A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: Geotripper Emerges From the Apocalypse...

This week is my commemoration of ten years of geoblogging. I've been digging through the archives for some of my favorite posts of the last decade, and we've reached 2011. We had a series of epic trips that year, one with my students across the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains, and the other a personal journey across the Basin and Range, the central Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau. They resulted in not one, but two blog series, A Convergence of Wonders, and Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel. I would recommend the first if you want to know what adventures await if you attend a Modesto Junior College geology field studies course, and the second if you want to know what happens when you just up and leave on a two-week trip without a plan, and just a vague goal (Rocky Mountain National Park). Those of you who know me will understand how hard that can be, starting out a day not completely certain where one will end up that night.

But as fun as those series were for me to write, I picked three individual posts from 2011 as my favorites. One was utilitarian, one was about the adventure of being a geologist (or geology fan), and the third, my response to yet another irresponsible prediction about a giant earthquake or apocalypse or some other world-ending thing that got the web and cable news all excited. Of course the predicted date came and went with no unusual activity as they always do. Frankly, I sort of lost it. That blogpost is below. The other two are coming shortly...enjoy!


From March 24, 2011: 

Welcome, survivors of the Apocalypse! Like you, I have been hiding in my underground bunker, safe from the radiation cloud and protected from the supermoon and giant earthquake that caused California to plunge into the sea. I'm waiting to see if my investment in oceanfront property on the Carrizo Plains has paid off with a nice seaside view. Did any of the southern California mountains remain as offshore islands? I was sort of hoping to have a few on the horizon. I've been rationing my Cheetos, Pringles and beef jerky. I lined my bunker with lots and lots of tin foil to protect myself from the electronic emanations of those pointy-headed "scientists" who kept poo-pooing the predictions of those who sensed the coming Apocalypse in their minds and mathematical calculations. As soon as I saw the work of the prophets on the Internet I knew it had to be true. Their prophecies were aired by the cable news networks, so I double-knew it had to be true. I didn't feel the earthquake because I built my shelter on a spring-loaded foundation. Was it really shaky? My clock broke, so I've been estimating the number of days I've been in hiding by making chalk marks on the wall; it's 2012 isn't it? The Mayan calendar came to an end and all? Have the Zombies died out yet?

Well, that's that. The supermoon weekend passed and California is still here. The full moon didn't scrape along the ground and erase cities. There were no tidal disruptions. There was no earthquake. There were no volcanic eruptions. No one melted from the radiation cloud. The prophets and predictors were wrong, yet again, wrong again for the umpteenth time. Over and over they are wrong. Hundreds of times they have been wrong. And still they find a stage on the cable news networks, the Internet, the radio...over and over. There always seems to be a crowd of uninformed and misinformed people who take them seriously, and there are uninformed and misinformed news readers who are unable to critically assess their irresponsible claims. At the same time they dismiss the statements and findings of academics who have given over their lives to the study and understanding of the earth sciences. And in the end the charlatans and fakes are never brought to account for scaring people and causing economic disruptions.

I've seen enough of "judgment journalism" in politics to know that cable news outlets are capable of shaming those who cross the line of honesty and decency. They are capable of using their media platform to upbraid and criticize officials who steal money or engage in hypocritical behaviour. Why are they not criticizing and shaming those who carelessly predicted earthquakes and radiation poisoning without regard to the consequences of being totally (and predictably) wrong? I have never seen the news readers take a self-proclaimed "psychic" to task for their hundreds of wrong predictions.

Wouldn't it be nice just once to see a camera crew waiting outside the home of one of those self-proclaimed psychics or would-be earthquake prophets and ask them over and over why they made yet another wrong claim that needlessly scared people? Just once to hear them told to their face that they are charlatans and fakes? How long will the con artists persist when they know they will be subjected to public derision when they make their spurious claims?

