Extended summer stormlover74 future snow hole banter thread 23

[LibertyBell]

14 hours ago, forkyfork said:

from my birder friend today. pheasant 

Since we're talking about birds, I figured I'd post this.... the high intelligence of crows and ravens has always impressed me, they plan for the future and understand what their reflection is, as well understanding the concept of zero.

 

[LibertyBell]

 

[forkyfork]

14 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Flacco the Owl is dead

stupid humans....

 

the "free flaco!" idiots are responsible. they actively interfered with capture efforts 

[LibertyBell]

6 hours ago, forkyfork said:

the "free flaco!" idiots are responsible. they actively interfered with capture efforts 

True

but to be honest, no animal deserves to be caged.

If there was a way, the best way would have been to return him to his natural habitat with the rest of his kind.  If he lived a year in NYC he probably could have managed just fine in the wild with the rest of his kind.

Like they did with Otto the Octopus who used his toys to break free from his enclosure and squirted water at the surveillance cameras to shortcircuit them, who was eventually released into the ocean.

Then again, the level of intelligence of octopi is absolutely amazing-- and stunned scientists who thought cephalopods couldn't be this intelligent.... and now we know they build large settlements on the seafloor.

 

[Dark Star]

17 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

True

but to be honest, no animal deserves to be caged.

If there was a way, the best way would have been to return him to his natural habitat with the rest of his kind.  If he lived a year in NYC he probably could have managed just fine in the wild with the rest of his kind.

Like they did with Otto the Octopus who used his toys to break free from his enclosure and squirted water at the surveillance cameras to shortcircuit them, who was eventually released into the ocean.

Then again, the level of intelligence of octopi is absolutely amazing-- and stunned scientists who thought cephalopods couldn't be this intelligent.... and now we know they build large settlements on the seafloor.

 

I don't know, hamsters seem to enjoy their life, living in our kitchen when I was a child.  He was very attentive and affectionate.  My mother used to feed him different things she was cooking.  Some people "cage" dogs.  That I don't agree with.  

[LibertyBell]

On 2/25/2024 at 2:30 PM, forkyfork said:

the "free flaco!" idiots are responsible. they actively interfered with capture efforts 

Looks like NYC is going to put some protections in place for birds because of what happened to Flaco.

 

[LibertyBell]

15 hours ago, Dark Star said:

I don't know, hamsters seem to enjoy their life, living in our kitchen when I was a child.  He was very attentive and affectionate.  My mother used to feed him different things she was cooking.  Some people "cage" dogs.  That I don't agree with.  

Hamsters are good that way because they are small and don't need much room.  A large flying avian predator is a different story though.

Smuggling in birds into the country is big business unfortunately.  A few years ago at JFK a shipment of finches came in from some country in Africa packed inside those hair curling things (I dont know what they are called.) The shipment with over 400 of these tiny colorful birds was intercepted and sent back and so were the people who did it (they were deported.)

You have to see how these birds are in the wild to see how happy and free they are.  I've seen documentaries on parrots in cages in terrible living conditions where they are picking at their own feathers because they are depressed and trying to kill themselves.  The more intelligent the animal the less happy it will be in a cage.  Parrots are near the peak of avian intelligence, about the same intelligence as a 7 year old child (similar to ravens, octopus, elephants, dolphins, chimps, etc).  They're more intelligent than cats or dogs (which are about equivalent to the intelligence of a 5 year old child), but none of these higher order sentient creatures live happily in cages.

[LibertyBell]

What I find so fascinating about octopus though and their settlements on the sea floor and why I talk so much about them is because they show us there is a different way to a higher intelligence than the mammalian/avian warm blooded route.  These complex creatures are cold blooded invertebrates and yet they are so amazingly intelligent that it shows us that if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe it may be in a form that we wouldn't even recognize at first if we somehow ran into it.

Parrots and ravens too-- the usual refrain about birds is because they have small heads they must be unintelligent-- and "bird brained"-- it's definitely not true.  Parrots and ravens actually have large complex brains and not all of it is in their heads-- birds' brains extend downward into their necks too.

