Some worrisome news from Greg Laden’s Science blog, also in the running for Best Science Blog
Note: Image below was not part of the original story
Seismic Activity at Yellowstone by Greg Laden
Anyway, I’ve got a few resources for you in case you want to explore this further. To begin with, I recommend a look at my earlier post on this matter:
As you have surely heard, the Yellowstone Caldera … the place where Old Faithful and the Geyser Basin reside … has been undergoing increased “activity” including some earthquakes and a rising up of the land. Is this a big problem? Should the evacuate? Should those of us living only a few states away start wearing earplugs?
My sister, Elizabeth, publishes a newspaper in the vicinity of Yellowstone and they’ve got a very comprehensive piece on he caldera. In fact, my sister’s nickname is Caldera Girl. So she really knows her Calderas.
Tracking Changes in Yellowstone’s Restless Volcanic System
…Since the 1970s, scientists have tracked rapid uplift and subsidence of the ground and significant changes in hydrothermal features and earthquake activity. In 2001, the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory was created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the University of Utah, and Yellowstone National Park to strengthen scientists’ ability to track activity that could result in hazardous seismic, hydrothermal, or volcanic events in the region…
Finally, we’ve got this somewhat hokey but still fun to watch movie of how we are all totally doomed (h/t Caldera Girl).
The good news is, if this sucker blows, global warming is not going to be a problem.
I am personally keeping close watch on the seismic activity in the area and if I see anything ominous I’ll let you know. As soon as I finish packing and driving about 2,000 miles to the south of here.
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Hi guys,
OT comment I want someone to criticize:
Since we are in a period of cooling . . . some will say that we are in a flat period . . . . irregardless . . . . in as much as the warming is said to be the cause of the sea level rise because of ice melt, then . . .
If the mms per year rise in sea level continues while the temperatures remain static . . . the theory of anthropomorphic global warming is definitively falsified. Perhaps it is possible to falsify AGW with existing information by this line of reasoning.
Fire away.
Grant
Having re read my post, I should have put Catastrophic in front of AGW. . . since the catastrophe is really the only absolute thing we are talking about. Earth is always warming or cooling. The only question is, is it doing this catastrohpically.
Sorry bout dat.
Human sacrifice seems to be exactly what is being proposed by a lot of fringe – and mainstream – Greenies, and this pathological worldview has long ago entered public mainstream thought in the form of “humans-as-cancer/virus” groupthink.
It’s certainly being proposed by regulars like SecularAnimist (give me strength) at RealClimate. I posted some humorous comment, none of which was approved…
i am up for human sacrifice to appease the earth gods.
lets start with the ones amongst us who have displayed the most hubris by suggesting that mere human activity is the driving force behind climate change(hansen, gore, ect)
Sea levels have been flat to a slight downtrend since 2006. There is currently no sea level rise. It is another “projection” that has shown to be false.
“The mantle cools about 50-75 degrees Kelvin/Billion Years”
And once it cools to the point where subduction stops, the rate of cooling will slow because subduction and volcanism is a method of heat transfer out of the mantle and lower crust.
I figure that these last few earthquakes are right on the edge of the caldera. So if future earthquakes stay within the caldera they will be migrating north. These last earthquakes are 2.6 miles NNW of the WLWY station which has recorded a 10 inch uplift in the park over the last 4 years—the most of anywhere in the park.
Mike M (12:06:42) :
“i am up for human sacrifice to appease the earth gods”
Let us sacrifice him (AG) to the Sun, better. The stake has to be a big one as his weight has increased a lot…(we could even make candles out from his grease!!)
MikeM – good thought. Why do these “let’s thin the human species” types never volunteer and set a good example for the rest of us? Put your money where your mouth is, says I!
Melting Greenland ice “will drown coastlines”
Written by Christopher Monckton
Thursday, 08 January 2009
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/scarewatch/monckton_scarewatch_greenland.html
The scare: In early January 2008, Stephen Schneider, a biologist turned climatologist, put up a blog posting to say that “We cannot pin down whether sea levels will rise a few feet or a few meters in the next century or two”; that there is a “potential for up to 7 meters of sea-level rise stored as ice on Greenland”; that “Greenland is apparently melting at an unprecedented rate, and way faster than any of our theories or models predicted”; that “mounting evidence from ice cores says probably there is unprecedented melting going on right now”; that “another decade or two of such scientifically-documented acceleration of melting could indeed imply we will get … meters of sea-level rise”; that “another 5 meters of potential sea level rise lurks … in West Antarctica”; and that “this is a gamble with Laboratory Earth that we can’t afford to lose.”
The truth: Remarkably, Mr. Schneider does not provide references – or any other evidence whatsoever – for his assertions. He merely declaims.
Why not throw Al straight into Old Faithful? Direct action is what it’s all about, right?