In the meantime, the media outlets need to learn the real facts about the possibilities of quakes and other hazards in California (and anywhere else) and make sure their audiences know the actual magnitude of the threat. The faults are here after all, and there is a lot of built-up stress. Damaging quakes will happen, and we need to all be as prepared as possible. The first thing to do is to arm yourself with knowledge. Get this knowledge from responsible government agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey, or the California Geological Survey, or academic organizations like the Southern California Earthquake Center. Then you make the appropriate preparations: keep emergency supplies of water, flashlights, radios, batteries, and first aid kits, both in your home, and in your car. Have a family plan for what to do when disaster strikes.

By the way, it is ok to have Pringles and Cheetos in your emergency supplies...but put some healthy stuff in there too. There is junk food and there is junk news. Too much of either can be harmful to your health.

The Rim of Fire and the "Impending" Mega-Earthquakes: Look past the inflammatory headlines

Every few years (or months) there is a flurry of activity, and everyone gets hot and bothered and worried that the world is about to come apart. There's concern, even panic, and then things settle down a bit and the subject gets forgotten for another couple of years (or months).

Oh, you thought I was talking about earthquakes? No, I was talking about media storm ABOUT earthquakes. There have been a couple of bad earthquakes this week, truly tragic events, including the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Ecuador that has killed hundreds of people. There were smaller, but still deadly events in Japan. As a result, stories are making the rounds in the media concerning the Ring of Fire, and the possibility of an impending mega-earthquake...somewhere. Some other place is about to get it, the stories suggest.

Is there something strange going on? Are these earthquakes omens of future events? The answers: no, and probably no. The problem in the media treatment of earthquakes is that writers of these stories have a bit of knowledge, and a bit of knowledge can lead to problems. People have heard of the "Ring of Fire", and figure that it is a single geologic unit to the extent that if something happens somewhere along the Ring of Fire, it will have an immediate cause and effect on some other part of the Ring of Fire. It's a misconception.

Source: A. Hayes

Geologists use the term Ring of Fire as a convenience to describe a variety of different tectonic boundaries around and within the Pacific Ocean region. The trenches and subduction zones do not behave as a single coherent unit, and thus a large earthquake or volcanic eruption along one convergent boundary does not mean the impending destruction of another part of the "ring". The problem is that when a large event does take place, like the Ecuador event, then people suddenly pay attention to all the magnitude 6 earthquakes that take place within a few days or weeks and draw the conclusion that all of the events are related. They are almost assuredly not.

The problem is that magnitude 6 earthquakes are happening all the time, often in isolated regions, so they receive less attention on a day-to-day basis. But throw in a near-magnitude 8 event, and suddenly all the magnitude 6 events seem to be a frightening coincidence, and they feel related, as if one is causing the other.

Can earthquakes be an omen of a future event? Yes, they can. In the same way that a stick crackles and pops before it snaps in two, foreshocks can indeed be a harbinger of an impending quake. The foreshocks are not recognizable as such until the main quake happens (they're no different than run-of-the-mill earthquakes), so they can't be used to predict major quakes. But when they do occur, they are precursors to a larger quake in the same general area, along the same subduction zone.They are not predictors of quakes across oceans.

Mega-earthquakes (magnitude 8 or 9) may also set off earthquakes elsewhere, by triggering movement on faults that are already stressed to the breaking point. This isn't happening right now either. We haven't had a quake that big.

So, the take-away is this: could a gigantic earthquake, worse than the tragedies in Ecuador and Japan, take place, say, tomorrow? Sure. If it happens, is it related to these other events? Probably not. And media writers really need to put aside the temptation to put inflammatory click-bait titles on their reports about future mega-earthquakes. Panic and stress are not good combinations in earthquake country. Accurate information, on the other hand, will save lives.

Here We Go Again: Yellowstone is Going to KILL US ALL! Wait a minute...

