Alaska's Mt. Redoubt Has Erupted 327
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."
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.
Re:Send in Al Gore (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 extra dumping of Greenhouse pollution is pushing those cycles out of their groove, into a new groove that leaves the weather more violent and the seas swollen with melted ice. 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.
That's why Al Gore is warning us so urgently. And why Republican governors are dangerous sources of hot air.
Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Devil Comes for Republicans (Score:2, Insightful)
I think Jindal was talking about using Stimulus money to fund volcano monitoring. Sorry, but I have to agree with him here. Monitoring volcanoes does nothing to STIMULATE the economy. Now if he were opposed to a stand-alone bill that spent $140,000,000/yr for volcano monitoring, then your points may be valid.
As to Jindal lying about his actions during Katrina, I can't seem to find your posts of outrage when Hillary Clinton claimed she was shot at in Bosnia, Barack Obama's claims that he had no ties to William Ayers or Tony Rezko, or his ignorance of the blatant racism of his pastor for 20 years. Where is your outrage over a guy who ducked paying taxes being put in charge of the IRS?
Sorry Doc, but if you want to at least appear to be non-partisan, you must at least make an faux attempt to apply the same standards to both sides. Truth is that there are good people on both sides of the aisle, although few and far between. You really shouldn't hate someone just because of the letter after their name. You used to be fair and smarter than that. Seeing that you've become a hateful, partisan hack disappointments me.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Can the devil come for all ideologues? (Score:1, Insightful)
Does politics have to pollute EVERY story here? Seriously, I hate the GOP (hate the Democrats, too), but you raving, spittle dripping ideologues who have to drag politics into every damned story on anything are worse than any of them. Yes, we all know about Jindal's idiocy. You are not unique. You are not special for doing thing. Every point in your post was said in the first 15 minutes after Jindal's original comments.
Please just die or something. You ideologues, on both sides, are useless.
Be nice to DOC RUBY!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Please, don't hammer Doc. He's brilliant, although as of late, misguided. His posts can be fair, open and extremely insightful when he's not just typing with his heart instead of his head. While emotional responses are usually not a problem, in Doc's case, his heart has been filled with partisan hatred of late. I'm hoping that his head will take back over and clean out all the illogical, off balance hatred that has clouded his otherwise sound judgment.
For example, (and to get back on topic) imagine his outrage if a Republican had spent $140,000,000/yr to monitor volcanoes. He would be screaming in all caps and bold that this was some sort of a payoff to Sarah Palin. He would say that the US has not had a major eruption since Mt. St. Helens in the mid 80's. He would also point out that since this eruption was predicted and prepared for, there is no need to spend MORE money for monitoring since the current system obviously works fine with the current funding.
I look forward to the day when I can read Doc's posts again and think, "Wow! That bastard made sense."
Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:3, Insightful)
He's only a "leader" because he's got lots of money to pay others to offset his excesses.
Actually, the company he buys his "offsets" from is owned by ... himself. By the way, can I buy "offsets" from myself, and write them off of my taxes?
Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:2, Insightful)
Explain why we are still not in an ice age if the "natural contributions of the Earth's own systems" are stable and don't cause climate change.
The natural contributions referred to do contribute to climate change, of course, as do other factors like fluctuations in the Earth's orbit around the sun and continental drift. The thing that makes the anthropogenic contributions to climate change troublesome is that they happen over a dramatically shorter period of time than is typical for natural events.
And when I say, "troublesome", I mean, of course, troublesome to us. The Earth will cheefully cruise along whether we infest it or not.
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.
Re:haha (Score:3, Insightful)
Two words: Patriot Act
Not to debate good ol' George (Orwell), but it seems a large oversight to compare Obama to Big Brother when the recent Bush Administration was so opaque, secretive and misleading.
Who were we at war with again? Iraq or Al-Quaeda? Or was it Eurasia or Eastasia... I always get the two confused.
Settle down, weirdo.
Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not Ad Hominem to note that Al Gore doesn't walk his talk. While he prophesies doom, he flys on private G5s, drives in a herd of Suburbans, and his house consumes more electricity in a month than most do in a year. Same with Hansen, who jets around the planet screaming "we all gonna die!".
