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Quake Changes Earth's Rotation, Moves Islands
kernel panic attack writes "This week's deadly Asian Quake and Tsunami may have been so powerful,
that it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article,
a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough
to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds. A second
article
says the quake moved undersea tectonic plates by up to 98 feet, shifting
islands near Sumatra out to sea an unknown distance. Also, a
USGS team wants images from commercial satellite operators to
help pinpoint coastline damage. Lastly, an interesting article from the Australian Spaceguard Survey about the need for a Tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves." The current estimated death toll is now nearly 70,000; Amazon and Google, among others, have added front-page links to simplify donating to the disaster relief effort.
Probably not as much traffic as Amazon or Google, but Apple also has also modified their front page to offer multiple relief links. Even the four boxes at the bottom have been changed to different organizations.
I would not think a quake, even of this magnitude could have that much effect on rotation. Then again, the speculation is that there could never be enough energy for a 10.0 quake, so 9.0 is pretty high up on the list. It is impossible to comprehend, but an 8.6 earthquake has enough energy to equal 60,000 hydrogen bombs. Amazing.
if this will have any affect on the asteroid 2004MN4 course, related to the earth.
I have 3 friends which were supposed to be in Asia at the time. 2 have come back before the desaster happened and on had some water around his feet, not realizing the dramatic extend of the desaster. He's safe home now.
Lucky day for my friends, but other people are far from that. I'll donate this evening.
In Korea, all your base are Only For Old People
but it doesnt make it fact
it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds
What will be the impact of this on geostationnary satellites?
On the measuring of time?
On the GPS?
Iraq: war to save the U
Does this mean we are going to switch to that guy's alternative calendar now?
I thought Quake was set on Mars, not Earth.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
3 microseconds faster! 3 microseconds!? That quake is robbing me of SLEEP. I want a 25 hour day dammit, so I can sleep in ONE HOUR extra each day... although, I might not get into the swing of resetting my watch.
Article is useless, and indeed meaningless without the _what_ filled in...
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
"a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds."
Thats alright, it all works out in the end. You see everytime we launch a explortion vehicle we loose a nanoscopic amount of rotation speed.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
"Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or 3 millionths of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis."
3 millionths of a second faster...per year? Per day? Per second? It would seem that that would be critical information left out of this and all other articles I've seen mentioning this change.
the wiki is here and some amazing videos are here
Absolutely amazing, the death-toll is reaching 69,000. I don't mean to be pessimistic, but would a warning system really have helped, though? I mean there are accounts of entire villages just being swept out to sea. Any life, obviously, is worth saving, but in the future I wonder how you could warn villages without power/communication systems. Very tragic.
Sig it.
Sp that's why I was feeling dizzy for the past week!
Scientist warns of Atlantic tidal wave
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5652141/
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I seem to remember seeing something a few months ago about the earth's rotation slowing a bit -- something that the scientists can't seem to explain. Any chance this sort of thing could be related or a partial explanation?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
It is interesting the Quake speeds up the earths rotation. Because there are factors like the moon that actually slow down the earths rotation. I don't know the rates of average earthquake will speed up the earths rotation vs. the rate the gravitional effect of the moon slows the rotation. So I guess in some ways earth quakes are a good thing in the long term. Because the earth having a 672 hour day would probably be more desasterious to life.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
espo
OK, let me rephrase that question, largest natural disaster to affect mankind?
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it is.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
There is a nuclear power station in Kalpakkam, India on the coastline that got hit by the Tsunami. The reactor was shutdown automatically. There was some flooding in the unit. The authorites claim it is safe. I wonder if these nuclear power station has any safegaurds for earthquacks.
THe rotation can be effected, exactly how you describe. But that cannot affect the orbit of the Earth.
0.000003 seconds * 365 days = 0.001095 seconds per year
0.001095 sec/yr * 1000 years = 1.095 seconds
You're all bastards!
A 10.0 earthquake has energy equivilant 1,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT. It would create a fault that circles the earth. A 12.0 on the other hand, with 160,000,000,000,000 tons of tnt energy, would break the hearth in half. Comparatively, the Northridge, CA quake of 1994 was "only" equal to 5,000,000 tons of emergy.
It's still hard to wrap my mind around the extent of the disaster.
It also is amazing just how much information we have at our fingertips from cell phones, cameras, the internet, and more. Had this happened twenty years ago, the sense of it would be different.
It's amazing seeing the global impact, and being aware of the global impact. The world is much smaller these days.
I am also heartened to see how the internet has given people information on how to help out. That, too, is different than what we would have faced twenty years ago. Let's hope it makes a difference.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
While it is important to have a warning system, if you look at the historical impact of tsunamis you will see that they don't happen that often. Aid money could be used for better things at this point in time.
w ave/surge)
For those interested in historical data, check out the em-dat database
http://www.em-dat.net/disasters/profiles.php
(
As if there wasn't too little time in the day already.
Think of all the electric I will save when I use them 3 microseconds of extra sunlight in the evening! I could save a whole seconds worth of power before I die! I don't even feel guilty for running 2 PCs all day long now!
I like muppets.
How could the Earth shift it's rotation?
It always revolved around me before...
Amazon.com's front page has a 1-click donation link available. The money goes to the Red Cross.
-jls
Techno-pagan
will this force Fox to rename threir show previously known as 24 Hours
I myself donated $500 to AmeriCares which seems to be a fairly reputable charity, and I'm only a poor graduate student.
Those of you who are well off enough, please, donate as much as you can to your favorite charity.
I quote John Donne:
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
I, the rotational inertia, is calculated different ways for different geometries. A long stick held by the end has a larger I than the same stick held by the center, for instance. Another example is a sphere, like the Earth, rotating on an axis. If it suddenly puts out a long arm, that's going to increase its rotation inertia considerably, decreasing its angular velocity. Lifting up a whole region by a few inches could easily do that.
What kind of global climate changes could be experienced due to the alteration of the Earth's axis by one inch?
Will that cause more or less light to strike particular areas heating/cooling the air, thusly altering the jet stream enough to manipulate the weather in a good/bad for us fasion?
BTW, the speed up of the Earth's spin is referring to the 24 hour cycle of days on Earth.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Network TV news keeps saying it caused Earth to "wobble on its axis." It already does that, which is where climatic seasons come from. If it did wobble more/differently, how might the seasons be impacted, if at all?
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
this article at BBC News
states that a cyclone in 1970 killed up to 500,000 people in Bangladesh.
Also China suffered similar losses when an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.3 almost obliterated the north-eastern city of Tangshan in 1976. The official number of people killed was put at around 250,000, although some said the figure was more like 750,000.
And not much over 100 years ago In 1887, about 900,000 people died when [China's] Yellow River burst its banks in the worst-ever recorded flooding
Or, in terms of real catastrophe that *might* be human-created/contributed
The droughts that swept across sub-Saharan African in the 1980s led to the starvation of an estimated one million people. They are threatening to do the same again
I suppose, to a smaller extent, it would help lower crime rates if this was also done at all NBA games.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
I keep hearing reports that there were actually two or three tsunami waves hitting the affected areas? Is this normal or does this indicate multiple earthquakes?
As a general rule, if you evacuate an area due to a tsunami, should you expect several waves several hours apart?
If you're wondering why the earth is spinning faster now, consider this. When an ice skater spins around, they start by spinning slowly with their arms outstretched. As they pull their arms in, they spin faster and faster. What happened to the earth was similar. One tectonic plate was shoved underground, making the earth spin faster. The same thing happens to stars when they go nova. All of the mass of the star is condenced into a small area, so it spins very fast. The result is a pulsar.
How about serving bad beer?
TFA is sketchy.
No mass was added or taken away from the planet, so how exactly could its rotational speed have changed?
Is it analogous to a figure skater spinning with arms extended, then pulling them in, making them spin faster?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
First comes the well-meaning-but-naive assertion that "there needs to be" this system, then comes the subtle hint that wealthier nations should pay for it, since theirs is the privilege of strength, while others have the right of weakness. All of this culminates in the UN declaring the civilized world to be "stingy", and some knee-jerk reaction by the USian Con-gress to fund it, and 173 miscellaneous pork-barrel projects for midwestern states, all rationalized because its "for the poor".
I, for one, do not welcome our new socialist overlords.
-1, Troll, -1, Flamebait, whatever, its true.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
There is now a lot of speculation on other scenarios as well. One that I heard today which seemed entirely feasible is if the plates keep shifting and move down too much they just might punch a hole and let lava burst out causing under-sea volcanic eruption which could trigger off tidal waves. Andaman is having so many earthquakes now that it doesnt seem like the plates have found stability yet. Also reg. the wobble - are they sure its not due to the 8 something in Antartica - being at the pole it really should shake things up.
Loathsome Cthulhu rose then from the deeps and raged with exceeding great fury against the Earth Guardians. And They bound his venomous claws with potent spells and sealed him up within the City of R'lyeh wherein beneath the waves he shall sleep death's dream until the end of the Aeon.