I'm going to start with the conclusion (I've highlighted some parts using the bold font):

Geological activity at Yellowstone provides no signs that a supereruption will occur in the near future. Indeed, current seismicity, crustal deformation and thermal activity are consistent with the range and magnitude of signals observed historically over the past century [Lowenstern et al., 2006]. Over the past two million years, trends in the volume of eruptions and the magnitude of crustal melting may signal a decline of major volcanism from the Yellowstone region [Christiansen et al., 2007; Watts et al., 2012]. These factors, plus the 3-in-2.1-million annual frequency of past events, suggest a confidence of at least 99.9% that 21st-century society will not experience a Yellowstone supereruption. But over the span of geologic time, supereruptions have recurred somewhere on Earth every 100,000 years on average [Mason et al., 2004; Sparks et al., 2005]. As such, it is important to characterize the potential effects of such events. We hope this work stimulates further examination of ash transport during very large eruptions.

The reason I am doing so is because the media is reporting on the body of the report that came out recently concerning the possible effects of a major caldera eruption at Yellowstone National Park. That means we are getting the usual headlines like:

If Yellowstone Supervolcano Erupts, Ash May Reach NYC

Yellowstone Supervolcano Eruption Would Doom the United States

Eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano will turn the US into a Third World Country

Eruption of Yellowstone supervolcano could spell the end of the US

For the most part, the reports themselves aren't too bad (there ARE exceptions). The thing is, we've always known that a Yellowstone caldera plinian supereruption would be devastating. That's old news. The purpose of the research was to model the potential effects of such an event. I get that disaster and omens of disaster are what sell newspapers or put eyes on advertising, so headlines go over the top, just like they always have. But this approach leaves the readers with the wrong impression, and they are going to worry about whether eruptions of Yellowstone need to be added to their fears of terrorist attacks, Megalodon shark attacks on their Caribbean cruise, or whether vaccines cause autism. In other word, useless levels of stress based on incorrect or blatantly wrong information.
 
I want to send kudos to a couple of media outlets with less sensationalistic headlines, such as those from the Billings Gazette: Researchers predict ash fall if Yellowstone supervolcano erupted or the Daily Digest: New computer models show likely fallout of a volcanic eruption in Yellowstone.
These kinds of headlines actually communicate accurate information without the terror-inducing yellow journalism.

This report from the U.S. Geological Survey serves a useful purpose. It is part of the kinds of research that can help cities, states, and nations plan for and cope with natural disasters when they occur. The authors were careful to state in their conclusions the extreme unlikelihood of a rhyolite caldera eruption, but their computer model might be useful in predicting the effects of lesser eruptions elsewhere in the world, eruptions that are far more likely.

You can see the report here:
Mastin, L. G., A. R. Van Eaton, and J. B. Lowenstern (2014), Modeling ash fall distribution from a Yellowstone supereruption, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 15, doi:10.1002/2014GC005469. 

But don't fret. There are still the Yellowstone WOLVES to worry about!

Giant California Earthquakes and the Radiation Cloud; California Falls into the Sea: Geotripper Emerges from the Apocalypse...

Welcome, survivors of the Apocalypse! Like you, I have been hiding in my underground bunker, safe from the radiation cloud and protected from the supermoon and giant earthquake that caused California to plunge into the sea. I'm waiting to see if my investment in oceanfront property on the Carrizo Plains has paid off with a nice seaside view. Did any of the southern California mountains remain as offshore islands? I was sort of hoping to have a few on the horizon. I've been rationing my cheetos, pringles and beef jerky. I lined my bunker with lots and lots of tin foil to protect myself from the electronic emanations of those pointy-headed "scientists" who kept poo-pooing the predictions of those who sensed the coming Apocalypse in their minds and mathematical calculations. As soon as I saw the work of the prophets on the Internet I knew it had to be true. Their prophecies were aired by the cable news networks, so I double-knew it had to be true. I didn't feel the earthquake because I built my shelter on a spring-loaded foundation. Was it really shaky? My clock broke, so I've been estimating the number of days I've been in hiding by making chalk marks on the wall; it's 2012 isn't it? The Mayan calendar came to an end and all? Have the Zombies died out yet?

Well, that's that. The supermoon weekend passed and California is still here. The full moon didn't scrape along the ground and erase cities. There were no tidal disruptions. There was no earthquake. There were no volcanic eruptions. No one melted from the radiation cloud. The prophets and predictors were wrong, yet again, wrong again for the umpteenth time. Over and over they are wrong. Hundreds of times they have been wrong. And still they find a stage on the cable news networks, the Internet, the radio...over and over. There always seems to be a crowd of uninformed and misinformed people who take them seriously, and there are uninformed and misinformed news readers who are unable to critically assess their irresponsible claims. At the same time they dismiss the statements and findings of academics who have given over their lives to the study and understanding of the earth sciences. And in the end the charlatans and fakes are never brought to account for scaring people and causing economic disruptions.

I've seen enough of "judgment journalism" in politics to know that cable news outlets are capable of shaming those who cross the line of honesty and decency. They are capable of using their media platform to upbraid and criticize officials who steal money or engage in hypocritical behaviour. Why are they not criticizing and shaming those who carelessly predicted earthquakes and radiation poisoning without regard to the consequences of being totally (and predictably) wrong? I have never seen the news readers take a self-proclaimed "psychic" to task for their hundreds of wrong predictions.

Wouldn't it be nice just once to see a camera crew waiting outside the home of one of those self-proclaimed psychics or would-be earthquake prophets and ask them over and over why they made yet another wrong claim that needlessly scared people? Just once to hear them told to their face that they are charlatans and fakes? How long will the con artists persist when they know they will be subjected to public derision when they make their spurious claims?

In the meantime, the media outlets need to learn the real facts about the possibilities of quakes and other hazards in California (and anywhere else) and make sure their audiences know the actual magnitude of the threat. The faults are here after all, and there is a lot of built-up stress. Damaging quakes will happen, and we need to all be as prepared as possible. The first thing to do is to arm yourself with knowledge. Get this knowledge from responsible government agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey, or the California Geological Survey, or academic organizations like the Southern California Earthquake Center. Then you make the appropriate preparations: keep emergency supplies of water, flashlights, radios, batteries, and first aid kits, both in your home, and in your car. Have a family plan for what to do when disaster strikes.

By the way, it is ok to have pringles and cheetos in your emergency supplies...but put some healthy stuff in there too. There is junk food and there is junk news. Too much of either can be harmful to your health.

The Yellowstone Media Storm: We're all gonna die! Oh, well sure, but...

Is Yellowstone gonna blow? Sure. Will everybody die? Sure, absolutely. But there is pretty much no connection between the first question and the second. Yellowstone caldera will in fact erupt again some day; it's a forty mile wide caldera with a huge magma chamber miles deep in the crust. That's the reason there are geysers there, and all those hot springs. And everyone will die, eventually. That's kind of a rule about living. But worrying about whether I'm gonna die from an eruption at Yellowstone is so far down my list of concerns that I am more worried about being gnawed to death by a pack of angry prairie dogs. It could happen, but it is highly unlikely.
I'm writing on the subject because a commenter asked for my take on the news this week about the activity around the Yellowstone caldera (for the record, "supervolcano" isn't a geological term). My best advice, before I finish with my own two cent's worth, is to check out the Eruptions blog here and here. Erik Klemetti does some excellent analysis of the story and how quickly things can be overblown by a media that thrives almost exclusively on spectacle, and has little use for reasoned discussions of the actual risks.

As I considered the question of an 'informed' response, I had to wonder if I'm not guilty of the same sort of exaggeration and sensationalism of cable news and other media. In my pursuit of educating others, I am not above discussing lurid tales of death and geological mayhem. After all, when I talk about volcanoes in class, I lead with Krakatoa, Tambora and Pompei, and I discuss the potential effects of a gigantic rhyolite caldera eruption such as those that took place at Yellowstone three times in the last two million years (not to mention broadly equivalent eruptions at Valles Caldera and Long Valley Caldera). I have a clear conscience on the matter, because I follow up with a discussion of the actual risk and probability of such events happening to our time; an eruption like the Yellowstone Caldera happens somewhere in the world every few hundred thousand years. Smaller, but certainly dangerous eruptions like those of Tambora (1815), Krakatoa (1883) and Katmai (1912) happen somewhere in the world on a scale of decades. And when these events take place there are clear signals that something is about to happen.

So, the Yellowstone Caldera floor rose around a foot during the last decade (that's the caldera in the picture above; I was standing on one rim, the mountains in the far distance form the other rim). There was an intrusion, a sill, that was filling and inflating with magma. There is nothing unusual or particularly alarming about this, as Yellowstone is an active magma chamber, and such events are normal. Although it has been 70,000 years since the last eruption in the park (and more than 600,000 years since the so-called 'supervolcano' eruption), it could happen again, but any activity would be accompanied by many other phenomena that would provide plenty of information about the scale of the eruption and the hazard to people in the region. My take? Learn about Yellowstone; it is a fascinating place, worthy of our attention and worthy of protection as a crown jewel in our national park system. But worry about the end of civilization as we know it in a vast explosion of fire and volcanic ash? No, there are other problems that we need to think about.

The best quote on the matter? From Max Read at Gawker: "But who do you trust, some kind of "professor," or your overactive imagination?" To which I might add: "But what about professors with overactive imaginations?"

The Hawaii Tsunami a "Non-Event"? I Don't Think So...

I know that the Hawaii tsunami is now officially old news, but it was an important geological lesson. Why does it take amateur video to adequately explain what was happening? As I watched cable news yesterday, the activity was hidden by screen banners and obscured by blathering newsreaders who didn't have enough knowledge to realize what was happening on the screen in front of them. I've been complaining about it for the last 24 hours, so I thought I should mention what incredible things we did see yesterday.

It boils down to the fact that there was a very thin line between a geologic curiosity and a geologic disaster in Hawaii yesterday. Think what a remarkable thing was happening in the video: a normally placid ocean bay protected from wave action by a long sea wall was suddenly full of mud, and was flowing. First one direction, then the other. How extraordinary is this?

Normal waves are a surface phenomena. Anyone playing in the waves at the beach knows they can avoid being mashed by a big wave by diving under it. The waves form up only a few hundred feet offshore and break against the beach. They involve a limited part of the water column, and the energy level, while high at the point of impact, is also limited. The swells that form up into waves may be generated hundreds or thousands of miles away by storm winds, but the swells travel only a few tens of miles an hour, and the turbulence extends only a few tens of feet beneath the surface of the ocean.

Tsunamis are not at all like normal waves. They are generated by a displacement of the water on the ocean floor by large earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or underwater landslides. They travel hundreds of miles an hour (roughly the speed of a jet airliner), and they affect the entire water column from the seafloor to the surface. They don't even really affect boats on the open ocean, as the boats simply rise and fall a few feet over a twenty minute time span. But the seafloor is affected by the passage. The dangerous aspect of a tsunami is what happens when the waves encounter shallow water along a shoreline. In essence, the energy of the wave that has been dispersed across the whole water column is compressed into a smaller and smaller space. The wave builds, and either draws water away from the coast, or surges into the coast without warning.

The activity at Hilo Bay is a wonderful example of the process. All the water in the bay was in motion, from the surface to the base, and this is what kicked up all the mud in the water. The water was surging in and then out again, explaining the strange currents around Coconut Island, seen in the video above. The total height of the tsunami surge was about three feet.

This was a huge earthquake in Chile, the fifth largest ever recorded. It was reasonable to expect a colossal tsunami, but tsunamis are subject to many variables. Smaller earthquakes have generated larger tsunamis in Hawaii (the worst tsunami to strike Hawaii, in 1946, was from a smaller earthquake that took place in Alaska). The largest earthquake ever recorded, from Chile in 1960, produced a devastating tsunami in Hilo, but the second largest, the Alaska quake of 1964 (magnitude 9.3) caused all of $60,000 in damage and killed no one in Hawaii (16 people died in California and Oregon, and 106 in Alaska). In other words, tsunamis are inherently unpredictable. In the worst tsunamis, of 1946 and 1960, the surge reached depths of 30 feet or more.

A warning system has been present in the Pacific Ocean basin since 1946, and the system was upgraded in the last few years, but has only been tested in a few recent large seismic events.