Besides “irregardless” being a useless word, I don’t have much to say about it.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irregardless
Living about 100 miles from Yellowstone, I’m finding this discussion very interesting. I’m not really worried by living so close to Yellowstone. If it blows as a supervolcano eruption, those living close to the caldera will be the lucky ones. Dying of ash pneumonia, cold and starvation are far worse that incineration and that’s what appears to have happened to all but a few thousand or less humans when Toba erupted about 74,000 years ago.
Philip McDaniel (11:08:25) :
Well…from a reading of the ‘general consensus’ if Jellystone, excuse me, Yellowstone decides to blow we’re in serious trouble. In fact, those of us farthest away – say, like here in South Florida, will most likely starve to death. On the other hand we could probably subsist on chicken-littles. There seem to be a bunch of them around down here discussing global warming.
Fluttered south to discuss their pet theory somewhere nice and warm did they?
Note that the IPCC falsely states the cause and exaggerates the consequences, both constructs of a straw man.
—————————————————
Temperature Change and CO2 Change – A Scientific Briefing
Written by Christopher Monckton
Wednesday, 07 January 2009
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/temperature_and_co2_change_briefing.html
THE CHIEF REASON for skepticism at the official position on “global warming” is the overwhelming weight of evidence that the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, prodigiously exaggerates both the supposed causes and the imagined consequences of anthropogenic “global warming”; that too many of the exaggerations can be demonstrated to have been deliberate; and that the IPCC and other official sources have continued to rely even upon those exaggerations that have been definitively demonstrated in the literature to have been deliberate. In short, science is being artfully manipulated to fabricate what are in essence political and not scientific conclusions – a conclusion that is congenial to powerful factions whose ambition is not to identify scientific truth but rather to advance the special vested interests with which they identify themselves.
PaulHClark (10:02:40) :
Then I guess it was worth the second attempt (which also claimed it was a duplicate, and probably referred to the previous post).
I stumbled across a nice USGS link of recent EQ activity at Yellowstone, see http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/special/Yellowstone.php . The red loop is the border of the caldera. Feel free to panic if you see quakes all around the periphery, though Jeff L’s (07:41:31) post again before panicing. The brown lines are faults in the area, be nice to them. The gray line is the border of the park, it’s about 3X the size of Rhode Island.
I’m no world traveler, but I can’t imagine a more unique place than Yellowstone, especially if you might be interested in Geology. I’ve been there once on a bicycle tour (1974), once in winter (1989, after the fires), and once as a side trip to another bicycle tour (2003, see http://wermenh.com/biketour/yellowstone.html ). Yellowstone is seismically active in almost any way you can imagine except as a tectonic plate boundary. The ever-increasing instrumentation lets us see things that would have been missed just a decade or two before.
On my first visit, I was disappointed with Old Faithful and the waterfalls on the Yellowstone River because they’re hard to get close to. I was blown away by the variety other thermal features from dry fumaroles to wonderfully clear hot springs. Each of the thermal basins has a special personality – I think I’d feel more safe in the middle of the earthquake swarm than when I was at Norris Basin. The energy and risk of a steam explosion that could happen right next to me was quite unnerving.
Gotta get there again, it would be fun to hike to some of the thermal areas that are undeveloped.
@Grant Hodges,
There would be a lag between changes in the atmospheric temperature and ocean temperature even if one assumes the former to drive the latter, which is by no means clear.
BTW it’s “anthropogenic”, anthropomorphic means shaped like a man. 😉
“Global Cooling is really Global Warming”
Written by Christopher Monckton
Monday, 05 January 2009
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/scarewatch/warming_really_cooling.html
The scare: On 2 January 2009, the Wall Street Journal wrote one of a series of articles apparently co-ordinated throughout the generally alarmist news media throughout the holiday season, trying to overcome the problem posed for “global warming” alarmists by the fact that global mean surface temperatures have been on a downtrend for eight straight years.
“Subtle changes, adding up decade after decade, amount to more than the climate’s natural variation”: In fact, they don’t. For a start, as previously noted, many of the changes are so small that they are well within the very large variations that have taken place in the climate of the past. In any event, the end of the present decade will prove to have been substantially cooler than the beginning, notwithstanding the steady increase in CO2 concentration throughout. In the past, one might have relied upon the Wall Street Journal to check its facts, and to present both sides of the story – especially the factually-true side. But, on “global warming”, no news medium can now be trusted to check even the elementary and readily-available facts recorded here. End of scare.
Sorry to veer OT like that. Been watching this site for a while now: http://www.yellowstonegis.utah.edu/. Nice compendium of stuff.
