Interesting that there was a small quake there while all these quakes have been occuring on the West Coast.

Recent US Earthquake Activity

USGS says 5.2, I'm around Santa Ana...

Looks like it was pretty close. Cool. Shaking lasted a good 8 seconds. Not usually so noteworthy, but this was rather stronger than usual.

It's just a little something I've been playing around with in my spare time.

It does use cookies to store the current settings, so when you go back to the page, it should be the same as when you left it.

The tiles for the photo and topo views are USGS images, sourced from Microsoft's terraserver-usa site. For the blended mode, they are generated as needed from the map and the photo, then cached locally on the server.

The address lookup is based on geo-locator using a database based on Tiger 2003.

Place lookup (and the landmark overlay) are based on both the USGS GNIS database, as well as the NGS Benchmark database. It has 2,504,693 entries in the database right now.

The Geourl overlay is based on geourl.org's XML feed - it's cached locally, and only polls geourl.org when data expires from the cache.

Dnsloc is based on DNS LOCation records - I ran a crawler a couple of weeks ago on every site listed in DMOZ, and found just over 1,000 sites that listed location info in their DNS records.

There are a few other overlays that are about ready, but I haven't put them on the main page yet - letting users add annotations, readings from weather stations, readings from streamflow stations, etc.

Basically, I want to take every web accessible database I can find containing information that makes sense when displayed geographically, and make it into an overlay.

It's just a little something I've been playing around with in my spare time.

It does use cookies to store the current settings, so when you go back to the page, it should be the same as when you left it.

The tiles for the photo and topo views are USGS images, sourced from Microsoft's terraserver-usa site. For the blended mode, they are generated as needed from the map and the photo, then cached locally on the server.

The address lookup is based on geo-locator using a database based on Tiger 2003.

Place lookup (and the landmark overlay) are based on both the USGS GNIS database, as well as the NGS Benchmark database. It has 2,504,693 entries in the database right now.

The Geourl overlay is based on geourl.org's XML feed - it's cached locally, and only polls geourl.org when data expires from the cache.

Dnsloc is based on DNS LOCation records - I ran a crawler a couple of weeks ago on every site listed in DMOZ, and found just over 1,000 sites that listed location info in their DNS records.

There are a few other overlays that are about ready, but I haven't put them on the main page yet - letting users add annotations, readings from weather stations, readings from streamflow stations, etc.

Basically, I want to take every web accessible database I can find containing information that makes sense when displayed geographically, and make it into an overlay.

Meh, I don't think it was a particularly good example of the scenery in California or Oregon. The video shows mostly numpers of other cars, and the road. I think the only feature I recognized was Mt. Shasta in northern Cali. You couldn't see features like the pretty resvours or forests much, he would need a camera facing to the side for that.

I'll see if I can do a caption of the route with features I can identify later. Here's a map of the route. He took I-5, the route with the blue shield labeled '5' from Los Angeles to southern Oregon.

I was under the impression that the arial and topo maps presented via terraserver were copyrighted/owned by the people that put them together in the first place.

Very true! However who they got them from is likely the USGS. USGS has a server of seamless data (http://seamless.usgs.gov/) that is a really good data source.
Examples:
- NED 10m Elevation data set, US
- STRM 30m Elevation data, US (for most of the world this data set is available at 90m due to restrictions imposed due to 9/11)
- NLCD 1992 30m Land Cover data set.
- Orthophotography!!!! DOQQ, this 1m data that covers much of the US, however the data could be 10 years old or more. I think you initially have to purchase this data from USGS.
- There's current weather satellite images...

Next source has Landsat Satellite Imagery and more sources of Elevation models, if you look in the links. Also there are some really neat projects.
http://terrainmap.com/

Finally your state or province might have a GIS data clearing house, which might provide you with topomaps. The Geological Survey of Alabama has an okay website of data that gives the topographic maps in GeoTIFF (TIFF with a standard GIS spatial data tag).
http://www.gsa.state.al.us/gsa/GIS/DATA.htm l

Oh and to answer your question about legally being encumberred. This would not be the case as long as the agency that scanned the map or digitized the data is a Federal Government Agency. (TVA, USGS, ...)

You say you want to collect bunch of maps for your community. You'd better check and see if someone has done this. (I bet you already have!) I hope you put these up on a website for other member of your community.

