Twitter Is Being An Asshole

What exactly I did that "appears to have exhibited automated behavior" is ever-so-helpfully unaddressed, but the real assholiness appears when I clicked the "Unlock my account button."

No e-mail option. In fact, NO other option than entering a phone number. Entering "I don't have a phone" doesn't work, because it has the "incorrect number of digits." Furthermore, if I DID have a phone, I most certainly would not be posting it online to some god-damned bot which appears to be exhibiting automated behavior. "We will not store your phone number." Oh, yeah, and there's that bridge in Brooklyn you might want to buy some stock in. What a pain in the fracking butt.

Followup, 4:50 PM: I have been unlocked.

Happy Codpiece Day

Others have noted the irony of Bin Laden's killing on the eighth anniversary of dubya's carrier-deck strut and Mission Accomplished bravado.
(All Hat, No Cattle) Golly, whoda thunk that gathering intelligence- and paying attention to it- responding with a focused plan, and carefully targeting your objective might have a more positive outcome than initiating unplanned hostilities against a poorly armed, fractious nation whose leader threatened your daddy and your masculinity?

Here's the thing: I don't want to underplay the importance of killing Bin Laden. I honestly don't know how important he is/was at this point; if reports are accurate, he has been thoroughly out of the loop. I think kudos and more are in order for those involved in this operation: well done! I wish it was as easy for me to assure you of proper health care and the benefits you deserve when you return to civilian life. Lord knows our country and citizens owe you at least that much, but we both know you're going to have to fight tooth and nail to even get attention, let alone the support you're due.

But what really disturbed me last night as I realized what had happened was the mood of celebration. I was watching Twelve Monkeys- an appropriately surreal, grim and depressing film, when I started hearing fireworks, cheering, and chants of "USA! USA!" I didn't pay much attention. Danged Greek kids will use anything as an excuse to make noise and get drunk... one gets inured to it after a while. Then I took a break and checked the web. Oh my. Celebrations in New York and DC. Obama interrupting Celebrity Apprentice Dance Survivors (or some such) for an officious statement. Boo-yah. A guy is dead. Go USA!

Really, people? Yeah, he was an awful person, a prick, a monster, even. Yeah, he planned an event that killed 3000 American Citizens within our national boundaries (I think it's that latter detail that gets everyone's panties in a knot- we sure as shit don't give a fuck when American citizens are killed overseas by ambushes and IED's.) But I had been under the impression that our country was built based on the principle of the basic dignity and assured rights of each and every human being. It's one thing to see a few self-selected yahoos celebrating the execution of a criminal in Texas (after, I might point out, the application of due process of law, however flawed that might be); it's another to see a huge portion of my country celebrating what amounts to a military execution as if it was a game-winning three point play in the closing seconds of a playoff game.

Listen, assholes: this is not a game. These are not the closing seconds- we have been warned that GWOT will likely go on for decades. Bin Laden was a human being, not a basketball. Celebrating the death a human being, however awful he was, cheapens ALL human life, including your own.

I'm reminded of Tommy Sand's song, There Were Roses:

Isaac was my friend! he cried, he begged them with his tears
But centuries of hatred have ears that do not hear
An eye for an eye, it was all that filled their minds
And another eye for another eye till everyone is blind

And the tears of the people ran together.

Again, let me be clear: I am in no way saying Bin Laden's death is a bad thing. I would have preferred his live capture and trial, but as best as I can tell, actually following our own law is distasteful and unworkable for our current legislative and executive branches. It's much more pragmatic to throw suspects into a box in Guantanamo, with assurances we'll sort them all out with military tribunals in some nebulous future. Given that fact, and the potential for his martyrdom or becoming an even more powerful symbol, I really don't feel that execution by Special Ops force is a bad alternative.

No, what disgusts me is the idea that we can treat the end of a human life- any human life- as a source of cheap entertainment, nationalism, and a reason to celebrate.

Sanctimonious Pricks

That would be who is running our country right now. A group of overwhelmingly white, male, wealthy and religulous bastards have shown their fortitude and conviction of principle by stonewalling any attempt toward a functional Federal budget over the issue of... drumroll, please... Planned Parenthood.

Now I can understand that they don't like abortion. I can understand that, because neither I nor anyone I've ever discussed the issue with "likes" abortion. See, I like puppies. I like kitties. I like ice cream, coffee, pizza and on and on. There are literally uncountable numbers of things I really enjoy as improving my life and my perception of it. Abortion is not one of those things. But sometimes it may be the least painful choice among many, and as a male, I simply do not feel it is my place to make such a choice for someone else by removing that option. I do not feel it is my business at all, beyond advocating for those for whom it may be an option- a painful, sad option, to be sure, but again, perhaps the least painful.

Given that these same sanctimonious pricks also want to remove services for post-fetal human beings, such as WIC (Women, Infants, Children- a food benefits program), and have shown less than interest or concern for access to health care services by ex-utero (even in-utero, for that matter) individuals, their level of concern for the viability of what, let's face it, is tantamount to a nine-month infection by a parasite that plays sheer havoc with a woman's physical and mental health, is puzzling to say the least. But consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, as they say, which I suppose indicates that modern conservatism is all about fat heads.

But what really got my panties in a knot this afternoon was this, from The Daily What:(according to Wikipedia, Planned Parenthood's annual budget is $1.04 billion, not $11.4 million) And here's an excerpt from the post with the above graphic:

Despite the paltry sum (the US spends nearly twice that much on war every day), and the fact that it is illegal under Title X for any federal money to be used to fund abortions, Republicans insist that no federal funds should be appropriated to organizations that perform abortions.

But, according to Planned Parenthood’s 2009 report (as illustrated above), abortions accounted for 3% of all services performed — far outweighed by vital, lifesaving cancer screenings and STD examinations. Also, as Ezra Klein notes, cutting funding for family planning will ultimately result in additional spending to offset the taxpayer cost of unwanted pregnancies “among people without the means to care for their children.”

So abortions amount to 3 whole frakking percent of Planned Parenthood's exorbitant $1.04 billion dollar budget? Gee, that's $30,000,000! That's about half the cost of the hundred or so cruise missiles fired into Libya during the opening hour of the recent and ongoing festivities there! Now in fairness, I'm sure that GOP cruise missiles rain down puppies, kitties and ice cream, so this might not be an appropriate comparison. And anyway, those are brown people over there, and those don't really count.

As I tweeted a little bit ago, "Well," said Ford, "the Thumb's an electronic sub-etha signaling device..." Get me off this crazy planet.

Today's GOP: Nothing a Vogon Constructor fleet couldn't fix.

"Even More Tragic"

In my previous post on the Arizona shootings, I quoted a comment I had received, but didn't really discuss how thoroughly it shocked and horrified me, leaving readers to find my problem for themselves. After considering this over the last day, I think that it is central to the issue of how mainstream the hateful, eliminationist rhetoric has become, and I want to revisit it. So here's the comment:

"It is a very tragic event. Even more tragic is to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. I do not believe for one second that they endorse democrats being murdered. How stupid to think so. I do not like democratic ideas but I do not want one single democrat to ever be murdered!!!!"

