----------------------- On a tangent --
Mother Nature can store up some remarkably nasty stuff underground:
...Vast volumes of basaltic lava paved over a large expanse of primeval Siberia in a flood basalt event. Today the area covered is about 2 million km² and estimates of the original coverage are as high as 7 million km². The original volume of lava is estimated to range from 1 to 4 million km³. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps
Of course that was about 500 million years ago. In what is almost the modern era, from the perspective of deep geology, events of this sort have been more moderate:
...The bulk of the volcanic eruption occurred at the Western Ghats (near Mumbai)some 66 million years ago....it is estimated that the original area covered by the lava flows was as large as 1.5 million km². The present volume of lava is estimated to have been 512,000 km³. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps
And almost yesterday:
The Yellowstone Caldera, sometimes known as the Yellowstone supervolcano, is a volcanically active region in Yellowstone National Park. It measures 55 kilometers (34 mi) by 72 kilometers (44 mi)....within the past two million years, it has undergone three extremely large explosive eruptions, up to 2,500 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption....the most recent such eruption produced the Lava Creek Tuff 640,000 years ago and spread a layer of volcanic ash over most of the North American continent. Smaller steam explosions occur every 20,000 years or so; an explosion 13,000 years ago left a 5 kilometer diameter crater.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera
The widespread image of nature as benign and stable is false, and is a psychological obstacle to proper appreciation of the growing climate crisis. Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
While I was reading up on it, I found this beauty of insult after injury: "At least the mud is not toxic".
As for a calm peaceful Earth, that's an illusion humanity has selected because we've been relatively abstained from sudden, catastrophical events. And in that tangent, I am the one predicting gloom this time: as long as the human population grows, these kind of disasters will get a whole lot worse in scale, number and severity. And if Yellowstone would actually go, we're really in for a world of hurt.
(BTW, small correction, the Siberian traps are dated some 249-250 million years ago. The Wikipedia entry is deceptive at this point by stating it was "the biggest in 500 million years". Check out the website at the University of Bristol, here, for an easy introduction on the topic.)
when i lived in hawaii during the 80's, kilauea volcano on mauna kea was churning out enough lava PER DAY to make a 6-lane highway from new york to chicago, pouring into the ocean and making it boil, with clouds of sulpuric acidulous steam, and sometimes turning instantly to a roughish black sand.
mama nature don't mess around... ~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.