The Earth is modeled in Physics classes as if the density is consistent throughout, so that they use a simplistic geocentric model as if all of the mass were at the center. This is not how The Earth is actually configured. For doing satelites one must models The Earth with micro-gravity elements, where masses are charted and denser areas have different effects based upon their sizes and locations. It is well known, for example, that under the South Atlantic Ocean there is a larger force of gravity.
And so if there were a shift in some dense part of the mantle or the core where it went farther into The Earth (or farther away) it would change the rotational speed because of the conservation of angular momentum. Think of a child spinning on a swing. When the child pulls in his arms, the child spins faster. When the child puts her arms out, she spins slower. Same with The Earth.
I wonder what effect this has had on insolation from the sun? Given that a lot of people use past insolation as an explanation for ice ages and such, I wonder if larger events than this have had effects in the past.
Goddamn useless crap. It'd be much more informative to speak of a 1E10 or 1E9 magnitude quakes.
Lastly, an interesting article from the Australian Spaceguard Survey about the need for a Tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves.
Should we nominate those that do this for a mass Darwin award?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
That's approximately 0.0001% of the Earth's population dead.
It's frightening how insignificant it seems compared to the whole, but yet how devastating it is up close.
Anyone looking for the tsunami videos can also now find them on edonkey/emule:a ryinsanity.org.wmv
a nity.org.wmv
n sanity.org.wmv
i nsanity.org.avi
tsunami_asia_261204_patong_beach___from_contempor
tsunami_asia_261204_phuket___from_contemporaryins
tsunami_asia_261204_srilanka___from_contemporaryi
tsunami_asia_261204_zeebeving___from_contemporary
I was amazed that the NASA scientists name wasn't mentioned in the /. blurb, but then I started reading the article and realized why it wasn't. It's just Gross.
I wonder if anyone ever called him by his last name, then first in school.
Your statement was off by a power of 10^5. That is a very large error.
because now i have to reset my watch to account for the correct time. DAMN YOU!!! DAMN YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Does this mean leap years are gonna go away?
Everytime I see "Quake" on /. I think of the game.
What could be better than preventing a plauge by providing fresh water?
How easy it would be to provide aid.
What else would you spend the money on?
Skyscrapers, all else being equal, yes. But human activity hasn't just been increasing Earth's moment of inertia, it has also been decreasing it. Cutting down millions of trees, for instance.
That may have been true in the past, but you can bet that after this event, for years to come every time someone on a tropical beach hears the word tsunami, they're going to b-line their way as far away from the water as they can!
The U.S. will donate $35 million. Let's see...
$35000000 - amount committed to help victims
100000 - conservative death toll
= $350 - spent to aid each victim
$147000000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
17000 - rough number of Iraqis killed
= $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi
I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.
The length of a day fluctuates two milliseconds, or a thousand times more, over the course of a year. Most of this attributed to the annual pattern of ocean storms.
DigitalGlobe have the satellite image before and after the tsunami in Sri Lanka.
If quake changed the earth's rotation, what will Doom do? Throw us out of the solar system?
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
And speaking of poor journalism, has anyone else noticed that Fox News has the epicenter of the quake totally wrong? They put it down near the bottom of Sumatra. I saw this on the first day and discounted it as early guesswork, but then I just saw it again last night (12/28), same graphic. I guess they just don't care.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
(100) Boxes of dinosaur sponges, (500) mops, (300) buckets, (1) roll of Brawny - The thicker, quicker, picker-upper, (1) Martha Stewart, (1) six-pack of Budweiser, (300,000) turkey franks, (320,000) hot-dog buns since 8 are in a bag for every 1 pack of 10 franks, (20,000) bottles of French's Mustard - an AMERICAN classic, and a healthy dose of ketchup.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
USA has sent 20 million $ in cash total (1 F500 ceo yearly salary) for this disaster which would save lives yet it can find a cool billion $ a week to take lives ? (iraqi)
civilised nation ?
"The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves."
The author is essentially right. Growing up in hawaii, the tourists are our number one source of income, and our number one source of stupidity. Everytime Japan had earthquakes, especially the last one in Kobe a few years ago, the whole coastline was evacuated around the islands. Hotels, businesses, schools, residents along the beaches were forced to move inland toward higher ground. Yet, there were the few tourists, standing on the reef walls, video cameras in hand, waiting to FILM the tsunami. Although that tsunami turned out to be only a foot tall (the local geological surveyists and warning systems calculated the exact time the wave would have arrived), the tourists were still in great danger had the tsunami been 20+ feet tall. Unfortunately it takes an event on a scale such as this to make the general world realize the need for education on such natural disasters, so that maybe now an early warning system would be effective in saving lives, rather than losing the amount we have in the last week.
I love the American news media.
What's most important is that they let us know that, out of the (now) 67,000 people who died in the catastrophe, hundreds of them were Americans. If 200 Americans died as a result of the quake, that accounts for about 0.2% of the total. Does that statistic really make the disaster all that more horrible?
Second, it's important that we know that many celebrities were affected by the disaster. I was really relieved when I found out that Jet Li survived, but I felt saddened when I learned that a friend of Nate Berkus, a regular contributor on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," is unaccounted for.
Please, give me a break.
The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves.
..bruce..
Robert Heinlein noted that human tendency in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress--when the rebelling Lunatics drop a large rock on Earth in a relatively isolated spot (somewhere in Kansas, if I recall correctly) to demonstrate their ability to fight back, large numbers of people flock to the location to watch--and are killed.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds.
...though, who am I kidding? They'd just add 10 hours to the work day, and I'd be worse off than before. *sigh*
As if the day weren't short enough as is. My work tells me that that extra 3 s are coming out of my freetime - NOT out of the company clock.
Why couldn't it have been slowed down by, oh, say, 8 hours or so? The extra 6 hours/day I'd have to put in might even be worth the extra 2 hours I'd have off.
That green slime had it coming.
The guys over at India's department of Space, National Remote Sensing Agency posted a link to an 8MB powerpoint slide of satellite images of the affected areas which effectively crippled their server due to the demand. Some of us readers over at Tsunamihelp.blogspot.com mananged to get some mirrors up here and here. I also created a .torrent which includes the images(in a PowerPoint presentation) as well as a bunch of footage of the tsunami that has been going around bringing down servers. Grab the .Torrent. Please grab the .torrent unless you're really lazy, the other mirrors will probably be tried first by those who really need the data. More seeders needed for that .torrent, leave your BT clients running please.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Playing my favorite computer game changes the Earth's rotation! AHHHH!!
Dashboard Widgets
http://www.mikemars.com/video/tsunamiphuket.wmv
h ttp://www.mikemars.com/video/sri_lanka_tsunami.wm v
http://www.mikemars.com/video/patong_beach.wmv
I was thinking about something the other day...
Had this event happened ~3000 years ago, it probably would have become a major chapter in some religious text, if not the foundation for a completely new religion (ocean worship?).
Seeing as most of the people affected by this quake are Muslim, I wonder if any Freepers / Boogerheads have implied that the quake was "God's Wrath" on a "corrupt culture?"
:-\
If no one's said it yet, it will probably be only a few more days before Jerry Falwell or some other shithead blurts it out...
The article in BBC gives more details on it. The interesting thing in that article about the Pacific warning system in place...
The Pacific system gives advance notice to coastal areas and low-lying islands that floods could be on the way, so that emergency plans can be activated.
US seismologist Harley Benz said a basic system of seismic sensors and tide gauges could be set up within two years in the Indian Ocean but that, he warned, was only one element.
"Putting in the sensors is the easy part," he told AP. "The difficult part here would be coordination between emergency response agencies in the region."
Has it been used even once? When was the last time a warning came intime and people were actually rescued. It's not a burglar alarm anyway.
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
hear hear
shame on you for letting your society get to that level of depravity, truly sickening and sad to read those numbers, and you call it winning hearts and minds ? i cant keep a straight face
...is coming from my working time, not my sleeping time.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Perhaps a disaster like this gave birth to such legend...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What about Krakatau?
A series of large tsunami waves generated by the main explosion, some reaching a height of nearly 40 meters (more than 120 feet) above sea level, killed more than 36,000 people in the coastal towns and villages along the Sunda Strait on Java and Sumatra islands. Tsunami waves were recorded or observed throughout the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the American West Coast, South America, and even as far away as the English Channel.
http://www.drgeorgepc.com/Vocano1883Krakatoa.html
and even as far away as Somalia and several other countries in Africa, 4,500 km (2,800 mi) or more west of the epicenter.
The wikipedia article also has the estimated dead in Somalia in the hundreds. Unreal.
itadakimasu
in all fairness, www.msn.com also has a link for donations to the victims of the tsunami.
Another estimate for the time change here.