 

I believe what fueled rapid brain development in these creatures is a high protein diet.  Ravens and octopi of course eat meat and parrots eat high protein nuts.  And a high intelligence was necessary for all these creatures; in the case of birds, it was originally to process their extreme visual acuity and later for socialization skills and in the case of the octopus to be able to escape predators while also catch prey in its challenging environment and was also later adopted for socialization.  All of the creatures I've mentioned are also known to make and use tools which also facilitated rapid brain development (it's a form of biofeedback, you need a complex brain to make tools and alter your environment but once you start doing that the mere act of doing that also makes for a more complex brain and higher intelligence.)

 

[Dark Star]

2 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

What I find so fascinating about octopus though and their settlements on the sea floor and why I talk so much about them is because they show us there is a different way to a higher intelligence than the mammalian/avian warm blooded route.  These complex creatures are cold blooded invertebrates and yet they are so amazingly intelligent that it shows us that if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe it may be in a form that we wouldn't even recognize at first if we somehow ran into it.

Parrots and ravens too-- the usual refrain about birds is because they have small heads they must be unintelligent-- and "bird brained"-- it's definitely not true.  Parrots and ravens actually have large complex brains and not all of it is in their heads-- birds' brains extend downward into their necks too.

 

I believe what fueled rapid brain development in these creatures is a high protein diet.  Ravens and octopi of course eat meat and parrots eat high protein nuts.  And a high intelligence was necessary for all these creatures; in the case of birds, it was originally to process their extreme visual acuity and later for socialization skills and in the case of the octopus to be able to escape predators while also catch prey in its challenging environment and was also later adopted for socialization.  All of the creatures I've mentioned are also known to make and use tools which also facilitated rapid brain development (it's a form of biofeedback, you need a complex brain to make tools and alter your environment but once you start doing that the mere act of doing that also makes for a more complex brain and higher intelligence.)

 

So you're saying I should have had a high protein diet in my early years?  A little late for that...

[Dark Star]

Wow, negative digits in central and northern Quebec, but looks like it won't do us any good...

[Volcanic Winter]

@LibertyBell(think you’ll like this)

Apparently the Akahoya eruption in Japan is now regarded as the largest of the Holocene. This was always known as a VEI 7, but it was recently revised all the way up to potentially over 400 cubic kilometers of erupted volume. For reference that’s getting close to half the size of the last Yellowstone supereruption!

Not too shabby for only several thousand years ago. More than double Tambora’s size, though it’s a different eruption style (recurrent caldera system vs large stratovolcano suffering a catastrophic drainout). These types of recurrent calderas are more prone to the massive VEI 7 - 8 eruptions, like Yellowstone, Valles Caldera, Clear Lake, & Campi Flegrei. Japan is also a hotbed of large scale and intense volcanism due to a unique geologic setting with oddly clashing plates.

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/volcanos/underwater-volcano-eruption-7300-years-ago-is-the-largest-in-recorded-history

I just want to note in general that constraining tephra-fall isopachs accurately and actually computing a semi accurate total erupted volume for some of these eruptions is a monumentally difficult task. Lots of literature actually cites different sizes for many of the same eruptions, and the figures are often in flux. It wasn’t long ago Toba was estimated all the way up to as large as 5000 cubic kilometers which is frankly mind boggling. I have the opinion that many historic eruptions were actually a bit bigger than the figures we use to describe them today which tend to be more conservative. There are some absolute monsters in the semi recent past, events that would catastrophically rattle modern humanity were they to happen today. Once you get into the VEI 6 space, a couple times larger than Pinatubo (closer to Krakatau and Novarupta), you get into eruptions that are just unthinkably large and would be absolutely wild for us to experience in real time in the cell phone age. 

[LibertyBell]

1 hour ago, Volcanic Winter said:

@LibertyBell(think you’ll like this)

Apparently the Akahoya eruption in Japan is now regarded as the largest of the Holocene. This was always known as a VEI 7, but it was recently revised all the way up to potentially over 400 cubic kilometers of erupted volume. For reference that’s getting close to half the size of the last Yellowstone supereruption!

Not too shabby for only several thousand years ago. More than double Tambora’s size, though it’s a different eruption style (recurrent caldera system vs large stratovolcano suffering a catastrophic drainout). These types of recurrent calderas are more prone to the massive VEI 7 - 8 eruptions, like Yellowstone, Valles Caldera, Clear Lake, & Campi Flegrei. Japan is also a hotbed of large scale and intense volcanism due to a unique geologic setting with oddly clashing plates.

