Fresh Bilge

While checking web discussions of the Chaitén eruption, I have seen many frustrated remarks on the difficulty of obtaining or interpreting satellite views of the volcano. As a long time follower of weather sites, I know a lot of satellite sources, and I have some experience interpreting what the images show.

Even I have been frustrated this weekend. NASA has removed its floater image of the volcano. This is foolish. There are four floaters idle, waiting for tropical storms that are yet to form. It is very rare for four to coexist in the Atlantic Basin, and if this were to happen at all, it would be months from now. The volcano should have priority.

Meanwhile, all one can do is get the full disc image of the Western Hemisphere and click for a comparative close-up. NASA’s GOES East feed was totally down yesterday. Today it’s working again; but at the best of times, it is only updated every three hours — another annoyance. US continental shots update every twenty minutes.

I have blown up a recent sample of a visible image at the top of this post. A small red square indicates approximate location of the volcano. Now we have the problem of interpretation. It is late fall in the Southern Hemipshere. Extremely strong jet stream winds race from west to east in this region. They will continue to do so for many weeks. At midwinter, some Antarctic swirls may move far enough north to shift upper winds in other directions, but we’ll think about that if the volcano is still erupting at midwinter.

You can see extensive mid and high cloud cover in the image. A vigorous mid-level swirl is approaching the coast directly off the volcano. Some ash will probably get borne back over Chaitén town for a few hours this evening as this little storm races ashore. It is the first significant surface wind-shift in this locale since the eruption began, but it will be brief. I presume the volcano is still pluming at mid-levels, but its output is merging with the tide of cloud. It’s impossible to be sure.

Days are short, and it will soon be dark here. Go for the infrared image at night. If any major explosion occurs, it will be easy to see. Look for a burgeoning blob, much higher and brighter than the clouds. It too will move east, but it will spread laterally as well. It will look nothing like meteorological clouds. Let’s hope we just keep seeing jet stream. Already the southern polar vortex has inhaled a lot of SO2.

Marc Reuel Marc Gerecht understands exactly how the US can counter Iran in Iraq during the closing months of the Bush Administration, leaving a successor to deal with Iranian nuclear ambitions. If that successor is Barak Obama, however, Iran will finish its program unmolested and proceed with its plans for genocide against Israel, while it holds the West at bay with nukes.

Rod Dreher quotes Barak Obama’s own words:

His former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an unreconstructed ’60s radical, a fire-breathing disciple of James Cone’s period-piece black liberation theology. Mr. Obama wrote in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, about his attraction to the leftist pastor’s church as a vehicle for social change. If black nationalism would uplift the race, he wrote, “then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence.”

That’s a remarkable admission of a racialized “ends justify the means” morality. It helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to stick with a crackpot like Dr. Wright. It also might explain why an up-and-coming Barack Obama found nothing particularly wrong with rubbing political elbows with Bill Ayers, the Chicago university professor and onetime fugitive member of the revolutionary, communist Weather Underground.

There is no reason to think Obama has changed his mind about these things. As Reverend Wright has accurately observed, Obama is a politician; he says whatever he must to win election. But he must not attain the White House. He is an enemy of his own country; he would surrender to the axis of authoritarians, from China to Iran to Venezuela. He has an ingrained ideological affinity for them, not for American liberty and capitalism.

This landscape will never look the same as it did in recent Landsat image. Thanks to The Volcanism Blog, I located a new Chaitén page at Geology.com. There I found this enlarged and labelled version which is much clearer than the Smithsonian archive link FB published at the beginning of the eruption cycle. Geology.com also has an number of video links in a sidebar. At the bottom of the short article, I found this quote:

Before the eruption, Chaiten was a 1000-meter high lava dome within a caldera about 2.5 kilometers wide and 4 kilometers long. The volcano has a history of explosive eruptions, dome building and pyroclastic flows associated with dome collapse. These characteristics make it a potentially dangerous volcano.

I have several observations to make here. The dome is not 1000 meters high; that is the elevation above sea level for the whole swell of land. The mini-caldera and dome sit atop the swell, and their relief is obviously quite small. There is no mountain of accumulated ejecta. Rather it appears as though a great subterranean magma chamber has simply swollen up the whole area northeast of Chaitén town. Notice the pattern of erosion. It is not radially oriented to the crater; rather it cuts and drains the whole swell. There also appears to be a much larger, older vestigial caldera just ENE of Chaitén, heavily vegitated and eroded, but showing a trace of rim. Could there be a westward-younging trend here?