1 22 80221dec28,1,6119845.column
/day
/day difference.
/year) / 12 months = 4.63 (ft/month)
.1829 ft * 12 inches = 2.195 in/year
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-04
(some useless registration required). I quote from the article.
"Incredibly, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck off Sumatra on Sunday morning caused a vertical displacement of so much material that the rotation period of the Earth has been permanently altered. By a tiny but measurable amount, the Earth is now rotating more quickly on its axis, and the 24-hour day is now one ten-thousandth second shorter.That's the result of calculations based on preliminary data made by Oak Park astronomer Dr. Leslie M. Golden. It's analogous to the increase in rotational speed that a twirling ice skater experiences when he or she draws in their arms. It is estimated that during the Sumatran quake, a block of material roughly 600 miles in length and 100 miles in width fell 30 feet closer to the Earth's axis of rotation. The planet has responded by rotating more rapidly, albeit ever so slightly, and our 24-hour days are now one ten-thousandth second shorter." by Tom Skilling.
If it is one ten-thousandth of a second then it works out to have more effect.
Doing the math for 1/10,000 of a sec/day:
so 10,000 days = 1 second
10000/365 = 27.39 years
So in 27.39 years we loose a second.
Diameter of earth 12,756 km or circumference 24,902 mi or 131,482,560 ft (appox at equator)
One second of the day means a radial distance of
24hr * 60 min *60 sec = 86400 seconds
131,482,560 (feet / day) / 86400 (sec/day) = 1521.79 feet/sec
at the equator (old 24 hour day)
or is what the eath turns in one second
or if there is change of 1521.79 feet of alignment in 27.39 years. or 55.56 feet / year.
or:
55.56 (feet/yr) * 12 in/foot = 666.72in/yr(bad omen here)
or 666.72 (in/year) / 365 days (aprox) = 1.8 in
55.56 (feet
This is a different estimate than Nasas but might be thought of as an upper bound until things
can be calculated more precisely.
Satelite's orbits will not change their period because of the change in the earths rotational speed. Geosynchronous satalites will slip out of synchronisity and need to use fuel to change their orbits, reducing their effective life as we have no way of replenishing fuel in geosynchronous orbit (around 22k miles out I think).
This will be devistating for GPS and will require immediate upgrades/repossitioning to those systems.
Can you imagine a year from now a precision guided missle landing 55 feet to the left. and each day
an additional 55 feet more. Frightning. I image the military has stopped using GPS guided weapons
until that can be corrected.
Now if you correct those numbers for the Nasa estimate.
3/100,000 instead of 1/10,000 then the
or 3,000,000 days to get one second then.
or 8219 years
1521.79 (ft/sec) / 8319 (years/sec) =.1829 (ft/year)
much less of an adjustment or a threat to satelite's positions or positioning satelites.
(check the math, who knows if I did it right)
Just an intellectual exercise to assess the effect. Enjoy
And yet our president is still planning on spending $40 million on his re-inauguration gala. 3 crazy days and nights. instead of actually standing out in the world community for once... he could really do some good for our global impact by cancelling the stupid pointless parties and sending that money to indonesia as well...
but that won't happen. there is no money in it.
Doesn't Amazon take the biggest cut of any online payments processor for donations? I'd be personally hesitant to donate through Amazon after reading what shareware authors have had to say about them. Amazon should put its money where its mouth is and provide the payment processing for the tsunami relief commission-free.
I wonder if these nuclear power station has any safegaurds for earthquacks.
Earthquacks? You probably mean ducks that can't swim, right?
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
and no has blamed Bush or Microsoft for this?
Come on Slashdot!
All this happens the day after Christmas!
Wheres your god now?
Since the Earth's rotation is slowing down, and will eventually reach an absolute stop, anything which keeps us spinning a little longer can only be a good thing.
Duke Nuke'em Forever will throw us out of the solar system!
... but terribly uninformed (I used worst descriptions initially, but insults will not make you change...).
A tsunami of these caracteristics has not been seen on those regions for more than 100 years, thus the local population did not necessarily have knowledge about how dangerous this could be.
Also the waves move at speeds comparable to a commercial airliner, people may get into a false sense of security since the waves could appear far away but will get to the observer's position in no time at all (a wave 10 km away would be drawning you in areound 40 sec if they move at 900km/hour)...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Because he's either joking or stupid.
Your Ad Here! $2.00 Per Day!
The reaction to this earthquake and the resultant tsunami should be taken a practice run for the eventual small asteroid strike that will undoubtedly cause similar results. Our rush to aid fellow men in their time of need will hopefully be returned to us one day when we face the same. Or will they just turn their backs and look the other way?
So far under $100 million in aid has been pledged by various countries to help in a disaster that has ruined $billions and killed dozens of thousands of people. Is that good enough?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
If you think spending that money was good for Iraqis, go bask in their thanks. If you think the war was justified for other reasons, post them; we still haven't heard one good reason.
...that you would have preferred that 420,000,000 Iraqis were killed, to bring the cost per kill down to a commensurate $350 level? I guess you'd really be complaining if only one Iraqi died in the whole war. After all, we'd have spent $147 Billion to kill that one Iraqi, right?
So it looks like Amazon.com is not only giving this front-page billing, they are also personally paying the credit card transaction fee, in effect losing at least a couple pennies for each dollar contributed.
In other words, they can't be faulted one iota.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Four hurricanes in Florida is nothing compared to this.
Imagine if this happened just off the Eastern U.S. coast during June or July. It would wipe out Miami, Daytona, Jacksonville, Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Wilmington and Norfolk. It would kill 100,000+ and possibly destroy the economies of three or four states.
Geez, and the reason the U.S. has building codes and early warning devices is because we're RICH. Most people in these countries would kill to make 10,000 a year.
It seems like this problem would take care of itself, darwin style, after a tsunami or two.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
MOD PARENT
AC has posted links to video footage of Tsunamis around the world.
Live forever, or die trying.
THe UK is donating 15 million dollars (after much pressure of the media and the general public).
This is the amount that football teams have paid for some top players in recent years:
Manchester United for Wayne Rooney: 54 million US$.
Manchester United for Rio Ferdinand: 58 million US$.
Real Madrid for David Beckham: 41 million US$.
Something is horribly wrong with this.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When you say "never" how far back does that go? Is it as far as anyone can remember, or through all of the regions recorded history, which for India is several thousand years, unless I'm misinformed.
If it's the latter, and this is something that only happens every several thousand years, a warning system is clearly not a useful investment.
Typhoons in Bangladesh and eartquakes in China have been much worse.
In regards to geographic extension it is difficult to think about something this devastating and widepread (there have beenn people killed as far as Somalia and Kenya).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In Florida, uncontrolled water consumption causes some ridiculous sinkholes. I remember when living in Tampa that an entire intersection was swallowed. Houses periodically make the news when a sinkhole takes the thing under.
This suggests to me that the water pressure holds up a good deal of what we consider to be solid ground.
Can anybody speculate that oil might do the same thing? Indonesia is a non OPEC country that exploits all they can out of the fossil liquid. Perhaps oil acts as a shock absorber against activity occurring on the crust closest to the mantle?
Laws are for people with no friends.
But then it seems Mr Bush has said more is to come, let us wait and see.
As an Indian citizen, in the middle of these dark days of our own, I do feel a tiny bit of pride on reading that the Indian government, poor and 'third world' that it is, is providing assistance to Sri Lanka & Maldives while coping with its own disaster at the same time. That is logistical aid as well as money, some USD 20 million to Sri Lanka and USD 1 million to Maldives, see http://us.rediff.com/money/2004/dec/29tax.htm. (a 'crore' is 10 million, and some 45 rupees make a dollar at today's rates).
Yes, I too intend to get out and donate tomorrow. And happily pay the 'Tsunami cess' in my taxes next year. It is our corner of the world, and we are all in it together.
Let's not have our usual "fun" in this discussion atleast.
If you do want to help, donate clothing/water purifiers like Brita more than cash. They atleast go the victims directly.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
but one has to wonder if anything would've helped reduce the loss of life. warning systems can help but what does one do when one lives on an island that is at sea level? even the tallest buildings would be susceptible if anything happens to one of their supports. this is truly a horrific event and my heart and prayers go out to all those affected.
Is it 5:30 yet?
And how much money have you donated?
"In November 1970, for example, a tropical cyclone, combined with a high tide, struck southeastern Bangladesh, leaving more than 300,000 people dead and 1.3 million homeless. In May 1985, a comparable cyclone and storm surge hit the same area. "This time," according to IDNDR Director Dr. Olavi Elo, "there was better local dissemination of disaster warnings and the people were better prepared to respond to them. The loss of life, although still high, was 10,000 or about 3% of that in 1970." When a devastating cyclone struck the same area of Bangladesh in May 1994, fewer than 1,000 people died."