One more source, in which you will probably have the most success is with your local (city, county, regional) planning (GIS) commity. Ask them for spatial data and tell them how you are going to use it, so they can make changes if needed.

Hope this helps!

Most of the USGS topo maps I've seen are older than Microsoft, some even older than Bill Gates. They aren't updated very often and are useless for finding roads and streets. I use USGS maps for hiking and they ARE useful for that.

Topo maps are basically elevation maps with a few major features like railroads and rivers thrown in. Topography doesn't change very quickly, so there is little need for updates to the paper maps. If you really need current data, use the national map. The DEM (Digital Elevation) data is relatively current, and you can add the layers (roads, etc.) that you want.

Your best (free) bet is probably TIGER data in either its original form or in shapefile form, updated and corrected locally.

TIGER is made from USGS DLG or DRG files, combined with some updating done by the US Census Bureau. Since the census is only done periodically, the TIGER data gets out of date.

Some organizations take TIGER data and update it and resell it in various forms. One of these is NAVTEQ, who has people out on the road constantly driving around and updating their maps. As a result, this information tends to be rather expensive, but pretty high quality. Other companies in the same business are DeLorme and UnderTow (formerly Chicago Mapping, I believe). I think UnderTow's Precision Mapping product has pretty decent licensing terms, last I looked at it (several years ago). Much better than DeLorme.

If you want to get your own imagery and work from that, there are several good free sources:

University of Maryland's GLCF site serves up 30m color imagery and 15m monochrome imagery for most of the world. To make the color imagery useful, you'll want to take a look at Scott Cherba's Tutorial using Photoshop or Terrainmap's tutorial using PaintShop Pro. One of the software companies I've founded makes an inexpensive utility called PixelSense (Windows, $49) to do this process automatically.

The United States Department of Agriculture Lighthouse Server serves up a variety of data including free 1m monochrome mosaics of virtually every county in the US. These are large files, and come in MrSID format, for which you'll need to download a Viewer (time-limited trial version) that can save out the portions you want. The nice thing about this is that they are mosaiced and brightness-balanced, whereas if you just go buy/download a bunch of DOQQs elsewhere, they may not match well at the edges of each file.

Finally, in urban areas, you may be able to take advantage of the USGS Urban Areas High-Resolution Orthoimagery available for some cities from the USGS Seamless Server. This data is fantastic, 1ft resolution color airphotos. You can see cars and individual people. It's very recent, having been aquired after 2001 for national disaster planning and response purposes.

Good luck. I'd be happy to answer questions you might have privately, as a lot of my customers do cartography.

Your best (free) bet is probably TIGER data in either its original form or in shapefile form, updated and corrected locally.

TIGER is made from USGS DLG or DRG files, combined with some updating done by the US Census Bureau. Since the census is only done periodically, the TIGER data gets out of date.

Some organizations take TIGER data and update it and resell it in various forms. One of these is NAVTEQ, who has people out on the road constantly driving around and updating their maps. As a result, this information tends to be rather expensive, but pretty high quality. Other companies in the same business are DeLorme and UnderTow (formerly Chicago Mapping, I believe). I think UnderTow's Precision Mapping product has pretty decent licensing terms, last I looked at it (several years ago). Much better than DeLorme.

If you want to get your own imagery and work from that, there are several good free sources:

University of Maryland's GLCF site serves up 30m color imagery and 15m monochrome imagery for most of the world. To make the color imagery useful, you'll want to take a look at Scott Cherba's Tutorial using Photoshop or Terrainmap's tutorial using PaintShop Pro. One of the software companies I've founded makes an inexpensive utility called PixelSense (Windows, $49) to do this process automatically.

The United States Department of Agriculture Lighthouse Server serves up a variety of data including free 1m monochrome mosaics of virtually every county in the US. These are large files, and come in MrSID format, for which you'll need to download a Viewer (time-limited trial version) that can save out the portions you want. The nice thing about this is that they are mosaiced and brightness-balanced, whereas if you just go buy/download a bunch of DOQQs elsewhere, they may not match well at the edges of each file.

Finally, in urban areas, you may be able to take advantage of the USGS Urban Areas High-Resolution Orthoimagery available for some cities from the USGS Seamless Server. This data is fantastic, 1ft resolution color airphotos. You can see cars and individual people. It's very recent, having been aquired after 2001 for national disaster planning and response purposes.

