APPENDIX A. HOW SAFE ARE YOU?

Before I begin blogging SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity, I thought I'd spend a couple of days sharing the Appendix items from Book 1.

You are Lucky to be Alive

A more personal starting point involves you and me. About 100 billion people have ever lived since the first Genus Homo about 2 million years ago. In many ways we did come from the equivalent of Adam and Eve, sort of, but most probably, through some ape-like missing link, and almost surely, originally from archaea, a microorganism somewhat like bacteria, among organisms considered to be the first living life form. But no one really knows what archaea are, so let us say that there are around 10 to the thirtieth power bacteria living today (a trillion is only 10 to the twelfth power), and they began 3.5 billion years ago. In the hypothetical 24 hour clock, with time starting at the Big Bang, it is as if bacteria appeared just after 6PM, with the very earliest Man at 47 seconds to midnight.

How many bacteria have ever lived? Say, for the purpose of this discussion, 10 to the 43rd power, which is close enough. Add the number of humans who have ever lived, and you still have essentially the same number of life forms, as Humanity is so insignificant in the totality of all living creatures on Earth. To this total, add everything else that has ever lived. Viruses? Not sure if they are really alive, yet, it does replicate. In general, there are more viruses than bacteria than archaea, but, as bacteria are heavier, there is more bacteria mass than the other two. Anyway, the total of life forms will still be in the neighborhood of 10 to the 43rd, but perhaps, multiplied by a factor of two or three. Thus, there was a one 10 to the 43rd power chance for you to become a living form. But you could have become a tree. Disregarding microorganisms, but including macro forms that ever lived, in this ridiculous comparative analysis, there was only a one in 10 to the 34th power chance for you to have become a human being.

You are, indeed, very lucky. There is only one of you…so far. Remember, the clones are coming. If you add all the sperms ever discharged and multiply by all the human female eggs ever produced, the chance for you being made was also very close to one in 10 to the 34th. Same odds, but just pure coincidence with the other calculation. 10 to the 34th is 1, followed by 34 zeroes, or 10 decillion. Google, the company, was a mistake. The founders thought 10 to the 100th power was a really large number, so they misspelled GOOGOL, which is 10 to the 100th. Finally, there is the googolplex: 1 followed by a googol of zeroes, but that gets us way off course.

Thus, although we are all one in 10 decillion, I would like to present a case for a higher order of good fortune—me. First, I was born in “the best place on Earth,” Hawaii, a one chance in 20,000 odds for Americans born in 1940. As mentioned in the beginning section, if not for World War II, and the generation before me sacrificing their lives to bring respectability to Japanese living Hawaii, I probably would not have been able to grow up from relative poverty to become a university professor. CNN-Money.com in 2007 ranked the top ten jobs, and software engineer was #1 with college professor #2. Yes, I taught software courses early in my career. There should be some luck factor I can toss in here, but let me simplify things by chalking this all to good fortune.

Yes, getting that PhD involved quite an effort, but so far, I’m not even inserting this huge amount of luck. I was the only person born that year who has taught in the college of engineering at the University of Hawaii, so those odds now increase to one in 200 million. Japan has the highest life expectancy of any nation. The oldest man (Tomoji Tanabe, 113) is Japanese and Japanese women live longer than any other ethnicity. I am of Japanese extraction, so that ups the odds to one in 10 billion. However, Japanese males living in Hawaii live longer than those who toil in Japan. They work too hard there, and there are those stresses we don’t have as an American citizen. Thus, I am at the lofty level of one in 10 trillion (1:10 to the 13th). In a 2006 USA Today publication I noticed that Asians earned $61,094, Whites $50,784, Hispanics $35,967 and Blacks $30,858. That should be good for another uptick, but 10 trillion to one is good enough. This is on top of the fact that there was only one chance in 10 with thirty four zeros that I should have been born.

Lou Gehrig, in his 1939 farewell speech, when he became the first major league baseball player to have his jersey retired, said, I am “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” He, of course, knew he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, what later became know as Lou Gehrig’s disease. I hope I never someday will be known for having Pat Takahashi’s disease, for, it is just possible, that I truly am the luckiest person in the Universe.

