Hardware Analysis - Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Jason Snyder — 2005-01-20T02:24:29-05:00

Ok, just to say something here, being "american" does not mean support your president in everything he does, or even like him. Patriotism means love your country. It nowhere says love your current administration(dictator, as my girlfriend puts it) I think that the american government has grown more and more similar to the board of directors of a large company, not the "of the people, for the people" thing it was supposed to be. Thomas Jefferson said, "he who gives up small liberties in the name of security deserves neither liberty or security" Ummm, patriot act? and that's how this administration does it. Patriot act. Clean Air Act. No Child Left behind. bs. they name a plan something that sounds good, and do whatever the hell they want. oh well, sorry for jumping in. I love america, and by america, I mean my neighbors, the land(forests, mountains, rivers, and yes, hippies) and for the most part, people who do not directly harm these things. later

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Brendan Falvey — 2005-01-11T05:41:36-05:00

I have been away and I see that human nature has asserted itself and descended into a slanging match. Apart from some very irritated individuals what has it achieved zip. All government responses were behind the reality and it was several days before the true extent became apparent. to the credit of the western countries they did get a major summit in place and that has now completed with some longer term solutions going forward.

Rather than yelling what how and where what have you done. OK the US was a bit slow but they do have a big beuraucracy to mobilise and over Xmas new year

Interesting to note that the middle east oil states have been rather slow on the aid bit (I would stand corrected here). Yet we have extremists yelling that the christians are coming well if thats the case perhaps the muslim money men in Saudi and iran could loosen their purses to ensure their islamic brothers do not see that christians can be charitable. I dispair of all religions as just another sales team to buy their product

As for global warmin and other disasters I again ask what are our governments doing. Hopefully this is a heeded wakeup call and they start to put contingencies in place

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Carter Sudeith — 2005-01-11T04:39:12-05:00

Terrorists only have to break through the crust at Yellowstone and we'll have the largest eruption ever witnessed. 15-quadrillion kilotons of explosives. It's safe to say the terrorists would be striking a major victory with that one.

And it's SO easy!

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Wolfen — 2005-01-10T18:55:42-05:00

This is a long one people. Now remember to look at all the links, think, and look at the LARGE picture. The following was written a week or so ago by my brother, a well known Environmental Engineer (aka Environmentalism based in fact and not just "belief").
<><><>
Melting: We tend to think of ice ages in the past tense. But actually, the term ice age is used to reflect two rather different time frames (http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/what_are_ice_ages.html). The shorter one is measured in tens of thousands of years--periods of extensive glaciation. We look back about ten thousand years to see the end of our most recent Ice Age (capitalized because that one is a proper title).

Yet, ice ages are also measured in a much longer scale--tens to hundreds of millions of years. Nearly all the periods when there were any permanent ice fields on the globe are contained within four intervals (http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/when_ice_ages.html).

Large, important glaciations occurred during the late Proterozoic (between about 800 and 600 million years ago), during the Pennsylvanian and Permian (between about 350 and 250 million years ago), and the late Neogene to Quaternary (the last 4 million years). Somewhat less extensive glaciations occurred during parts of the Ordovician and Silurian (between about 460 and 430 million years ago).

During each of these periods, many glacial advances and retreats occurred. For example, over 20 glacial advances and retreats have occurred during the last 2 million years.

If one views ice ages in the longer time frame, we are in a typical glacial retreat in what are probably the early years of a long period of glaciation. What we are working to gain an understanding of is how much of the recent thawing isn't natural.

The Mediterranean: About 7.2 million years ago, continental movements brought Africa and Europe together (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea) at the Straight of Gibraltar, cutting the Mediterranean Sea off from the Atlantic Ocean. It slowly dried up to at best a couple of saline lakes well below sea level. About 5.4 million years ago, the Straight reopened, flooding the Sea.

The Black Sea was fresh water and much lower the Ice Age. The Mediterranean Sea was lower as well, but melting after the Ice Age caused it to fill to the point that about 5,600 BC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea) (maybe a few hundred years later (http://archives.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/09/13/great.flood.finds.ap/)), the Mediterranean started flooding into the Black Sea. This inundated civilizations on the shores of the fresh water sea. A sea of that size doesn't fill quickly...it probably averaged rising only a few inches per day.

Theories of the flooding, followed-up by the discovery of ancient human settlement deep under the Black Sea along the old shoreline have fueled debate that this may have been the great Biblical flood referred to in the story of Noah's Ark. Many Biblical scholars disagree, especially those who read the Bible as a literal history versus (http://www.biblestudylessons.com/cgi-bin/gospel_way/days_importance.php) a symbolic myth.