"The dramatic difference, according to Roundtable participant Mohammed Saidur Rahman, Director of the Bangladesh Disaster Preparedness Centre, was a new early-warning system that allows radio stations to alert people in low-lying areas."
source
All the more reason to have tsunami warnings.
I mean really, deathmatch was cool and teamfortress was probably the greatest mod ever written, but "speeds up the earth"? C'mon. I don't believe that.
In another note "The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves."
Ah, Darwin moves in mysterious waves.
-Styopa
Your statement was off by a power of 10^5. That is a very large error.
Your correction was off by a power of 10^2. That is a very large error.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I guess you equate death, fear, and misery with freedom. Now they can write letters to the editor of the local paper from the rubble that used to be their home (assuming the US doesn't shut the paper down). Lucky them!
"$147,000,000,000..."
I hope you don't bitch about your taxes come April. Don't complain about run down national parks, your grandma's medicare, rotten VA hospitals, and everything else that money could've gone to. For someone so patriotic you seem to put more importance in Iraq than you do in the US.
"but at least I know my country _did_ something"
Taking pride in pointless violence! Good for you! Sometimes the "solution" is worse than the problem.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Actually, a change in the earth's shape/composition can alter its orbital trajectory around the sun.
That's because of tidal effects: planets are soft and deform due to the gravitational forces they exert on eachother. Those plastic deformations result in friction, i.e. the gravitational energy is being converted into heat and orbits are modified.
For example, the distance between the moon and the earth is slowly decreasing (in a distant future we will no longer observe solar eclipses!), and a similar effect exists between the sun and the earth.
So a big change in the earth's tectonic plates could in theory affect tidal effects, hence the earth's orbit around the sun (but the effect is probably tiny).
A change in the earth's inner composition could also modify its magnetic field, but I don't think that would affect its orbit around the sun.
Most companies donate money to charity. Big and Small, doesn't matter. However they only have so much money to work with. Microsoft may have billions on paper, but if they tried to turn that into cash today it would be worth a lot less.
I haven't seen anyone make the obvious joke yet:
"I told her I was going to make the earth move last night, and I sure did baby!"
Ba-dum-dum!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
"The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves."
One word: Darwinism
Many people are saying the extent of the disaster is hard to comprehend.
One measure is that the death toll is approaching that of the Iraq war and may soon pass it, though any cost estimates are still less than a tenth of that.
Or put in more flammable (but defendable) terms, this is almost as big a disaster as George W Bush.
One thought I've had is: How can this be prevented in the future? Do coral reefs slow/stop tsunamis? Is it possible to construct something like a reef where there are none? /. have any wisdom on this topic?
I think a warning system (beyond the knowledge that if the sea receeds it's time to run like hell) is worthwhile, but how about a PREVENTION system? Does
Actually, the 3 microsecond effect (the Earth is now spinning a bit faster, shortening our day by about 3 microseconds) will have no long term effect. Our Moon has the drag effect on Earth anyway, continuously prolonging our days - about 15 microseconds per year.
r thquake
Aha, here is a bit about that from Wikipedia[1]:
"The moment of inertia of Earth decreased a bit due to the earthquake. Because the angular momentum is conserved, this results in an increase of the angular velocity of Earth's rotation. In other words, the earthquake shortened the length of a day by as much as 3 s. However, due to tidal effects of the Moon, the Earth's rotation slows by 15 s per year. So any rotation speedup due to the earthquake will have no long-lasting effect at all."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_ea
Simpy
how long it will be before I get my first "Help the victims of the tsunami, forward this mail to everyone you know and $company will donate $0.10 per person to the relief fund" chain email? Nothing is sacred to those shitheads.
"Any similarity between the hooting of a million eager monkeys and Slashdot is purely coincidental." -THEFLASHMAN
God!
Your post made me mad, really. I've had to make a serious effort to remind myself that I should not fall to easy generalizations. No, most Americans are not like you. Most Americans are actually decent and caring people.
Most Americans just happen to live in the same country as you. I don't even think that the proportion of selfish bastards is higher in the US than in other countries. It's just that, for some reason, selfish bastards are more vocal in the US than elsewhere.
It's OK now, the burst of anger has receded. My faith and respect in the American people is unharmed. I'm even willing to consider that you didn't really think before posting and that you don't really mean that. But do you realize how hard you make it not to hate the US? Do you realize that you're a liability to your country?
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Dear JackAss,
After the Hayward fault lets go with the schools and apts and hospitals that were built on top of it and sudden the damage goes from "a jar of mayonnaise fell from the shelf of a grocery store and broke" to holy fuck alot of people are dead and homeless, get back to us. Obviously you weren't in East Oakland in 1989, digging people out of their cars with their legs crushed.
BTW, I live near the Rogers fault a continuation of the Hayward fault and it has a 15% chance of a great earthquake between 2003 and 2032.
Yeah, your country (and mine) sure _did_ something. We launched an unjust (and corrupt) war against a sovereign nation, effectively distracting its citizens from the real focus of necessary military action: finishing the Al Qaeda hunt in Afganistan/Pakistan.
But you already knew that, didn't you?
Bush on Osama: "Now you see him, now you don't!" I mean, come on. Who cares how much Iraq cost - even ONE penny was too much. A lot of people have died this weekend - let's keep our eyes on the prize, shall we?
Okay, back to your soapboxes, everyone.
Question to U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center, sedas [-AT-] neis.cr.usgs.gov: 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? It is easy to find the telephone numbers of newspapers in beach cities in Thailand, for example, by searching with Google.
Sorry refered to 55 ft/day that is per/year but 4.63 ft month or about 1.8in/ day. So you have a month or two to move from next to ground zero to not be mistaken for a terroist bomb factory by a GPS weapon (if the GPS system is not updated).
Umm, I think the person... err... Idiot who wrote this apparently is too busy with their head up in some part of their body to comprehend the reality here. Oh, and not to mention that the earthquake in CA (I happen to be in SFO then), was in the middle of nowhere with a total population of the area in 100's (and not thousands and millions). I think the person again forgest the devastating effects of the Tsunami in Hawaii in the 50's (or 60's - something like that I forget). Given his/her state of mind, I think we can have pity on him/her.
"Even for a very large event, the effect is very small," Kanamori said. "It's very difficult to change the rotation rate substantially."
Didn't any of these scientist fools ever see Superman 2?
Question to U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center, sedas [-AT-] neis.cr.usgs.gov:
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?
It is easy to find the telephone numbers of newspapers in beach cities in Thailand, for example, by searching with Google.
There hasn't been anything like this in the Indian Ocian the last 300 years (longer than history, for you, mr. A.C.) which is partly why they don't plan for things like this.
.. and you tell them to fend for themselves? wow!
As of now, 78.000 people have been confirmed dead in the area. Officials expect the number to reach (100.000) one hundred thousand, from several different countries.
http://www.big-boys.com/articles/tsunami.html
My guess is, absolutely none.
So, if this mega-tsunami happens sometime after midnight eastern time, the evacuation is going to be something like "wake the neighbours".
I'm not sure even I have the solution to this. Should you create an alarm system for something that just may never happen or take hundreds of years possibly? On the other hand, if you don't, you've got millions of deaths going to occur.
Best thing is probably to blow the thing up.
Unfortuantely most people just don't look at the two oceans, especially their underwater attributes.
Both the Pacific and Indian Oceans have very small if non existant shelves. There is simply deep ocean and then land rising up very quickly.
The Atlantic Ocean has a large shelf that protrudes well out to sea on the east coast of the US. This can significantly reduce the effects of Tsunamis (which are the displacemnt of water). Think of it this way, the Tsunami will "break" hundreds of miles out to sea and then flow in to the east coast of the US.
This may mean extremely high tides and localized flooding, but very unlikely to create the situations seen commonly in Japan and this week in SE Asia.
Go do some *BASIC* research and get back to us, eh?
Alright this slightly off topic, but I want to know.
What happens if an earthquake moves Greenwich? Does 0 degrees longitude (and thus everything else) move with it?
actually it's 15 million pounds not 15 million dollars. That's about 28.7 million dollars.
I don't think this really affects the good point you are making though.
The northern hemisphere is heavier, and as such, forces all continents to move "downwards". It's called gravity.
Why else would all the continents have tips on their upper part, as if the mass was dripping down? (turn your maps upside down to see this!).
Happy Holidays!
http://www.origamy.com.br/xmas2005
What a joke!! Another one of your Democratic Hero's who also happened to be a slave owner!
He made those remarks about Hamilton - his and Jefferson's enemy who also happened to be an abolitionist - which greatly angered these slave holding "gentleman". All the while whooping it up over the great French Revolution, of course ignoring the slaughter the eventual coup from Napeoeon. I guess he was their 'hero' too!
But did you really expect more out of the French?
I pay enough in taxes already. You can send them the check for the services to monitor other countries problems such as this. Nothing is free.
-1, Jackass
Even less time between shifts at the office!
