Posted on 12/30/2004 9:02:59 AM PST by M 91 u2 K
This is what a seismologist in our local paper said:
There could not be a tsunami on the US east coast similar to Asia's. There are no plate boundaries in the Atlantic. The Mid-Atlantic ridge is an accretion ridge as opposed to where plates meet in the Pacific ocean.
It is where oceanic crust is being produced as opposed to being eaten up. That is why the east coast doesn't have a warning system. It has been studied by teh USGS and it was determined there was no need for it.
Historically there have been no records of anything like that happening in the Atlantic, but there have been some big tidal waves in Alaska, Hawaii and Japan.
The same wouldn't be true in the Gulf where the depth of the water decreases rapidly as it comes up on the Continental Shelf.
Nope, just don't like 'academics' taking advantage of current events. I work in academia and see that kind of opportunism all of the time....
Duh.
So what you are saying is, sooner or later, we're all DOOMED! OK I can handle that. ;9)
very true and we should just wire the worlds oceans. (why cant we just recycle the military's system which had the whole oceans wired for sound?)
HOWEVER all this panic reminds me of the old SCTV skit with John Candy playing a scientist for the national enquirer say "uh, yeah sure, its uh possible. Yes I am a scientist".
60,000+ people were killed in Portugal and Spain by the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and Tsunami.
In 1929 a tsunami killed 27 people in Newfoundland that was caused by an earthquake causing an underwater landslide.
I believe I've seen the person interviewed you're referring to and it's a case of the media not really going to find the right people to interview, right after the disaster; sort of generic geologists rather than tsunami experts.
The Atlantic has PLENTY of plate boundaries. There are no subduction zones other than the Carribean one, though. That's why there are a lot fewer large tsunami in the Atlantic. (There's speculation of a subduction zone beginning to form between the Eurasian and African plates which may have caused the Lisbon tsunami.)
Who specifically do you think is taking "advantage" of current events in academia?
Most of the tsunami community is debunking the Canary collapse claims. It seems to me Simon Day became sort of a publicity hound (perhaps not intentionally, it's quite a narcotic to become such a celebrity for speculating about that Canary scenario) but that was long before this tsunami.
"HOWEVER all this panic reminds me of the old SCTV skit with John Candy playing a scientist for the national enquirer say "uh, yeah sure, its uh possible. Yes I am a scientist"."
This panic is being competely driven by the 24-hour news cycle and the body-count.
It is insane. They news networks can wait to increase the count.
The threat of a Tidal wave hitting today was no greater than it was last month.
It reminds me of all those nut how were asking their Dr's to give them Cipro, when the anthrax stuff was going down.
I don't think New York City would be too seriously affected due to its geographical position. Manhattan island sits north of the ocean in the middle of the Hudson, and the Long Island part of it would be buffered by the barrier islands.
In fairness to the seismologist, the exact question posed to him was:
Could there be a similar tsunami on the US east coast?
I typed his verbatim answer from there but mistakenly left out he "US" part of the question.
I read an article some time ago that mentioned a large landslide off the continental shelf could also generate a tsunami. If a tsunami doesn't get you within a thosusand years, a hurricane probably will.
The media can't wait to blame america. Can't wait to blame bush for not signing Kyoto. Can't wait to praise Kyoto. Can't wait to blame the SUV's for directly causing the tsunami. Can't wait to fly in and get face time in front of the camera and show the tragedy. (with fake tears on the face) Can't wait to show Gorbachov with his communism is now environmentalism anti-private property schtick. Can't wait to show its the UN not the USA which is sending help, food, and money.
The only surprise is that the MSM is not having spontaneous on air orgasms.
Good to hear. Having never been out there, I have no idea about the landscape.
Some people believe that it was a rogue wave that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald back in 1976. This rogue wave is referred to as the "Three Sisters".
The ship was damaged already by the time the wave hit and it finished off the ship.
Here's a cut and paste from an article on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald...
Theory 4: Three Sisters
Perhaps the most romantic theory about the wreck of the Fitzgerald is that the ship succumbed to the forces of the Three Sisters, a Lake Superior phenomenon described as a combination of two large waves inundating the decks of a boat and a third, slightly later monster wave that boards the vessel as it struggles to shrug off the effects of the first two.
Again, Captain Cooper of the Anderson provides fuel for this theory, as he relates in Marshall’s Shipwrecks of Lake Superior that slightly before 7 p.m. “we took two of the largest seas of the trip. The first one flooded our boat deck. It had enough force to come down on the starboard lifeboat, pushing it into the saddles with a force strong enough to damage the bottom of the lifeboat.… The second large sea put green water (the powerful center of a wave) on our bridge deck! This is 35 feet above the waterline.”
Since these two large waves struck the trailing Anderson mere minutes before its final radar contact with the Fitzgerald, might they have joined a third rogue wave, overtaken the struggling Fitz 10 or 15 minutes later and overwhelmed the already listing and troubled ship?
As with all of the other theories, it may well be that we will never know the total story of this wreck - leaving each theory, for now, as good as any other.
Boston is easy to save. Just divert all the water into a series of semipermeable tunnels underneath the city. Too bad for those in the tunnels at the time though.
Dang... I was just about to have lunch.
bump!
Think I'll just stay put here in the midwest.
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