Flood Legends: Most civilizations have creation myths and flood legends (http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html). Whether it be Noah's Ark, Gilgamesh, the Family of Fuhi, or the Aztec story of Tapi, these disparate flood legends (over 500 of them) have a number of similarities. Most involve (http://www.apologeticspress.org/rr/rr2003/r&r0311b.htm):

- Warning of a great flood,

- Building a boat large enough to hold the lone surviving family and often pairs of all animals

- A worldwide flood,

- Setting birds loose to look for land...if they come back, they couldn't find land and vice versa, and

- Making landfall on a mountain.

Maybe these myths have evolved in repeated retellings from one central event. Maybe it's a common means of man trying to make sense of a typical type of great disaster. Maybe that's why the continuing discovery of great floods that have happened since the Ice Age stirs such interest.

Glacial Flooding: Glaciers don't necessarily melt in an orderly manner. We periodically get to view two rather different types of significant flooding events.

A number of glaciers periodically have j�kulhlaups, the term for glacier outburst flooding. We see these with some frequency in Iceland because normal glacial melting is sometimes accelerated by geothermal activity. Iceland's Tungaarjokull glacier (http://www.earthwatch.org/pubaffairs/news/russell_01.html) sits atop an area of geothermal activity that causes a lake to form underneath the glacier. Every few years the water bursts forth, sending tremendous floods downstream. Fortunately, there's not much civilization for those j�kulhlaups to threaten.

A different type of flooding is seen in southern Argentina's Glaciers National Park (http://argentina.gotolatin.com/eng/Attr/htm/Argentina-Los-Glaciares.asp). Lago Argentino (http://www.ripioturismo.com.ar/eftelagarg.htm#), the third largest lake in South America, is fed by several Andean glaciers, including Perito Moreno (http://www.patagonia-argentina.com/i/andina/glaciares/fractura.htm). This glacier cuts across Lago Argentino, forming a dam that can eventually hold back 50-100 feet of water upstream over several square miles of lake. Every few years, glacier gives in to the stress and fractures.

The fracture generally starts where the glacier meets the land across the lake. With enough pressure, water eventually forces its way through, creating a hole (photo at the above Perito Moreno link). The hole gushes water for several days, growing under the force until the end of the glacier gives way. That sends icebergs and the rest of the flood water to visit the lower portion of the lake. Then, the glacier slowly closes the gap again...that's what I got a chance to see and especially hear about 40 days after one of its fractures in the '80s.

Holocene Megafloods: We continue to learn of tremendous floods that occurred during and since the Ice Age. A nearby example is the Spokane Flood (http://www.owaa.org/Spokane/spokaneFlood.htm), an event that occurred several times (http://www.dnr.wa.gov/geology/columbia.htm) during the Ice Age.

An ice dam (part (http://www.kidscosmos.org/kid-stuff/mars-trip-relief-map.html) of the great ice sheets) would form on the Clark Fork River near the Montana border with Idaho. When it would break, a volume of water approaching that of Lake Michigan would go rushing downstream, scouring the countryside. These floods may be the greatest man has discovered...others claim the Lake Agassiz megaflood in Canada was larger. The rate of flow of the Spokane megafloods was probably over 60 times that of the Amazon, and it traveled 45 miles per hour through parts of the Clark Fork canyon. The floods scraped soils down to bare basalt, was key in the formation of Grand Coulee, backed up at the Columbia Gorge, and created the cliffs that many of the Gorge's falls drop from.

Glacial Lake Iroquois was a much larger version of the present-day Lake Ontario. An ice dam near the northern shore of Lake Champlain (upstate New York bordering Vermont) gave way (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/12/041219152011.htm) during a period of warming 13,400 years ago, sending three times the volume of Lake Ontario down the Hudson River Valley. Lake Ontario's natural outlet, the St. Lawrence Seaway, was covered with ice.

Water raged down the valley and flowed into the ocean at New York City. Global warming theorists think all that cold, fresh water interrupted the Gulf Stream, blocking the flow of warm water to the northern reaches of the Atlantic (satellite thermal image of typical Gulf Stream flow here (http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEAWIFS/IMAGES/eastcoast.gif)). That may have quickly triggered another cooling spell...one of a couple the earth had after that flood and before the end of the Ice Age.

There were also Holocene megafloods in a number of other places, including:

- The Tsangpo River Gorge (http://www.earth-pages.com/archive/geomorphology.asp), the world's deepest (and part of the Brahmaputra River system (http://encarta.msn.com/map_701511283/Brahmaputra.html)). It drained multiple megafloods held back by ice dams in southeastern Tibet.

- A giant lake in western Siberia (http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/lake.html). An ice sheet blocked the northward flow of both the Yenisei and Ob Rivers, creating a lake more than twice as large as the Caspian Sea. It finally burst down the Chuja River (http://www.sentex.net/~tcc/cfdb-sib.html) valley in the Altai Mountains, speeding at 90 miles per hour. Note that Lake Baikal, not far north of Mongolia (and a few hundred miles east of this megaflood) has seals....meaning that it must have been connected to the sea at some time.