I have seen no other reference to any Chaitén eruption but the single one dated to roughly 9700 years ago. Only a small amount of geological study has been done there. From satellite vantage, the landscape shows little evidence of deep burial. Note, however, the large snow-covered volcano immediately inland of Chaitén, beyond the vestigial caldera. We don’t know whether there is any direct connection between the these features, but it is suggestive that one of Chaitén’s initial shallow quakes occurred under the neighboring mountain, and was followed by an immediate 5.0 temblor at great depth. (I learned this from IRIS; Volcano Blog had mentioned only the shallow quakes.) Chaitén may be an entirely new start from a shared magma source, and the previous eruption may have been its first.

This is what makes the current eruption so dangerous. The pattern of precursor quakes, which FB has published previously, forms such a wide perimeter that it suggests potential magma movement on a scale not observed in other historical eruptions. But the volcano was not monitored closely before the onset of activity. There is no way to know how much deformation may have occurred, and infer the extent of subterranean pressure.

Chaitén’s activity may be only a gassy release that will settle down after a few months. However if the lid should come off the chamber, with complete disintegration of the old dome, global consequences would be severe. With world population high and competition for resources keen, it would not take much climatological disruption to strain mankind’s agricultural system past capacity and induce famine on a scale never before seen.

In 1991, when I was living in Fargo, ND, I knew a lot of local farmers. After Pinatubo’s eruption, I sat them all down for a climate briefing. I told them to expect weather problems the following summer. They were glad of my warning: crops were severely affected in 1992. Summer-long rains and cool days caused rust in the wheat. Many fields were burned rather than harvested. I also told our Red River Valley farmers that global warming was an open question, and that another decade of research would be needed.

We have some answers now — other climate drivers are more important than anthropogenic CO2. Several of them are currently pressing temperatures into a down-trend. In the coming weeks and months we will learn whether Chaitén proves to be the strongest of all, at least in the short-term.

History Lesson: Anti-semitism in Islam can be traced back to 869 AD — just a bit earlier than the Czarist hoax of the “Protocols.”

American Anti-Semite: Consider Jeremiah Wright, friend of Farrakhan. Allied by common hates, black supremacists care little for any distinction between Christianity and Islam.

Sarkozy Struggles: It’s too soon to write off the French President. Neither Reagan nor Thatcher accomplished reforms overnight. The process takes years.

Wrong President: The US would have been better off with Hailey Barbour these last eight years. Mississippi was more corrupt and inept than Washington, DC, if possible.

California Imperialism: The Golden State exploits its neighbors to retain a facade of green politics. This won’t work on a national scale. Even Mexico would balk.

Deep Turbines: Environmentalists oppose undersea turbines in the Gulf Stream. “Won’t we eventually stop the Earth from rotating?” More fine products of American schooling.

While it snowed in the northern plains yesterday, deadly tornadoes ripped through the nation’s midsection. These phenomena go together. The contrast of airmasses clashing under strong upper flow triggers spin in thunderstorms. FB has repeatedly mentioned that readers should expect a bad tornado season during the current La Nina. Though the equatorial anomaly is weakening, the cold pool of negative PDO in the NE Pacific is helping keep Alaskan storms on a SE track into the US. The current system will race to the East Coast today. While conditions are less volatile than yesterday, more tornadoes could still occur all the way to the coast.

In the wake of the current system, the frontal zone will sag much further south. Indeed it should bring a few days of relief from the heat and humidity now afflicting South Florida. Then it will lift back from the Gulf and afflict the southern states with more severe weather. Very heavy rains could occur next week in many places. Meanwhile sauna heat will settle here, with persistent offshore winds preventing sea breeze. Record highs in the mid nineties are likely next weekend. Ugh. Record cold will plague the Midwest and Great Lakes at the same time. Global cooling is not a pretty thing. Anomalies of every sort increase — Al Gore thinks warming is to blame. 3000 Argo buoys and assorted satellites say otherwise, no matter how much NASA’s resident Gorebot, James Hansen jiggers surface data to distort reality. Still no sunspots, either.

I had to go back and correct my last travel post. I had based it on a very sketchy outline in the old journal; then I discovered specific, dated writings from the trip back East. As soon as I left Seattle I started to write again. The events of the summer had come too fast for me to keep up. The trip back, though much swifter, was drained of emotional content by my defeat and loss. Weary of hippie gibberish, I described my feelings and surroundings acccurately.

Judging from my journal, we must have stopped somewhere along the Columbia River that first night out of Seattle, so I suppose we got a late start. Mount Rainier hid in the clouds as we left, but the weather must have broken later. The photo at the head of this post was the closest Panoramio match I could find for my account of the camping place. “Last night,” I remarked, “My eastward rider got us stoned as we watched many-colored light play upon the clouds above the dark mountains and silver river.”

On July 29, 1970, my white Ford crossed the last of Idaho’s lavas. Turning southeast, our road followed the path of the Oregon Trail, with Bitterroot Mountains to the west. Preoccupied with my own bitterness, I never gave them a second look. I felt like the abandoned barns we passed — the husks of failed dreams — homesteads that could never have fulfilled the hopes of their builders. “Hot plains of southern Idaho whirling by,” I wrote as my rider drove. “So like me to take refuge in words… I lie in the back of the wagon with my eyes behind.”