But the luckiest person to have ever lived? Actually, no. Every one of you can create your own odds to be even luckier. All you need to do is take control of your life and do it. This sounds too much like a promotional ad on TV, but you can do it! You will gain a clue on how in APPENDIX B.

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Typhoon Hagupit is at 115 MPH, is bringing a lot of rain to northern Philippines and now appears to be headed for Hong Kong.

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Crude oil skyrocketed $25/bbl today, and settled at $121/bbl (this is the WTI Cushing Spot...Bloomberg closed at $109/bbl for NYMEX Crude, so I'm not sure what is happening), $16.37 higher than Friday. The Federal bailout plan is blamed for this highest one day jump ever. The highest previously was on June 6, when the increase was $10.75/bbl. Indications are, though, that speculators were caught short to meet end of October requirements, and the futures price for November will drop some. The danger, though, is that the market is metastable. Look for Congress stepping in to limit speculation on oil futures. The DJI sank 373 to 11,016.
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THE SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THE BLACKOUT (Part 9)

I have a really ridiculously simple solution for surviving mega-tsunamis: don’t even think about it. Look at the odds. 100 meter or larger tsunamis will affect you only if you happen to live at the coastline where a mega-landslide occurs, major volcano erupts or gigantic asteroid crashes into the sea. By the way, the National Geographic Channel showed what would happen if a 500 kilometer monster hits Earth (it has happened from three to six times already in the lifetime of Earth): all life would be destroyed, save for, maybe, microorganisms deep below the bottom of the ocean. The only event close to significant in our lifetime was the Lituya Bay 520 meter (1706 feet) landslide (40 million cubic yards) caused tsunami, triggered by a 7.5-8.3 (depends on who you quote) Richter scale earthquake, where there were more witnesses/survivors than deaths. There have been marine earthquakes, which created major tsunamis (but all much smaller than 100 meters), killing thousands, but these were not mega-tsunamis. Thus, it is safe for me to say that, over the next millennium or so, you don’t need to worry about being terminated by this natural phenomenon. In the Appendix you will see a table showing that death in American by a tsunami is three times lower than from being hit by an asteroid.

The odds for your survival increase exponentially with the distance of these events, for if another Krakotoa or Stromboli explodes, reasonably large {but not anything like that dinosaur extinctioning, 65 million years ago, 6 mile (only 10 kilometers) in diameter behemoth} asteroid strikes or Nuuanu landslide falls, the 100 meter or so potential tsunami will rapidly decay over only a few hundred miles. So, if you’re several thousand miles distant, you will be inconvenienced by a tsunami watch, but all the physics point to a centi-tsunami, that is, on the order of centimeters (less than half an inch/cm).

Further, nature tends to be helpful about landslides. Tsunami scientists are generally in accord that mega-landslides are very rare. There seems to be a gradual wearing of potentially dangerous landfalls. Anything else is the exception. George Pararas-Carayannis, who was mentioned as writing the definitive paper contradicting the contention that Cumbre Vieja in La Palma will soon trigger a mega-tsunami, told me that he even doubts that the largest ever landslide, that Nuuanu one about a million years ago, was a monolithic event. More probably, the evidence in the ocean is an accumulation of many, many landslides over time.

So, the Simple Solution is not to worry. Be entertained by those apocalyptic TV specials and films, but strike mega-tsunamis from your worry list. Well, this was certainly a wimpy ending to a book, but this is not The End, as controversies abound in Book 2. Plus, I plead with you to read APPENDIX B on Rainbow Visions. You can help to make a difference for Planet Earth.

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Typhoon Hagupit is at 100 MPH and strengthening. The path is between the Philippines and Taiwan, and landfall is expected north of Hong Kong.

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SO WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO SEATTLE? (Part 8)

Just look at the movie prospects. A tsunami will travel at just about the speed of a commercial jetliner. Thus, it is conceivably possible that United 10H leaving Hilo for Seattle departs just when disaster strikes. The passengers will witness the cataclysmic fall of the airport and much of the western side of the island into the Pacific. Will they be able to land at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport? Will the tsunami engulf the airport? The mental turmoil on the plane will carry half the novel.