VD
Further compression of the earth's mass would actually slow the earth down, not speed it up. Someone has there physics in a wad. Think of it this way. If you are being swung in a cricle and you then extend your legs. The result is that you swing faster, because your mass is distributed further from the center of the rotation. Not the other way around. Freaking dorks don't know what they are talking about. Secondly, the earth did not change it's mass, so travel around the sun is NOT going to be effected in the slightest. It would take an outside force to effect that, not an inside one.
So does anyone know if their are any legitimate websites taking paypal donations for the relief effort?
Ack - there goes my sleep time.
Right now I'm reading "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku. Very interesting in that it talks about some of the non-physics implications of the mastering of space-time such as direction of technology and impact on the future of civilizations. Check it out if you haven't yet.
Email me for more discussion.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Sorry, doesn't the DoD regularly recallibrate known GPS satellite positions against the "fixed" stars anyway to check for ephemeris errors? I don't think we have to worry about this from a GPS perspective very much at all.
I found this incredbily useful:
Trimble's tutorial on GPS.
To put this in more perspective: more people died with this single wave than in the Vietnam or Korean wars (US death toll), which were both in the 50,000s if I recall correctly. Incredibly traggic.
> >$147000000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
> > 17000 - rough number of Iraqis killed
> > = $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi
> >I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.
>
>$147,000,000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
>25,000,000 - number of people freed from dictator
>= $5880 - spent to free an individual
> I'm proud to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but at least I know my country _did_ something.
Suppose we drop a cheap ($10M) set of nukes across Baghdad and in doing so, kill 1,000,000 people.
$147,010,000,000 spent.
1,017,000 Iraqis dead.
24,000,000 Iraqis liberated.
That comes out to:
$1,445,526 - spent to kill each Iraqi, and
$61,204 - spent to free an individual.
In short, the nuclear annihilation of 1,000,000 civilians would cut the cost of each preventable civilian death by 85%, while simultaneously boosting per capita humanitarian spending per capita by 20%. And somehow both of you would regard this as an improvement?
I'm ashamed when Americans attempt to optimize the wrong metric. Call me a QA weenie if you want, but at least I know something about process engineering!
Here it is converted to a .pdf
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
The 'wobble' known as Chandlers wobble can be measured using a Laser Ring Inferometer.
2 68
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?ObjectID=3504
It's pretty cool tech actually, a rediculously precise table with a laser split at a corner travelling around the corners via mirrors reflecting back to the source. The slight phase difference in the beams is measurable. This phase difference is actually how your 777 flies from A to B with 3 laser ring gyros one for each axis.
Hedley
I resent being made to feel that I owe something to the third world because they don't plan/build to withstand disasters the way we do here in the United States.
Right...so you realy think there are defences in place that will protect the East and West coast from tsunamis like the one that struck SE Asia?
Please get your head out of your ass!
i believe the earth's rotation already varies slightly from year to year and day to day as a result of weather patterns and normal seismic activity. so while this may be a larger than usual one time change, there is nothing to say that it won't reverse itself due to other eartquakes or volcanic eruptions sometime in the future.
i'm also pretty sure that the gps satellites are regularly repositioned slightly, and that they carry enough fuel to last some time, besides which, they would only have to be adjusted once to make up for the change, not continually. all they have to do is move a few feet (or maybe even less- to lazy to do the math at the moment) closer to the earth, and they will speed up appropriately to match the new period of earth's rotation.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Using Skype.com software, and a broadband connection, it would have been possible for a single person in the U.S., using SkypeOut, to call telephones in Thailand for an hour for just a few U.S. dollars. Would you save the lives of 5,000 people if it cost only $20 and an hour of your time? Of course!!!!
It is VERY easy to find the phone numbers of hotels and newspapers in Thailand, for example, using Google. Just tell everyone that, if they see the water receding, they have just a few minutes to get to safety.
"Kanamori said. "It's very difficult to change the rotation rate substantially."
Unless you're an angry Superman trying to save Lois.
don't expect that marketing spin to sell more games...
Oh, what storm?
I would hope so. I would hope they do that update soon as we undoubtedly are starting to slip.
Being an evil dictator, hated by the world: Priceless
WE (people) don't do anywhere near the damage to
this planet than the planet does to itself! It is
no coincidence that the "ozone hole" is over one of the largest ACTIVE volcanoes! Again, see the
last chapter Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton
has a wonderful essay, that says it much better
than I can.
Yes but a catostrophic event like this may translate to a larger than planned orbital correction which would reduce the lifetime of the satalite. More likely a software correction would be made. I don't whether the handheld devices "know" where satalites are supose to be, or whether the satelite tells the devide where it is. I the former then orbit correction needed, the later, just prgramming change.
The Geosycnronous satelites have more of a task as they need to re-position to maintain station. Their lifetimes have just been shortened.
At last, my evil plan is coming to fruition. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ......
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
No, we only got to where the earth would have been at that time in its rotation 3 mircoseconds faster. Drat!!! Now I've got that much less time today!!! The fact that this happened when we did NOT have daylight savings time in effect makes it worse. This is undoubtedly a plot to steal time from us. Now to counter-act this we have to get everyone to wind thier watches at the same time. . .
My brand new GPS system is now going to be off too, THAT's why I couldn't find the car keys!!
Seriously, how much shift would it take for the GPS satellites to be affected? My brain is in low gear today, I suspect an alteration in the rotational axis would have more of an effect than a 3 microsecond alteration in the time of rotation.
Don't mind me, I have more fun this way!
No, they recalibrate to a ground station.
I've been reading Slashdot since 1997. Trolls have always been annoying, but as for the *hundreds* of flamebait/troll comments on the recent tsunami threads...well, I don't know if I've ever seen such unbelievable indifference to the value of human lives--or such stunning ignorance.
/. account. Unbelievable.
I'm not trying to make a statement by leaving Slashdot forever or anything like that, but I doubt I'm the only person who's swearing off comments and sticking to the headlines after reading some of this trash. It makes me ashamed to have a
The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves."
Call it the Darwinian Warning System
Table-ized A.I.
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/041217/b121706.html/
Rather than reporting on the disaster, Fox News have been harping on about how the world hates America. I wonder if they ever had a "memo of the day" about this story.
147000000000 / 25000000 Iraqis SAVED from a brutal dictator and his crazy sons (who took freshly married women from their husbands to have sex with them, and who threw people into plastic shredders for fun; head first for a quick bit of fun and feet first for loads of fun -- ie SCREAMS) = $5880.00 per life SAVED! Money well spent. The amount we give is the amount we give. It is ours to decide. And it is usually (almost ALWAYS) more than the combined giving of all others, so back the fuck off. And I don't see anyone lined up to aid us when we have problems (911). We seem to be able to handle ourselves. And I hear Sri Lanka turned DOWN aid, because it was from Israel. Oh, to have that luxury! By the way, I'm ashamed that you are an American too! Your numbers are sickening, and biased. If you don't like it here, I believe Canada is accepting applications...
"The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves."
Call me crazy, but isn't it these very type of people we DON'T want living with us?
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
What you said does not seem right to me.
Any magnitude 9 earthquake at sea, 10 KM down, can be presumed to cause Tsunamis. If I had known about it in time, 10 of my friends could have called 10 of their friends, and we would have had 100 person-hours of calling. We could have notified hundreds of thousands of people, assuming a little cooperation from the people in the nations we were calling.
It is easy to show that such a call is not a hoax. Tell anyone who will listen that, when the water recedes an unusual amount, there is only a very short time to get to safety. It doesn't take much to get to safety from a 20-foot wave, assuming there is higher land nearby, or a strong building behind other strong buildings.
Darn. This means the days are getting even shorter. I hoped the change was for the better.... (walks off to pour another cup of coffee)
...from Philadelphia, and last night I sent $5,000 to the Red Cross for their International Response program. Today, I'm sending $2,500 to Doctors Without Borders and (just to be a selfish American prick) $1,750 to sponsor training for a guide dog puppy at Southeastern Guide Dogs in Florida.
That's almost 2% of my 2004 income.
So fuck you, you piece of shit. What have you done for humanity lately?
This is not an international dick-waving contest to see who can 'contribute' the most. How about we just help them, OK?
And to my French "friends", I only wish you had
war dead buried here whose graves I could desecrate
the way you did the graves of the brave Americans
who helped free your land from the Nazis! Of
course if there were such graves, I wouldn't do
anything because unlike you fuckers I have class.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but... No, you obviously don't have class.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
From the link you posted one can see that the U.S. donated 6.9 Billion in ODA (Economic Aid - Donor) while Norway donated only 1.4 Billion.
Also, there is this little goody -
Norway exports 3.466 million bbl of oil/day - Only Saudi Arabia and Russia export more oil than Norway.
