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Baby_Hitler
Errorist
Registered: 03/06/02
Posts: 27,625
Loc: To the limit!
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Millions of Americans to die in the next tsunami?
#3637932 - 01/17/05 06:40 AM (19 years, 2 months ago) |
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5652141/
LONDON - The bad news is tens of millions of people along the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada may drown if the slow slippage of a volcano off north Africa becomes a cataclysmic collapse.
But the good news is the world is not likely to be destroyed by an asteroid any time soon.
Scientist Bill McGuire told a news conference on natural disasters on Monday that sometime in the next few thousand years the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma will collapse, sending walls of water 100 meters high racing across the Atlantic.
A chunk of the volcano the size of a small island began to slide into the ocean in 1949. There is almost no monitoring of the volcano, giving virtually no chance of any advance warning of another eruption, which could trigger the catastrophe.
"The U.S. government must be aware of the threat. I am sure they are not taking it seriously," McGuire of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre told reporters. "They certainly should be worried, as should the island states of the Caribbean."
He said the giant tidal wave or tsunami triggered by such a collapse would hit the other islands of the Spanish-owned Canaries within an hour and reach the north African coast within two hours.
Between seven and 10 hours later, waves still several tens of meters tall and traveling at the speed of a jet plane would be swamping the Caribbean and crashing into the eastern seaboards of South and North America.
McGuire urged the governments of Spain and the United States to fund monitoring of the volcanically active La Palma ? a project he said could be achieved relatively cheaply.
He said the slow collapse ? started by an eruption in 1949 ? would almost certainly be turned catastrophic by another eruption of the volcano, which erupts every 25 to 200 years.
The last eruption was in 1971, and prior to 1949, the previous eruption was in 1712.
"A future president of the United States must make a call on what to do when La Palma collapses," he said.
On a brighter note, scientist Benny Peiser of John Moores University in Liverpool told the same news conference that the threat of a cataclysmic strike on the earth by a large asteroid was fading rapidly as money was pumped into finding them.
Within 10 to 30 years, all the near-earth asteroids will have been charted. Scientists believe they can find a way to steer an asteroid out of the way of the earth, as long as they have enough warning it is coming.
That leaves the field clear for Hollywood to move on to volcanic eruptions and tsunami for the next generation of apocalyptic movies.
-------------------- "America: Fuck yeah!" -- Alexthegreat “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.” -- Thomas Jefferson The greatest sin of mankind is ignorance. The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally. --Salena Zeto (9/23/16)
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CJay
Dark Stranger
Registered: 02/02/04
Posts: 931
Loc: Riding a bassline
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Re: Millions of Americans to die in the next tsunami? [Re: Baby_Hitler]
#3638485 - 01/17/05 10:58 AM (19 years, 2 months ago) |
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yaaaayyyyyyy!
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Innvertigo
Vote Libertarian!!
Registered: 02/08/01
Posts: 16,296
Loc: Crackerville, Michigan U...
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Re: Millions of Americans to die in the next tsunami? [Re: Baby_Hitler]
#3638490 - 01/17/05 11:00 AM (19 years, 2 months ago) |
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never liked the East coast anyway.
-------------------- America....FUCK YEAH!!! Words of Wisdom: Individual Rights BEFORE Collective Rights "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
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IamHungry
Stranger
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Re: Millions of Americans to die in the next tsunami? [Re: Baby_Hitler]
#3639620 - 01/17/05 03:27 PM (19 years, 2 months ago) |
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I thought that because of how they are formed tsunamis couldn't be higher than about 10 meters. I didn't see any scientific backup to prove that the size of those tsunamis would be "tens of meters tall" in this article.
-------------------- Here comes the sun, do n do do, Here comes the sun, and I say, It's alright...
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trick
Registered: 10/22/04
Posts: 1,059
Loc: unknown
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Re: Millions of Americans to die in the next tsunami? [Re: IamHungry]
#3639626 - 01/17/05 03:28 PM (19 years, 2 months ago) |
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[sarcasm] the government should just bomb it like everything else [/sarcasm]
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Aldous
enthusiast
Registered: 10/19/99
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Re: Millions of Americans to die in the next tsunami? [Re: IamHungry]
#3639692 - 01/17/05 03:43 PM (19 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
IamHungry said: I thought that because of how they are formed tsunamis couldn't be higher than about 10 meters. I didn't see any scientific backup to prove that the size of those tsunamis would be "tens of meters tall" in this article.
They can be dozens of meters high, and then they're called mega-tsunamis. Some people have actually survived one on a boat off the coast of Alaska, and there's geological evidence of other mega-tsunamis in history.
If this one happens, millions will die in huge traffic jams on the East coast.
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