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Alaska's Mt. Redoubt Has Erupted
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Mar 23, 2009 08:02 AM
from the mountain-go-boom dept.
from the mountain-go-boom dept.
alaskana98 writes "Alaska's Mt. Redoubt volcano has erupted 3 times, with the first event starting at 10:38 PM Alaska standard time.
The ash cloud is estimated to be higher than 50,000 feet. So far, only light ash fall is predicted for areas north
of Anchorage."
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It's still dark in Alaska (Score:4, Funny)
The web cam just shows blackness
Re:It's still dark in Alaska (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently this is what the inside of a layer of ash looks like at this time of morning.
Global cooling on its way?
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What I want to know... (Score:4, Funny)
Can Governor Sarah Palin see it happening from her house?
Not at the moment, she's on her knees (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Not at the moment, she's on her knees (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What I want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can Governor Sarah Palin see it happening from her house?
And if she does, does this make her a qualified Vulcanologist?
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It's not Russia, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Sarah Palin reports she can see it from her house.
Re:It's not Russia, but... (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Redoubt.php [alaska.edu]
Fox News says it erupted tomorrow.
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Re:It's not Russia, but... (Score:5, Informative)
[to be technical, Sarah Palin lives in Wasilla, which some consider a suburb of Anchorage, even though it's an hour away by car]
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Re:It's not Russia, but... (Score:5, Informative)
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Why not? (Score:5, Funny)
New Orleans don't need government waste like something called "volcano monitoring". We should all move to places like New Orleans where they dont need to waste all that kind of money monitoring something that may or may not happen. ...Good to know I'm not the only one who thought Jindel bashing volcano monitoring was highly ironic.
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Re:It's not Russia, but... (Score:4, Informative)
She might be able to see a vague outline of ash in the sky today, but as the ash blows north any further viewing will be obscured.
You can see Denali from Anchorage because it's mostly flat in between the two.
The view south from Anchorage however is mostly mountains; seeing anything off in the distance is unlikely.
BTW, the drive from Anchorage down the Kenai to Homer is staggeringly beautiful. I highly recommend it.
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Re:It's not Russia, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:It's not Russia, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hah! I get it!
It's funny because, unlike you, she's not a virgin!
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Send in Al Gore (Score:3, Funny)
Well this should clearly be illegal, dumping all of that ash and those greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Of course there's a Republican governor.
Won't somebody think of the caribou?!
Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:5, Funny)
I may even market it in an infomercial: "Volcano Gas! The natural male enhancement! For women too! You can have an Earth Shattering Happy moment with your partner!"
I'm on my way to film commercials with that smiling couple!
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Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:5, Funny)
How about a tie in with my All Natural Green Organic Hemlock Energy Drink?
"If it's good enough for Socrates it's good enough for us!"
Every can comes with a coupon for the sequestration of your carbon.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's nothing we can do about the natural contributions of Earth's own systems to the Greenhouse - except where we're increasing it by cutting trees, replacing them with livestock, helping heat the oceans to kill coral reefs, create dead zones instead of carbon-based life ecosystems and acidifying them to release more oceanic carbon into the air. The Earth's baseline Greenhouse gas cycles are stable enough for us to live in, as we evolved to do over thousands and millions of generations.
But the sudden ext
Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:5, Insightful)
If we don't rein in our artificial contributions, even though they're small compared to the natural baseline, we're going to inherit a whirlwind that will probably destroy our civilization."
There is not enough scientific eveidence to back up your statement. "Probably" is a strong word. Overpopulation could be the real danger. Humanity might receed, the climate will go on.
Throughout history there have always been those crying "end of the world". Many of them cooks and manipulators, I'm sure. All of them wrong.
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Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:5, Funny)
Throughout history there have always been those crying "end of the world". Many of them cooks and manipulators.
Note to self: when someone says the world is ending, do NOT try their soup.
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Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:4, Insightful)
There is not enough scientific eveidence to back up your statement. "Probably" is a strong word. Overpopulation could be the real danger. Humanity might receed, the climate will go on.