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/volcanos/underwater-volcano-eruption-7300-years-ago-is-the-largest-in-recorded-history

I just want to note in general that constraining tephra-fall isopachs accurately and actually computing a semi accurate total erupted volume for some of these eruptions is a monumentally difficult task. Lots of literature actually cites different sizes for many of the same eruptions, and the figures are often in flux. It wasn’t long ago Toba was estimated all the way up to as large as 5000 cubic kilometers which is frankly mind boggling. I have the opinion that many historic eruptions were actually a bit bigger than the figures we use to describe them today which tend to be more conservative. There are some absolute monsters in the semi recent past, events that would catastrophically rattle modern humanity were they to happen today. Once you get into the VEI 6 space, a couple times larger than Pinatubo (closer to Krakatau and Novarupta), you get into eruptions that are just unthinkably large and would be absolutely wild for us to experience in real time in the cell phone age. 

wow speaking of which I wanted to ask you about Yellowstone.

So there's this rather funny scifi series called Resident Alien in which the good alien is trying to stop the bad aliens from funneling a large quantity of water into the Yellowstone caldera, he said they are trying to destroy all life on the planet by causing it to erupt.  But then he also said that even if he stopped them that Yellowstone could erupt "at any time" because it erupts on average every 600,000 years and it's been 643,000 years since its last eruption.  He said the bad aliens were hastening its eruption and because of them it could erupt within one year but even if he was able to stop them it could erupt anyway since it was "due"-- and in his crazy sense of humor he thought it was funny if he stopped them but it erupted anyway.  Anyway that part isn't true-- that Yellowstone is "overdue" to erupt?

[Volcanic Winter]

1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

wow speaking of which I wanted to ask you about Yellowstone.

So there's this rather funny scifi series called Resident Alien in which the good alien is trying to stop the bad aliens from funneling a large quantity of water into the Yellowstone caldera, he said they are trying to destroy all life on the planet by causing it to erupt.  But then he also said that even if he stopped them that Yellowstone could erupt "at any time" because it erupts on average every 600,000 years and it's been 643,000 years since its last eruption.  He said the bad aliens were hastening its eruption and because of them it could erupt within one year but even if he was able to stop them it could erupt anyway since it was "due"-- and in his crazy sense of humor he thought it was funny if he stopped them but it erupted anyway.  Anyway that part isn't true-- that Yellowstone is "overdue" to erupt?

So I have a decent amount I could say about Yellowstone. It’s true that statistically it’s very slightly overdue for its next large caldera forming episode. It’s not true that there’s any major significance to that with respect to current US risk. First of all Yellowstone actually last erupted properly 70kya in a massive rhyolitic effusive eruption that was something like 100 cubic kilometers of thick rhyolite lava flows. Massive on a scale well beyond anything in historic times, Laki was 15 cubic kilometers remember of basaltic lava. Rhyolite is like volcanic peanut butter to basalt’s warmed up honey. So it had a pretty substantial eruption not too long ago that is not often mentioned or discussed in the context of it being overdue. I would imagine some of the magma that would be contributing toward the next supereruption was released in this event and may have delayed the next one by some degree, though this specifically is just logical speculation on my part.   

These types of massive volcanoes go off when they’re ready and not before, regardless of the statistics of their previous eruptions. Recent studies determined Yellowstone is not currently thought to possess a melt fraction (percent of magma body that is molten and in an eruptible state) that would support a supereruption right now. But that can change, right? The last Yellowstone supereruption is now known to have been triggered by two massive basaltic intrusions of hot, juvenile magma very deep underground. These two pulses took place across several decades, and should they occur to they would be imminently noticeable / detectable. There would be massive inflation within the caldera and a whole continuous swarm of deep volcanic quakes, along with periods of tremor represented magma on the move. The entire caldera would be very clearly alive, instead of its current very sleepy state. 

We would know. It would be unmistakably “awake.” That injection of hot basalt would remelt some of the magma chamber and creative an enormous instability that leads to a blowout. 

In earnest, Yellowstone is not even in the top tier of volcanoes I think are most likely or most capable of causing human harm in the near future. Ioto / Iwo Jima is an under the radar choice, a giant pimple in the ocean under Japan that is growing at an alarming rate, some of the fastest uplift known at a volcanic system - for centuries. Its last caldera eruption was very large and would’ve sent a catastrophic tsunami all over the Pacific. It’s very capable of doing that again and probably will in the not too distant future. You can actually see the striations in the island where the sea level line was mere decades ago, going all the way back for centuries. It doesn’t even have the same topography as when it was landed on during WWII. 