A Nineteenth Century Anglican convert to Catholicism, Cardinal Newman is to be beatified. A gay Catholic, Australian John Heard celebrates the celibate prelate as an example to same-sex attracted men. (Here is a related article in the Times of London.) The Cardinal had a lifelong, passionate, but presumably platonic friendship with a younger priest who predeceased him. The two lay together only after both were dead. Is this really such a good example?

Douglas Feith has published an insider’s memoir on the key decisions of the Iraq war, from the 2002 preparations through the 2005 transition to an elected Iraqi government. It will be called a neo-con apologia — and by the less temperate, it will be branded as Bush terrorist propaganda — but it tells the truth from one perspective, and it affirms my contemporaneous impressions. After the 2003 invasion, I wrote that a government of Iraqis should be set up immediately. Instead a “provisional authority” was founded, and it was run by an agent of the State-CIA partisan axis that implacably opposed the Republican Administration. Naturally the venture went awry.

Yep, it’s Michelle Obama. No wonder she’s bitter. All that phony education she couldn’t handle, and now she’s the laundry woman with a big brown bag of cash.

Identity blither blither video games blather blather blather neurological blither blither attention span blather censorious blither addictive blather blather manipulating blither open to change.

If reactionary neurologist Susan Greenfield (love the name) lived in the US rather than the UK, she’d probably be an Obama campaign advisor. Maybe she is anyway. The transnationals are on the march. So is Drudge.

Apparently there’s a poison pen amid the poison tongues.

Current conditions: Hollywood, FL, 92 F, partly sunny; Fargo, ND, 34 F, light snow. At midday on May 10. Global cooling anyone? Models indicate storms and excessive rain for much of the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic and NE over the coming weeks, with abnormal chill over the Great Lakes. The West will warm and dry with ridging, though cool fronts should still reach the Pacific NW at times. The cold trough in the central and east part of the US is just a nose of the persistent frigid feature over Canada. No thaw has yet reached the Barren Ground, and continuing snowfall has buried the land so deeply that satellite images show scenes of Ice Age whenever the sky clears. What does it mean? I won’t be around to see, but it fascinates me nonetheless. Still no sunspots…

The latest Buenos Aires VAAC update indicates “continuous emission” from Chaitén resumed at 0900Z (5 1/2 hours before post time). The ash plume is difficult to discern on visible or infrared imagery, as heavy cloud has swept off the Pacific at mid and high levels, and the ash is mingling with it. Some wavelengths do bring out the ash component, but I do not presently have access to that data. Forecasts are fairly conservative today, increasing extent but not height of the plume. Perhaps the seismic profile has changed. I have not found real-time seismic data for local tremor. IRIS records larger quakes, but there have been no more of those since the opening fusillade. Additional quakes in the 4 to 6 range would be a strong indicator for the main blowout. Let’s hope the eruption continues at comparatively low intensity, as it has done the last couple of days. I should emphasize again that only stratospheric explosions have implications for global climate. So far, Chaitén’s big shots have been brief. We can only watch and wait. This may go on for months.

Dr. Sanity is highly qualified to link the neurosis of the West and the psychopathy of the Middle East. There’s nothing left for me to say on these topics, which is just as well, given my current preoccupations with climate and global food supply, not to mention my indulgences in reminiscence.

Thanks to Dr. Sanity for the cartoon. I’ve neglected politics this week. With a historic cyclone disaster in Burma, and a potentially historic volcano eruption in South America, I have had my bloggy hands full. Also I am a bit downcast by the results of the Tuesday primaries. Obama appears to be salvaging his nomination. I am sure he is the weaker candidate, but even the smallest risk of an Obama presidency is alarming and depressing. Need I explain? Here are two reasons: utter naivete abetted by deluded foreign policy advisors. These people would get the US in terrible trouble, worse than Carter, in their four short years. There would be no second term, but we are still contending with Carter damage today (and he’s still kissing dictators).

World Climate Report provides information from Quaternary Science Reviews. The subject is paleoclimate of recent Ice Ages. The most interesting finding: high variability is characteristic of cold periods; comparative stability, of warm ones. This is the exact opposite of the alarmist viewpoint.

With NASA’s page down — probably for the weekend — I found an operative source for real-time South American photos at the University of Wisconsin. It shows no dramatic activity at Chaitén overnight. In fact at this relatively low resolution, I cannot distinguish any volcanic plume from the racing bands of meterological cloud. I’ll look for closer views, but any major increase in the eruption would show on the full-disc image, so it hasn’t happened yet.

