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Supervolcanoes: The Real Threat; Key Paper |
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Written by Claudia Klein
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Friday, 21 September 2007 |
 After all the hype and brouhaha surrounding deforestation and global warming, I might, at the risk of sounding alarmist, postulate that at some point in the future, supervolcanoes will pose a far greater threat to human existence on this earth than global warming.
Let's take a peek first into history. The largest volcanic eruption in recorded history is not the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in Italy that laid the town of Pompei to waste! Rather, it is the tremendous explosion of Mount of Tambora as recent as 1815. The explosive force of Tambora's eruption was about 4 times greater than the better known Krakatoa eruption of 1883.
It's hard to imagine the powerr of these eruptions but written accounts of Krakatoa's was such that the eeven from hundreds of kilometres away, Krakatoa sounded like a canon "exploding next to your ear!"
Consider this. These catastrophic eruptions would pale in comparison with the magnitude of the eruptions that created Lake Toba in Indonesia. Even the eruptions that created Lake Taupo in New Zealand, the Yellowstone National Park, Cerro Galan and Fish Canyon Tuff in Colorado would have covered a whole continent-sized area in ash. The relatively small but rather recent Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines spread ash and blotted out the sun throughout the region for weeks.
The Lake Toba event 74,000 years ago, for instance, created a mini-ice age that lasted 1,000 years, whenst most humans and most other species living in the region would have perished!
Until now, most fears about planetary destruction have focused on global warming. However, this would be chump change compared to the instant massive destruction that would befall theearth if a supervolcano was to erupt, or an asteroid was to crash head on onto earth. That makes sense. The only recorded meteorite impact of much note would be the Tunguska event of 1908. Yet the scale of destruction wrought by the meteorite is mild compared to deadly volcanic eruptions. Also the frequency of these volcanic eruptions and associated earthquakes and tsunamis is 5 to 10 times more!
So, in conclusion, we have to ask ourselves whether the senseless attacks aginst palm oil carried out by environmental organizations such as the Friends of the Earth, Wetlands and Treehugger is unneccesarily alarmist and overhyped? |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 25 September 2007 )
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Comments
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Yep! The author is dead right. The attacks against palm oil are for economic reasons.
Posted by John K Smith, on 11/09/2007 at 03:17
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