Pretty cool way to look at it. My take away ... Florida is almost as big as Britain? Wow, I didn't realize how small Britain was.
How big was the Tonga eruption?
51–60 of 269 posts
Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it creates "engagement" which is rewarded these days apparently. Also, I thought the trained people should have learned a thing or two from Pompei not to build near volcanoes. I'll cut some slack for the people who designed Pompei, they didn't know, but everyone after that should have learned.
What are the chances that the volcano erupts with a train on/near that portion of track? How often would you likely have to fix it? How much does it cost to go around? I am sure these questions are being asked and the risks being weighed. They may not be right and you might not agree with them but unless they did this without any forethought I would not call them dumb. Also you are comparing them to Pompei even thoug…
It would disrupt critical supply chains. That train line is part of a key freight artery between Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, and SD.
Railroads and highways also invite towns and cities to be built around them, so if you want to be responsible toward future generations of human lives, you should direct those major arteries through less geologically-active regions.
Hugging an active volcano never was a good idea in history and it still isn't.
Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?
#53Pretty cool way to look at it. My take away ... Florida is almost as big as Britain? Wow, I didn't realize how small Britain was.
… or how big Florida is.
Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?
#54What I'm curious about is whether this was equivalent to, or larger than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa Also whether it will turn the sky red for months.
We have had really beautiful sunsets here in Northern California for the past week. Maybe related? (We also have a winter wildfire in Big Sur that could be contributing.)
Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?
#55Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?
#56This looks like a tedious process that I would have totally done on my own had I thought of it. By that I mean the painstaking process of matting out each frame, then randomly placing it on places of the map, just because I could, just for the lulz. I'm not discounting it as "i could have thought of that", but appreciation for how useful it actually is. Some people cannot grasp certain things without visuals, and thi…
How about this tool? https://evergiven-everywhere.glitch.me/ Granted, it's the Evergiven, but how hard would it be to exchange the image?
Sure, that's fun. That has been taken much further than I would have bothered by just placing a cutout on maps and saving those images. Somebody had an idea, and just didn't stop, and took it to that level. My modern day level of "cleverness" would have stopped well before thinking, "ooh, integrate into a live website". That is clever and allows others to share in the fun.
Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?
#57[deleted]
Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean, how fucking dumb do you need to be to look at a lava flow and cut a road or train track through it? Do they not realize that lava means "run"? Build infrastructure elsewhere. Right, and nobody should build cities on rivers or coasts, because rivers flood[1] and coasts get hurricanes that cause floods, nobody should build anything in valleys[1], because they flood, nobody should ever build anything in mounta…
> Right, and nobody should build cities on rivers or coasts, Many ancient civilizations knew not to build on coasts. Beijing, Xi'an, Cairo, Rome, Paris, Mexico City, Madrid, London, Moscow, Kyoto, most of these cities of critical governmental and strategic importance were not built on coasts for very good reasons. And then you have some modern hipsters after the 17th century who decided not to take a history lesson a…
Ancient civilizations did build on coasts, you're cherry picking a handful of cities that weren't, but most (if not all, going off memory) of the cities you listed were built along rivers. Building on the coast gave (and gives) access to trade and fishing which are of great utility to most societies.
Besides, avoiding the coast itself doesn't do you much good. Earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding (from rivers or rain), drought, fire, tornadoes can hit in many different areas even away from the coast. Hell, hurricanes can go pretty far inland and do quite a bit of damage (more from the flooding than the winds, but also the winds, at that point). You'd be hard pressed to find a totally safe place on this planet that could support the entire human population. You'll still need the hazardous areas for agricultural and mining purposes if nothing else, and unless people can handle a 1000 mile commute, you'll end up with communities and cities growing in those places.
Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?
#59Will this have a cooling effect on the Earth this year? I seem to remember global temperatures fell after the big one in the Philippines.
The amount of sulfur injected into the atmosphere was quite small compared to the explosion of Pinatubo
Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And then you have idiots that build train tracks and highways right through lava I was disappointed to see no active lava flows in your linked image. What you show is simply a road and train tracks built on top of rocks.
Lava will likely flow there again the next time Shasta erupts.
True, but we were dumb enough to build a civilization on this planet and lava will flow everywhere the next time we have something like what caused the K-T event so I suppose it runs in the family.