Y'know ...
All day long the television has had on people talking about Mt. St. Helens, and about how she's gonna blow, and it's going to be nothing like it was in 1980, in fact, overall, quite a mild explosion. Then Wolf Blitzer comes on with a teaser for his show on CNN in about five minutes, and he says, "Could she be preparing for a major explosion?"
*shakes head*
Let me tell you something ... Geologists have been on top of the mountain since she started gurgling. Geologic science has progressed so far in the last twenty-five years that not only is it irresponsible to describe this potential or occurring eruption in terms of what happened in 1980, it's illogical. Today we have far better resources to predict geological disturbances, and dramatizing this perfectly natural event is just insane.
I was thinking about this today. Volcanoes have been erupting for billions of years. They are not like earthquakes, and nobody really builds cities under volcanoes anymore. I'm sure there are a few out there, but I think modern man is pretty aware of Pompeii, and it's just bad city-planning to build anything at the base of an active volcano. So, the question is this ... if there are no casualties involved, then is a volcano eruption really news? I mean ... MSNBC had people blathering about this all day long, with a live camera on a steamy mountainside. This is NOT NEWS. Especially the day after one of the most important presidential debates in the history of the office. It's a shame, really. She's not even belching lava, just some smoke farts. I could see this on the Discovery Channel any Sunday afternoon.
Bah, call me geologically jaded, but unless people are actively swimming in rivers of molten rock, this is definitely building a molehill out of a mountain.
*shakes head*
Let me tell you something ... Geologists have been on top of the mountain since she started gurgling. Geologic science has progressed so far in the last twenty-five years that not only is it irresponsible to describe this potential or occurring eruption in terms of what happened in 1980, it's illogical. Today we have far better resources to predict geological disturbances, and dramatizing this perfectly natural event is just insane.
I was thinking about this today. Volcanoes have been erupting for billions of years. They are not like earthquakes, and nobody really builds cities under volcanoes anymore. I'm sure there are a few out there, but I think modern man is pretty aware of Pompeii, and it's just bad city-planning to build anything at the base of an active volcano. So, the question is this ... if there are no casualties involved, then is a volcano eruption really news? I mean ... MSNBC had people blathering about this all day long, with a live camera on a steamy mountainside. This is NOT NEWS. Especially the day after one of the most important presidential debates in the history of the office. It's a shame, really. She's not even belching lava, just some smoke farts. I could see this on the Discovery Channel any Sunday afternoon.
Bah, call me geologically jaded, but unless people are actively swimming in rivers of molten rock, this is definitely building a molehill out of a mountain.
