Mt St Helens

Blew its top 30 years ago yesterday. Lots of relevence to me.

- 30 years is nothing, looking back. Esp when you were 37 when it happened.

- I was embarking on a four month assignment in central London. during which I was jokingly accused of bringing with me the coldest summer in decades.. which caused Brighton and scores of other holiday venues to suffer economically.

- The recovery of the area around the site speaks loads of the powers of nature to recover a balance. Despite warnings the area might take many decades to show life.

With rare wisdom the devastated area was made a national monument and, more important, rules made that NO manmade effort to 'improve' it would be allowed.

A dispassionate study of this and other 'catastrophes' and their after effects shows that not only organic life evolves to a stable state but that the planet has, too. And when you read alarmist predictions of catastrophe brought on by man... it's a good thing to take a step back and evaluate the thesis based on their own evidence.

To wit: Not only am I increasingly aware of my own insignificance, but I INCREASINGLY question the hubris of those who project doom based on their own incomplete understanding.

Pogo was right, the 'enemy is us..' but not the us most assume.

The enemy is the skeptic-attacker and all fcukwads like him.
{- I lament I did not point that article out when it first appeared. It was full of ad hominem invective bordering on hate-speech. }

They continually LIE about their own and claim skeptics hate science... when seemingly every week it turns out the opposite is true.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/18/most-idiotic-global-warming-headline-ever/

- Not readily pointed out is that if the postulation of 2007 were true, then it was too late to do anything to prevent 4.5 Billion people dying of 'GW' effects by 2012. The 'tipping point' was long past.

 

30 years ago I was an 8th grader in Lake Oswego, Or (Portland suburb 60-70 miles from St. Helens) when what was the most beautiful mountain I've ever seen literally blew up. It had many smaller ash releases prior to the big one, and if the wind was blowing right our driveway/plants/lawn would be covered. You had to wear a surgical mask to sweep up the stuff, and most all our plants were killed off (one of my still most prized possessions is a jar of St. Helens ash).

Luckily for us the wind was blowing the opposite direction that morning and we drove less than five minutes to a location where we watched the awe-inspiring aftermath of the initial explosion. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins that lived in Yakima, Wa (central) weren't so lucky. The ash cloud was so powerful that it looked like midnight at noon.

The time-elapsed photos that caught the side of the mountain caving in and exploding out are amazing and worth a google.