Can this happen? Well… Will this happen? Not in my lifetime, nor that of many generations to come, and maybe never. Scientists who bother might prove that this is not possible, and might find flaws, maybe even fatal ones. But the fact of the matter is that a far field mega-tsunami created by a major landslide has never happened in recorded history. Thus, all models cannot back check with reality. There are non-linear factors involved and sufficient noise from both sides of the controversy that one can’t totally rule out the possibility.

But, like the re-creation of H.G. Wells War of the Worlds, where, if you listened at the beginning, you should have heard that this was a Halloween fictional yarn, let me underscore that this tongue-in-cheek artifice, is provided as an extreme case of a natural hazard not commonly acknowledged for the sake of public education. But in my tale, is Seattle destroyed by this 100 meter monster? A weak no. All the science points to a tsunami of relatively short period, which will rapidly decay with substantial height attenuation. It is possible that Seattle could experience a three meter tsunami, but most probably something on the order of one meter. That was the scenario in 2004.

In the Third Tsunami Symposium, held from May 26-29, 2006, in Honolulu, I learned several more things which swayed me even further towards rationality. First, the Los Alamos National Laboratory multiphysics SAGE code was used to analyze the possible La Palma conditions—375 cubic kilometers, 75 kilometer runout in 9 miles at a speed of 140 meters per second—and produced a 500 meter tsunami, but in the general south southwest direction, not towards the United States. The purported 50 meter tsunami hitting Florida was calculated to only be 1.3 centimeters. Yes, the damage to the Canaries, and even Africa and parts of Europe (Portugal and Spain) would be severe, but the diminution of size over distance would be significant because of the short period. The Stanford ASC Center using a different model pretty much reinforced the Los Alamos report.

Finally, at the all-day tsunami tour, I was flabbergasted to learn that while I was a senior in high school, a 55 foot tsunami run-up occurred in Kahuku from a 1957 Alaskan earthquake, close to the Turtle Bay Hotel (where the EnergyOcean conference was held in 2007). Nothing in my memory remembers this. Although I never lived further than half a mile away from the beach all my early life in Hawaii, my only recollection about an incoming tsunami was when I was six years old or so, a friend and I began to dig a hole in our yard to draw the water just in case it made it into our neighborhood. Yes, we were reprimanded for being so stupid, made even more dumb because the minimal tsunami (but major in Hilo) on the south shore of Honolulu had already come and gone when we began our excavation project. But the good intent was there.

Back to the tour, just about the time we were at that 55 foot Kahuku site, my colleague, Dailin Wang, who had recently transferred from the University of Hawaii to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, got a beep, and noted on his electronic device that a 5.8 earthquake had just hit in the ocean on the opposite side of Sumatra from the big one which devastated the region the day after Christmas. In the minutes that followed there seemed to be no tsunami generated, so he did not have to rush back to the center. The tour group later went to the Center, but I had to move on to other things. I later learned that the actual earthquake was of 6.4 magnitude, and it occurred on land, killing more than 5,000 and leaving 200,000 homeless. This should not be confused with the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which on December 26 killed 230,000. I guess the point to this story is that it is difficult to make a quick assessment with current technology. Someday, the instruments will get better and the communication system improved.

Thus, Seattle, you can sleep comfortably. You won’t even have to be concerned about a tsunami of a meter. Sorry, Hawaii, for gone will be the northeast side of the Big Island. Plus, the tsunami devastation back up the chain, will be devastating. While this tsunami points towards Seattle, there is a rearward effect that will very significantly affect Kailua-Kona, Kahului, Kaanapali, Honolulu and Lihue.

How seriously? It does not matter, for the odds of such an event are too remote to ponder. Yet, if such a landslide were to occur on the west side of the Big Island, a 300 meter tsunami could well hit Waikiki Beach, because it would be in the reasonable near field. Plus, too, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology apparently still sticks by its lab results done for that UK group, so, who knows, maybe they could be right and that tsunami hitting Seattle could very well be 100 meters, or more. Whether it’s Six Hours to Seattle or Half an Hour to Honolulu, I really haven’t yet settled on the details. There could, well, be too, Twelve Hours to Tokyo, when the Hawaii tsunami triggers the fall of the San Andreas Fault, creating a mega-tsunami towards Japan. That might be Book 4.