"Carbon limits for thee, but not for me" isn't inspiring.
What We Can Do (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you've nailed it exactly (though unfortunately there's more people than just the dwindling "right" that is stuck on the doomed path).
The debate over causes of climate change is worthwhile only as a means to the end of identifying what we can change here and now to avert disaster. We can't change the frequency and size of volcanic eruptions. But we can reverse the destruction of vegetation that naturally balances our atmosphere, but now synthetically unbalances us as we burn it instead of grow it. And even bigger and more changeable is the amount of ancient vegetation in fossil fuels that once stored Greenhouse gases, giving our atmosphere a stable, mild climate, that we now burn to "fire up" the Greenhouse.
The real answers don't come from finding someone to blame. They come from finding what we can change. And as hard as the beneficiaries (and irrational lovers/phobics) of petrofuels might make it to change, they're still easier than changing the volcanoes. And, as far as we can tell right now, probably sufficient. So it's worth identifying their contributions, then scaling them down.
If our climate change and energy debates revolved more around who can change instead of who to blame, we might get workable consensus much faster and more easily.
Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:3, Insightful)
So what? The offsets aren't some magic. If indeed Gore owns the offsets company (which I'll believe when I see proof), then that company has to buy them from somewhere that is actually reducing carbon emissions to sell to Gore.
I'm always impressed when some Republican (er, "libertarian") badmouths someone like Gore who is using economics to solve real physical problems because they might be making a profit or making some savings. It makes your ideology obviously not economics, but just vendettas.
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.
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.
Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. Gore's home is highly energy efficient [peakoil.com]. The energy he uses is produced by non/less polluting alternative sources. His large "home" includes offices for his wife, himself, space for staff and a lot of security.
Even at that scale, and even before he renovated years ago, Gore's house didn't use anywhere near "50 times" as much as a "normal" house.
You Republicans (er, "libertarians") will just lie and say anything to attack people who actually work to protect us in this country.
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.
Re:It's not Russia, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
not so long as there is a snowballs chance in Texas that she will be elected to any public office anywhere ever again.
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.
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?
Re:indeed (Score:1, Insightful)
"Why even bother to predicate hurricanes if government is useless at responding to them."
Re:It's not Russia, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hah! I get it!
It's funny because, unlike you, she's not a virgin!
Re:The Devil Comes for Republicans (Score:3, Insightful)
It obviously is stimulus.
It creates more spending (either indirectly by the workers spending their wages, or directly by purchasing equipment/fuel/etc) and is thus a stimulus.
Yes other things are much better, because they have multiplier effect.
Just because something is not the best way to do something, doesn't mean it doesn't do it at all.
Re:The Devil Comes for Republicans (Score:1, Insightful)
Hillary Clinton lied. It was a really stupid lie, because she's a really stupid person. But her career is done after the end of the Obama administration and she will never be president, so I don't really give a shit.
Barack Obama never claimed to not know William Ayers or Tony Rezko. He simply denied being their special time friends, which isn't very surprising because people with connections know thousands of people and hardly any of them are their super special time friends.
Barack Obama said he wasn't present for the sermons in question, and by all accounts he wasn't. But that's ok, because while paranoid and stupid (stupidity in a church?!), they weren't really all that racist.
A few people that make enough money to have people prepare their taxes had errors that represented a fraction of their tax burden. You might too, but no one looks because you aren't important. Let me know when someone appoints Wesley Snipes and he claims he's not a U.S. citizen and thus doesn't have to pay taxes.
I am not a Democrat or a Republican, and I don't really care if you think I am non-partisan or not since you appear to be full of shit from the start, but you should go back to the drawing board, find one of the numerous fringe liberals that subscribes to some kind of Luddite beliefs where collective funding of natural disasters is teh wrong and we can both laugh at it. Otherwise you can take your false equivalence, predicated on misinformation, and stuff it up your ass, where you seem to keep your head.
Re:Send in Al Gore (Score:2, Insightful)