New cycle in Ring of Fire (updated)

May 28 - The Indonesian quake toll is up to 4,600 according to Indonesian officials, and rescuers are in a race against time to dig through the rubble in the hope of finding survivors of the 6.3 magnitude quake that hit Indonesia yesterday. The government has declared a 3-month state of emergency.

There is an interesting connection to recent activity at Mount Merapi and this as well as previous quakes, including the 2004 undersea quake that triggered the Asian tsunami. Some scientists believe the ring of fire is going through a new cycle:

"There is certainly a connection between the December 26 quake that triggered giant waves that swept much of Aceh and the one that jolted Yogyakarta on Saturday," he [Priyadi Kartono, of Indonesia's National Co-ordinating Agency for Surveys and Mapping] said.

Dr Kartono told The Jakarta Post that both events were triggered by the movement of the tectonic plates underlying Indonesia and the Indian Ocean.

[...]

"Yogyakarta and the rest of Java island are located in the Ring of Fire belt, where the Eurasian and Indo-Australian plates stack on each other and create regular movements which cause earthquakes," said Wahyu Supri Hantoro, of the Bandung-based Centre of Geotechnology at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

Indonesia is home to the world's largest collection of volcanoes - 76 - and after the Boxing Day disaster University of Ulster seismologist John McCloskey predicted more quakes due to the stress placed on neighbouring faults.

[...]

The recent earthquake and activity on Mount Merapi raises concerns that a so-called "super-volcano" on nearby Sumatra might erupt.

If it did, the catastrophic blast would toss hundreds of thousands of cubic kilometres of rock and ash into the atmosphere, dwarfing the eruptions of Krakatoa, Mount St Helens, Pinatubo and any conventional volcanic explosions over the past tens of thousands of years.

"These super-volcanoes are potentially the greatest hazard on earth, the only greater threat being an asteroid impact from space," Monash University vulcanologist Ray Cas told The Australian last year.

Studies of the impact of volcanic eruptions on global weather patterns have given rise to many interesting speculations. One suggests that the effects from an Indonesian volcanic eruption may have caused famines in places as far away as Europe and triggered the French revolution in 1789.

May 29 17:04 - A seismologist disagrees that the earthquake will affect Mt. Merapi:

David Booth, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey, disagreed, saying the quake would not necessarily cause the volcano to erupt. He said the plates that shifted to cause the earthquake did not necessarily open cracks in the surface that would be needed to cause a volcanic eruption.

"Volcanoes are all about creating pathways for the magma to move up to the surface," Booth said in a telephone interview. "It's like a lemonade bottle having been shaken. There is enormous pressure there. But if there isn't a pathway to the surface, then the pressure will stay contained."

The biggest danger isn't from lava, which is slow moving, but pyroclastic flows, and Merapi has produced more of them than any other volcano in the world, according to the Merapi page at John Search's website (interesting site, he provides volano tours!) Volcano News at that site says the recent earthquake was "not large enough to change the state of activity" which I take to mean "what will happen will happen."

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Mount Merapi still rumbling

May 17 - Any of you old enough to remember the lengthy watch on Mount St. Helen's? Scientists kept warning she was going to blow and everyone waited and scientists issues the same warning and everyone waited ... and then she blew.

There must be a fair degree of impatience on this volcano watch as well; do it or don't, for crying out loud, so people can either react or get on with their lives.

After the report Monday that volcanic activity was at it's highest level things seemed to quiet down but today another cloud of hot air and ash was released.

Some residents have not yet left the mountainside which brings up the same Katrina question many of us asked ourselves: would you leave or stay?

Perhaps more relevant is the Mt. Rainier question, as the Seattle metropolitan area sits next to that volcano.

Mother Nature is not, despite the popular saying, a bitch. She is all woman and reserves the right to change her mind.

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Mount Merapi and other explosive things

May 9 - Volcanoes fascinate me, and there's one on the Ring of Fire that seems likely to erupt - Mount Merapi. Lava began flowing down the slopes at 2 a.m. their time and residents have been urged to leave.

It last erupted in 1994, sending out a searing cloud of gas that burned 60 people to death. About 1,300 people were killed when it erupted in 1930.

Volcanoes are one of those nasty things that may give hints of restlessness -- but after they blow, it's often too late to respond.

I recently watched a documentary - probably on the Discovery Civilization channel - that pointed out that, as Mt. Vesuvius had not erupted for centuries, those in Pompeii and Herculaneum had no oral tradition or stories about the mountain that would have helped them understand the magnitude of the danger. They were used to earthquakes and behaved as though this was just another in a series of tremors, so went about their business rather than run for their lives. As history records, they waited too late and died horribly trying to flee Pompeii or while waiting for help on the beaches and, for those from Herculaneum, huddled in caves as they waited for it to "blow over." It did blow over - an intense pyroclastic wave with heat so intense their brains literally boiled away.

As many have pointed out in discussions of the nuclear threat from Iran's mullahs, it is instructive to remember that an earlier European response to Hitler would have averted not only much of the devastation of World War II but also the Holocaust. We have well-studied history and oral tradition but too many of us behave as though the undeniable threat is unprecedented.

Iran's mullahs, as was Hitler, have been very clear about their aims. When the worst happens, we will not be able to pretend that we were blindsided and it will be useless at that point to admit we were stupid.

That letter from Iran is not an overture to resolution of the problem -- it doesn't even address the problem -- but the appeasers among us are likely to use it to justify their weak-kneed response to the threat. See! They wrote a letter! This is an opening! It's not an opening -- it's a diversion. It's a token bereft of meaning but one intended to lull the foolish into a false sense of renewed hope that we can talk (Taheri writes a great dismissal of the Cheap Talk Approach here.)

At the very least, the measures the U.N. has approved are naive:

Representatives of the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France as well as Germany made the decision to tell Iran the pluses and minuses of its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program at a meeting after more than three hours of talks by their foreign ministers Monday did not produce an agreement on the resolution.

As a result of Tuesday's decision, representatives from the three European countries that had been spearheading negotiations with Iran will spend the next few days preparing a package of incentives and sanctions, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because there has been no official announcement.

The European Union was eager to become Syria's bestest new friend after the U.S. applied sanctions, and our experience with the U.N. Oil-for-Food program for Iraq demonstrates how many in the "world community" are willing to do business with rogues.

Besides, would Iran be in a better bargaining position with nuclear weaponry or without? Need I ask?

I remember how sharply President Bush was criticized when he included Iran in the Axis of Evil ... I haven't heard that particular one lately.

Vulcanologists stationed at Mt. Merapi have learned from it's history and that of other volcanoes. We should emulate them rather than the conventional wisdom of those who lived and miserably died when Mt. Vesuvius blew.

May 10 18:49 - Deborah Orin's column on the letter is titled Tyrant's Letter Lunacy. Heh.

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