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Tropical Cyclone Sinlaku (name of Micronesian goddess), now at around 50 MPH, has been moving parallel off the eastern coast of Honshu, is now in the vicinity of Tokyo and should begin to move away from Japan in the east northeast direction. Lots of rain and some wind. Tropical Cyclone Hagupit (Philippine word for flog--the next named storm will be called Jangmi, Korean for rose) just formed east of the Philippines, now at around 50 MPH, should become a typhoon in two days and in four days could strengthen to 120 MPH. However, the projected path shows Hagupit intersecting the Philippines and Taiwan and heading for China.

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Crude oil jumped $6.27 to $104.15/bbl. The DJI leaped 369 to 11,388. Has the economy now rebounded? Nope. It's ironic that the Republican White House so swiftly and boldly led the bailout. Too much government? Yes, but it was helping other republicans who happen to run those financial organizations, plus, they say this the worst national crisis ever...or at least since 1929. Have you been watching gold? When there is a run on gold, that omens a coming severe downward trend of the economy because investors are looking for a safe haven. A kilogram of gold bought a car decades ago. A kilogram of gold buys about the same quality of car today. Yesterday, gold jumped $116/ounce, and today, it dropped $32/oz to $865 because of the rescue. Oops, it just jumped $10/oz to $875. Remember, just two months ago gold was at $977/oz, when the fear of something greater than a recession gained credence. Oil also just happened to be nearing $150/bbl. How high has gold ever gone? Adjusted to 2008 dollars, something on the order $2300/oz at the peak of the second oil crisis in 1980. Gold has long been predicted to hit $2000/oz in 2010. Maybe $5000 in 2012? Go ahead, put in that gold crown now.

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SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE (Part 7)

Hawaii is very similar to the Canaries. We annually get 7 million tourists, and they are up past 9 million. They are a little more than 1000 miles away from Madrid and Honolulu is separated from D.C. by almost 5000 miles. We both have seven inhabited islands of volcanic origin. They are part of Spain but have a so-called eighth satellite, called Venezuela, where many of their inhabitants emigrated to when faced with poverty in the earlier 1900s. Smart, because they now have a more secure link with crude oil. Hawaii’s eighth island is Las Vegas, which keeps winning in the balance of trade and population competition. Dumb, because our involuntary personal contributions just bankrolled the new Echelon on the Strip for the Boyd Gaming Corporation, which was postponed due to our current recessive state of financial affairs.

Let me pick August of 2012, as this seems to be my temporal focal point for unnatural mega disasters. Suppose the combination of a slow moving Category 5 hurricane stalls just south of the Big Island, bringing torrential rains to the east side, say, 48 inches over two days.

An earthquake of magnitude 9.0 triggers the eruption of Mauna Loa and Kilauea. This is a stretch, because the largest previously, the Great Kau Earthquake, only was an 8.0. But, say it happens, and, lava begins seeping into those crevices and faults along the line of the previously defined landslide boundaries, weakened by the horrific quake. The extra percolating rain fluid, which also percolates to depth, becomes steam, and, with more heat, continues to expand like superheated gas. The eruptions continue for several days, heating the interstitial fluids, increasing the edifice pore pressure and, through thermal alteration, expanding fault cracks, weakening critical material interfaces and lubricating slip planes. Decoupling along low friction and strength layers occurs at those flow boundaries of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Kilauea. Of course, those 48 inches of rain added an enormous extra weight to the already metastable underground condition.

At 10:04AM on September 6 (I become 72 that day...but I'll be on Oahu, for sure...if not away from Hawaii on a trip), 2012, the collective strains induced by all the above cause a catastrophic failure of the vertical and horizontal extension of dyke intrusions, and the whole monolithic block falls at 250 Km/hour (155 miles/hour) piling up 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the coastline at a depth of 3048 meters (10,000 feet), creating a 100 meter (328 feet—about as tall as the highest building in Honolulu, but only half as high as the Seattle Space Needle) tsunami headed toward Seattle. Stay tuned for what happened.

