Posted on 01/08/2005 5:25:54 AM PST by Gengis Khan
MADRID: A wall of water up to 55 yards high crashing into the Atlantic seaboard of the United States, flattening everything in its path — not a Hollywood movie but a dire prophecy by some British and US academics.
As the international community struggles to aid victims of last month's devastating tsunami in southern Asia, scientists warn an eruption of a volcano in Spain's Canary Islands could unleash a "mega-tsunami" larger than any in recorded history.
According to their controversial study, an explosion of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma could send a chunk of rock twice the size of the Isle of Wight into the Atlantic at up to 220 miles an hour.
Many experts believe the risk of 'mega-tsunamis' from such a massive landslide on La Palma has been hugely overstated.
But in the study's scenario, energy released would equal the electricity consumption of the US for six months, sending gigantic tidal waves across the Atlantic at the speed of a jet plane.
Devastation in the US would reach trillions of dollars with tens of millions of lives at risk. Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, Brazil, the Caribbean and West Africa would also be swamped by giant waves.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofindia.indiatimes.com ...
Anyone ever proposing boring holes in these volcanoes to start alleviating the pressure a LITTLE at a time
I am absolutely sure that our European friends and our Muslim buddies will be in a race to offer us help in our time of need.................................[NOT!!]
Does that mean the Kennedy compound will be flooded????
Get Ted another drink on that news.....
The earth is like a giant pressure cooker. We need a valve to let loose some heat.
This is the umpteenth time this issue has arisen.
I detect some wishful thinking.
Will America be tnext to go under?
These guys don't think so:
http://www.sthjournal.org/media.htm
Nor do they:
http://www.drgeorgepc.com/TsunamiMegaEvaluation.html
More like the race to finish us off.
Yes, but Ted Kennedy is under the protection of Greenpeace,
Well I didnt write the article...... and I am reading this for the first time.
Why do u think I would wish something like that for anybody?
No, of course not. I've seen this idea for several years now and it seems more wishful thinking on the part of some authors. They seem to take delight in the fact that the East Coast of the US could be washed away without realizing that a tsunami is a 360 degree affair.
Your right....Greenpeace will stop that wall of water from touching one brick.....Have another drink Ted!
Actually tsunami really aren't, as we saw in the Indian Ocean. They're quite directional depending on what initiates them. There was almost no wave ejected North or South from the Sumatran Quake.
Dont worry Hollywood always save us in the final seconds.
Sure, there might be some minor inconveniences if a 55-meter high tsunami hit the US. On the other hand, your photo shows the UN building being devastated, and the article mentions that France would also be swamped, so all in all it could be a good trade-off ;-)
Sigh...guess I have to post this again...
THE TSUNAMI SOCIETY
MEGA TSUNAMI HAZARDS
January 15, 2003
The mission of the Tsunami Society includes "the dissemination of knowledge about tsunamis to scientists, officials, and the public". We have established a committee of private, university, and government scientists to accomplish part of this goal by correcting misleading or invalid information released to public about this hazard. We can supply both valid, correct and important information and advice to the public, and the names of reputable scientists active in the field of tsunami, who can provide such information.
Most recently, the Discovery Channel has replayed a program alleging potential destruction of coastal areas of the Atlantic by tsunami waves which might be generated in the near future by a volcanic collapse in the Canary Islands. Other reports have involved a smaller but similar catastrophe from Kilauea volcano on the island of Hawai`i. They like to call these occurences "mega tsunamis". We would like to halt the scaremongering from these unfounded reports. We wish to provide the media with factual information so that the public can be properly informed about actual hazards of tsunamis and their mitigation.
Here are a set of facts, agreed on by committee members, about the claims in these reports:
- While the active volcano of Cumbre Vieja on Las Palma is expected to erupt again, it will not send a large part of the island into the ocean, though small landslides may occur. The Discovery program does not bring out in the interviews that such volcanic collapses are extremely rare events, separated in geologic time by thousands or even millions of years.
- No such event - a mega tsunami - has occurred in either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans in recorded history. NONE.
- The colossal collapses of Krakatau or Santorin (the two most similar known happenings) generated catastrophic waves in the immediate area but hazardous waves did not propagate to distant shores. Carefully performed numerical and experimental model experiments on such events and of the postulated Las Palma event verify that the relatively short waves from these small, though intense, occurrences do not travel as do tsunami waves from a major earthquake.
- The U.S. volcano observatory, situated on Kilauea, near the current eruption, states that there is no likelihood of that part of the island breaking off into the ocean.
- These considerations have been published in journals and discussed at conferences sponsored by the Tsunami Society.
Some papers on this subject include:
"Evaluation of the threat of Mega Tsunami Generation From ....Volcanoes on La Palma ... and Hawaii", George Pararas-Carayannis, in Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol 20, No.5, pages 251-277, 2002.
"Modeling the La Palma Landslide Tsunami", Charles L. Mader, in Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol. 19, No. 3, pages 160-180, 2001.
"Volcano Growth and the Evolution of the Island of Hawaii", J.G. Moore and D.A.Clague, in the Geologic Society of America Bulletin, 104, 1992.
Committee members for this report include:
Mr. George Curtis, Hilo, HI (Committee Chairman) 808-963-6670
Dr. Tad Murty, Ottawa, Canada, 613-731-8900
Dr. Laura Kong, Honolulu, HI, 808-532-6422
Dr. George Pararas-Carayannis, Honolulu, HI, 808-943-1150
Dr. Charles L. Mader, Los Alamos, NM, 808-396-9855
and all can comment on this or other tsunami matters.
For information regarding the Tsunami Society and its publications, visit: www.sthjournal.org.
For general and educational material on tsunamis, check: www.tsunami.org.
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