Of course, these megafloods didn't cover the globe, and there's no proof that any of them came with rains that lasted 40 days and 40 nights. We do know that they were associated with natural global warming when the earth was rebounding from the depths of an ice age.

The Glacial Lake Iroquois megaflood flushed walruses (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/12/041219152011.htm) into the ocean and buried them. The walrus evolved (http://www.nps.gov/bela/html/walrus.htm) at least 15 million years ago, before the most recent ice age. There were no ice fields then. Should that give us hope, or is Noah's ark the only reason the walrus is here today?
<><><>
The End.

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Ross McFarland — 2005-01-10T17:11:36-05:00

It's times like this that make me glad I live in good old neutral Scotland ....

All we ever get is rain, which is my favourite weather type; oh s**t wait ... Global Warming + Rain = Raining Herring; something unseen since Red Dwarf

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

The Real Robert Jones — 2005-01-10T16:48:42-05:00

At least we have one believer of global warming in these forums. Now here in VA were at 70 F degrees for the PAST 2 WEEKS AND AT LEAST ANOTHER TWO WEEKS in the middle of WINTER (when we are usually at 20-30 F degrees!! This is unheard of, ever.

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Kieran Blenkarne — 2005-01-10T11:00:25-05:00

the beginning of the end. not only there, but down here in NZ, there are icebergs just 7km offshore, coming up from the south pole, that is unheard of here, global warming is taking its toll

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Michael A. — 2005-01-06T14:38:44-05:00

Oh I realize that. I was just trying to put the amount of casualties and money spent into perspective.

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Anthony Weaver — 2005-01-06T07:01:42-05:00

as far as the florida hurricane vs. the tsunami, i think the main thing you're forgetting is that florida is a US STATE. of course we're going to spend more money to repair our own country than another country halfway around the world. as calloused as it may sound, any country would do that. your citizens should always come first. also, aiding florida was a US only affair. how many countries do you think gave money to help with that? zero. whereas the tsunami-affected areas are receiving aid from all around the world and will continue receiving it.

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Carter Sudeith — 2005-01-06T06:07:39-05:00

We're just trying to upstage Japan.

Drive on through! Have a nice day!

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Michael A. — 2005-01-05T21:09:36-05:00

I agree with you guys for the most part. Our government was way too stingy to start with. We spent $14 billion (USD) repairing Florida after the hurricanes last year and yet we can't give one tenth of that to those who have suffered through one of the worst natural disasters in all of history? Pretty sad if you ask me.

Of course, you have to remember that more aid is on it's way and that our military is spending millions of dollars distributing what we've already pledged. A friend of mine in the Coast Guard is on the way to Thailand right now. And don�t forget that the civilians here are donating millions of dollars as well.

Keep in mind that we're actually being quite generous. Technically, we're not required to share anything with anyone. Although it may be selfish to put it that way, every dollar those in need receive from the United States is a dollar we don't have to give and a dollar we could spend on ourselves. $350 million USD may not be a whole lot in the scope of a disaster like this, but if those who receive this money aren't grateful for what we give, no matter how small it is at first, I wouldn't be too willing to give much more if I was in management. You have to appreciate what you get. I got a couple of really crappy things over the holidays. Sure, they sucked but people were still thinking of me and giving me things I didn't deserve. When I look at it that way, it makes a lot more sense.

---

And as Sander said, let's keep this civil.

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Thermalfreak — 2005-01-05T08:16:38-05:00

Wow im happy about bill clinton making speaches and says bush should take notes no how to make them and im called biased and complaining about what the US is doing? Wtf you guys jus seek out stuff and then turn it aroumnd against yourself....

countries that couldnt do anything: Switzerland during World war 2?.... we were right next to a country that wanted to take over europe....our army is specialised but by far too small even for our size...so there was nothing we could do....instead we threatened to destroy the bridges and tunnels that riddle the country if they invaded making it useless as far as germany was concerned.....switzerlnad couldnt do anything about it but they didnt let it spread because of them and thats the same with all they can do on the war with terror...

p.s. I dont think US doesnt sucks ass.....so dont suddenly accuse me of that either

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

rick elzer — 2005-01-05T07:55:22-05:00

george bush is a idiot... end of f**king story. nah but i wish soo greatly that the tsunami was localised entirely inside george bush's bedroom, dont get me wrong i hate lots of stuff. anyway thnx for your time

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

The Real Robert Jones — 2005-01-04T19:44:54-05:00

World War III it is, no one has the right to tell me "US SUCKS ASSES." If they suck so much, then stop trying to use OUR resources for YOUR needs. Donating $350 million to aid is a priviledge, not a right. If you don't like it, then shut up.

Re: Re: The frailty of human life, when nature takes its toll

Sander Sassen — 2005-01-04T19:35:08-05:00

Keep it civil people, we're not going to start World War III in our forums now are we?