Via BBC, a superb map delineating extent of flooding in Burma, correlated with details of population distribution. Nearly two million people lived in locations that remained underwater for days. A sidebar also includes a thumbnail of the path taken by Nardis. It was a perfect hit, the absolute worst-case scenario for this delta. With the storm tracking just inland from the coast, it affected the maximum possible area with onshore winds. Even as Nardis weakened, its advance drove more water against the shallow-shelving coast, all the way to the head of the great bay east of Rangoon. BBC’s closeup satellite images provide much more detail than the ones I published previously. Check them out too.

Addendum: Socialism kills. We have already seen this in the US, with respective local responses to Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Addendum 2: WSJ suggests Burma be kicked out of the UN. China would probably veto such action against its ally. That would be instructive.

Sorry. No travel post today, even though I did collect appropriate Panoramio photos. Maybe tomorrow morning. Maybe not. I am highly distracted — and not just by prednisone jitters. I have more Chaitén information. The Buenos Aires Volcanic Ash Advisory Center issues forecasts as well as statements on current flight conditions. This information is intended for aviators, and does not reach the general public. It is derived from the best guesses of geologists about eruptive behavior, as well as model projections of upper winds. The latest statement says current elevation of the main ash plume is 24 to 28 thousand feet. It also predicts major increase in the height and coverage of the plume overnight and tomorrow. I’m sure today’s alarming seismic data figured in this estimate.

I commend two recent posts at The Volcanism Blog. The first provides full translation of a long statement by the Chilean volcanic institute. The second includes a fascinating datum: the estimated volume of ejected material is already 2 cubic kilometers. This is more than twice the volume of ejecta from Mount Saint Helens. And the eruption is getting more intense. I think we’re in trouble, rare readers. It’s clear that the geologists expect a cataclysmic climax soon. Another vent has opened, and seismic readings indicate major rock-breaking under the 9,700 year-old dome. This means high likelihood of Pinatubo scale ejection (10 cubic kilometers), and possibly much worse. I have already spoken of the climatologic and agricultural implications.

A new report says the government of Burma continues to forbid UN personnel into the country. The army has taken control of incoming food aid. It’s a safe bet that refugees will require money or political connections to benefit. Outrageous. But here is a strange passage from the close of the article. It directly contradicts other media coverage.

Grim assessments were made about what lies ahead. The aid group Action Against Hunger noted that the delta region is known as the country’s granary, and the cyclone hit before the harvest.

“If the harvest has been destroyed, this will have a devastating impact on food security in Myanmar,” the group said.

I don’t think this is correct. Dry season is just ending. Surely dry season is harvest time. Replanting is done in the mud when the rains return. But it is probable that the recent harvest was still in primitive storage and supply chain when the cyclone wracked southern Burma. Much of last season’s grain was probably lost, and the new planting will be severely disrupted by flooding, brine contamination, loss of infrastructure, and the human misery of survivors. It will probably take several years for Irrawaddy agriculture to recover. During that time, Burma must learn to work with foreigners, or famine will kill millions.

Pretty, pretty. But perilous. It’s the crater of Pinatubo, pictured in 2006, only fifteen years after the great explosion. Wet climate and a bed of volcanic ash bring the green back in a hurry. According to Wikipedia, geologists are unsure whether the eruptive cycle is complete, but the mountain has been quiet since 1992, though mudslides and flooding continue to cause problems in the aftermath of massive ash deposition. There are also toxic metals leaching into local waters.

On the far side of the Pacific’s Ring of Fire, Chaitén Volcano continued to erupt today, with continuous pluming at 20 thousand feet. I have seen no stratospheric breakouts. Perhaps the steady eruption will degas the chamber without any great blowout, but I keep thinking about the pattern of earthquakes. A rare reader asked how Pinatubo’s precursors compared. I found the answer at Wikipedia. Pinatubo quakes were sharply localized. They began 5 km NW of the summit, then moved shallower and directly underneath. Chaitén is behaving very differently.

We can only watch and hope. Hybrid cars will not reverse this climate driver. Of course they accomplish nothing against any climate driver, including anthropogenic CO2, which is probably a much smaller factor in climate than supposed. One might as well throw virgins in the lava. There was a tiny sunspot of the new cycle for one day this week. Is this relevant? Certainly. We have recently seen data on ocean cooling that provides powerful affirmation of a downturn in atmospheric temperatures. We have seen a weakening of the sunspot cycle that has kept earth warm between ice ages. No one should be worrying about “global warming.”

But John McCain is a convert, along with much of the Republican leadership. Some of them are pandering, but I think Schwarzenegger and McCain are sincere. Now McCain is rumored to be planning a “climate change tour.” Oi. Meanwhile American Thinker describes how deliberate media downplay blocked Maine officials from properly warning the public against major flooding that ensued last week from melt of the record snowpack. The Boston Globe did not want to admit that snowpack could set records. If the evidence doesn’t fit the theory, our “journalists” (and some of our “scientists”) discard the evidence.