Good luck. I'd be happy to answer questions you might have privately, as a lot of my customers do cartography.

Your best (free) bet is probably TIGER data in either its original form or in shapefile form, updated and corrected locally.

TIGER is made from USGS DLG or DRG files, combined with some updating done by the US Census Bureau. Since the census is only done periodically, the TIGER data gets out of date.

Some organizations take TIGER data and update it and resell it in various forms. One of these is NAVTEQ, who has people out on the road constantly driving around and updating their maps. As a result, this information tends to be rather expensive, but pretty high quality. Other companies in the same business are DeLorme and UnderTow (formerly Chicago Mapping, I believe). I think UnderTow's Precision Mapping product has pretty decent licensing terms, last I looked at it (several years ago). Much better than DeLorme.

If you want to get your own imagery and work from that, there are several good free sources:

University of Maryland's GLCF site serves up 30m color imagery and 15m monochrome imagery for most of the world. To make the color imagery useful, you'll want to take a look at Scott Cherba's Tutorial using Photoshop or Terrainmap's tutorial using PaintShop Pro. One of the software companies I've founded makes an inexpensive utility called PixelSense (Windows, $49) to do this process automatically.

The United States Department of Agriculture Lighthouse Server serves up a variety of data including free 1m monochrome mosaics of virtually every county in the US. These are large files, and come in MrSID format, for which you'll need to download a Viewer (time-limited trial version) that can save out the portions you want. The nice thing about this is that they are mosaiced and brightness-balanced, whereas if you just go buy/download a bunch of DOQQs elsewhere, they may not match well at the edges of each file.

Finally, in urban areas, you may be able to take advantage of the USGS Urban Areas High-Resolution Orthoimagery available for some cities from the USGS Seamless Server. This data is fantastic, 1ft resolution color airphotos. You can see cars and individual people. It's very recent, having been aquired after 2001 for national disaster planning and response purposes.

Good luck. I'd be happy to answer questions you might have privately, as a lot of my customers do cartography.

Your best (free) bet is probably TIGER data in either its original form or in shapefile form, updated and corrected locally.

TIGER is made from USGS DLG or DRG files, combined with some updating done by the US Census Bureau. Since the census is only done periodically, the TIGER data gets out of date.

Some organizations take TIGER data and update it and resell it in various forms. One of these is NAVTEQ, who has people out on the road constantly driving around and updating their maps. As a result, this information tends to be rather expensive, but pretty high quality. Other companies in the same business are DeLorme and UnderTow (formerly Chicago Mapping, I believe). I think UnderTow's Precision Mapping product has pretty decent licensing terms, last I looked at it (several years ago). Much better than DeLorme.

If you want to get your own imagery and work from that, there are several good free sources:

University of Maryland's GLCF site serves up 30m color imagery and 15m monochrome imagery for most of the world. To make the color imagery useful, you'll want to take a look at Scott Cherba's Tutorial using Photoshop or Terrainmap's tutorial using PaintShop Pro. One of the software companies I've founded makes an inexpensive utility called PixelSense (Windows, $49) to do this process automatically.

The United States Department of Agriculture Lighthouse Server serves up a variety of data including free 1m monochrome mosaics of virtually every county in the US. These are large files, and come in MrSID format, for which you'll need to download a Viewer (time-limited trial version) that can save out the portions you want. The nice thing about this is that they are mosaiced and brightness-balanced, whereas if you just go buy/download a bunch of DOQQs elsewhere, they may not match well at the edges of each file.

Finally, in urban areas, you may be able to take advantage of the USGS Urban Areas High-Resolution Orthoimagery available for some cities from the USGS Seamless Server. This data is fantastic, 1ft resolution color airphotos. You can see cars and individual people. It's very recent, having been aquired after 2001 for national disaster planning and response purposes.

Good luck. I'd be happy to answer questions you might have privately, as a lot of my customers do cartography.

The USGS also has maps viewable online. I'm not sure, but FOIA may make their maps part of the public domain. They talk about FOIA on the USGS web site, he might want to check that out. There's a ton of other information there that might be relevant.

The USGS also has maps viewable online. I'm not sure, but FOIA may make their maps part of the public domain. They talk about FOIA on the USGS web site, he might want to check that out. There's a ton of other information there that might be relevant.