To be fair he specifically said "civilization" and not "life on earth" or even "all the humans".
Civilization isn't that hard to destroy if you look at the last few civilization that went kaput (Mayans, Romans, Egyptians etc).
Climate change could do that to ours, but it is pointless to say "we can't do anything" regardless of its man made or not.
We could spary Gobi and Sara with white reflective paint with B52 bombers. We could drop a few nuclear bombs into an active volcano. We could genetically engeer a new algae that sequesters all the CO2 it can and then sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
But to say mankind can't do anything is short sited.
We may be involved in climate change or we may not. (several billion humans, cows, and cars making CO2 obviously does something, but how much? In past times when there were lots of plants there were high oxygen content atmosphere followed by an ice age, followed by an increase in animal life which also happened to coincide with CO2 with increase of temperature which resulted in more plants and then more animals etc. Might be related. Might not.)
Anyways... My point is not that global warming is man made or not. My point is that either way we should do something about it if we want to keep our civilization.
Either that means adapting the environment or adapting ourselves.
We can put some intelligence and technology into this or just let natural selection work its thing.
Personally, I'd rather not be around when natural selection works it thing.
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Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should you care at all how much energy Gore uses, if none (or little) of it causes Greenhouse pollution? Do you demand that we all live worse, even if we don't have to?
Gore is a leader because he leads. He took political risks - and real political damage - for years while he was ahead of public opinion. Now that the evidence is so overwhelming that even bad leaders like Bush admit the problem Gore has been working to solve while they've been working to cause it, Gore is widely recognized as that leader because he helped get the public to accept the science. Though the public is so hard to lead that even an example of a rich guy living well without causing the harm he's working to avert isn't good enough for some people.
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Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't one of the points of his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" that everyone needs to do their part to conserve?
No, it was not. At all. I've watched it. The point of his documentary is convince people there's a problem and that if we ignore it we'll all in trouble. Full stop.
Now, at the end of the movie, during the credits, there's a list of 27 things you can do, which is the very first time suggestions are aimed at people instead of governments. It really isn't the point of the documentary, and it isn't Al Gore saying them, and it is during the credits.
18 of them boil down to 'talk to other people and your government leaders'. That's right, even 2/3rds of the suggestions actually aimed at viewers of the movie don't have anything to do with changing people's energy usage.
As for the rest: Three are transportation suggestions, one is planting trees, one is recycling. There are only four that are vaguely applicable to houses:
'Switch to renewable sources of energy.', which Gore does, paying a premium to do so.
'Buy energy efficient appliances & lightbulbs.', which he's stated he does, at least with CFL lights, we don't know about the rest.
So what is left that he possible doesn't do:
'Change your thermostat (and use clock thermostats) to reduce energy for heating & cooling.', which we don't know if he does.
'Weatherize your house, increase insulation, get an energy audit.', which he has done, at least in the energy audit. (And as it's a new house, it's hard to imagine it's poorly insulated.)
You'll note 'live in a smaller house' is not on that list.
Al Gore has been turned into some sort of uber-strawman by the right, where they imagine he's suggested they all live in tree houses. To recap: His presentation in the movie doesn't suggest any changes for any people to make at all, and even the tack-on-to-the-credits list of things for people to do is mostly 'make other people aware of what's happening, and make politicians aware that you're aware.'
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Finally.... (Score:3, Funny)
Finally, several months after the loss in elections, Sarah Palin let the steam out.......
Meanwhile (Score:4, Interesting)
Meanwhile, in Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal mutters something about all this wasteful government spending.
Re:Meanwhile (Score:5, Funny)
Jindal was right! We don't have to monitor volcanoes, just wait for them to erupt and the news media will monitor them for us! Who wants to monitor them when they aren't doing anything interesting anyway? That would be like monitoring weather patterns out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean...boring and useless.
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indeed (Score:4, Funny)
Why even bother to predicate hurricanes if government is useless at responding to them.
"Government is ineffective, vote for us and we'll show you how!" - traditional GOP motto.
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Re:Meanwhile (Score:4, Insightful)
> just wait for them to erupt and the news media will monitor them for us!
