A Few Things of Interest

As always, there is a lot of good stuff over at the Arizona Geology blog, so I encourage a visit. But, I have to repeat something I saw over there:

The Arizona Guardian online newspaper, is prominently displaying a YouTube video of Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen in a committee hearing, with the caption:

On June 25th the senator voiced support for opening up uranium mining in Arizona and countered environmentalists by assuring them that the the Earth has been around for "6,000 years..." and has lasted that long without environmnental laws. She said it twice.

Thankfully she's not my representative (she represents Snowflake), but I'm really disturbed that someone with views like this legislates in Arizona. It's really no wonder that the state governement is in such bad shape right now.

And because I don't want this post to be a complete downer - the following is a time-lapse video from the International Space Station of an incredible eruption of the Saraychev eruption last month in the Kuril Islands (north of Japan). This one is big enough to make for nice sunsets world-wide for a while (though it's still too early to determine if climate will be affected).

California Earthquake Swarm

In the past few days, the Salton Sea area of southern California has been experiencing an earthquake swarm - with a few quakes as large as the mid-4's on the Richter Scale. With this swarm comes an increased probability of a large quake on that section of the San Andreas fault. A large quake in this area could effect Yuma and western Arizona - especially if it ruptured from north to south. The Arizona Geology blog has a good write-up about it.

In other geology news, there is a huge volcanic eruption going on at Redoubt in Alaska. There are good updates at the Eruptions blog and the AVO.

Monitoring the Stimulus

Monitoring is an important aspect of practice for engineering geologists, geologists, engineers, and other geoscientists. It is often a key component of our designs and solutions and as most owners know, it can be a bit pricey at times.

Now my goal is to keep this blog politically neutral, though I will happily discuss issues of potential interest to Arizona AEG members, other AEG members, and the rest of the people who follow this blog. I missed the speech by President Obama to a joint-session of Congress the other day and I missed the Republican response. It seems that a part of the Republican Response by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal included specific mention of the inclusion of 'volcano monitoring' in the Stimulus bill that we've heard so much about. Apparently he mentioned it as a waste of tax-payer money.

This has raised a bit of an uproar from people in the geologic community. This response at the Magma Cum Laude blog takes Governor Jindal to task on the issue. This response by the Green Gabbro blog discusses how volcanic hazard monitoring does create jobs and stimulate the economy (in addition to being a good idea). There are many more responses linked at the Magma Cum Laude blog. I can't help but wonder if Governor Jindal considers hurricane monitoring a waste of tax payer money.

Anyway, I found this unfortunate example of science becoming political (an all too common thing these days) that may be of interest to those following this blog.

Edit: I just heard from a friend of mine who works at the Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory (HVO). His response - 'Governor Jindal has done more volcanic hazard awareness in 15 seconds than the USGS has done in 15 years'. Perhaps it was all a bit of reverse psychology.