Of course we can expect to see nothing about record Southern Hemisphere icepack in the Globe or Times either. And no one is talking about Chaitén. If it smothered Buenos Aires in ash, it might make page 27, complete with caveats about low SO2 content preventing any global cooling effect.

Above, Indian Ocean temperature anomaly on May 1; below, May 8.

I posted the top image on May 6. The post-Nargis May 5 image was already available. If I were a data-falsifier, eager to make a phony impression for ideological purposes, like warmista scientists Hansen or Miles, I would have posted the later image and said see, global cooling. I would have done this in good conscience, for the greater cause. But I value the truth more than the cause.

Facts are usually more complex than agenda. Prior to the passage of Nargis, there was one warm patch in the northern Bay of Bengal, and it did make Nargis strong for landfall. Howver most of the Indian Ocean was cool and remains cool, relative to normal. Nargis formed at the edge of the blue, and moved on an aberrant path because global cooling has enlarged the northern hemisphere’s polar vortex and kept it active through the spring. That’s more subtle and harder to explain, but it’s the truth.

Notice how dramatic a change the cyclone wrought. It really took a lot of heat from the ocean. That heat was released to the upper atmosphere, and its downstream effect is probably responsible for the model predictions of high pressure ridging in the Pacific Northwest next week, where none has been previously seen this season. Climate is global. But one cyclone only makes a momentary perturbation in the larger pattern; PDO will reassert itself. The ridge will flatten promptly.

Meanwhile the UN is trying to jog Burma into swifter relief action by warning of monsoon rains next week. It is time for seasonal rains, to be sure, but that pool of Nargis-cooled water will help suppress them somewhat, and the rainy ITCZ is being held nearer the equator by the remnant of northern hemisphere’s winter jet. Let’s hope the rains hold off a bit longer, for the sake of poor Burma.

Russia paraded nuclear missiles in Red Square. The annual military show had been downgraded in Yeltsin’s day, when Russia was more interested in internal politicking than menacing the world. Now we have Bears in the air and wolves in the Kremlin. Naturally the “irresponsible ambitions” of America are to blame. We had the temerity to support the founding of consensual governments — even in Russia itself. Now the Russians have reverted to tradition — autocracy — and they want subservient neighbors again. What are they prepared to risk? What would the US do, if Russia fomented an uprising among ethnic Russians in Ukraine, then invaded to “protect Russian interests?”

Buenos Aires Volcanic Ash Advisories can be found listed on this page. Not all of them concern Chaitén. Other South American volcanoes are active. Latest reports from Chaitén indicate continuous ash emission, but the plume is barely reaching 20,000 feet. Only the stratospheric punches raise global concern, and there have been no more since the very brief shot yesterday. Caveat on the ash advisories: they are coded for aviation interests. Flight level: 200 means 20,000 feet.

There’s no question that the internet is an angst amplifier. When I write about cyclones, sunspot minima, and volcanoes, my traffic goes through the roof. Over the past week it has averaged five times normal. But this morning I read a disquieting story from South Korea, which i quote in full below:

Tens of thousands of young internet-obsessed South Koreans, whipped into a frenzy by alarmist television programmes, a complex scientific paper on genetics and a hyperactive online rumour-mill, have held candlelit vigils protesting against imports of American beef.

Believing that the meat carries a high risk of BSE and that Koreans are genetically predisposed to contracting the linked Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the online masses have taken to the streets, cursing America and demanding that their Government should act to avert catastrophe.

Two features of the protests have caught the authorities, the Government and teachers offguard.

The first is that, unlike the mobs that have contributed to South Korea’s long history of street rallies, more than half of the demonstrators are below university age.

Some teachers approve of the rallies, others condemn them, but all agree that their students are spending too much time in cyberspace.

The second is the virulence of the xenophobia on and offline: despite sweeping to power on a more foreigner-friendly ticket, Lee Myung Bak, South Korea’s new President, leads a country with substantial anti-American feeling.

Behind the fury and panic is the decision made last month by Mr Lee to allow US-produced beef back into the country after a five-year hiatus.

South Korea, with other Asian nations, suspended imports in 2003 after cattle in the US were found to have BSE: the protesters are convinced that the ban has been lifted too soon and with too many concessions to Washington.

On the many new BSE-related websites that have sprung-up in the last week, the language is little short of hysterical. Pseudo-science, anti-Americanism and teenage angst have produced a staggering volume of web traffic.

“Are we fated to die so young?” wailed a typical post. “I just want to live and fulfill my career dreams, not die mad like an American cow,” wrote another.