I too, was looking for a public domain mapping system to assist in a site we are doing about the Big Island of Hawai'i (www.instanthawaii.com). After scouring for sources the National Map Viewer was the best bet. All their data is in the public domain and can be used in a variety of ways.

Once you go to the site you will receive a very nice GUI interface with selections on the left and right and in the middle a map of the US including Hawai'i.

Using your cursor, click and drag a rectangle around the area you are interested in and it will zoom in on your screen. You can continue to zoom in using the same technique (or just clicking in the center of where you want to zoom) but don't zoom past the SCALE=1 graph on the upper right corner (scales below 1 pixelate). At a scale of one the map shows very detailed information - roads are visible, etc.

Now the real fun begins... using the options on the RIGHT SIDE, click each one and look at what they offer. The offerings will change depending on the scale (at a scale of 1, all offerings that are available will be allowed) - some offerings disappear at higher resolutions). THese options act like overlays - you can get street maps, water usage, historical maps, topographical maps, etc. Some of the layers will overwrite other layers so if you want a more complex map you might have to take a number of snapshots.

The selections on the left side are rarely used - except to rezoom the map and scroll the map side to side.

Using this system I was able to generate at a scale of 1, the entire Big Island as a series of over 80 screen shots that I remerged in photoshop to create on HUGE (over 200 megabytes) map that includes all topographical information, roads and rivers and streams. Since this is a volcanic island the map shows most of the craters (anything deeper than about 250 to 300 feet) and quite a few craters I didn't know existed.

This is one of the best tools out there - is a bit tedious to use but once you get the hang of it - it is invaluable.

That's the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Yeah, there's definitely no point to Chilltowner's project--which is now nothing more than a hyperlink to the National Map.

As hyperlinks for the copy-and-paste impaired:

National Map
Direct link to viewer

That's the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Yeah, there's definitely no point to Chilltowner's project--which is now nothing more than a hyperlink to the National Map.

As hyperlinks for the copy-and-paste impaired:

National Map
Direct link to viewer

You mean Bioremediation? There's already gobs of research being done in this area. :)

The geobacter project does exactly that for Uranium waste. This was also mentioned back in October:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10 /1 2/2057227&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=191

Other links about bioremediation:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
USGS's site on bioremediation

The question is how much water do we need to supply the power we need?

Well we need Deutrinium and Trittium in equal quantities. These isotopes are much rarer than Hydrogen-1 but we can just burn any Hydrogen and excess Deutrinium and recover most of the energy it took to electrolyse the water to get it and we are left with water.

The world uses about 4x10^17 btus of energy a year ( Source ) which is equal to about 4.2x10^20 joules a year. Each atom of helium 4 produced by fusion of hydrogen provides 2.819x10-12 joules so we need about 1.5x10^32 reactions a year. As each molecule of water gives 2 atoms of hydrogen and 2 are required for each reaction this is the number of molecules of water that need to be electrolysed. This corresponds to about 5 million litres of water (bare in mind that the relative molecular mass of the water we are using is 21 not 18 as the deutrinium and tritium we are extracting are heavier than the hydrogen-1 commonly found in water). If we assume that the power station is 5% efficient (about the same as modern power stations) then we need 20 times this amount (100 million litres per year). Comparing this with the total amount of water in the world which is about 326 million cubic miles ( Source ) (1.4x10^21 litres) we find that the amount we will need in the next million years is about 0.0000000007% of the water in the world assuming current power consumption so the question about what to do when it does run out is accedemic anyway.

What is the purpose of creating 3d terrain maps? What type of textures or data do you want to overlay? Is there any economic value to your project? Do you want to be able to do a virtual walkthrough, or just generate static images?

If you are trying to program a flight simulator, your needs are totally different than if you were trying to do mapping or GIS analysis. Also, you could just be trying to make a pretty picture.

Pretty picture:
Use terragen (as mentioned by previous poster)

Mapping/GIS analysis of geospatial data:
ArcView (not cheap)

Architectural rendering:
Lightwave (not cheap) or RapidSite 3d (not sure if they are still making this one)

Goofing around with flight sim:
some game engine

You might want to take a look at this site:
Vterrain is a pretty cool place to get started. The community is pretty helpful - some French dude who programs flight sims gave me some pointers in developing a commercial 3d mapping application.