Ed Scott (08:41:21) :
I think Harry Truman made the right decision, though apparently he stayed more to protect the property than because he couldn’t imagine living off the mountain.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/mountsthelens/hary11.shtml
Rather than Yellowstone, other volcanoes in the Cascades pose a more immediate threat (where immediate means possibly in my lifetime). For example, you won’t find me moving to a river valley within sight of Mt Rainier. And you can see Rinier from a long ways away.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/mountsthelens/rain12.shtml
TitiXXXX1892 (03:53:15) :
“Reminded me of that story, which I think I found on WUWT at first
How to construct a world-wide panic
The essential elements of an effective global panic consist of two parts:
First, one needs to identify a potential source of a world-wide catastrophe. Second, one needs to convince everyone that that actions of man are about to trigger that catastrophe. This is best illustrated by this following theoretical example:
It is well known that a “Super Volcano” lies under Yellowstone park. This volcano went undetected for many years, because its sheer size is so large it escaped notice when looking for something more familiar in size.
The consequences of another eruption of this monster can be fairly well predicted. First, it will simply blow away a fair-sized piece of Montana, and falling ash will bury cities for many miles beyond. The atmospheric ejecta will blanket a large portion of the earth, blocking out the sun and producing a “nuclear winter” for a significant portion of mankind. Crop failures and other effects of rapid cooling will lead to the death of untold billions of both human and animal inhabitants.
In fact, there are some significant geothermal and other indicators in Yellowstone that suggest this monster is again on the move. This has sparked at least one major television presentation discussing the potential for another eruption and the obvious catastrophe that would follow if it does. But this information in itself has not created much in the way of panic. Most citizens are resigned to the fact that mega-disasters, should they occur, can not be prevented by human action because they are part of the natural behavior of the planet and worrying excessively can not change anything. Don’t worry, be happy, we’re all in this together.
To turn the Yellowstone Super Volcano into a world-wide panic, we need a convincing piece of junk science as a trigger. Taking our cue from the “man-made CO2 is causing global warming” hoax, here’s one distinct possibility as far as Yellowstone is concerned:
Professor Wilfred Brimstone at the University of Mongolia has developed a model which clearly shows the buildup of human population on both the east and west coast of the United States is putting excessive pressure on both sides of the North American plate. The accumulation of vast amounts of additional weight in the form of people, buildings, automobiles, and other man-made items is creating such an excess of plate pressure at the edges, that magma is being forced laterally toward the center of the country, and in particular towards a weak crust zone in Montana centered at Yellowstone park. In the same manner as popping a pimple by squeezing from two opposing sides, the “coastal weight effect” is squeezing the magma beneath the crust and causing a rapid pressure buildup of the Yellowstone Super Volcano. Man’s greed to live near the ocean has tipped the balance of nature, and it is now only a matter of time until Yellowstone blows its top.
….. unless we take quick action to arrest and reverse this process.
It is critically important to immediately evacuate everyone from both coasts, and dismantle all heavy structures and begin transporting them to the center of the country, redistributing them evenly over a wide area until the overall plate pressure has been suitably equalized and the danger has passed. Senator Barbara Boxer has introduced a bill which will impose a stiff tax on any item weighing more than six ounces in order to pay for the weight relocation. A new $100 million Center for Building Weight Studies is currently under construction in Santa Barbara.
If you do not want to be dislocated from your present home, former Vice President Al Gore has just formed a new company, Relocation Unlimited, in which you can invest in “weight offsets” and not have to move. For a price, Mr. Gore will arrange have an equivalent weight of ordinary dirt dug up and relocated instead of your own 3 bedroom ranch.
It is also of immediate importance that we educate our children in the nature of this pending disaster that their parents’ over-building has created. Children everywhere should quickly make costumes that resemble blocks of concrete and conduct ritualistic marches in the general direction of the central Midwest. This, combined with the waving of signs and the singing of Kumbaya will quickly spread the word throughout the public school system and draw the attention of the mainstream media which is also critical to this effort. Working together, we can all stem this rapidly looming disaster.
incidentally, you can purchase your STOP YELLOWSTONE NOW t-shirts by visiting our online store, and our book by the same name is available on Amazon.com. A prime time television special is currently in production”.
And you believe that?
J.Hansford. (10:07:53) :
Personally I think the world will be destroyed by mutant hamsters…. Rustling and scurrying, little beady eyes, watching….. always watching…. 😉
Everyone knows that it’s Skynet, dude
Karl and crosspatch, thank you for your corrections and reassuring comments about the life of sun and earth. Mine was just a light, not very well researched banter on the perspective of little picture – Gore and big picture – universe. Next time I go swimming I will keep in the shallow end.
I say we pump the chamber with water, then add some ping pong balls to float the “boat” so to speak. Then we slowly pump the water out. We can raise the necessary revenue with taxes.
hotrod (04:35:00) :
It would certainly test the hypothesis of global cooling due to volcanic ass injection into the atmosphere.
Would that be when it blows all our posteriors into the air? 😉