Now think about that. Six people are dead. A congressional representative faces an uncertain future- the damage to her brain was much worse than I imagined a person might survive. The bullet traveled from the back to the front of her left lobe; this was not just a skull-grazing injury. One of the dead was a nine-year-old girl, pictured above, Christina Taylor Green, whose birthday was September 11, 2001. She had been featured in a book named "Faces of Hope," which contained portraits of 50 children, one from each state, born on that fateful day. She was interested in politics as a solution to human and social problems, and was taken to meet Giffords by a neighbor who thought she would enjoy the experience. Ironically, the levels of paranoia and fear whipped up by a certain side of the US political spectrum in the aftermath of her birth date have, without any real doubt, played some role- potentially small, possibly large, we simply don't know yet- in ending this child's life. And that of five others.

So, responding to my comment linking this paranoia, hateful rhetoric, Sarah Palin, the teabaggers, and my own anger and despair at yesterday's events, the commenter acknowledges that it was indeed a tragedy. Then proceeds to say, "Even more tragic is to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party." "Even MORE tragic?" Seriously?

MORE tragic that an absolute nobody blogger/facebooker/twitterer makes the exactly same connections as thousands of others who write and go public on the web? MORE tragic that Palin and the teabaggers are asked to take SOME degree of responsibility for an atmosphere of terror, blind rage and bloodlust? MORE tragic that within minutes of the news, Palin and others were pulling down images and comments that people have been warning for the last couple of years would lead to exactly this kind of massacre? Are you fucking serious?

These things are "even MORE tragic" than the simple fact of Christina Taylor Green's cold, dead body? Not to mention the 18 other injuries and deaths? MORE fucking tragic?

And this is exactly the point. I'm sure the commenter didn't even think about what she was saying. She was on autopilot. She has been conditioned by Palin, O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, Boehner, Brewer, and on, and on and on, to believe that merely impugning the wonderfulness of "people like them" is more tragic, a greater crime, a worse humanitarian crisis, than hundreds of thousands of people dying annually from lack of health care, than millions of children who are mal- or undernourished every day, than tens of thousands of homeless veterans for whom it's well worth shelling out for showy car magnets, but not worth a nickel to actually get them shelter. I'm sure she is quite right that neither she nor her party's leaders "endorse" democrats or other undesirables being murdered outright. However, she has been well trained to understand that when, God forbid, such a thing happens, the appropriate response is to defend the righteous, stay calm, put it out of your mind, and walk cheerfully forward into the the world that is being re-shaped for the right people. The ones like them. The ones who believe the right things, in the right God. The ones who understand that democracy is all about being the ones ballsy and macho enough to kill and take power from anyone with the temerity to stand in the way of the blessed. The ones who understand that civility is for the weak. The ultra-rich and those who are happy to service them and their whims. The ones who understand that "thinking for oneself" is a trick of Satan. Because to react in any other way would even more tragic still.

Step One:

Dehumanize your opponents, but deny you are doing so. Make it look as if you're merely "reflecting" "grass roots" sentiments, rather than sowing them.

Step Two: Accuse your opponents of doing what you're doing (even though they're not) because a) it provides an excuse for what you're doing- you DO have to defend yourself, right?- and b) if they're doing it too, it must be okay. WaPo:

When asked about the Palin target map, Beck said: "I don't know. It's really easy in the context of what happened this morning to look back and say, 'I don't know if this was such a bright idea.' At the same time, there are other politicians from the other side of the political spectrum who have said similar military-style sayings. Do I really believe they are intending harm on people? No."

Step Three: Portray your opponents as existential threat to yourself and people like you. "They will come for us and put us into concentration camps." (Image from Balloon Juice) Step Four: Use continuous and escalating language calling for violence. Symbols and metaphors of guns, death, and targets associated with your opponents will plant and nourish the seeds you want growing. (Images from FDL)

Step Five: When a deranged loon inevitably takes your rhetoric literally, and kills and/or wounds your opponent(s), and possibly other bystanders, express shock at events no one could have foreseen, and outrage that some might want to hold you accountable for your actions and rhetoric.

Step Six: Lather, rinse, repeat.

Step Seven: Profit. Krugman:

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

But of course they won't, nor will commercial media, particularly TeeVee news. Because in the end, it's all about Step Seven. Cosmic Variance:

I met Gabby at a reception a year ago. She seemed, on our very brief acquaintance, to be a really wonderful person — energetic, smart, full of optimism about doing good things as a member of Congress. Her husband, Mark Kelly, is an astronaut. If I may step away from the ideal of journalistic objectivity for a moment, this is a stupid fucking tragedy.

Yeah, what Sean said. Unfortunately, I have spent too much of today seething with anger at the stupidity of where we have willfully gone in this country, for the sake of financial and political profit, to fully allow myself to empathize with the loved ones of those who have been killed and wounded in this morning's shooting spree. Giffords is, as of the latest reports, expected to survive, though I've heard nothing about what permanent losses of ability she may suffer. I doubt there is any basis for guessing about that yet. But at least six others are dead, including a Federal Judge and a nine-year-old girl. Four others (again, as of the most recent reports I've read) are still in critical condition, and the number wounded seems to be unsettled- the numbers I've seen range from 12 to 18.

My first facebook status this morning ended with "Thanks, Palin and Tea party: you make us proud." To which a high school classmate responded, " It is a very tragic event. Even more tragic is to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. I do not believe for one second that they endorse democrats being murdered. How stupid to think so. I do not like democratic ideas but I do not want one single democrat to ever be murdered!!!!" I'm certain that very few truly want their opponents literally murdered, though metaphorically, I'm not so confident. But when your rhetoric says "Second amendment solutions" it shouldn't come as a surprise when one or more of your followers takes it literally.

And in the end, I think what infuriates me most is that I suspect I know how this will all play out. Media will attempt to be "Fair" and "Balanced," that is, Palin et al will have the opportunity to defend themselves, and play the innocent victims. Media will point out that tempers are high, as if that excuses everything. The American Public will return to their fevre dream and collective amnesia. This event, and the lessons that could be taken from it, will be forgotten. The dead and wounded, and their families, will be shuffled into the waste heap of history. What angers me is the complacency, the banality, and above all, the predictability of this.

How many remember George Tiller? How long ago was it that he was killed?

My condolences and most hopeful wishes for the friends, families and colleagues of today's victims, and to the wounded. I hope our country has enough vestige of decency to give you the support, respect, and above all, the recollection that is your due.

God Frikken' Dammit, Google!

How 'bout you just leave freaking well-enough alone?  I was just fine with the status quo, and I didn't need you to go and dick around with things to accomplish... what?  Super. Now we have an improved preview.  Did you need to screw around with everything else to accomplish that?  And you apparently have decided to play the "Let's rotate the photo on uploads" game again.