Finally, if you need a source for terrain maps, check out the USGS's National Elevation Dataset (NED). This is the best thing since sliced bread in the GIS community.

Good luck...

In case anybody wanted to know the actual location of White Island, here it is

Well this is what the USGS says about that... And give the credit to Google.

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/prepare/factsheets/NewMad rid/

I'm moving.


Personally, I don't know why. I'd much rather deal with earthquakes than tornadoes. In an earthquake, your stuff falls into a nice neat little pile (at least before the ensuing fires engulf it). In a tornado, you, your family and your possesions are blown away into other states. :-P

The thing is, the plate as massive as it is in scale is elastic and these faults, like the San Andreas may run hundreds of miles. When there's a shift it may only move the whole plate a few inches in an area (or even feet in one example north of San Francisco where a fence was warped) that's a lot of mass to move and we're just standing on it like ants. Some pressure relieved in one locaction undoubtably builds pressure somewhere else, or even transfers presure to a parallel fault. This is a particularly good place to start when looking at the scope of things.

Still, as far as I have seen the worst to hit North America since europeans settled here struck in a series between 1811 and 1812 near New Madrid, Missouri, one of which reportedly run church bells as far away as Washington DC.

Some day the big one will hit and all the land east of the San Andreas Fault will slide off into the Atlantic Ocean

Still, as far as I have seen the worst to hit North America since europeans settled here struck in a series between 1811 and 1812 near New Madrid, Missouri, one of which reportedly run church bells as far away as Washington DC.

Some day the big one will hit and all the land east of the San Andreas Fault will slide off into the Atlantic Ocean

From the Science Daily article..."Making that determination will help in understanding whether they are adding to or relieving stress in the Cascadia subduction zone off the Washington and B.C. coast, where the Juan de Fuca plate dives beneath the North American plate. The subduction zone is capable of generating great earthquakes, and scientists recently determined that a Cascadia earthquake in 1700 measured about 9.0 in magnitude."

And Wired... "The coastal region of northwest Washington state and southeast British Columbia is prone to earthquakes, and scientist warn the area gets hit with a devastating shake of magnitude 9 about every 500 years."

Sure.. we're only 196 years off the 500 year mark since the last 9.0, but for it only to pop up a few years ago makes it seem very ominous.

This data, while very interesting, could still go 2 ways. It is helping to alleviate and prevent major earthquakes in that area, or it's a major precurosr to a huge event that could happen in the near future. The hard part? What is considered teh near future... tomorrow? 5 years? 10 years? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

What's even more interesting is that I have yet to see any reports about this coming from any of the California plates, perhaps it hasn't been found or tested for or it's just not there.. Who knows.

The toothpaste on my shelf contains 0.24% sodium fluoride; that's about one part in a thousand that's fluoride, by mass. If we assume that I go through 250 g of toothpaste per year--about half a pound--that's 0.25 g of fluoride I consume each year. Over a quarter billion or so Americans, that would be sixty or seventy tons of fluoride.

The average per capita water use in the United States is (rounded up) about two hundred gallons per day. (Ref.) Assuming that all of that water gets fluoridated at 1 part per million, that's another 200 tons per year fluoride.

If we assume that the fluoride was originally sourced from calcium fluoride (fluorspar), that's a total of about 900 tons of fluorspar to meet the entire nation's dental fluride requirements.

Current U.S. use of fluorspar is on the order of six hundred thousand tons per year. (Ref.) Nearly all is imported, and two-thirds (66%) of those imports are from China.

To conclude, fluoride use for public health purposes makes a negligible contribution to total domestic fluorine demand--less than a fifth of one percent of the total fluorine consumed. Also, domestic leaders haven't got anything to gain by selling more fluorides--the U.S. imports most of its supply from a country it doesn't particularly like, and where it definitely doesn't own any of the local natural resources.

We have lots of nutria here in Louisiana that might also be trainable for this. As an added bonus, after they blow, they should be just crispy enough to eat!

Phurd Phlegm says:

"For instance, the Chesapeake Bay on the east coast of the United States is a 90 km impact structure."