Over the past couple of days, virtually every teenager in Seoul has received the same text message on mobile phones, “Schools closed next Thursday”.

The information is bogus, but authorities are steeling themselves for street demonstrations on the grandest scale. By the weekend the protesters’ numbers are expected to rise tenfold.

The BSE scare has already made its practical effects felt. After a two month honeymoon period in power, Mr Lee has approval ratings below 30 per cent.

This is all nonsense. American cows are not dropping like flies in fall. There were two or three isolated cases years ago. Feed formulations have been changed. There is no BSE in herds. Canada had a few cases more recently. There’s no anti-Canada craze. And there was never sound proof that BSE transmits to humans at all. If it did, most of the British population would be dead by now, since BSE really got into the food chain there, a long while back. But of course the Korean fit isn’t about BSE.

Many early adopters of the internet assumed it would enhance understanding between people and improve the world. Maybe not. Porn was just the beginning. Consider the Korean students, the demonstrations of thuggish internet nationalism in China, and the recruitment sites for global jihad. Will Israel one day be invaded and overwhelmed by a flash crowd of lightly armed Palestinians?

The internet is merely a tool. It amplifies all our human traits, including the malevolent ones. What have we done? Schools in the Orient and the Occident, for very different cultural reasons, do not teach people to think independently. But how can adults teach this invaluable skill to the young, when so few of them possess it themselves?

The GFS model continues to advertize a strong high pressure ridge poking over the Pacific NW next week, providing a break in the cold, stormy weather, and a period of melt for the record snowpack. It will spell the end for lower elevation skiing, but not for higher elevations, as the warmth will be short-lived. More storminess is now shown flattening the feature by day 10, as I would expect, given the sea temperatures. The western ridge will drive the interior US troughing eastward, ending the rains in the plains, and making for very chilly, stormy conditions across the Midwest and NE. Record lows could be set in many places next week. Heavy rain and severe thunderstorms could precede storm systems, bringing risk of more tornadoes for the coastal plains from the Carolinas to the Cheasapeake.

Here in South Florida, the storminess to the north will cause winds to be westerly on a number of days. This is a hot pattern for us, and sultry conditions have already set in: our morning temperature is 78 F, dewpoint 69 F. Thunderstorms may occur locally on seabreeze front along east coast as onshore flow attempts to develop against the prevailing wind. This could happen again on Sunday. Any rain would be welcome, but looks too localized to help with dry conditions developing in the Everglades. Normal summer convection is still weeks away, so the heat will be hard on the countryside. I would not be surprised if we see some big smoke plumes next week.

Here is the most disturbing information I’ve yet seen on the eruption of Chaitén Volcano. It comes from a volcano guide’s blog, Volcano Live. He does not give his source, but I think he qualifies as an expert on the subject.

Five shallow focus earthquakes (10 km depth), larger than magnitude 4, accompanied the eruption of Chaitén volcano in Chile. The earthquakes occurred in a region of low historical seismicity, therefore were probably related to the eruption of the volcano. [The table shows magnitude, local time, and location in relation to Chaitén.]

4.4     April 30, 2008 at 11:52 PM     17km E
5.3     May 02, 2008 at 01:51 AM     30km NE
4.9     May 02, 2008 at 07:13 AM     13km NW
4.1     May 02, 2008 at 06:13 PM     16km SW
5.0     May 02, 2008 at 10:36 PM     30 km NE

Note the dispersal of epicenters radially around Chaitén. If this activity delineates the extent of the magma chamber under the volcano, the world is in graver trouble than I imagined.

Update: 09 May 7AM EDT: Volcanism Blog has posted numerous links to photgraphs, many at Spanish language sites that only accept search with accent over “e” of Chaitén.

Via the Volcanism Blog — the best source I’ve found for Chaiten news — I located and downloaded these Earth Observatory images of yesterday’s big puff from Chaiten. It’s particularly instructive to see the trail of white ash across Argentina in the aftermath of the plume’s passage. A notable amount of ash did reach agricultural land — ranch and grain country — south of Buenos Aires. Traces of ash even reached the capitol. This was just one brief blast, probably no more than twenty minutes in duration. Imagine twenty hours.

Low dose naltrexone has reportedly shown some degree of clinical efficacy against many cancers, including lymphoma and CLL. The science sounds somewhat persuasive. I have little to lose, after my fourth round of conventional treatment. I shall try to persuade Doctor D. to let me try this for remission maintenance after my current course of R-CHOP is complete. It will probably be no more effective than the Chinese herbal remedy I tried first time around, but it’s a lot cheaper, and if it gives me a few more months before relapse, I might eke out a final visit to the BVI’s next winter.

