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Volcano Near Mexico City Becomes More Active
benfrog writes "Popocatépetl, a volcano that sits 34 miles east of Mexico City, has begun a series of small eruptions. It's feared that larger eruptions would not only endanger people within range of its explosions, but disrupt life in Mexico City with ash clouds. 'People in the village of Xalitzintla said they were awakened by a window-rattling series of eruptions. Mexico’s National Disaster Prevention Center said one string of eruptions ended in the early morning, then the volcano started up again at 5:05 a.m., with at least 12 eruptions in two hours.' More than 30 million people live within sight of the volcano."
Must be all the tacos.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
...we need to move away from volcano-generated electricity, and decommission all volcanos near population centers immediately.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/region/N_America.php
Shows 4.3 and 5.1 in Central America in the past day...
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
December 21
relax, 8 more months to go
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think the Zetas finally have a way to extort the district for protection money
Go Google the location of the plates and fault lines, then look at earthquakes for the last 10 years and you will see a pattern.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ypalM7eSBEQ/SdzT_ajylVI/AAAAAAAAAbM/XNB1-z6lvKg/s1600-h/tectonic_map.jpg
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/byyear.php
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Fast.
Slashdotters, be afraid.
Have gnu, will travel.
I got an idea, how about evacuating? I'm sorry, that was a smart idea. Stay there, I'm sure you'll be fine.
I was going to type something about Malcolm Lowry but my fingers developed paralysis.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
...evacuate 30 million people. Plus all of Mexico City. Many of whom have limited resources.
Oh... maybe you're not as smart as you think you are.
how to get all of the drug lords to put their base of operations on it? It could solve a lot of issues.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What kind of idiot builds a city next to a volcano?
N from Edinburgh
...never seems to leave mexicans alone.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
theory has it that without some major eruptions in recent prehistory the planet would be a large ball of ice. (source: BBC Horizon: Snowball Earth (2001)). Volcanoes emit huge quantities of, among other things, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. All major greenhouse gases.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
disrupt life in Mexico City with ash clouds
The air quality of Mexico City is very dirty, so dirty that birds actually die while they were flying and fall down from the sky
And I read somewhere that an American diplomat once commented that the dust you see in Mexico City is mostly made up of dried manure
In light of this, a little bit volcano ash won't do much harm to Mexico City
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Uncharacteristically the weather is great and visibility today is spectacular. Could that be an omen?
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
The Mayas are training for Dec. 2012.
the musical fruit, The more you eat, the more you toot! The more you toot, the better you feel, so eat your beans with every meal!! -a song my mom used to sing to me as a child. I'll never forget it.
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
now I have successfully tested my Volcanoanator!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
+1 I know, right...
Well... As a Mexican living in Mexico City, I beg to differ. And have some first-hand information.
Our air is not as clear and clean as it (c|sh)ould be, of course. But neither is the air of any ~20 million people city. Starting in 1989, very important programs to improve the air have been implemented. Some ideas –some bad, some good– were also scrapped in the process. The main points:
The most polluting industries have been moved farther away from the city (or relocated to other places in the country)
There is a mandatory emmissions control for all vehicles carried out twice a year for each car, strictly followed.
As a result of the previous point: If your car is less than ten years old and has low enough emissions, no restrictions are placed on it. Older cars, or cars that don't meet the threshold, have to "sleep" one day a week, and one weekend a month.
The biggest open-air dump yards and sewage systems have slowly been closed and converted. This is an ongoing process, and very hard to get right, but it is moving in the right direction.
And yes, our city is still big and polluted — But when I've travelled to several South American countries, I have been astonished at how older cars leave a stench of bad combustion... That does not happen here any more. And that's indicative on why our air was in such a critical level 20 years ago.
Fix the demand side of the equation, and the supply side will fix itself.
If we just listened to Rush Limbaugh and locked up drug addicts like Rush Limbaugh, we wouldn't have any damn Zeta drug gang problem!
errr wait, that would only clear up the big pharma drug gang problem, never mind...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Does anyone know, is there a caldera there? When I google it, I see that there was one formed 12k years ago, but if there was one today, then you'd want to watch for a supersonic outgassing, because if that happens, the city needs to evacuate ASAP.
With the outgassing, my understanding is that the pressure reduces to one that is insufficient to hold up the ceiling of the caldera, so you then get a collapse, and a mega-explosion, a la Santarini, Krakatoa, and other such megavolcanos.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Any live web cam broadcast of this event?
Jack of all trades,master of none
I live in Mexico City. The Popocatepetl is a very well known and well studied volcano. And no, although it's 35Km away from the city's South Eastern outskirts, Mexico City is by far not at risk. The eruption –in case it happens– would most likely not be a violent one (i.e. as with St. Helen or with Chichonal). This volcano has been passively active for thousands of years. Volcanic activity did increase, yes, but it happens every few years — I'm not sure if it was in 2000 or 2004, but we even saw some lava being spilled out of the crater. Of course, that washed away the glaciar that had been in place for hundreds of years (at the very least).
Oh, and while our country's security situation is VERY far from "quiet" (specially in the last five years where the current president has taken all the wrong decisions), the country is by far not in the face of a civil war or an uprising. The criminal groups that –yes– have created panic in many areas of the country are not after the political control. The violence is linked with the routes for drug transit to the USA, but those groups do not (openly) seek political power. And, even with our elections drawing near (July 1st), it's very far from a real threat nowadays.
I have less imagination for distressed, poor people than you do. The setting you pictured us would belong in my imagination to a post-earthquake Haiti — and quite probably I'm being too discriminatory anway. Yes, I live in Mexico City. A city known for people having to cross 40Km in 2hr to get to work (because there's so much people and so many cars that traffic is just so slow downtown).
We so far have had nothing we have not seen over and over for the last hundreds of years. It's not gratuitous that this volcano is named "Popocatépetl" — The smoking mountain. It always has some smoke getting out. We are just seeing an increase in its strength, as we are used to, in ~10 year cycles.
Nothing to worry about.
So Mexicans cannot legally immigrate?
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
some do that, most don't