Close, but not quite. The impact was at the southern end of what is now Chesapeake Bay, but was then just sort-of offshore proto-Virginia, USA. There's an picture of the crater on the cover of this paper about it. Somewhere I read that the crater is so huge and deep that fragments of the wall exist above the surface as separate ridges in southeastern Virginia and southern Maryland, even though the crater bottom itself is several km beneath the surface.

Lake Powell Article

Lake Powell Photo

Lake Powell Satellite Image

Ipswich River in Mass

Tellurium is about $14/lb. Gallium, by comparison, is about $1000/lb, which is why gallium-arsenide photocells, which can reach 30% efficiency, aren't widely used.

World production of tellurium is only about 100 metric tons. Gold production is 25 times larger. Tellurium is cheap because it is produced as a byproduct of copper smelting. Nobody mines tellurium directly at present. So there may be a supply problem if demand increases substantially.

duh. that is so 50's-era.

So weird. "Satellite Cameras" are the reason you can buy a cheap CCD at Fry's for $15, right next to the snap-dried ice cream ...

Did a search, for those who don't know, here's an apparently large coprolite with accompanying analysis.

The problem I see with this bubble stuff is that they detect it by the emission of neutrons. Anything which gives out lots of neutrons is going to have many of the problems of fission - any plant big enough tobe useful will need shielding and will produce nasty waste makeing decomissioning expensive.

ObOldJoke: Some years ago, a student paper allegedly proposed that the fusion reactor architecture most worth pursuing was a Gravitational Confinement design.

The kicker is that he may be right (you could power a state with a solar farm the size of a medium-sized city, if you had cheap enough bulk power storage, while fusion plants are likely to be very expensive to build and maintain). We'll find out in 50 years or so.

You sir no nothing about science. You CANNOT make a claim with the limited data points that humans currently have about weather patterns.

First, I'm only repeating what the general scientific consensus is. This is nothing new or strange.

Second, If we had limited data points, you would have a valid point. But the fact is we have very precise data points garnered from ice cores drilled in the Antartic that shows the content of CO2 in the atmosphere and the related temperature changes for the past 500,000 years.

See this link

So I would say, it is you sir, who knows nothing about science.

It was also said that the toxic output of this blast contained nearly a thousand times the ozone depleting chemicals that humans have created since the Industrial Revolution."

I've heard this claim before, investigated it, and found it to be ridiculous.

From this reference: "...[T]he large explosive eruption of Mount Pinatubo on 15 June 1991 ... injected about 17 million tonnes of SO2 into the stratosphere. ." The fossil-fuel derived output of SO2 was roughly equivalent to 68 Tg/yr of S (68 million tonnes/yr) in the late 80's (source: Global Environment: Water, Air, and Geochemical Cycles, by Berner and Berner, 1996). Since this number is only for the sulfur component, the total mass of SO2 is even larger, 136 million tonnes/yr.. A year's worth of human sulfur dioxide production far outweighs Pinatubo's production. The sulfate aerosols resulting from SO2 act as surfaces for ozone-destroying chlorine. The lifetime for these sulfate aerosols is 3 years, as compared to 45-100 years for common manmade (and ozone destroying) CFCs (ref).

Also from the 1st ref."...[V]olcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). 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 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons). Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes...."

It was also said that the toxic output of this blast contained nearly a thousand times the ozone depleting chemicals that humans have created since the Industrial Revolution."

I've heard this claim before, investigated it, and found it to be ridiculous.

From this reference: "...[T]he large explosive eruption of Mount Pinatubo on 15 June 1991 ... injected about 17 million tonnes of SO2 into the stratosphere. ." The fossil-fuel derived output of SO2 was roughly equivalent to 68 Tg/yr of S (68 million tonnes/yr) in the late 80's (source: Global Environment: Water, Air, and Geochemical Cycles, by Berner and Berner, 1996). Since this number is only for the sulfur component, the total mass of SO2 is even larger, 136 million tonnes/yr.. A year's worth of human sulfur dioxide production far outweighs Pinatubo's production. The sulfate aerosols resulting from SO2 act as surfaces for ozone-destroying chlorine. The lifetime for these sulfate aerosols is 3 years, as compared to 45-100 years for common manmade (and ozone destroying) CFCs (ref).

Also from the 1st ref."...[V]olcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). 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 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons). Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes...."

Mt. St Helens was a relatively small eruption.

I believe the poster you were responding to was citing the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. This particular eruption in 1991 was at least 10 times as violent as Mt St. Helens.