Thanks, Google. I love the way you make things easier.

In other news, I've finally caught up with the backlog of stuff in my RSS. If I can figure out how to upload pictures that AREN'T ROTATED 90 DEGREES, I can start posting on my recent geogalavanting.

Pricks.

So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish

From The NYT Economic Scene:

According to NASA, 2010 is on course to be the planet’s hottest year since records started in 1880. The current top 10, in descending order, are: 2005, 2007, 2009, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001 and 2008.

So we're getting right on that, right? Right? I mean, think about the farmers!

The intense heat and humidity that blanketed central Kansas since late last week have killed more than 2,000 cattle and one state official called the heat-related losses the worst in his 17 years on the job.

And our descendants...

The average temperature of the planet for the next several thousand years will be determined this century—by those of us living today, according to a new National Research Council report which lays out the impact of every degree of warming on outcomes ranging from sea-level rise to reduced crop yields.

With La Nina setting in, the mid-term outlook may not be as bad as the last few months,

"This year the fact that the El Nino episode has ended and is likely to transition into La Nina, which has a cooling influence on the global average temperature, it's possible that we will not end up with the warmest year as a whole."

but notice the provisional in there: it's possible this won't be the warmest year since the advent of meteorological instrumentation. Last Friday, Dr. Jeff Masters posted one on the most terrifying things I've read in a while:

June 2010 was the warmest June since record keeping began in 1880, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), and was the fourth consecutive warmest month on record. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies rated June 2010 the third warmest June on record, behind June 1998 and June 2009. Both NOAA and NASA rated the year-to-date period, January - June, as the warmest such period on record. June 2010 global ocean temperatures were the fourth warmest on record, while land temperatures were the warmest on record. Global satellite-measured temperatures for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were the 2nd warmest on record in June, according to both the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) groups. The record warmest temperatures in the lower atmosphere were recorded in 1998.

And of course it's not just the US: people and crops are being affected across the globe.

MOSCOW — A blistering heat wave has made life miserable for millions in Russia and northeastern Europe, few of whom have air conditioners, and destroyed millions of acres of Russian wheat, setting back an agricultural revival that was just reaching its stride after years of faltering efforts.

So with every single one of the ten hottest years on record falling in the last 11 years, (not counting 2010- the numbers aren't in yet, but it's very likely to fall in that ranking, even if it doesn't take first place) can we move along and address the issue? Not. Freaking. Likely.

Senate Democrats had already scaled back their plans to pursue limits on greenhouse gas emissions, like those in a bill approved by the House last year. Instead, Senate Democrats had said they would seek a cap on carbon emissions only for power plants. But even that proved overly ambitious.

“We don’t have a single Republican to work with us,” Mr. Reid said. Nice play, Senator, and I agree: the blindness of the right is stunning. But even the dems don't seem to understand that corporate profits amount to just about nothing when our food and water supplies collapse. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I have serious doubts that humanity has the intelligence, and ability to sacrifice self interest for the broader good, that it's going to take to get through this crisis. Extinction is forever, and our glorious brains and "special" relationship with the wizard in the sky don't make us immune. I'm glad I won't be the parent of one of the last generation of children, trying to explain how a few hundred lawmakers put their election prospects ahead of human survival.

If we don't make it, it will be because we don't deserve survival.

The Cost of Climate Denialism

The news on climate change over the last few months has been devastating, and I haven't felt capable of writing anything sensible on the topic. The intentionally ignorant deniers have apparently claimed victory in the midst of what was globally the first or second warmest January on record (first for the southern hemisphere, and I've seen claims of both for the planet as a whole), at the end of the warmest decade on record. Arctic ice extent at the beginning of February was at near record lows...... and well below the 2 standard deviation range from the two previous decades (1979-2000). The report for last month will be issued in the next few days, and from my occasional perusal of the site's daily charts, winter 09-10 looks to be roughly on par with winter 06-07, the record holder for minimum ice extent thus far.

The point is, the above are facts. They're not predictions. They're not the work of a giggling evil scientist hunched over his spreadsheets in a dimly lit lab, with steamy CO2 vapor coming out of flasks of colored water with dry ice in them.

To the people who are whining, "But it's cold! We have snow! We never get Snow!" I say STFU. I have quite a bit of sympathy with the east coast and Europe, but weather- even a full season of it- is NOT climate. Would it make any difference to your perception if I argued that climate change is happening even faster than we thought because western Oregon had it's warmest January on record, and it's looking like the warmest February too? It shouldn't. Those months at that location are single data points in an enormous set extending over many locations and a period of decades.

One recent bit that really got my attention- not in a good way- was the spin given to the widely publicized "admission" by Phil Jones that there was no warming from 1995 to present. Except it wasn't an "admission," it was a statement of fact: given that 15 year window, he could not, at the 95% confidence level, say that warming was occurring. Once again it's the confusion of "significance" in the statistical sense and effect size. And yes, the effect is there: the trend has been .12 degrees warmer each decade, or almost 0.2 degrees Celsius over the last 15 years. Another way of putting this is that it is as likely that the warming trend is 0.24 degrees as it is 0 degrees per decade. But the most likely trend is 0.12 degrees. Here's the actual quote from Skeptical Science:

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

BBC: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?

Phil Jones: I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

Swans On Tea posted the above chart yesterday (the .15 trend is the result of using a specific data set), and I've seen similar arguments elsewhere. George Will has been one of the most vocal and visible deniers in the US. Of course he ran with this, and of course the illiterate morons at WaPo didn't think to check his facts or representations thereof. That was the op-ed that was so jaw-clenchingly infuriating that I just couldn't take it any more.

For the sake of your children, for the sake of society, and if you're young, for your own sake, if you don't have a clue how science and statistics works, shut your fucking yap. Your opinion IS NOT of equivalent worth compared to those who have spent lifetimes studying the relevant disciplines. Can you say with absolute certainty that if you load a pistol, stick the barrel in your mouth, and pull the trigger, that your brain will soon afterward exit the back of your skull? No, of course you can't: guns sometimes misfire, shells are sometimes duds. But statistically, following the above procedure would be pretty damned stupid, wouldn't it?

The question is not whether the climate is warming or not: it is. That's a simple fact. The question is how certain do we need to be before we act. Do you want 95%? 99? 99.9? A tenth of a percent is my guesstimation of your chances of surviving as a result of a misfire. (You're actually much more likely to survive by flinching.)

And, oh, by the way, here's what I set out to mention before I got off onto a rant: the Arctic is being increasingly militarized as a result of warming unlocking mineral resources. And because of denialism, the US risks losing access to resources we should control, or military confrontation if we try to push our claims.

Major melting has spurred Russia, Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), and Norway into a new gold rush, except this time it’s about staking claim to huge reservoirs of natural gas, petroleum, and untold deposits of minerals previously inaccessible because of the polar ice shield. Much of the sub-sea Arctic wealth will of necessity be transported by ships because thawing tundra will be too unstable for pipelines. The South Koreans anticipated this more than a decade ago, building giant vessels to secure a big share of the shipping market.

Sadly, when the claims of the ignorant and unthinking have equal weight compared to those of the informed and educated, this is the result: such a society fumbles and falls behind others. If you want to call that elitist, fine. I'd rather be called elitist than proclaim myself an idiot.

Fake News

Remember this photo, from a few months back, which won the £10,000 prize for the best wildlife photo of the year?
It was staged; the wolf was tame, and loaned from a wildlife park.

Also, you may have heard,

Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate

(Via Michael Tomasky's Blog)

Looting in Haiti? Shut your yap. What would you do if you had no food, no water, no shelter, and no expectation that these might show up in the foreseeable future? Would you sit there patiently and watch your family starve or die of exposure and dehydration? Ya think you might consider breaking into the local market? Yeah, me too. Would you describe that as "looting", or as "fighting to survive"? Yeah, me too. I'm glad to see others pointing this out.

Let's see... oh yeah, earthquake swarm in Yellowstone. Everything to the east is going to be blown into the Atlantic, everything else into the Pacific. Tidy. No need for a relief or aid effort. Of course the so-called "experts" in their ivory frigging towers have different ideas. But then they have a vested interest in seeing North America go "foom." Never, ever trust anyone who actually has spent time studying something. Causes bias.

Lockwood is in a pissy mood this morning.

*sigh* No, He Didn't

From a link at Uncertain Principles, I found this: "Why is the news media comfortable with lying about science?"

The most egregious case seems to have happened at the UK's Daily Mail, which ran an article in the Science and Technology section of its website entitled "The mini ice age starts here." In it, the author argues that we're due for decades of global cooling, driven by ocean currents that the article claims produced the last century's warming—not greenhouse gasses. These facts are ascribed to impeccable scientific sources: the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, and Mojib Latif, a prominent climatologist based in Germany. A substantially similar story, with precisely the same attributions, later appeared on the Fox News site.

There was small problem here, though: Mojib Latif is still alive, and was easy to get a hold of. When contacted, he pointed out that large portions of the report were inaccurate. A prominent climate blogger contacted both Latif and the NSIDC; he quotes Latif as saying, "I don't know what to do. They just make these things up." Referring to "facts" attributed to it by the article, The NSIDC's director said, "This is completely false. NSIDC has never made such a statement and we were never contacted by anyone from the Daily Mail. "

The second case examined in the above post involves ABC trotting out Jenny McCarthy to rebut a recent study regarding diet and autism in children. Jenny McCarthy's single qualification for being in the media is that she was Playboy's Playmate of the month, then of the year, more years ago than I care to recall. Take that, scientists. Your boobs aren't big enough, you don't show enough skin, and you aren't blond enough to have an opinion on medical issues.

The post makes some very important points, and there are some important and insightful comments as well (though many are of the fairly useless "me too" variety).

Which brings me to the particular case I want to bitch about today. A few days ago, I pointed out a piece from Scientific American in which Bob Yeats, one of my geology profs, had said in part,

In an interview last week for an unrelated story, Robert Yeats, a professor emeritus in geoscience at Oregon State University in Corvallis, said that an imminent big west coast earthquake concerned him far less than a "big one" that might occur in Haiti, due to the large fault near the capital city of Port-au-Prince—and the poverty-driven low level of earthquake-preparedness there.

"If they have an earthquake on this fault that runs through Port-au-Prince," the death toll would be tremendous, he said January 6.

Predictably, over the last couple of days, the media have misrepresented this to the point that I could bite through rebar. KGW came first, as best as I can tell, with the headline, "OSU geologist forecasted Haiti quake."

PORTLAND, Ore. -- An international earthquake expert from Oregon State University forecasted that a destructive earthquake would hit Haiti just a week before it happened.

*sigh* No, he didn't. The author didn't talk to Yeats, he talked to Andrew Meigs. Yeats was in Japan at the time. There is no source for the claim that Yeats "forecasted the quake." Forecasting would involve issuing some probability of a quake larger than some magnitude within some window of time. I do know that Yeats' major interest is in the neotectonics (recent earth movements) of western North America, a region from which Haiti is noticeably absent. I for one had not been aware that a fault strand of the Caribbean-NA plate boundary ran through Port-au-Prince, but I would imagine most structural-tectonic professionals were very much aware of that. A large population with terrible infrastructure, and essentially no standards for such construction, would, to paraphrase Richard Clarke (I think) have US disaster experts "running around with their heads on fire." Yeats couldn't have helped being aware that a quake in Haiti would be a disaster beyond imagining, but that's a long way from saying, "Well, sometime in the next week or two, Haiti is going to get battered almost to death."

Next up was KVAL, with the same headline. They do get the lede pretty much right, though.

CORVALLIS, Ore - International earthquake expert and geologist Robert Yeats forecasted one week ago that one of the world's most at risk locations for a major destructive earthquake was the fault that runs through Haiti and near Port-au-Prince.

Still, identifying "one of the world's most at risk locations" isn't a forecast, it's a statement of fact, and one that had been made many times before (though I again emphasize that I had not been terribly aware of that fact prior to the event). Yeats seems to be getting credit (which I doubt he actually wants) simply for having been the most recent to repeat this fact.

And AHA! I should have guessed! Here's the OSU Press Release. Found it as I was tracking back links, and I hadn't seen this until just now.

An international earthquake expert at Oregon State University predicted one week ago that one of the world’s most at-risk locations for a major, destructive earthquake is the fault that runs through Haiti and near Port-au-Prince.

I've ranted about journalism by press release before...

This is why traditional journalism is dying. Reprinting some author's press release isn't journalism. It's not reporting. Press releases are intended to do one thing: get publicity for the sponsoring institution. There might be some important information in them, but if so, it's purely coincidental.

...and I'm certain I shall do so again in the future. Strengthening my firm belief that press releases should be banned, take a look at the third paragraph of this pile-o-crap:

The observation also brings home the remarkable advances scientists have made in recent years in understanding the complex, as-yet-unpredictable behavior in the thousands of faults around the world that set the stage for earthquakes, and the socio-economic forces that make some locations more vulnerable than others.

See the problem here? Shorter press release: "OSU prof predicts as-yet-unpredictable event."

Case closed. Putzes.

The Oregonian gets into the act too, with the headline, "Report: OSU professor says deforestation caused many deaths in Haiti quake" *sigh* No. He didn't. What he said is quoted right there in your article:

[Yeats] saved his harshest criticism for practices such as deforestation. He said that many trees have been cleared from the hillsides in Haiti, increasing the likelihood of landslides.

"I haven't seen the figures, yet," Yeats said. "But I suspect a lot of the deaths were caused by landslides."

Headlines are written by editors, not by reporters, so a lot of the invective in this post is directed at them, not the reporters. But from the outside, to the readers, this distinction is most often lost. The important thing to note here is that the death and destruction we've seen thus far is almost exclusively from Port-au-Prince, where landslide damage does not seem to have been a major factor. Dave's Landslide Blog notes this morning that liquifaction (which could be thought of as a particular kind of landslide) is the process that destroyed the port, but in other posts he notes that there doesn't appear to be much in the way of slide damage in the city. He also notes that we don't know much of what is happening outside the city yet... that's a bad sign. I suspect Yeats is right, but we don't have that information yet. Which means that the Oregonian's headline is jumping the gun and misrepresenting Yeats' comments at the very least. BTW, for ongoing analysis of geologic factors influencing both the results of the quake and the recovery/aid effort Dave has been doing a yeoman's job.

Finally, the article that The Oregonian bounced was from my own hometown's Gazette Times, a paper for which I have never been shy to express my contempt. So do they for once come through? Need you ask? Here's the headline: "OSU professor predicted Haiti earthquake." And here's what he actually said:

"What surprised me most wasn't that it happened," Yeats said by phone Thursday morning. "But that it happened when it did. I didn't expect it this soon.

(...)

Yeats said other areas of concern include Kingston, Jamaica; Tehran, Iran; and Istanbul, Turkey. He said those cities also are on large faults and their building structures are vulnerable as well.

However, Yeats said, it's hard to convince political leaders to take action because geologists can't answer the big question the leaders want answered.

"We don't know when earthquakes are going to happen," Yeats said. "That's what they want to know. It's possible the earthquake might not happen in their lifetime, and their focus is on the present."

"We don't know when earthquakes are going to happen." "OSU professor predicted Haiti earthquake." How is it that reporters and editors can look at those two sentences in the same short article and not feel a sense of mental conflict, no cognitive dissonance? It's important, because if we can't expect journalists to recognize paradoxes, how can we expect the broader public to try to sort out their nonsense?

Alice laughed. `There's no use trying,' she said `one ca'n't believe impossible things.'

`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Case closed. Putzes.

I Will Never Fly Again

Oh, sure, terrorists scare me to pieces. From Nate Silver, we have some stats showing how scared we should be:

Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.

These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.

Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne.

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

On the other hand, what are the odds that the insecure folks at Homeland Security are going to make you so miserable you wish you could explode just to spite them? I guess you can't have a probability higher than 100%, but they're working on it over there.

For the last hour of the flight, you now have to sit in your seat with your hands folded in your lap. No food, no computer, no nothing. And if you think you might have to use the bathroom, expect to be arrested and charged with failure to obey a cabin Nazi, or some other felony beef, so you might as well wear one of those homicidal-astronaut diapers.

This is gonna work real well with kids. And elderly. And many with health problems. I've read elsewhere that EB Misfit's "no nothing" includes books and magazines. As she points out in a later post,

The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. So what has the Underwear Bomber managed to do?

Think of the sheer stupidity of "Sit In Your Seats With Your Laps Empty For the Last Hour of the Flight (Or the Air Marshal Will Shoot You in the Head)" rule. What is so magical about the last hour of the flight? Anyone who smuggled a bomb or an Insane Chemist Bomb-Making Kit(tm) on board could try to blow the thing up at any point of the flight. (Don't expect the DBP to figure that one out, by the way.)

...

All of this without doing much more than scorching the terrorist. I'd rate the attack as "very successful".

Yes, as Silver points out, flying has become such a dangerous, terrorism-vulnerable undertaking, that we should all just stay on the ground.

Fine. I'm there.

Followup, 3:50 PM: Oh, joy. Here's a big surprise.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an Independent who aligns with the Democrats, has promised hearings when Congress returns for its break.

(CS Monitor) I'm sure Traitor Joe is all over making sure people are safe and healthy. This isn't about him, nosirree.

We've Agreed to Agree About Something Sometime

And that's "meaningful."

I suppose it's better than simply disagreeing.

We're talking about climate. You know what agriculture is completely dependent on? Having a pretty good working knowledge of what the climate is going to be. Yes, there will be crop failures regionally from time to time as the weather varies, but in aggregate, we have been able to count on plentiful food production because we have learned what the climates are from place to place. If we don't know what the climate is going to be like (and we don't), we can't grow food. It really is that simple.

I suppose when we start having perennial and widespread crop failures, and even the US starts to look like Biafra, the conservatives can take comfort in the fact that this really is all a big hoax to make the whole world over in a Marxist-Leninist revolution.

Merry Christmas, assholes.

Interesting Article

Hmmm. Interesting article. I enjoyed reading it.

If it looks and smells like spam, I delete it. Sorry Gretta. Actually, no, I'm not sorry. I get a fair amount of pleasure deleting crap seconds after it shows up.

The Mud Bowl

In about half an hour from the time I start this post, Oregon State and University of Oregon will kick off their annual football faceoff. Those of us who regard this as a waste of our time and an unnecessary aggravation (puke, broken glass, and noise) refer to this annual tradition as either the mud bowl or the toilet bowl. This is often the most anticipated game of the year in Oregon, and is traditionally held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This year they're holding it on the Thursday after Thanksgiving.

Why? Because ESPN paid them off.

See, whoever wins this year's game goes to the Rosebowl... and I guess that's a big deal.

So people will take off work early (or call in sick), and drive from all over the state to attend a three-hour game that starts at six (sunset was at 4:33), and probably won't end until after nine, then drive home. 'Cause tomorrow's also a work day, don'cha know. Or a school day, if you're an OSU student. Now that may sound fairly innocuous, but this is one of the busiest events of the year for Oregon's highways. OregonLive had a piece yesterday, "Before Thursday's big game, expect a Civil War in traffic." The traffic jams associated with Oregon College football, especially the Civil War game, are legendary.

Oh, yeah... then there's the tailgating. Add in the weather that's typical at this time of year- drizzly rain and fog- and you have a recipe for disaster. The majority of the attendees do not have the option of spending the night; they need to be back home tomorrow morning.

Now the positive news is that the last couple of days have been chilly, but mostly clear, so the pavement is dry. NOAA is not predicting rain until late Sunday. So precipitation will not be an issue... but we've had a lot of fog this week, and the I-5 corridor is fog alley.

In short, my opinion is that underfunded Oregon Universities have been pushed by economic starvation into accepting bribes from a sports network to change a scheduled event. And that change is likely, to an utterly unacceptable degree, to put the lives of their alumni and current students at risk.

I hope I can't say "I told you so" tomorrow. I honestly do. Football is obnoxious and stupid from my perspective, but that is what it is: my perspective and my opinion. It's worth exactly what you paid for it. Other people have the right to choose whatever entertainment they want to engage in. It just pisses me off that lives are being put in jeopardy for a goddamn cable company's corporate bottom line.

Followup, Fri. December 4: Yay! I can't say "I told you so."

OSP said there were no major traffic incidents besides a rear-end, non-injury crash on I-5 south of Salem at 3:25 p.m. and the one-car accident on I-5 north after the game.

There were, however, 14 DUI's; 12 of these are implied to be related to the game.

More On the Gigavolcano

Busy news day... Samoa got double-walloped first by an 8.3 magnitude earthquake, then by a tsunami, with implications for the Oregon coast. (That last link is a very interesting article illustrating how even a very minor tsunami can be dangerous.) Also, the millionaires on the Senate Finance Committee have decided that profitable insurance companies are more important than affordable health care. A gleeful Charles Grassly announced that the next target was the socialist and government-run FBI. "I'm tired of seeing the small-business and entrepreneurial orientation of bank robbers and kidnappers thwarted by government interference with the free market."

Snark aside, the point is, I'm not going to get through a great deal of my news today... I still have 450+ items in my RSS.

But I do want to get back to the teravolcano, and its peta-eruptions, because its 25 km of megaplumbing is ultrafascinating.

I had not heard of this Permian volcanic system before the recent news, and my original intention was to highlight and discuss points in the press release that were interesting and engaging to me. Sadly, I made the mistake of doing a Google for "Ivrea-Verbano Zone and Serie dei Laghi of northwest Italy." Oh my. There's a lot of information to digest.

For example, here we have a very recent field guide to the area (1MB pdf)- a geologic overview rather than a specific trip with stops- dated September 18, 2009.

Together with the metamorphic and igneous rocks of the adjacent Serie dei Laghi (SdL), collectively forming the Massiccio dei Laghi (Boriani et al., 1990), the rocks of the region record Palaeozoic accretion, metamorphic and magmatic processes, the effects of the Hercynian orogeny, post-orogenic magmatic underplating and associated lithospheric stretching and thinning, Mesozoic extension and effects associated with the position of the region in Alpine tectonism (e.g. Handy et al., 1999) (Fig.3).

To the extent I have a particular interest in a specific sub-discipline of geology (I don't really), I would probably have to say igneous petrology is it. Petrology is the study of how rocks are formed; igneous petrology deals specifically with rocks that cool and crystallize from a molten state. The above implies, to me at least, that we're dealing with hot-spot volcanism. The ability to look at the compositional variations, along with temperature and pressure as recorded in minerals, from the top of the mantle to the surface of the earth is as exciting as anything I can conceive. And for those of you into structure, there are some diagrams that almost qualify as pornography (see, for example, the bottom of page 8 and top of page 9).

Another article seems to confirm the hot-spot idea in this diagram of the conjectured structural-thermal evolution of the region.

The point is, there seems to be quite a bit of relatively accessible information on this exposure. In the abstract to the scholarly article in question, Quick et al. claim that "Correlation of ages of volcanic and middle to deep crustal plutonic rocks suggests that they constitute an unprecedented exposure of a subcaldera magmatic plumbing system to a depth of 25 km, and points to a cause and effect link between intrusion of mantle-derived basalt in the deep crust, and large-scale, silicic volcanism." Now this is exactly what has been assumed since my puppy days, back in the early 80's, with respect to Yellowstone. Magma with a basaltic composition rises to the lower crust from the mantle, then some combination of magmatic differentiation (some components solidify earlier, leaving the residual magma with a different composition) and crustal melting (mantle basaltic magmas have temperatures of ~1200 degrees Celsius; crustal rocks melt around 800 C) result in granitic-rhyolitic magma that is relatively enriched in volatiles. In large amounts, this is exactly what's required for explosive volcanism.

So if this is what has been hypothesized, why is this discovery important? Because it's an actual confirmation of the model, not just a theoretically plausible conjecture. I have described the process of doing geology as predicting the past. At first, that seems oxymoronic, but what we do is painstakingly assemble all sorts of data, try to put it together into a coherent picture, then develop a model that explains how that picture came to be. We test the model by saying "If that model is accurate, then we should be able to find A, B and C." Then we go look for A, B and C. In other words, the model involves predictions (A, B, C) that should have already happened at some time in the past, but no one has looked for them. So if we find A, B, and C, it strongly supports our model. And that appears to be exactly what happened in this case.

The next point that is of interest is that the spatial distribution of magma below a volcano is an extremely important, but difficult to investigate, aspect of how and why volcanoes erupt. A recent Accretionary Wedge post by Tuff Cookie talks more about this issue. Certainly there are lots of places around the world where one can observe shallow to deep components of volcanic "plumbing," but the ability to see a section of a single volcanic system, essentially a snapshot in time, through an essentially continuous depth of 25 km (15 miles) is indeed unprecedented, as far as I know. One of the reasons I was so disparaging of the lack of tectonic setting is that each volcano has its own "personality," architecture, eruptive style, compositional range and so on. But not even describing whether the volcano was the result of extension, a hot-spot or subduction would be like describing an organism's behavior without specifying whether the organism was a plant, animal or bacterium. This is one single volcano, which undoubtedly has its own quirks and in many ways is different from any other volcano that has existed. Nevertheless, it can serve as a model for some aspects of many volcanoes, and as a better model for a few.

I knocked the idea of calling this caldera a "supervolcano;" it's nowhere near big enough. I also mocked the very idea of "supervolcano." There are big eruptions, little eruptions and enormous eruptions. Do we really need a special category for the largest few dozen eruptions in the planet's history? Would it make sense to describe the very smallest eruptions as "microvolcanoes?" If your goal is to rivet people to the tube, so they'll sit through the commercials, sure, it's a useful ploy. But in terms of science, it's a minor distinction of degree. Yes, we are particularly fascinating by the extremes, but it doesn't really serve any purpose to set those extremes apart in their own group. Silver Fox made much the same comment in an Accretionary Wedge post a few months ago:

Geology and volcanology have seen some warranted increase in notoriety and recognition since the release of movies like Supervolcano, and since the publication of supervolcano articles in popular scientific magazines like Scientific American and Discover, however overdramatized or inexact the popular renditions might be. The Wikipedia article Supervolcano, for example, says that "Supervolcanoes are relatively new to science; they were previously unknown because they do not fit the stereotypical model of volcanoes." This statement is incorrect: very large-scale explosive caldera-forming eruptions have been known to geologists for quite some time. Hey, I knew about them way back in the dark ages, before I reached the age of thirty!

I know that the enormous eruptions at Yellowstone had been well-documented by the early 80's when I started in geology, and I think it's important to keep in mind that only 15 years earlier, plate tectonic theory was only starting to be widely accepted in the US.

I have been pondering today if I could think of a way in which you could get a "supervolcano" without also getting a caldera. I think the key is that supervolcanoes are explosive. One might erupt an enormous amount of lava in a flood basalt eruption, but that's not explosive (which is the reason the basalt flow illustrating the press release is ludicrous: that kind of lava, and particularly that kind of flow, couldn't be associated with a supervolcano). As the media and pop culture have defined supervolcano though, I think such an eruption would necessarily involve a caldera. But to reiterate a point from yesterday, calderas come in a range of sizes, from a km or so, up to Yellowstone's 45 X 85 km, and perhaps even larger. Only the very largest of those constitute supervolcanoes. One proposed formal definition would define these as erupting a volume of ejecta with a dense rock equivalent of 1000 cubic km or more. Under this definition, even the Long Valley eruption, with a volume of 600 cubic km, falls short- better than halfway there, but not much.

All that said, calderas of any size are formed in dramatically violent eruptions, and any discovery that leads to a better understanding of such events is just fine by me. The "Rosetta Stone" metaphor was a quote from the lead author, and I still feel like it's unjustified hyperbole. Nevertheless, the point he was trying to make was that having an actual physical layout for the system underneath the vent gives us a better way to draw geophysical (heat flow, gravity, seismic, inflation-deflation, and so on) inferences about the activity of magmatic systems where we don't know what the physical layout looks like. So there's some validity to it, but tossing out a term like Rosetta Stone to a staff PR writer is inviting trouble.

I could probably go on, but the point is this: there's lots and lots of fascinating, amazing and important stuff out there in the world. People who write press releases are not on salary to represent that stuff in any accurate, knowledgeable or meaningful way. They get their paychecks for making their employer look good. As I said yesterday, they may from time to time get things right, or write a story about an interesting topic, but it's purely coincidental. I don't hold their ignorance of anything other than how to write a fluffy, catchy story against them. They're doing the job they're being paid to do, and they have the background and knowledge base that the job requires them to have.

But I get pretty furious with "journalists" who have learned to type ctrl "a", ctrl "c", ctrl "v", and think that constitutes doing their job.

Science "Journalism" by Press Release

I have ranted about journalism by press release before, but I'm going to do it again. You may have heard about the news last week of the ""Rosetta Stone" of supervolcanoes discovered in Italian Alps" A number of papers, in addition to many online sources including RedOrbit, and the trigger for this post, NASA's Earth Observatory, have now picked up this press release (from July 20th) and reposted it, 2 months later, as a sensationalistic piece of "geology news."

Before I start getting all nit-picky, I will point out that two volcanism bloggers, Eric Klemetti at Eruptions and Ralph Harrington at The Volcanism Blog, who know vastly more about the topic than I do, gave fairly respectful hat tips to these reports. They didn't discuss anything in terms of the weaknesses of these (stunningly uniform) reports, though, nor try to clarify the importance of the news beyond the "OMG Super-Terrifying SuperVolcano MegaBlast Eruption Whiz-Bang Crash OMG!!!!" tone of the report(s). And those topics are what I want to address.

Let's start with a look at the photos that accompany the original press release.This is a basaltic lava flow, very likely from Hawaii. Note that it flows easily (is quite fluid); you can tell because it's thin, flat, and unbroken. Is this a "supervolcano?" Not in the public perception, though it is, as far as I know, the largest active volcanic edifice on the planet. Does it have any relevance (other than being a volcano) to the Permian volcano in Italy? Not that I know of. Why is it included? My guess is that it's a reassuring, stereotypical picture of "lava" in the journalistic mind. Story about volcanoes? Find a picture of runny, red lava.
This is the Yellowstone Caldera. What is the relevance? Both this and the Italian volcanoes are calderas. Yellowstone is the volcano for which I believe the term "supervolcano" was coined for some disaster infotainment show some years back. The term has no defined usage in the geological community, but if the Italian Volcano is a supervolcano, then obviously we have to haul in Yellowstone.
This is the Bishop Tuff. Its relevance is that it erupted from Long Valley Caldera in east central California, the second largest identified caldera in the US (after Yellowstone). We wouldn't want the public to think Yellowstone was the only supervolcano (other than the Italian example, of course).

And that's it for the pictures. Notice anything missing? You know, like some photos of the volcanic and magmatic exposures this article is about? A map of the location? A diagram of different zones or composition of the roots and a depth chart? Maybe even a preliminary reconstruction? Nope, none of that.

Why not? Well, duh! The article is about supervolcanoes, not research.

OK, let's take some of the sentences that made me wince, starting with the first: "Scientists have found the "Rosetta Stone" of supervolcanoes, those giant pockmarks in the Earth's surface produced by rare and massive explosive eruptions that rank among nature's most violent events." The Rosetta Stone was an archeological artifact that allowed linguists to begin deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. This discovery will not allow us to do that.

"Supervolcanoes, historically called calderas, are enormous craters tens of kilometers in diameter." No. Just no. If eruption of a magma chamber causes the earth's surface to collapse, forming a depression, it's still called a caldera. We haven't renamed every caldera as a "supervolcano." This leads to "Sesia Valley's caldera erupted during the "Permian" geologic time period, say the discovery scientists. It is more than 13 kilometers in diameter." First, Permian should not be in quotes; the correct name is Permian. We're not using it as a euphemism, nor in an unusual or non-standard manner, nor are we quoting the word in the context of a definition. Second, 13 km (~8 miles) is big (a bit larger than Crater Lake, at 6-7 miles), but it doesn't really qualify as a supervolcano. Yellowstone Caldera is 45 X 85 km; Long Valley Caldera is 17 X 32 km. So 13 km radius is pretty puny by comparison, and the Sesia Valley Caldera isn't by any stretch a "supervolcano." But we won't that let that get in the way.

"The exposure also serves as direct confirmation of the cause-and-effect link between molten rock moving through the Earth's crust and explosive volcanism." Really? How? "'It might lead to a better interpretation of monitoring data and improved prediction of eruptions,' says Quick, lead author of the research article reporting the discovery." So "might" equals "direct confirmation?" I guess so. I'm also guessing that molten rock moving through the earth is pretty much by definition associated with all volcanism, not just explosive volcanism.

"Calderas, which typically exhibit high levels of seismic and hydrothermal activity, often swell, suggesting movement of fluids beneath the surface." What do you mean by "often?" And hopefully the caldera nominally being discussed here doesn't show these activities. Of course, these activities can be expected (though not predicted) at any active volcano, and an increase in these activities may indicate an eruption in the relatively near future... or not.

"Bristish researchers introduced the term "supervolcano" in the last 10 years." Well, no; British documentary makers introduced the term in 2000. Wikipedia is not dependable, but it's a good place to start if you don't have any background.

"Besides Yellowstone, other monumental explosions have included Lake Toba on Indonesia's Sumatra island 74,000 years ago, which is believed to be the largest volcanic eruption on Earth in the past 25 million years. Described as a massive climate-changing event, the Lake Toba eruption is thought to have killed an estimated 60% of humans alive at the time." And this is relevant... why? Oh Yeah. Supervolcano. OMG!!!! SUPERVOLCANO!!!!

"Another caldera, and one that remains active, Long Valley in California erupted about 760,000 years ago and spread volcanic ash for 600 cubic kilometers." Yeah, we need to have an example that remains active. Say what? Yellowstone is still active? Yup. And by my quick reading, it would be unwise to assume that Toba is extinct... Then we have "spread volcanic ash for 600 cubic kilometers." I don't even know where to start with that.

Another specific complaint is that the three "supervolcanoes" mentioned occur in differing tectonic settings: Toba (I'm assuming) is a subduction volcano, like Crater Lake. Long Valley is thought to be extensional volcanism, at least last I heard. And Yellowstone (along with Hawaii) is one of the iconic hot spot volcanoes. There is no discussion of the setting of this new one.

Now the fact that RedOrbit picked this press release up and republished it essentially unchanged doesn't surprise me. The fact that NASA's Earth Observatory did, when there are so many obvious flaws, does.

This is why traditional journalism is dying. Reprinting some author's press release isn't journalism. It's not reporting. Press releases are intended to do one thing: get publicity for the sponsoring institution. There might be some important information in them, but if so, it's purely coincidental.

This took longer than I expected, and tomorrow I want to come back to this and point out why it's a fascinating and important story (there are, coincidentally, some important bits of information in it). But I'll close with this thought: The way I learned it, the way to avoid plagiarism was to cite your sources. Note the plural there. If you copy your entire work from a single source (especially verbatim), even if you cite that source, it's still plagiarism. That's what RedOrbit does: they pass along press releases and hope to make some ad revenue by being an aggregater site, and they make no pretensions of being a good site for good science. That's not to say you can't find good science at sites of this type, but you better be science literate and ready with some fairly large bricks of salt if you hope to do so. But NASA, I'm disappointed. Couldn't you have run this through the hands of someone who knows a little geology? Maybe done a follow-up interview? Added a little bit better science? Shame.

Part Two is here.

Clarification and Apology: I have received an e-mail from an administrator at NASA's Earth Observatory responding to what he views as an accusation of plagiarism. Since it is a private e-mail, I don't feel comfortable responding to it in a public forum. I have been pondering all morning about precisely how to respond, which I do feel compelled to do. In the interim though, I did not intend to accuse NASA's Earth Observatory site of plagiarism; the link and attribution to the original press release is clearly provided at the end of the article, nor was the EO in any way claiming authorship of the article. It was, in fact, via the post at EO news that I found the original press release, and I was and am grateful for the link. Whatever meaning I had intended though, looking over the closing paragraphs of the above post, it does seem quite reasonable to suppose that I was accusing EO of plagiarism. To those I may have offended, I offer my sincere apologies.

There are some very serious issues here, though, beyond that of plagiarism, that I think I'll have to address in another post.

Bipartisan Consensus Has Been Reached

Everybody hates the Baucus version of the health reform bill.

“There are honest and principled differences among all of us working for reform,” he said at another point. “And this package may not represent all of our first choices.”

Yep. That's right: Honestly and in principle, the republicans want to make sure that the American people continue to face excess deaths equivalent to a 9/11 every month and a half because they can't afford health care. In principle, the republicans honestly see no reason that the insurance companies and big pharma shouldn't continue to profit from the trickle-down, torrent-up model of business we worship in this country. Honestly, the republicans think that principles of high finance demand that the bankrupting of families should continue; if they can't afford to deal with their health costs it's their own fault. They should have thought about the consequences before they got sick or injured.

Asked if he were disappointed by the lack of support from Republicans, Mr. Baucus acknowledged that “no Republican has offered his or her support at this moment.”

I have become heartily sick of the old chestnut that goes (with variations) "if even one life was saved, it was worth any effort." That sentiment is asinine to begin with (how many lives might have been saved if that effort was directed elsewhere?); the fact that I come across it daily has rendered it so trite that it now angers me.

However, I think with a slight rearrangement, it might be fresh and fitting for our time: "If even one person was saved from paying an extra socialist tax dollar, all the lost lives, the countless person-years of suffering in agony, the lost homes and cars, disrupted and destroyed families, the lives of wondering in despair if anything, anything could have been done to save a loved one, and the anguish and fear that so many experience in the face of the unknown and unexpected, will all have been worth it."

Shorter republican health version: think happy thoughts, pray to jeebus, don't get sick, and send a nice card to the bereaved. If it's good enough for Somalia, it's good enough for you.

Merely Average?

Europeans keep asking me, has America lost its mind? From healthcare to its economy, the US is looking merely average.

Merely Average? I think not! We are so far below average on so many counts that we have our own category: we're a Zeroeth World Nation. That's even better than a first world nation! Ha! So there, all you merely "developed" countries. We've gotten over that whole obsession with development and human rights. The democracy is dead! Long Live the Corporatocracy!

Part Honest Fear, Part snark, Part Just Funny

I have never seen Downfall, but I have from time to time posted pieces of Hitler's rant with satirical subtitles. EB Misfit posted another one of these this week; I left a comment saying I found these very funny, and she recommended I watch the clip with its original subtitles. It was actually more difficult to find than I expected; there are apparently well over a hundred of the spoofs. However, her point is well-taken; the original is not funny. It is terrifying. This man came to control over Germany under conditions that are eerily similar to what we have now: economic disaster, a non-functional political system, paranoia, searches for scapegoats, and a deep fear of the "other".

Could it happen here? I don't know. I'm not enough of a student of history, nor of political science, to hazard a guess. But it is clear that a very large portion of people in this country have utterly forgotten (or more likely, never learned) what fascism is. Forgetting history is the first step toward repeating it. Firedoglake has been running a three-part series on the patterns of nations' slides into fascism, how to resist those patterns and avoid the traps that lead to that state. It's a fair amount of reading, but highly recommended. I learned a lot from these, some of what I learned has been hopeful, some... not so much.

Part I: Fascist America: Are We There Yet?
Part II: The Last Turnoff.
Part III: Resistance for the Long Haul.

As Stewart remarked a while ago, what has this country come to that people could be accusing a gay Jew (Barney Frank) and an African-European halfbreed (Obama) of supporting fascism?

I will also point out that with darker hair and the proper moustache, I think Glenn Beck could pull off a powerfully accurate Hitler.

So with those thoughts, I offer a little comic relief... this is the best (funniest) version I've seen so far: Hitler finds out his subtitles are wrong.

In case you think I take this whole thing too seriously...

see more Political Pictures

...and you may (or may not) recall that I started off the year begging that we quit calling each other fascists, and doing my darndest to show how silly it was to trivialize the concept.

Just saying.

Frosty in the Greenhouse

See, if we just put that top hat back on the pole, everything will be fine. The NSIDC report for July is up, and it's very reassuring. The "God wouldn't let mankind destroy the planet" people are right! It's only the third worst July meltback on record, after '07 and '06. So it looks like this whack job (PhD in physics or no) has been vindicated: "...the best satellite data show that the Earth as a whole has been gradually cooling for a decade." (/snarky rant)So any line falling outside the blue tinted area are two standard deviations outside of the reference set, and would typically be described as "unlikely to occur by chance." I'm not going to say how unlikely, for a number of reasons. But the 2006 values for July would have fallen between the '07 and '09 values, and the July '08 plot (below) was almost as low as this year's.
But I can still draw a line from July 2007 to July 2009 and predict an imminent ice age.I think we should drill the Arctic for whatever oil we can get at while the getting's good. Then we can put on the top hat.