Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing
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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?
I was thinking the same thing about yellowstone.
Love it stormbear! Or as Jon Stewart said: we like our volcanoes to surprise us.
The only thing I could figure when Jindal dismissed volcano monitoring was that he just didn’t know what it is or what it accomplishes. He probably just thought that it was some kind of pure research.
While I’d be willing to bet that most people here know what volcano monitoring does, let me put it on a 3×5 card for those who don’t:
Unlike earthquakes, volcanic eruptions are actually reasonably predictable if you are actively monitoring the volcano. Volcano monitoring makes it possible to warn people who live near a volcano to evacuate or otherwise prepare prior to an eruption. And there are a number of major US cities that are vulnerable to volcanic eruptions, so it’s not a hypothetical concern.
What Jindal was advocating, then, was to leave the citizens of cities like Seattle, which rests in the shadow of the long-overdue Mt. Rainier, in the unenviable position of being caught off guard by a pyroclastic flow. And like I said, I think he was doing this out of sheer ignorance, but that only underscores the need to make sure that our elected representatives have a decent understanding of science.