It created an "aerosol cloud" that spanned the continents and even affected global weather.

Scientists estimated a 4 to 6 percent loss in ozone at the time. It was also said that the toxic output of this blast contained nearly a thousand times the ozone depleting chemicals that humans have created since the Industrial Revolution.

And here's the kicker: This was only the 2nd largest eruption of the 20th century!

Sometimes I think it is human pride that makes us want to be the most influential, and thus devestating, force on this planet.

All human activity since the industrial revolution is less than one small to moderate eruption

Because, for example, the eruption of Mount St Helens put 1 Million tonnes of sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere - these are the things that have the most effect on the worldwide climate, the ash from volcanos is local effect only.

Now, a million tonnes sounds absolutely huge. But it is still only just over five times what, say, the State of Louisiana emits as sulfur dioxide every year.

So in other words - the US easily produces as much sulfur dioxide, and more, every year than the explosion of Mount St Helens.

Or put it this way - you get sulfur dioxide from burning fossil fuels. We mine, worldwide, billions of tonnes of coal every year (the US alone produces just under a billion). How much sulfur dioxide do you think all that lot produces? The answer is that a typical small coal-fired power station (100 MW) may produce from 20 000 up to 30 000 tons of sulphur dioxide a year. In other words, Mt St Helens is worth a measly 40 small coal-fired power stations. How many of them are there in the US alone?

Well, for heaven's sake, talk to one of them, will you?

Wrong. This says otherwise.

No, it doesn't.

Do you know something scientists at Argonne National Labs don't?

No, but I know something that you don't, apparently the difference between the sentences "Distillation removes both ionic and nonionic organic contaminants" and "Distillation removes all ionic and nonionic organic contaminants." Distillation can remove a large amount of contamination, especially if done repeatedly using industrial equipment. But the fact is that the distilled water you buy at the grocery store has got nothin' on the deionized water used to clean silicon waffers.

I am also curious how you know Calder is a "scientist at Argonne National Labs" and not a high school geometry teacher: (from your link) "NEWTON is an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators." I just find this funny because you took issue with my citing the site for a furnishing industry earlier.

Now, because I am getting tired of carrying on this stupid debate, here is a bunch of those fancy internet links you love so much:

These people manufacture deionized water. Suppose they wouldn't know anything about it. . .

Microelectronics and Nanotechnology Research Laboratory

Myron L Company

Deionized water as a cleaner Question: Why not just use distilled if it has even less ion concentration? Why buy more expensive de-ionized water?

Lytron Fun quote: "Care must be exercised when using DI water. The very lack of ions also makes this coolant unusually corrosive. Called the "universal solvent," DI water is one of the most aggressive solvents known. In fact, to a varying degree, it will dissolve everything to which it is exposed. Therefore, all materials in the cooling loop must be corrosion-resistant."

Semiconductor Glossary

another random newsgroup

Office of water quality technical memorandum

Early Death Comes from Drinking Distilled Water Very interesting article.

Wikipedia entry Interesting quotes: Even distillation does not completely purify water, because of contaminants with similar boiling points and droplets of unvaporized liquid carried with the steam. However, 99.9% pure water can be obtained by distillation. Reverse osmosis is theoretically the most thorough method of large-scale water purification available, although perfect semi-permable membranes are difficult to create.

Why I say no to distilled water Another interesting article on the health side effects of drinking distilled water.

Why purified water is bad to consume

Note that there is a difference between household water purifiers (both distillers and deionizers) and industrial equipment. The later only run the process once, and the so the water has been distilled/deionized, but that doesn't mean it is deionized.

Now, I'm sure you can find a thousand more sites telling me how distilled water is actually so pure it will sometimes spontaneously develop sentience and how deionized water is not only good for you it can kill cancer and stop

No one expects oil to last into the next century. The expected to peak rather soon. What we really need is more government funded research into alternative energy so we can get off this oil train as soon as possible. Or at least be ready when it crashes.

You can find a number of sites here... the first one on the list (yes, it's Microsoft, but it does the job quite well) is one of the two that I tried on there, and it worked out quite nicely. Was able to get an aerial map of my home down to the surrounding 800x800yd area with little issue, excepting that you typically expect clicking on a point on the map to center it.

The USGS who traditionally take a high figure for reserves estimate to a 95% confidence rating that there are no more than 112.6 billion barrels in the US - including reserves located in offshore areas and those that will become available through higher prices and improved extraction techniques. Proven reserves are only 30.4 billion barrels, so the USGS is extrapolating heavily and depending on better estimates of existing fields - not the development of new fields.

Reserves simply can't go much higher because all of the oil provinces in the US have been thoroughly explored and drilling deeper takes you through the oil formation window and into a zone where natural gas is created.

Saudi Arabia's proven reserves are 261.8 billion barrels, with an estimated 40 billion more down there somewhere. However, you cut the cake, there is at least 2.5 times as much oil under Saudi Arabia as under the US.

The reserves/production value are also telling, the US has a R/P value of 10.8 - that is less than eleven years before existing reserves run dry at current production rates; Mexico surprisingly goes dry in 10.1 years, Saudi Arabia? 86 years!

Best wishes,
Mike.

As its only 2500 years this thing has been sealed up, I'd guess they are doing something a tad more obvious like looking at isotope levels in trapped air bubbles to determine the age of the ice cores they've extracted.

Tectonic plate movement seems to be unconnected to the rest of what you're talking about, but it seems irrelevant anyway, as the lake looks to be well inside the antarctic plate which would have moved only couple of miles in that timeframe (I would have thought the fact that there has been so little earthquake activity that the ice is still intact was a big clue).

As for DNA... this wasn't a cryogenic tube for bacterial pizza delivery boys, both the lakes microbes and those outside have diverged from their ancestors, and even at the time they would have been divergent because they are unlikely to have been in physical proximity (or they'd all be covered in ice right now).

What you're suggesting is somewhat equivalent to comparing the code of the Linux 2.6 kernel and SCO Unixware 7.1.3, without using any previous versions, and trying to guess who copied what from whom. And just as ridiculous.

Dammit, I've just been trolled...by the bastard lovechild of Michael Crichton and Darl McBride.

Map of the Plates

No that's incorrect. According to the UN, the US pumped 5.8 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2000. Volcanism is a huge contribution to CO2 production, but the human race produces more. The US in the above report increased its CO2 production rate by roughly 15% from 1990 to 2000. Alternate sources peg the CO2 release in the same neighborhood (estimates 5.5 billion tons of the carbon portion of CO2 released into the atmosphere - that's roughly 20 billion tons of CO2 released globally per year. In comparison, natural volcanic activity releases around 130-230 million tons of CO2 per year on average.

Very true. Just look at a map like this. Just Sahara alone is a sandbox (larger than Europe?) for terraforming experiments that could eventually provide space for a population like 500M - and still have room to spare for reservations, where desert specific wildlife could be preserved. After that, the desert in southern Africa, Arabia and Asia could be terraformed.

Of course it could be argued that these areas, being terrestrial, by definition already _are_ terraformed. So i'd suggest we find a more precise term that would indicate the _real_ intent: making land capable of sustaining life for a certain population density, without a significant import of food.

This means we have to study the causes of desertification, and hopefully find out a way to reverse the process.

I'd much rather see the USA put the money in such a project (together with the other rich parts of the world, of course) than see the money sent of on what can in reality only be considered an expensive, exclusive, and thorughly extravagant tourist trip to Mars. Sure, we may learn something from that trip. But the _relevance_ of what is learned is questionable, I'd say.

-Lasse

Every year it drains it aquifier and every year it gets less and less. It isn't refilling. The chance Inida had to avoid it it lost in the 90's.

Have you ever looked at a map of the US aquifer system? More details here. I'd be most worried about the Ogallala Aquifer that serves Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. That's draining quickly. Another generation or two and its Ogallala's remaining water resources will not be economically viable to extract. Bye bye US grain production. Of course, the reduction in Canadian natural gas exports will have shut down the US fertiliser production long before then...

Every year it drains it aquifier and every year it gets less and less. It isn't refilling. The chance Inida had to avoid it it lost in the 90's.

Have you ever looked at a map of the US aquifer system? More details here. I'd be most worried about the Ogallala Aquifer that serves Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. That's draining quickly. Another generation or two and its Ogallala's remaining water resources will not be economically viable to extract. Bye bye US grain production. Of course, the reduction in Canadian natural gas exports will have shut down the US fertiliser production long before then...