The Burmese junta is refusing to allow foreign aid into the country. It is especially suspicious of the US military, which provided vital logistical support for tsunami relief in nearby Indonesia. Should we even bother, in the circumstances? Unless the aid shipments can be controlled by armed outsiders from point of entry to point of delivery, there is absolutely no likelihood that they will do any good. In short, it would taken an invasion to carry out the humanitarian impulse. No one has the authority to act, so the refugees will continue to die. I do think this crisis will bring down the government eventually, though it may take another year or two.

Update: New, rather hysterical sounding claims from Britain’s Sun tabloid put the Burma death toll at 200,000 and suggest it could go much higher if the government continues to deny access. I would discount this as rumor but for the frightening satellite before and after photo pair, which I shall reproduce again below. There were millions of people living in that swamped land. Rice production will be severely disrupted for some time, maybe years. The Irrawaddy delta was Burma’s ricebowl. There is already a rice shortage worldwide. Cyclone Nargis could have long-lasting consequences.

This ten-minute video is quite a trip.

There’s plenty of oil in the world, explains Vaslo Kohlmeyer. Present prices are artificially high because of environmental constraints, cartelized production, and speculation. But the speculators will be burnt. Prices will fall again, though not to $20 per barrel. IMO, we’ve debased the dollar too much to get back below $60. Consider these figures:

According the Energy Information Administration as of January 2007 there was more than 1.3 trillion barrels of proved crude oil on earth. Even if this were all the oil on the planet there would be no immediate danger of shortages, because at the current rate of consumption – roughly 85 million barrels a day – this supply would last for more than 40 years.

But the 1.3 trillion in these so-called proved reserves refers only to a tiny fraction of earth’s oil, designating only that portion which can be extracted under current ‘economic and operating conditions.’ As it happens, this figure grows with each decade and usually dramatically so.

In 1882, for instance, there were 95 million barrels of proved petroleum reserves. This number jumped to 4.5 billion in 1926 and then to 10 billion in 1932. In 1944 the quantity stood at 20 billion. In 1950 it leaped to 100 billion and in 1980 it was 648 billion. In 1993 the world’s proved reserves grew to 999 billion, and today they stand at 1.3 trillion barrels.

There is no shortage, nor will there be one, if foolish constraints are lifted. The present prices are not symptoms of market failure or corporate greed, but political meddling and environmentalist crackpottery. The prejudice against carbon release will continue even into a Little Ice Age. Religions are remarkably resistent to contrary evidence. In fact the faithful of Gaia might burn heretics to keep warm in a glacial world.

Columbia University has invited a Hamas show-and-tell for the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s existence as a state. Frontpage has picked up Mary Madigan’s sardonic coverage of this despicable event, so typical of the department shaped by the late and unlamented Edward Said.

Morning at Chaiten. I’m a little Chaiten crazed right now. Nothing else interests me. Allow me to commend the infrared satellite imagery. It shows a great deal, if one interprets rightly. When you visit the interactive page, you’ll find a full disc map that includes South America. Ask it to animate ten or twelve images, without color. To get the close-up animation, click the map on the Andes, just inland of the volcano, which is located close to coastline, well to the south of Chile, and just south of the prominent indentation of the coast, which runs pretty straight further north.

Now there’s the problem of interpreting what you see. Chaiten is located in southern South America, and winter is setting in. A very strong polar jet stream prevails. This sweeps banks of mid and high level cloud across the area from time to time. It also has profound effect on Chaiten’s plume. In the past two days Chaiten has erupted ash continually, with varying force. Most of the time it’s just fuming, and the ash cloud rises to fifteen or twenty thousand feet as upper winds grab it and sweep it across the Andes range, which is fairly low in this area. Downstream of the mountains, much of this low level ash gets trapped in rollers and eddies. Ash is persisting over a large area of southern Argentina. This will make a lot of people uncomfortable, force more evacuations, and may cause lasting agricultural harm if the ashfall accumulates thickly enough. But the low level ash is strictly a local issue.

Somewhat higher plumes, around thirty thousand feet, get caught in the jet stream and borne over the Atlantic. These plumes cause more extensive effects. They trouble aircraft, but they also block sunlight with their spreading haze. Their course will be dictated by the South Polar vortex, which will keep them confined to high southern latitudes. They may add more winter cooling to an already chill region of the world, but they mix out fairly fast with precipitation.

We need to be concerned only about high blasts, reaching forty thousand feet and up. These pierce the tropopause and enter the stratosphere. The tropopause is low at this latitude, especially in winter, so it is easy for the volcano to punch past it. At least four such punches have occurred since the onset of Chaiten’s eruptive cycle. There was one yesterday morning, and another today. They are not easy to distinguish from clouds and other eruption plumes, but their movement and appearance give them away. The jet stream race is obvious. The punch clouds, at higher elevation, get into slower and divergent wind fields. Yesterday’s drifted southeast; today’s, northeast. Lower plumes string out and race east. You can see the distinctions quite plainly in the images. High plumes separate on their own courses, and gradually thin at the edges.