Due to their oil production, Norway is the third biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emmissions on earth, but they don't seem to feel very guilty if you were to judge them on the amount of foreign aid they give. They make ~40 Billion a year selling oil, and they donate a paltry 1.4 Billion?
What does Norway think happens to all the oil they sell - do they think it magically disappears? Why do they continue to supply this greenhouse gas producing liquid?
Norway is world leader per-capita in the production of greenhouse gas precursors!
As so many others I fully agree: A tsunami warning system should be put in place. It ought to be fairly simple given the amount of satelites in orbit.
Those who flock to see the killer waves - well - www.darwinawards.com will take care of those. The rest of us can only applaud their stupidity and lack of presence on the roads leading away from disaster.
In a report the day after the quake I saw a number of tourists stating "we are going there and we are fully confident that the travel agency has everything under control".
What a tribute to Darwin.
Ok by me. Let us know about the tsunami, and I'll get the hell outta the way. If other people prefer to get a nice view, that's their decision...at least average human IQ goes up a little bit. Given the choice between allowing the death of 70K randomly selected people, or 70K people allowing themselves to be killed by their own stupidity, let's let the stupid ones go.
I don't have a credit card but I'm sitting on a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate that someone gave me. I was hoping to be able to use THAT to make a $25 donation to the American Red Cross (Or, frankly, ANY organization providing relief!) through Amazon.com. After some searching I can't find any way to do it...
So I'm going to use Slashdot to see if I can do the next best thing: I'm willing to give my validation code for a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate to anyone who is willing to MAKE a $25 donation. Seriously. No stings attached here and I suppose, ultimately, that I'll never have any verification that it worked but cynicism is worse than inaction. I'm just a guy with bad credit who still wants to find a way to help.
If you are willing to make that donation, just send me an email (to my email address listed above) and I'll send you the code to the Amazon.com gift certificate -- it is good through 17-Nov-2005.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Whatever difference is made by donations via the information age will be sucked up by the red cross for their salary just like they did during the 9/11 attacks.
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
Lastly, not all greenhouse gas stem from consuming oil.
That's the reason they're so high on the list. The government simply pockets the money, has absolutely nothing to do with it, so instead of giving it to it's citizenry (like it should) it just gives it away.
The current number for the US is $16.2 Billion, btw. Strangely during the end of the Clinton numbers the funding dropped significantly.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
And assuming two other things -
A quick search on google for more information shows that the information was misquoted in the Reuters article and that the original quote was that this event "May have shortened the day by 3 microseconds" which IS a meaningful statement.
Judging by the responces your post has garnered, it seems that far too many /. readers have a fairly difficult time with analytical thought. ;)
Sorry, but I have to disagree in two points.
I DO agree that charity should not be a publicity stunt, but I am pretty much sure that neither Apple nor Dell nor Amazon nor any other major player in the market made a quick and direct donation to help the victims of the flood.
I disagree on the point that charity should be local. These companies are global players. They thrive on the globalization effects. Thus their donations on charity should also be global.
Right now USA companies make big money on all markets, on all peoples, on all societies, but only the american people benefit from the charity donations. That might be nice for you if you are a USA citizen, but ROW is ignored once again.
Yes of course, they can absolutely spend their money in any way they choose. But this is exactly the kind of behaviour that make other peoples hate you. You may call it envy or greed, I'd call it comprehensible. No one likes to be dominated, no one likes to be ripped off.
I also disagree with the 'Microsofts not liquid cash' argument. First of all I never even mentioned Microsoft, I was talking about those companies who put up links to donation sites on their front page. These companies are in the consumer market. They have liquid cash income. You don't pay your book at Amazon with hedge fonts options or real estate. You pay them with money. Per definition this money is liqid. It has flown to them just a few days ago.
And one afterthought to that marketing stunt argument. If for example BP would donate one months profit (~ 1 billion $) to the flood victims instead of shoving it to the share holders, then I would happily fill my car up at their station the next time.
-silence
Dyslectics of the world, untie!
Normally when a person or entity uses the amazon honor system for donations/payments amazon takes a nice cut of the pie. I emailed them today to check if they did the same thing for the disaster relief and apparently they aren't!
I included both emails below:
TO: Amazon
FROM: Urgo
I have a question about the disaster relief donation page that you have setup on amazon.com. I know normally with the amazon honor system amazon gets a cut of all the donations. Is amazon taking a cut of the money in this case or is all of the money people donate going right to the red cross?
FROM: Amazon
TO: Urgo
Thanks for writing to us at Amazon.com.
Please rest assured that all the donated money will go to the Red Cross to help victims of tragedies in southern Asia, India, and Africa.
Please know that Amazon.com is waiving its usual fees.
Belive in Technology and AMAZE yourself. -- RIP ZDTV/TechTV
Cool!
I think that are good news and that is the right way.
Setting up a link to a donation sites is something the weblog community should take care of. Those who have little money but a lot of web site hits to offer. Those who have the money or the goods should rather donate that directly.
-silence
Dyslectics of the world, untie!
Not to mention the boon for the economy. We need to outlaw earthquakes so we can have longer days...
It's the only way to save social security!
Which is why I donated to Doctors Without Borders.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I did some calculations earlier and found that the Geos would have to move less than a centimeter. The GPS satellites reposition relative to ground stations anyway, though I am not sure on what period. At any rate, they would only have to correct course once, and not by much. Remember, we are talking about a change on the order of 10**-11 relative to the current length of the day.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You realize that word has come to mean "people trying to defend their home from invaders" when used by the invaders, right?
In an effort to connect images of the tragedy with sites that allow people to make donations to the relief effort, myself and a number of friends have posted a list of mirrors to my weblog. Please use this to take some of the load off video.contemporaryinsanity.org and help get the word out.
Join Tor today!
That seems small, but remember these huge satelites are out at 2 * 10**5 miles or 1 * 10**9th feet aprox. and given the tonnage of the satelites, there would be a real measurable change in energy to make the correction.
Your centimeter change, is that a centimeter closer orbit to make that adjustment?
I would be interested to see your calculations.
One article I read said the change would be about 1/10,000 of a second / day which is on the order of 10**-5 which is certainly an upper bound for the effect. I await things settling down and a new reading on the actual new length of day being discovered. I guess leap seconds will become a much more common occurance.
There has been some odd correlations between where the oil industry has been performing 200+db subsonic ocean floor tests and the earthquake.
Also, the experiments appear to be devestating to local marine life populations - my guess is that the 200+ dB tests destroy much of their sense of sound or pressure.
Anyway, it is worth a read.
Okay, that is about the 50th post on Darwinism I've seen. But come on now, we've had how many million years to syphon these traits out of the gene pool, and people still do dumb things like this? Something is wrong with the theory.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Amazon and Google, among others, have added front-page links to simplify donating to the disaster relief effort.
Perhaps Slashdot could do the same? After all, 80,000 dead and counting definately counds as "Stuff that matters."
OK, so all you tourists in the area with GPS units should take some readings so rescue workers can make adjustments. Post them in the Discuss page on Wikipedia for the earthquake.
Both of the seconds times are actually microseconds in the wikipedia article. A great reason why you shouldn't spend your time looking through character maps to find obscure mu symbols and just use a u for microvolts, microamps and microsoft. This formatting issue has caused problems in many published papers, which which often don't get corrected.
My calculations are based on:
G= 6.67259E-11 m**3/kgs**2
Mass of Earth (Me)= 5.9742E24kg
Current rotation period(w) in Seconds=86040
Although these are estimates, they are close.
For Geosync orbit:
Radius=((G*Me*w**2)/(4*pi**2))**1/3
For current Geosynch, I get 42124855.2417033 meters. This may seem large, but remember that most people report Geosynch above the radius of the Earth, so they are in the neighborhood of 36000 Kilometers.
Then, since I don't have a good high precision calculator, I was able to only go to the precision of subtracting 10 microseconds instead of only 3. With this calculation, I got 42124855.2414383 meters. This makes a difference of less than a millimeter in fact, and the time change was still three times larger than it should have been.
It seems like the difference should be more, but remember that 3 microseconds is less than 1 in 10**11 of the total time in a day. And although we square the orbital period, we then take the cube of the whole thing because gravitational attraction goes down with the cube of distance. So in all, we are talking changes 11 or more decimals out.
I know I didn't follow scientific precision principles. If I did, I would have had to cut off at five digits, which would mean I couldn't calculate any time differential less than a second. This calculation is not accurate, but the order of magnitude should be right on.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
What the hell does this mean about our atomic clocks???
So if that ever happens to you, don't hang about, run inland as fast as your little legs will carry you. You life depends on it.
Slashdot moderators please help get that message out, you will save lives.
You have a point to some extent. But you should also make your research properly. It is not uninterrupted contiguous barrier. It has everything from shallow banks to deep gorges that go all the way to the shore. While the banks will protect the shore, the average depth is deep enough for the wave to reach the shore in plenty of places and actually get focused by the gorges in others to way above the 10m average.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
So the Earth's rotation is theorized by one NASA geophysicist to have sped up by 3 microseconds.
