Geohazards
greengabbro | February 25, 2009The consensus piece of apologetics for Jindal's anti-USGS remarks appears to be to claim that even though volcano monitoring is, of course, a worthwhile investment, it is not economically stimulating, and therefore does not belong in the stimulus bill.
To claim that this is what Jindal was actually trying to say requires a phenomenally over-generous interpretation of his speech. But forget what Jindal did or did not say, or mean to say, or imply - his big flop is yesterday's news now. Considering the argument that volcano monitoring does not belong in the stimulus bill on its own merits... I…
greengabbro | February 24, 2009I turned on Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's campaign speech pre-campaign campaign insinuation pre-campaign dogwhistle fundraiser rebuttal to Obama's speech while cooking my pancakes this evening.
I have two questions.
Do Republicans (or moderates who don't have a kneejerk anti-Republican reflex) also feel like he's talking to the nation as though we were all kindergarteners? I was flabbergasted, but I don't know how to properly account for my rather strong political biases here.
DID HE SERIOUSLY JUST SAY THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT BE MONITORING VOLCANOES??!?!!!????@#$@!
Ignoring for the sake…
greengabbro | January 15, 2009One of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the natural character and beauty of a half-written blog post and should not be considered flaws or defects.
Draft date: August 15, 2008
At about 2 in the morning on Saturday night, I was wandering back to the hotel when I found myself chatting with someone on the street. I have no idea how the conversation got onto earthquakes, but it did, and…
greengabbro | January 7, 2009 Rob R. asks:
I've been following along with the recent happenings at Yellowstone (that is, as best as I can as a layman) but haven't seen that site [data from the Yellowstone GPS network] before. Could you explain (or link to) what I'm seeing there and what a "change in surface topography" might look like? Thanks in advance.
Sure thing! What you are looking at on that page is a network of GPS receivers cemented to various points in the Yellowstone caldera and surrounding area. The USGS has written a nice overview of GPS and other geodetic volcano monitoring techniques, and I won't…
greengabbro | December 18, 2008According to a study of deaths from natural hazard "events"* across the U.S., earthquakes, volcanoes, and other spectacular geophysical hazards are much less deadly than common weather events like heat waves, floods, and thunderstorms. The study was published in the open-access International Journal of Health Geographics, so you should all be able to follow the link - but if you would rather read the summary version, the Los Angeles Times noticed that California is mostly safe, and ran with that angle.
The study's authors looked at county-level data on natural fatality hazards during the…
greengabbro | June 30, 2008One hundred years ago today, a meteor exploded above Siberia, flattening trees over an area of a couple thousand square kilometers (one-tenth of Wales). This video shows the mostly recovered forest, and a view of the lake that might or might not be an impact crater:
The narration overstates the "mystery" about the cause of the explosion. We might not have any of the traditional tell-tale signs of an impact, like a crater or even a bit of leftover meteorite, but we've observed smaller atmospheric meteor explosions. People are still floating alternative hypotheses, but there's little reason to…