These puffs are too small for world climatological impact — so far. If the volcano should erupt with enough force to put a more sustained blast above the tropopause — say eight or twelve hours non-stop — world climate would certainly be effected for several years. Bottom line: with other cooling drivers already documented, Chaiten has very real potential to tip the world into Little Ice Age conditions immediately. It’s an extremely disquieting prospect, which explains my disposition to keep posting on this topic. I may prepare a banner as well. Stay with FB for informed readable commentary.

The biggest Chaiten explosion yet is currently under way. This cycle continues to show every sign of building to a calamitous climax.

This morning I woke with a Dylan song running through my head. I had the intro and a bridge, but it took awhile for the famous chorus to float into my waking thoughts. “It’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain’s agonna fall.” Ah, that is greatness. I was a fool to think I could ever songwrite on that level.

The hard rain had fallen on me at Seattle, back in July, 1970; and I could think of nothing but flight back to the familiar. I have no recollection of leaving the city, or anything about the first day of travel. I must have taken I-5 south to I-84, then headed southeast for eventual linkup with I-80 in Utah. Boise, ID is a blank to me, and my only recollections of Ogden, UT date from many years later. We drove long hours at the slower speeds that prevailed on highways even before Jimmy Carter; I made the distance to Wheaton in four days.

My journal says I let my rider drive, but I only recall the strangeness of bedding down in the car with someone other than RH. We must have made a late start, because my journal says we overnighted in first sight of the Columbia River. The next night we probably parked off some dirt road in empty country a short way from the highway somewhere in the high plains. I remember doing that once with Tim in western North Dakota. On that occasion, a decade later, we stopped well after dark, too exhausted from a long eastbound run to push another six hours for Fargo. We woke to daylight, with cattle literally pressing their noses to the glass all around us.

Those times, those times. If I seem nostalgic, let me disabuse you with some links. First, Christopher Hitchens on the 40th anniversary of student revolt in 1968. By 1970 I had learned how to blend and move in the counterculture. That was my preferred term at the time, and we called one another “freaks.” The media term “hippie” was seen as derisory. No one I knew called himself a hippie.

I was also a fervent environmentalist and early member of the Sierra Club, which I joined as a teenager in 1964. A few years later, when I started hiking and camping, I had already learned the principles of no-trace wilderness travel, and I practiced them religiously. But I had no notion how these ideals would devolve, how they were already devolving.

As the estranged son of a merchandise manager, I had also acquired a contempt for commerce. Driving across Wyoming, I was infuriated by the billboards for a tourist trap called “Little America.” Lady Bird Johnson, wife of the ousted Democratic President, had championed “highway beautification.” Litter laws were strengthened and trash was removed; but there was money behind billboards, and they were not so easily challenged. Eventually more discreet advertising was incorporated into federal highway signs, but that compromise was still years in the future.

I saw a really crappy AP article on Chaiten linked by Drudge. Garbled science. Fortunately I found a much better account from a more scientifically solid source.

Stern said the possibility of the Chaiten volcano affecting Earth’s climate is probably fairly low. “In to order to significantly affect the climate, a volcano has to put out a lot of sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere for an extended period, which then reflects sunlight away from the Earth,” he said. “Our data from Chaiten showed the last eruption was high in silica and low in sulfur.”

Now I see the lineage of the garbled version, but I am puzzled. While SO2 is very effective reflector of sunlight, silicate ash blocks the sun as well. The difference in proportion shouldn’t matter very much. I don’t know whether good comparisons are available, but it seems odd for Science Daily to make such a flat statement, unless the site is committed to warmist agenda. A perusal of the archives shows a pretty wide variety of climate articles, with different viewpoints represented, so I remain perplexed by the dismissal of aerosol cooling.

There was a crowd at the clinic today, and the nurses were run ragged. They must administer complex and risky treatments to a lot of patients simultaneously, keeping all of them on track with correct medications, laboratory tests, advice about side effects, and so on. The staff is highly skilled and highly paid.

There are also intense human demands. Many patients are depressed or frightened. Spouses are often in worse emotional shape than their sick partners. Today I saw a weak, shrunken woman walking out from the back, where there are several rooms for patients to lie down. She was one of the younger cases, in her forties. I always feel extra sorry for the people who are being robbed of life this way. My nurse for the day, Eileen, put down the vials and paperwork.

“You look like you need a hug,” she said.

She gave the woman a long, heartfelt embrace. Tears flowed freely. Afterward I spoke to Eileen as she passed, carrying more pouches of medicine to the sick.

“You’re so busy today,” I observed, “But you found time to give someone a hug. I almost look forward to coming here, because I have such admiration for the people who work in this place.”

Have you ever seen a nurse glow?