Is that 3 microseconds per minute? Per hour? Per day? Per month? Per year? Per century? The importance of this figure depends on the unit by which we divide.
If it's 3 microsec/minute, then that's 525,600 microsec/year *faster* that we rotate to reach 1 year, or, 525.6milliseconds/year, or 0.5256 seconds/year, or 52.56 seconds/century (ignoring leap-years).
But if it's 3 microsec/century, well -- clearly that's of far less significance. Still arguably important, but not nearly as much so. Personally, I wouldn't lose sleep over it even if it is 3 microsec/minute, but for timing purposes in physics, and quite possibly for keeping time in-sync in world financial markets, among other examples of relevance, that could be well worth considering.
My gripe in all this is as follows: this is Slashdot, not USA Today. I expect at least a fundamental grasp of science and math here - is that asking too much? We learned about the importance of units in elementary school; have we already forgotten that lesson?
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Tsunamis: Darwin in action.
Nah. I'm sorry. You're wrong. The only real worthless people around here are ones that find it OK to waste money--that could be spent on aid--to intentionaly do things that waste human lives.
Surely you can see the irony of the whole situation?
I would think a big concern is that marine maps and charts of the area are probably all off. Not only from the movement of the plates and position of where stuff sits on that plate, but quite often the quake causes underground sluffing and rock slides where there were once cliffs to essentially underground hills (mountains) will change position. So where a deep draft vessel could once run... They saw a lot of this in Alaska after the 1964 quake here.
Has this issue been addressed by anyone? This big of a quake could affect things thousands of miles away.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Deformation is being modeled with techniques recently developed. Maximum of 20 meters of slip on the fault plane. They did not mention the dimensions of the plane yet, but it is likely to be 100's km long, but 10's wide along the subduction zone.
;)
I would expect that some portions of the Indonesian coast went down, and will be permanently flooded. Other portions went up.
These will be the portions where navigation is effected (get out those proposals to to hydrographic surveying
In Alaska and Peru, the subsidence was 2-3 meters in places, and the uplift was up to 10 at faults with surface rupture.
As if it would be too hard to program a missile to land 55 feet/year to the right of the GPS target :) Even adjusting for latitude would be trivial. The point of GPS is to have a KNOWN reference point. After that you can calculate whatever you need it to do.
-AC
Define 'help'. Reducing the total bodycount? Maybe the net effect of warnings would not budge this statistic. Increasing the Darwinian fairness by letting smart people out of harm's way while letting people with smaller frontal lobes take their place by jockeying for a front seat? I call that helpful.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
we all knew this was coming...
You didn't read my post, or try to get phone numbers, using Google. It's very easy. Every hotel has a phone number. Put Phuket into Google.
It's shocking how easily the people who have replied in this thread accept the death of tens of thousands of other people.
I'm curious how they update all the maps when a large earthquake moves a big chunk of the Earth's crust by many meters. With modern navigation systems like GPS, it's a significant change. If you were an airline pilot landing in bad weather, you might want to know if the runway had moved 10 meters to the left and down.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Great research, finding out that there are millions of phones in Sri Lanka. Just use Google to find a hundred or so.
WELCOME TO THE 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@sri.lanka.net
"The Galadari Hotel is in the heart of the city in Colombo, over looking the beautiful Indian ocean."
Presumably there is a staff of at least 200. Tell one, everyone else will know soon. They don't want their friends and neighbors to die, and they know how to reach them.
It's people like you who ruin all the best social activities. House-fire parties, mudslide-surfing, blasting-cap biting. Suck lemons, ass.
...and be defensive to the detriment of the strength of your arguments, but I have to agree with you on that last point.
Billy Boy's pet drug company has also acted (based on patent claims) to completely block proposed donations of low-cost generic anti-AIDS drugs to Africa from Brasil.
Paul Allen doesn't overtly fight as dirty as Bill does, and in fact in many ways he's the Compleat Modern Gentleman, yet his donations still reflect his ideology. I wouldn't be able to make much sense of the situation if they didn't.
And now for something completely different.
It may be coincidence, but I only know of two organisations which routinely ship 100% of public donations to the front lines, and they're both Christian. I had a chat with a local who collects donations for Retinosis Pigmentosa research, and because he collects a lot he personally got to keep 45% of whatever he collects.
I imagine that by promising to pass 100% through, Amazon has considerably upped their own donation referrals. Perhaps they should consider making that feature a permanent fixture?
And perhaps a few secular organisations could try asking separately for donations from secular humanists (or whoever, really) to support the organisation itself, so that they too can guarantee to pass 100% of what is donated on through. It might help to remove one more excuse for stinginess from the equation.
Do you have enough of your own background/contacts to comment creatively?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Pork-barrelling (to win an election in SA, in that case) is never pretty.
They've got an Oberon stuck up in the dry at Fremantle, if you want to see a sub that used to work. In fact, the Yanks borrowed them a few times when their own subs weren't up to snuff.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A friend of mine who works for ADRA was relaying first-hand reports to me from there. 100% of what you donate to them goes to the front lines, no matter what your religion, or the religion(s) of the disaster victims.
I don't know of any Atheistic organisation which can come close to that. Christian donors just seem to be more generous. Moderate Islam ain't so bad, either, but tends to fatalism.
Madalyn and her grand-daughter (nice girl, used to chat with her on FIDO and our last conversation went unfinished because of that) were murdered by their manager over a matter of a few tens of thousands of $. If that's the leaders, even the "television evilangelists" aren't so bad. I guess it helps to have a future focus.
As an Atheist, you're either responsible for just yourself, or for everybody depending upon your viewpoint. I'm very glad to hear that you're shooting for "everybody" because in practice very few do.
The only logical ground I can see for being an Atheist, as I once was, was if evolution actually worked. But it doesn't and it can't. Reknowned ex-Atheist Antony Flew hasn't quite gone so far as top profess anything resembling Christianity, but to his credit he is following observations to their logical conclusion.
OK, I guess we can let the flamewar rage, now. It's been months since I was modded anything but up anyway. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
... seeing as I've never met you, I'd rather you didn't address me by first name. Use my nick as is the custom for blogs.
That is true, but it really annoys me when Yanks get this holier-than-thou attitude. It's so entirely undeserved almost all of the time.
In this case I think the evidence is pretty clear cut. The US isn't living up to their ODA obligation. Yet instead of admitting this simple indisputable fact we get a bunch of apologists making excuses. Is it so difficult for a single Yank to say "yeah, you're right, our government doesn't do enough to help other countries". What is the big deal to Americans?
I'd criticise my government in a heartbeat. I think you'd do the same. That's the Australian way :-)
My only comment is that I don't donate to charities based on their secular or religious backgrounds. I think any charity that proclaims its ideology is doing so for political reasons and I find that distasteful.
For those of you who would like to know about what is required and how it is spent, this is a field report for Chennai from Balaji Sampath.
(Request to mods: please mod this up so that people may read it. Thank you.)
(Information: 1 lakh = 1e5
1 crore = 1e7
India country code: 91)
======
Dear Friends,
After the initial shock and chaos, we are now quite well organized to handle the relief efforts. A number of organizations have started working together to handle the relief work - AID, TNSF, Pondicherry Science Forum, DYFI, Vidyarambam, Pratham and the PHM Organizations. We have formed a quick informal coalition to coordinate this work. As of now the state level coordination is being done from the AID-India office in Gopalapuram Chennai. We are together working on relief efforts in Chennai, Cuddalore and Pondicherry, Nagapattinam and Kanyakumari. The relief work is planned in 3 phases:
(1)Immediate Relief - food, clothing, blankets, temporary shelter, medicines and health camps for emergencies and epidemics.
(2)Second Level Relief - Construction of huts and houses and health needs.
(3)Third Level Relief - Livelihood needs for the families affected.
Right now all our focus in on the first phase.
In Chennai - we have divided ourselves into 3 teams:
1.Collection and Information Team: This team will handle calls, receive donations of money, clothes, medicines, blankets and vessels and send receipts, give information on the current status of relief work. This team will also give out press releases, send out email reports and call for further donations based on the needs. This is the team that people from outside must contact. The people to contact:
Bharati/Manohar/Hari (AID office) (44-28350403),
Ravishankar (IIT Prof) (94440-84910),
Chandra Anil (93823-30752, 44-28350403)
Smitha Kalyani (98401-73800)
Vibha Ravindran (98402-63275)
Balaji Sampath (94440-61033, 44-28350403(Office))
(I - Balaji - may not be available for the next 4 days as I am going to Nagai and Cuddalore to help with the field coordination.)
2.Allocation and Distribution: This team will get the needs from various field locations, sort the materials collected, divide it up for different locations based on the need and send it to the field coordinators for distribution.
