Wed 25 Feb 2009

Bobby Jindal, the GOP governor of Louisiana delivered the Republican response for Obama’s Joint Session of Congress speech. You know it didn’t go well when Fox talking heads calls it lackluster. You are certain it sucked bad when folks over at Little Green Footballs, Free Republic and Red State think he made “Palin look smart,” “guarantees 8 years of Obama” and “anti-science.”
Yeah, Republicans complaining about a candidate being too anti-science. I was shocked too.
But Jindal actually called out volcano monitoring as wasteful, pork barrel spending. The first thought that entered my tree-hugging liberal mind was “there goes his support in the American West.”
According to the US Geological Survey Circular, the US states that have active or possibly active volcanoes are New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. Wyoming is an especially troubling issue since it has Yellowstone – one of the largest volcanoes in the world. 640,000 years ago, Yellowstone erupted and it ejected 240 CUBIC MILES of rock and dust into the sky.
In late 2008 and early 2009 Yellowstone experienced quake swarms – one swarm had over 500 earthquakes in a seven day period.
If Yellowstone goes, most of the midwest would be unlivable and the effects would be felt globally. Mass famine and death would result.
Maybe Jindal is right, we don’t need to monitor anything that dangerous. Just like we ignore hurricanes. What’s the worst that could happen?
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7 Responses to “ Bobby Jindal – Science Fail ”
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February 25th, 2009 at 8:08 am[...] Bobby Jindal – Science Fail » Town Called Dobson [...]
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February 25th, 2009 at 12:07 pm[...] from FiveThirtyEight.com; ‘A letter to Gov. Bobby Jindal’ from Magma Cum Laude; ‘Bobby Jindal – science fail’ from Town Called [...]













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February 26th, 2009 at 12:59 am
Excellent.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:07 am
What’s the worst that could happen? Twenty million Westerners relocating to New York.
Maybe Jindal is smarter than you give him credit for. Would you like to be the Republican candidate in 2012?
February 26th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Lest one think that 240 cubic miles of rock and ash isn’t much, one map showing the effects of the Yellowstone eruption of 640,000 years ago noted that the ash and debris from the eruption covered nearly the entire United States west of the Mississippi River. Ouch.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:12 pm
It was not only an asinine thing to say, it was untrue. The paltry millions are not just for volcano monitoring.
But the mention of Yellowstone does bring a question to my mind. If we become certain that it’s going to blow in the next decade, what can we do?
April 20th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
From what I understand, Max, there isn’t anything we can do. Chances are fair, actually, that they won’t even tell us it’s coming. What good would it do? There wouldn’t be time to evacuate the entire western United States. It would be wiser if people would desert that region of the country entirely and permanently, but of course that’s not going to happen. Most Americans, I’ll wager, don’t even know Yellowstone is a problem.
There are things they can supposedly do to ease off the pressure in the supervolcano… but those things could also set it off early.
So, we’re stuck. My recommendation is, learn a whole bunch of primitive skills and learn how to hunt. Farming won’t be worth squat for a long time. And get into shape and be ready to walk a long way at a moment’s notice.
I’d move to Europe if I could.