Way scarier than Yellowstone right now IMO. But Yellowstone captures the hearts of Americans and is guaranteed to get clicks, so it’s frequently pushed as a catastrophe waiting to happen. Could be 1,000 years, 10,000, or 500,000 before the next supereruption. All are way beyond immediate worry. It’s almost certainly not happening tomorrow, near 0% chance. 

When you start hearing about unprecedented uplift, an endless intense quake swarm at depth, and signs of unmistakable unrest that continue for years unabated, then we have something to worry about. 

[forkyfork]

 

[MJO812]

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

10 hours ago, MJO812 said:

It’s never a lock that we see a hurricane locally, but odds are certainly higher than normal this season. I fully expect a parade of major hurricanes coming out of the MDR this season. 

[LibertyBell]

On 2/29/2024 at 4:11 PM, Volcanic Winter said:

So I have a decent amount I could say about Yellowstone. It’s true that statistically it’s very slightly overdue for its next large caldera forming episode. It’s not true that there’s any major significance to that with respect to current US risk. First of all Yellowstone actually last erupted properly 70kya in a massive rhyolitic effusive eruption that was something like 100 cubic kilometers of thick rhyolite lava flows. Massive on a scale well beyond anything in historic times, Laki was 15 cubic kilometers remember of basaltic lava. Rhyolite is like volcanic peanut butter to basalt’s warmed up honey. So it had a pretty substantial eruption not too long ago that is not often mentioned or discussed in the context of it being overdue. I would imagine some of the magma that would be contributing toward the next supereruption was released in this event and may have delayed the next one by some degree, though this specifically is just logical speculation on my part.   

These types of massive volcanoes go off when they’re ready and not before, regardless of the statistics of their previous eruptions. Recent studies determined Yellowstone is not currently thought to possess a melt fraction (percent of magma body that is molten and in an eruptible state) that would support a supereruption right now. But that can change, right? The last Yellowstone supereruption is now known to have been triggered by two massive basaltic intrusions of hot, juvenile magma very deep underground. These two pulses took place across several decades, and should they occur to they would be imminently noticeable / detectable. There would be massive inflation within the caldera and a whole continuous swarm of deep volcanic quakes, along with periods of tremor represented magma on the move. The entire caldera would be very clearly alive, instead of its current very sleepy state. 

We would know. It would be unmistakably “awake.” That injection of hot basalt would remelt some of the magma chamber and creative an enormous instability that leads to a blowout. 

In earnest, Yellowstone is not even in the top tier of volcanoes I think are most likely or most capable of causing human harm in the near future. Ioto / Iwo Jima is an under the radar choice, a giant pimple in the ocean under Japan that is growing at an alarming rate, some of the fastest uplift known at a volcanic system - for centuries. Its last caldera eruption was very large and would’ve sent a catastrophic tsunami all over the Pacific. It’s very capable of doing that again and probably will in the not too distant future. You can actually see the striations in the island where the sea level line was mere decades ago, going all the way back for centuries. It doesn’t even have the same topography as when it was landed on during WWII. 

Way scarier than Yellowstone right now IMO. But Yellowstone captures the hearts of Americans and is guaranteed to get clicks, so it’s frequently pushed as a catastrophe waiting to happen. Could be 1,000 years, 10,000, or 500,000 before the next supereruption. All are way beyond immediate worry. It’s almost certainly not happening tomorrow, near 0% chance. 

When you start hearing about unprecedented uplift, an endless intense quake swarm at depth, and signs of unmistakable unrest that continue for years unabated, then we have something to worry about. 

Thanks, so 70,000 years there was a smaller Yellowstone eruption? I wonder if that had any effect on the climate back then?

 

Wow, Iwo Jima sounds like it's very capable of creating a repeat of the Christmas 2004 Tsunami.

[LibertyBell]

7 hours ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

It’s never a lock that we see a hurricane locally, but odds are certainly higher than normal this season. I fully expect a parade of major hurricanes coming out of the MDR this season. 

It's always low, and we seem to be out of the era that get major east coast hurricanes coming this far north, I'd expect yet another gulf coast and florida hurricane season.  We're also very tucked in so any hurricanes making it this far north are likely to hit Nova Scotia instead.