3.Field Team: In each area we have a team of volunteers who will be coordinating the relief efforts and distribution of materials.
In Chennai we have started the relief work in 5 areas:
Pattinampakkam (Foreshore Estate)
Tiruvanmiyur and Olcott Kuppam
Kottivakkam
Royapuram
In each area we have allocated 2 people to coordinate with the distribution. These 2 people are taking down names of people, family survey, needs survey
and what is being distributed. The idea is that this individual rapport that is built will be useful in working with the people over the next few months - ensuring rehabilitation and livelihood as well. Every day as the collections are being done, the field coordinators will go to the relief camps to provide the people with what they need.
This is the plan everywhere - we work with a community, get a rapport during the initial relief phase and then work with them on the house constructions
and livelihood rehab phase.
In Nagapattinam district - which is the worst hit in Tamilnadu - we have 3 organizations on the field working: Tamilnadu Science Forum, Vidyarambam
and DYFI. We are also trying to get other orgns and the dist administration into a joint coordination effort. Many of our volunteers of who are from fishing villages have died and so have many of the children studying in the support centers. Ranganathan from Vidyarambam left yesterday from Chennai with a van load of clothes and relief materials. Locally DYFI and TNSF have collected some materials and started the distribution. We have sent them some immediate funds and I will be taking more funds and r
GPS satellites are constantly monitored from ground observation stations (Navstar's land segment). These observations are used to create and later update the ephemeris information. Your GPS receiver uses its most recent ephemeris to convert ranges to the satellites into a geodetic coordinate (lat/lon).
/geodesy geek
Really, GPS should be able to deal with a minor change in rotation speed without any glitch. The land-based observations are used to adjust the ephemeris for the sat's actual position relative to ground control -this is typical. This information is then sent to the receivers from the satellites.
What we will see is that datums that people have been equating with their GPS obervations (ie: the WGS 84 ellipsoid) may become obsolete more quickly. Software developers are going to have to make the jump to a more correct GPS datum (ITRF?).
Of course, for the geosychonous satellites (of which, GPS is not) there may be issues.
"sunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves" -Article
Sounds like a fair way to clear out the gene pool.
Look for torrents on isoHunt. Search for tsunami.
... donors can state where they want the money used. The Red Cross has rules about how it uses the money it receives.
F 60 F1EF63B580C7A8CDDA80994DC404482&incamp=archive:sea rch
n wo rk/myths.html
And the 9/11 victims families are already millionaries.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=
families or loved ones of civilians killed on Sept 11 received, on average, $3.1 million in government and charitable awards; families of uniformed personnel received average of $4.2 million
The Red Cross says
Between September 11 and November 9, the Red Cross has provided direct assistance amounting to $143.4 million.
All money that Americans have donated to the Liberty Fund is being used for its intended purpose: to help everyone across the country touched and impacted by these tragedies. Millions of dollars in financial assistance is going to families who lost a precious breadwinner. Facilities that are open 24 hours a day are helping the rescue workers with important needs such as food, shelter and emotional support. As well, countless volunteers are helping thousands of individuals and families who lost their living environment.
http://www.redcross.org/news/ds/0109wtc/donatio
I feel older already.
Yes, in Anchorge, Alaska there is a park called earthquake park (which my sister lives near) and the effects of the quake are quite apparent. For example my sister lives in a house that is say maybe 500 feet from the ocean. Before the quake it was half a mile or more from ocean. What happened is that say 300 feet from her place all the land past that point dropped down and everything past 500 feet now is under the inlet. When the tide is out, you can still see debri from the concrete houses that were destroyed (foundations even).
I also have to wonder what happened to ships at sea. True, the waves of Tsunami are supposed to be quite a bit less due to no shallow water, but still it would have been a big (rouge) wave from and unexpected direction. How many ships in that ocean out at sea saw damage or were destroyed?
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
1 rotation ~= 24 hours + 3 microseconds
My apologies for not being able to find a proper aproximation sign. I'm also having trouble copy and pasting symbols I have stored elsewhere.
Does this mean we'll be having a leap second in 333,333 years? That will throw my schedule all off.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
That would be a leap second every 333,333 days.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
I do not now, nor will I ever care what you think.
Tinfoil hat? Naa, I long since replaced it with a reinforced titanium alloy.
...then why did you reply? You obviously care that somebody knows that you supposedly do not care what I think... or something like that. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Hmmm. I wonder how annoyed they are by your own HTTA? (-: Or my own overwhelming self-righteousness, for that matter; welcome to the wonderful world of human nature
How about the ones who are doing so to help people avoid making mistakes?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
> This week's deadly Asian Quake and Tsunami may have been so powerful, that it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds.
This is nothing more than media sensationalization; it is not significant in any way, shape or form other than passing as news to the average joe, in turn selling more newspapers/products/ads. Nothing here to see, please move along (maybe to redcross.org?).
Must-not-watch TV!
GPS does not use geosync orbits - they are in a fairly low orbit, and a given satellite probably is only overhead for maybe an hour or something like that. The important thing is that the satellite knows where it is at all times, and it transmits that info which GPS receivers use in their calculations. All satellites drift naturally due to tides, etc, therefore there was already a need to periodically reassess the GPS satellite orbits and update the satellites idea of where it is located...
Sorry for the confusion. He originally had questions about both GPS and geosynchronous satellites. I answered both in the same paragraph, but should have been more clear that I was answering two different questions.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I don't know of any specifically Atheist relief organizations, nor do I see why any organization would want to exclude people with religious beliefs who are otherwise suitable. There are *non-religious* organizations who do great work, such as MSF.
What you seem to miss is that disbelief in supernatural beings does not imply an absence of ethics.
The only logical ground I can see for being an Atheist
Here's one: if God exists, he's a total bastard.
...so technically, you're correct.
Speaking to your point rather than your words, the known alternative is much worse.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You need to do a bit more research before putting up straw-men. If objections seem too easy to knock down, perhaps it's because they're not real targets, did you think of that?
Do you have kids? If so, has there ever been a time when they simply Will Not Be Told? When you have to go ahead and let them hurt themselves in some degree, in order to prevent them from totalling themselves and/or hurting others? What you're looking at here is in part a scenario like that.
Have you ever run across a military situation in which a few troops had to go through absolute hell in order to spare many troops and/or civilians a bad experience? You're also looking at a situation like that.
If God had created a set of automata, completely incapable of doing anything wrong, we would not have these problems, or anything like them. We would also be essentially unaware of ourselves in any way that mattered. Why does God need self-aware creatures? I haven't been told. Certainly not to - you should pardon the phrase - lord it over them. But stop and imagine for a while, would you rather have responsive children or a house full of machinery? If your SO doesn't always do what you want, do you destroy them on the spot? Would you want to?
RT.org, BTW, are reknowned more for their flexibility than for any attachment to logical rigour.
But we digress. If Atheism exists, and it does, it must see Theism as an abberation. Agreed? You're certainly reacting like that so far.
Given a responsible Atheism ("since I am essentially the ultimate authority I am also ultimately responsible for what happens around me and after me") - call it Altrusitic Atheism even though that's not really correct - such an Atheist is duty-bound to promote their position in order that the people around him react in a way which (s)he sees as most responsible. Which is a long-winded way of saying that a responsible Atheist would work to most completely undermine the assertion "only Theists operate charities" where the opportunity existed, by operating or contributing an Atheist-bannered charity. Any problems with that so far?
The other, sadly popular pole of Atheism could be typified by the assertion "since there is no afterlife, no accounting, I should grab for as much as I can get out of this life, and damn anyone else" (or possibly, "apres moi, le deluge") - call it Selfish Atheism - couldn't care less about charity unless it needed some itself, and therefore has no rational motivation to operate or contribute to charities. Yes? No?
The vast majority of real-life Atheists exist somewhere along that spectrum. This picture is muddied by labelling issues: the practical observation that many who think of themselves as Christian (this applies to members of other religions, but I address Western society) are for all practical purposes Atheist, and many who call themselves Atheist are really Agnostic.
However, the vast majority of Atheists, effective or declared, hew to the Selfish Atheism end of the spectrum. What you are living amongst is a society driven by Selfish Atheists with some echoes of what might be called "habitual Protestantism" and a sprinkling of Altruistic Atheists and others to give it a veneer of responsibility.
Take away that echo and the dilution by others and what you're left with looks very much like the French Revolution. Babies being passed from pike-head to pike-head and the kind of stuff you read about in the Jesuit Oath (plough through all of the Black Masses to the core of the Black Pope's army and what you'll find is - surprise - more Selfish Atheism and might-makes-right).
Now we pass again from observation to speculation, but it bears upon one of many possible existential options beyond the two you posited.
If you want the whole planet to look like that, just wait, it's scheduled to happen. When it does happen, remember this conversation. This tsunami is but an apertif of disasters to follow, and an faint echo of disasters which have already been.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing