Aw, man. When did private browsing stop getting around article counts?Tip: If you're hitting the paywall, Google "the really big one" (the title of the article) and click the appropriate Google link to read the article. No incognito/private browsing necessary.
"Please don't move here. There's no more room and the freeways are made of fire."posted by Celsius1414 at 10:38 AM on July 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
¡°They¡¯re debating about whether they should build a $7 million bridge,¡± Corcoran says. ¡°You don¡¯t need a $7 million bridge high enough and strong enough to withstand the quake and the tsunami! You need a $1 million bridge strong enough to survive the earthquake, so people can cross it to escape the tsunami. However it¡¯s built, it¡¯s not going to survive the tsunami."posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:12 AM on July 13, 2015 [13 favorites]
In a report filed in November 2008, The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that a serious earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone could result in "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States," further predicting "widespread and catastrophic" damage across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and particularly Tennessee, where a 7.7 magnitude quake or greater would cause damage to tens of thousands of structures affecting water distribution, transportation systems, and other vital infrastructure. The earthquake is expected to also result in many thousands of fatalities, with more than 4,000 of the fatalities expected in Memphis alone.Also, an excellent and timely field trip report from Idlewords/Maciej Ceglowski: Confronting New Madrid
"At the high point of its development, Cahokia was the largest urban center north of the great Mesoamerican cities in Mexico and Central America. Although it was home to only about 1,000 people before c. 1050, its population grew explosively after that date. Archaeologists estimate the city's population at between 6,000 and 40,000 at its peak, with more people living in outlying farming villages that supplied the main urban center.I mean really just mostly the smallpox, I think.
As I mentioned in some of my previous blogs, any reasonable analysis suggests the warmth is predominantly the result of natural variability. That is, not being caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. I know some folks are not happy with me saying this, and some media/advocacy groups are pushing other things, but I think the facts are clear. Let's talk about it.He also wrote a little while ago about how climate change will affect the Pacific Northwest.
Here is a thought to keep in mind: the more extreme the weather anomaly, the less likely it is to be caused by human-induced (anthropogenic) global warming. The current situation is mega extreme in terms of our temperatures. The reason this aphorism makes sense is that global warming due to increased greenhouse gases should warm the earth in a progressive, slow way---not in huge jumps. Here in the Northwest, temperature increases have been particularly slow (about 1F over the past century) because of the huge thermal inertia of the Pacific Ocean.
And there is something else: the warming influencing our region is localized and does not have the characteristics of the global warming signal seen in climate models. While the Northwest has been hot and dry, much of the eastern U.S. has been much cooler and wetter than normal. Even the Rockies have been wetter than normal. Global warming would warm them as well.
And something is amplifying the warmth even more....the Pacific Ocean. The ridging over the eastern Pacific and West Coast has resulted in warmer than normal waters, something demonstrated in a recent paper by Nick Bond (WA State Climatologist) and others. It seems like high pressure reduces winds and lessens the mixing of cooler water from below the surface. Thus, the eastern Pacific has been 3-6F warmer than normal, which warms the air reaching our region. To demonstrate this, here are the sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (difference from normal) for the past month...you see the reds and orange colors off our coast? The is warm water. Nick Bond termed a colorful name for it: the BLOB.posted by dialetheia at 12:22 PM on July 16, 2015
Artw: “How to survive the Cascadia tsunami.”Man, I surfed through to the New Yorker update, and thence to the Tsunami Evacuation Map for Gearhart and Seaside [PDF]. It's grim.
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posted by Going To Maine at 7:55 AM on July 13, 2015 [11 favorites]