What I really wish is that the newreaders (er, um, excuse me, anchorpersons and reporters) at the cable networks would take the time to truly educate themselves in the basics of geology. As a teacher of geology, I shiver at the thought of standing up in a classroom of philosophy students and lecturing on philosophy without any time to prepare. These newspeople are standing up in front of millions of people and displaying their appalling ignorance of geology. The other problem, of course, is that their audience is not aware of it.

UPDATE: Chris at goodSchist is collecting some of the mainstream media crimes against geologic understanding here. Be sure to contribute if you see something!

I Have a Dream...in which the 24 Hour Cable News Networks Serve a Useful Purpose

Photo of tsunami surge from West Hawaii Today

I have a dream, or more a fantasy, because dreams are more likely to come true. I fantasize about the day that a cable network newsreader (I know they like to call themselves "anchorpeople", but forget it) stands up in front of the television cameras and says, "I'm sorry, but I and the entire news team in this room and on the site of the geological event out there haven't got the faintest idea of what we are babbling about. So we are going to suspend our coverage until we have hired a correspondent who has the scientific education to give us a cogent and reasoned explanation of what is going on."

My dream isn't going to come true, is it? As I noted yesterday, the networks will spend tens of millions of dollars to cover minute aspects of sporting events, but they can't shell out, say, $90,000 a year to a competent geologist/earth scientist who can warn them that they have gone overboard on the hype, and to calm down.

What was the real story yesterday? There was a massive earthquake in Chile yesterday, an 8.8 magnitude monster that was the fifth biggest tremor in recorded (i.e. on a seismometer) history. It produced a tsunami that would affect the entire Pacific Ocean basin. The coverage of the earthquake itself earns the news networks a C+, because they apparently still remember some of the science they learned six weeks ago in Haiti.

But...their coverage of the effects of the quake on the Pacific Basin and Hawaii? An F. Not even a gentleman's F+. They've done grievous damage to the entire concept of responsible journalism. They hated that the Indonesian tsunami struck without warning so that they couldn't plan for their coverage of a tragic human event. So this quake hits, and they have a half day's warning to prepare for the event in Hawaii. They were so incompetent that they could position stationary cameras in what seemed to be only three locations (including what seemed hours of pictures of one moronic surfer), and then breathlessly babbled for hours about the approaching maelstrom. The tsunami arrived, and they didn't recognize it happening in front of them. Then they acted disappointed that it wasn't the disaster they had been building up for hours. And they cut to commercials. This, of course, is what I was raging about yesterday.

The story they missed? A giant earthquake produced what could very well have been a colossal tsunami. The civil defense apparatus of the state of Hawaii gears up for the event, sounding the warning sirens hours ahead of the arrival of the tsunami surge, and doing an incredible job of warning the population of what could be coming. The people of Hawaii do the right thing, stocking up on emergency supplies and taking shelter in the appropriate locations. The evacuations run smoothly, from what little I hear, and if a monster tsunami had hit, the death toll would have been very low. The tsunami hits with an intensity at the lower end of the predictions, and a number of fascinating phenomena take place (and I am still waiting for some decent coverage of what actually happened). There was a collective sigh of relief, and life returns to normal, after a brief interruption and a little inconvenience. That was the real story, and it was for the most part untold.

The damage they have done? By building up the story to a fever pitch, they could have caused unnecessary panic and worry, and when they expressed their disappointment (in their attitude, if not their words) at the outcome, they set up a situation in the future where people might not take tsunami warnings seriously. They have turned this into a "Peter cries Wolf" story in which the civil defense people actually seem to be apologizing for overestimating the size of the waves (and please follow and read the link). The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has nothing to apologize for; they acted appropriately for the situation, and the population responded well. I can only pray that in future events they will also respond correctly.

My friend at Phreatic Ramblings captures a particularly inane conversation that took place yesterday. I normally like Rick Sanchez if he is talking about politics, but he didn't do so well here.

UPDATE: Sorry Rick, but your cartography ain't so good either (Thanks, Rebecca)