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

7 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

It's always low, and we seem to be out of the era that get major east coast hurricanes coming this far north, I'd expect yet another gulf coast and florida hurricane season.  We're also very tucked in so any hurricanes making it this far north are likely to hit Nova Scotia instead.

If you look at the history of majors in the north east there is one about every 70 years. So I would hardly say we have switched out of that pattern. On the contrary we are due. It’s only anger of time. Cat 3 winds will decimate the power grid, and make sandy look like a walk in the park: 

[LibertyBell]

5 minutes ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

If you look at the history of majors in the north east there is one about every 70 years. So I would hardly say we have switched out of that pattern. On the contrary we are due. It’s only anger of time. Cat 3 winds will decimate the power grid, and make sandy look like a walk in the park: 

the 50s were an amazing time, I wonder what was going on then that no matter how many or few total TCs there were, there were always multiple ones (including majors) hitting the NE coast.

the heatwaves during the 50s were also very long and we had multiple 100+ degree long heatwaves which we don't see anymore-- from June through September!  Worcester even got hit with an F5 tornado during one of those extremely hot years!

 

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

40 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

the 50s were an amazing time, I wonder what was going on then that no matter how many or few total TCs there were, there were always multiple ones (including majors) hitting the NE coast.

the heatwaves during the 50s were also very long and we had multiple 100+ degree long heatwaves which we don't see anymore-- from June through September!  Worcester even got hit with an F5 tornado during one of those extremely hot years!

 

It’s above my skill level but I’m sure someone can go pack and look at the synoptic pattern in 54 specifically. It’s really just a roll of the dice. A pattern conducive to a north east landfall exists multiple times a year, it’s just a matter of lining up a cane with said pattern. 

[LibertyBell]

54 minutes ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

It’s above my skill level but I’m sure someone can go pack and look at the synoptic pattern in 54 specifically. It’s really just a roll of the dice. A pattern conducive to a north east landfall exists multiple times a year, it’s just a matter of lining up a cane with said pattern. 

Maybe something happened to make those things more common back then and whatever was causing it lasted for several years before the pattern flipped?

It basically existed from 1944 to 1960.

longer heatwaves, more 100 degree temps, more northeast tropical activity, stronger severe weather outbreaks.

 

[Volcanic Winter]

7 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Thanks, so 70,000 years there was a smaller Yellowstone eruption? I wonder if that had any effect on the climate back then?

 

Wow, Iwo Jima sounds like it's very capable of creating a repeat of the Christmas 2004 Tsunami.

It’s a good question, I really don’t know. Laki managed it being almost ten times smaller, but we know Laki was pretty unique. With that said, Yellowstone is giga powerful and the thermal updrafts above the volcano during that eruption had to be insane with that kind of magma volume. A lot of gas was probably reaching fairly high up there.

Really hard to describe how much magma 100 cubic kilometers is. Going back to Laki at 15km^3, were that eruption happening today it would be seen as apocalyptic (especially with the toxic gasses filling the troposphere probably down through Europe again). 

[MJO812]

Joe Rao thinks that the rubber band will eventually snap and NYC will go back to normal and we'll above average snows. 

He also thinks Tonga have ruined the winters in the past few years in the east.

[Brian5671]

7 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Joe Rao thinks that the rubber band will eventually snap and NYC will go back to normal and we'll above average snows. 

He also thinks Tonga have ruined the winters in the past few years in the east.

Let's be honest-no one can even guestimate right now about next year let alone the next few.

[psv88]

1 hour ago, Brian5671 said:

Let's be honest-no one can even guestimate right now about next year let alone the next few.

These people will say anything for clicks/money

[MJO812]

 

[LibertyBell]

It was the perfect day, every day in spring should be like this!

No allergies, no winds, low humidity and clear blue skies from horizon to horizon!

If we ever start regulating weather, it should be like this 6 days out of 7.

Let it rain on each 7th day.

[LibertyBell]

6 hours ago, MJO812 said:

 

I'd rather have warm sunny cloudless weather every day than a bust like March 2001 ever again.

 

[Brian5671]

9 hours ago, psv88 said:

These people will say anything for clicks/money

Yep-I guarantee the usual suspects will come out with the same ol cold/snowy winter forecast next October....