Ah, another job better done by the private sector.
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haha (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:haha (Score:5, Insightful)
No he doesn't; If 8 years of Bush has shown us anything, it's that conservatism means never having to consider the possibility you're wrong.
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Re:haha (Score:5, Funny)
But happiness is never having to say you're Tory.
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Correction... 4 NOT 3 eruptions... (Score:5, Informative)
NOT from TFA:
Re:Correction... 5 NOT 4 eruptions... (Score:3, Informative)
2009-03-23 02:04:08
As of 2:00AM March 23, 2009, AVO has recorded FOUR large explosions [...]
2009-03-23 04:37:08
Another large explosion is occurring at Redoubt.
(which IS from TFA)
Correction... 5 NOT 4 eruptions... (Score:5, Informative)
/Former resident of Eagle River, AK
//Saw Mt Redoubt the last time it erupted.
///Well, at least until the ash obscured the view.
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No, no, no... (Score:4, Funny)
It's a imaginary place in the Simon & Garfunkel song.
Kinda like Shangri-La, El-Dorado, Hobbiton or New Zealand.
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The Devil Comes for Republicans (Score:4, Interesting)
When Republican governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal took to TV immediately after President Obama's address to the Joint Session of Congress last month, he whined that the government funded volcano monitoring is "wasteful spending" [sciam.com]. Of course he was lying, since he said "$140M for volcano monitoring", when that money is for USGS "facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities", all kinds of important stuff for running and protecting our country.
Then Jindal went into some kind of weird story about his standing for sanity during Hurricane Katrina (which he was lying about [talkingpointsmemo.com], too - and it was a story about the lone Democrat getting things done, surrounded by Republicans including Jindal doing nothing but flapping their lips). Reminding us what happens when the government doesn't monitor predictable local natural disasters that kill thousands and destroy cities.
This was the official Republican response. Maybe they just want to keep secret their main competition for spewing filthy hot air that kills Americans.
Re:The Devil Comes for Republicans (Score:4, Interesting)
It's spending money, right?
To pay people's wages? That sounds exactly like stimulus.
To buy equipment? That sounds exactly like stimulus too.
Sure less multiplier effects than say building roads and bridges to connect industries to transport hubs/people, but you can't say it "does nothing to STIMULATE the economy", since clearly it does.
Of course stimulating the economy by borrowing/printing money is retarded anyway, but that's beside the point.
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Re:The Devil Comes for Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
It's spending money, right?
To pay people's wages? That sounds exactly like stimulus.
To buy equipment? That sounds exactly like stimulus too.
Sure less multiplier effects than say building roads and bridges to connect industries to transport hubs/people, but you can't say it "does nothing to STIMULATE the economy", since clearly it does.
Of course stimulating the economy by borrowing/printing money is retarded anyway, but that's beside the point.
Well, if simply paying wages is the goal, then you could pay a LOT more wages for $140,000,000 a year than you could by simply monitoring volcanoes. How much of that money is spent monitoring volcanoes overseas? How many American jobs does it provide? What is the LONG TERM stimulus to the economy when compared to say a school which employs teachers, janitors, administrators for decades, not to mention educating kids?
Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against volcano monitoring, but not under guise of "stimulus". $140,000,000/yr will provide 2800 people with $50,000/yr jobs that actually build something, fix something, or make life easier for someone else, all of which would stimulate the economy much more than a few geologists sitting around collecting steam and ash data from a non-active volcano in the Phillipines. Again, I'm not saying it's not important, but it certain is not stimulus.
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Re:The Devil Comes for Republicans (Score:5, Interesting)
So you are okay with Bobby Jindal having no morals and lying as long as everyone else is lying? Two or three wrongs make a right? Or are you suggesting that every time you note someone is lying you have to find someone on the other side that lied in the last ten years (on matters that are irrelevant to the current discussion) to be "fair"?
Bullshit. Katrina wiped a ton of Americans out because the government didn't monitor the situation. Jindal says we should not monitor volcanoes. He lied about his experience. Why do you insist on changing the subject? Because you are a partisan hack yourself.
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Re:Be nice to DOC RUBY!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, your post was kinda flattering, if inaccurate. I thank you for the accurate flattery :).
I've been much less "partisan" since Republicans lost most of their power after holding way too much for way too long. I don't know how I look otherwise. FWIW, my "partisan" attitude is not so much a Democratic partisan, because I'm not a Democrat (I'm independent), as it is highly anti Republican, since that party has been such a damaging collection of bad people for so long, and we're so damaged by it.
In this case, you're going along with Jindal's Republican lie that $140M is spent by Democrats on volcano monitoring, when I pointed out the fact is that the monitoring gets only a (relatively small) fraction of that overall budget amount. And though Republicans did indeed spend some considerable money on volcano monitoring when they were the ones writing, passing and signing USGS budgets, I never complained - because I never saw evidence it was too much. In fact, if I'd seen evidence that it was too little, I probably would have complained. As I just did when Jindal attacked it, even if he has only lies and partisan posturing to offer, without power to screw up that budget (at the present time). Indeed, I could have pointed out the further Republican hypocrisy of Sarah Palin not only accepting the money Jindal badmouthed (but can't stop), but Palin's refusing to even comment on that dramatic divergence from the official Republican position on that budget, even as she continues to run for president. Because I'm talking about Jindal, disaster preparedness, and Republican refusal to learn from Katrina (or anything else), not the vaster and duller subject of mere Republican hypocrisy.
If you can show evidence that the current system (including the safety of USGS/contractor jobs in this Republican recession) "works fine" without the stimulus budget, I'd like to see it. All I can see is Jindal claiming he learned from his (imaginary, and self-defeating as a fable) Katrina experience that the government shouldn't fund monitoring for natural disasters. Katrina was predicted by government monitoring, too, but the full necessary system under Republican control and development didn't seem to "work fine". Except to Jindal, for whom it works fine as a (made up, self-defeating) story to tell on TV.
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Re:The Devil Comes for Republicans tsarkon (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, you can't predict earthquakes, except in the case of aftershocks. We aren't 'monitoring' earthquakes to predict them, we're simply studying them to see if we can predict them, and to predict tsunamis and volcanoes.
Secondly, tsunami predictions have saved quite a lot of lives. The last disastrous tsunami, in fact, was predicted in plenty of time to help people, except that there wasn't a unified warning system for the area and that the various countries hit are still mostly third world and had no way to notify their people.
Tsunamis in general are incredibly easy to predict. You just wait for an largeish earthquake, which can easily see on semographs, and then look for swelling of the ocean at that place. It is sheer stupidity we don't have some sort of global monitoring for them. Two hours after the quake that caused the last one, four hours before it hit anywhere, radar satellites picked the damn thing up. We could easily just tie together existing systems and have fair warning of these things.
And, of course, the monitoring of Mount Pinatubo saved 10-20 thousand lives when it erupted in 1991. In total, the entire monitoring of that volcano, in the decade the US had done it, came to about 15 million dollars. (Or about the cost of having one guy from AIG work for them that entire time.)
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Link to a story (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an actual story about what is happening [sfgate.com].
A poem (Score:5, Funny)
15 240 meters (Score:5, Funny)
Since everyone but Myanmar, Liberia and the United States use the metric system I just thought I'd point out the hight of the ash cloud.
In case you don't know this obscure "ft" unit. ;-)
Re:15 240 meters (Score:5, Funny)
And I thought we used wings...
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not all government pork is bad - insert joke here - ...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:YEP (Score:4, Insightful)
Care to refute any of it...
Well, I can refute something in there pretty easily: We have no one in government called 'Chairman Obama'. So pretty much any statement that mentioned 'Chairman Obama' is blatantly wrong on the face of it.
Also, why'd you include links to the 2007 and 2009 budget? Obama, neither your imaginary 'Chairman Obama' nor the actual President Obama, had anything to do with those budgets. (Well, beyond the fact he was in the Senate at that time...but the House does the budget.)
Those were just the two things that it's trivially easy to disprove and not even up for debate.
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