Posted on 09/08/2014 2:26:41 PM PDT by blam
Ajai Raj
September 8, 2014
Last Friday's eruption at Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano had many worried about the possible impacts of a larger eruption on air travel. Another eruption at Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has caused a state of emergency to be declared on Big Island, as lava flows from the ongoing eruption have advanced within a mile of a residential zone.
That's just one example of how much danger volcanoes pose to the U.S. — and we aren't doing much about it.
Compared with Iceland, the U.S. is much more vulnerable to volcanic disasters — and has been failing at monitoring these risks, according to a government report.
The United States Geological Survey's proposed National Volcano Early Warning System classifies volcanoes by threat level and by how well they're monitored. United States Geological Survey
Where Iceland has 32 active volcanoes, the United States has 169 — 55 of which are designated as serious threats by the United States Geological Survey's Volcano Hazards Program in the report. Unfortunately, only 3 of these are being monitored with the most up-to-date instruments available.
For example, 39% of Very High Threat level volcanoes in the US, like Mount Rainier in Washington, have only limited monitoring, which means that we can monitor them for major changes in activity, but not in enough detail to model and predict their behavior in the future.
As the report states:
Waiting to deploy a proper monitoring effort until a hazardous volcano awakens and an unrest crisis begins means that scientists, civil authorities, businesses, and citizens are caught in a reactive mode of 'playing catch up' with the volcano, trying to get instruments and civil-defense measures in place before the unrest escalates and the situation worsens.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
But if any of them blow....what difference does it make?
Watched volcanoes never boil.
So, is someone fishing for a grant?
Yellowstone’s super volcano is the one I worry about.
Sort of like illegal aliens and terrorists.
That's what Hildebeast might say :-)
Who knows, maybe Obama will issue an executive order, telling the volcano to stop erupting.
So watta we gonna do when a monitored volcano announces that is going to erupt? put a cork in it? Do we have any corks that big? Where is Congress on the problem? Shouldn’t DARPA or something be working on Big Corks?
There is no reason to worry about Yellowstone. If it blows it is all over in several ways.
Not a heck of a lot we can do about them, if we needed to.
Certainly if Yellowstone has a big one like the last 3 biggies it will be a disaster for our country and the world. On the other hand, Yellowstone has had around 70 smaller ones since the last big one 640,000 years ago. One like that would be survivable, but very damaging.
In a book about the major Pinatubo eruption, the authors describe the problems the scientists had acquiring enough equipment to properly monitor and predict the eruption. We definitely need to be putting more monitoring equipment out there. We shouldn’t have to beg Hawaii and Mexico for scarce equipment.
It's obvious which of these is more responsible for Climate Change ........
Possibly. But natural disasters don’t have much connection to political ideology. Preparation for them does though.
So lets tax people more, and then we can hire a ton of government scientists and researchers to do the valuable work of watching volcanoes and recording temperatures! Fantastic! It’s for the children!
the sixth seal is about to be broken and you will all be plunged into darkness and there will be no illumination for the smoke poured up out of the Abyss will be like the smoke from a huge furnace so that the sun and the sky will be darkened by it;Always something...
A carbon tax will fix this problem.
Not enough monitoring? Well what can we expect from a chintzy cheapskate government that refuses to spend money on anything or collect much in the way of taxes.
How can the Gov afford such activities when all they care about is avoiding deficits and balancing the budget?
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