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The eye of Tropical Cyclone Sinlaku, at 64 MPH, is just east of Kyushu, and should skirt Honshu over the next couple of days. Rains will be torrential. All is otherwise quiet on the hurricane front.

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Crude oil prices inched up to $98.20/barrel, even when 93% of U.S. Gulf oil output was idled. There doesn't seem to be much correlation between hurricanes and oil prices, probably because the U.S. produces so little oil. This slight rise was blamed on a weakening U.S. dollar. The DJI soared 350 to 10,960 when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced that an independent agency will be created to take bad loans off bank balance sheets. These wild sinusoidal gyrations could make tomorrow particularly terrific or terrible, for various quarterly options will be expiring. AIG will next week be replaced by Kraft Foods on the Dow Jones Industrials.

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THE HAWAII CHALLENGE TO LA PALMA (Part 6)

My first research project at the University of Hawaii, funded by the National Science Foundation Research Applied to National Needs Program, was a laboratory/modeling activity for the Hawaii Geothermal Project. This effort occurred during the early to mid 70’s. I was part of the reservoir engineering team which evaluated the underground condition of the Puna Area on the Big Island of Hawaii, and we subsequently undertook an exploratory drilling program.

It made some sense for me to be involved because chemical engineers are sort of like petroleum engineers. We received guidance from Hank Ramey of the Stanford Petroleum Engineering Department, the world authority in the field.

My lab experiment had to do with building a steel tank on the first floor of Holmes Hall, where the College of Engineering is located, filling it with various types of sand/clay/carbonates/silicates, and simulating what might occur in the real world to produce geothermal reservoirs. I did no real work as such, but supervised the research and educational programs for two students who went on to gain graduate degrees on this subject matter. A third student, who I worked closely with at the well-site, Arthur Seki, went on to work at HNEI, then later became the renewable energy expert for Hawaiian Electric Company. The engineering lead for the project was Paul Yuen, an electrical engineer, who went on to become Dean of the College of Engineering and President of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research. The three of us still golf on occasion.

I became quite familiar with various rift zones, and noticed, in particular, that Kilauea Volcano had a prominent southwest rift zone, beginning at Halemaumau Crater (where visitors congregate at the Volcano Observatory), and extending towards the town of Punaluu, where I met my wife, plus the East rift from Halemaumau to Cape Kumukahi, in the line where our well was to be located. Under extraordinary conditions, that section of the Big Island seemed to me to be more apt to fall into the ocean than the San Andreas Fault in California. If so, a major tsunami would strike a region in the direction of Central to South America. That was in 1974.

It occurred to me around that time, though, that if there were any kind of softening caused by the crisscrossing interfaces of historical Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa flows, somehow weakened by interstitial fluids and/or a’a lava (porous flows), that a bigger chunk of the Big Island from the Volcanoes National Park area cutting across north of Hilo town, from where Pearl comes, could fall in the northwest direction to affect the western states. I promptly forgot this thought as the energy crisis came and I was transformed into a solar energy researcher and renewable resources advocate. Thus, my subsequent forays into hydrogen, Congress and the ocean.

Nearly three decades later, after I retired from the University of Hawaii, I saw an article in the Honolulu Advertiser reporting on a silent earthquake, really a slippage, of the southern flank of Kilauea volcano, which was deemed to be a possible signal of danger. At 3 inches of movement one day in November of 2000, that was 400 times greater than the normal rate for 24 hours.

There has been speculation that suddenly rainy conditions can serve to lubricate underground conditions and also apply additional pressure force (the extra weight of the rain). It so happened that the slip occurred eight to ten days after a storm, which brought 36 inches of precipitation over three days on the south side of Kilauea.

My interest so piqued, I participated in the Second Tsunami Symposium, sponsored by The Tsunami Society in May of 2002 on the University of Hawaii Manoa campus, with the conference site located a two minute walk from my office, which was actually an improvement from my days as a director, provided to me when I retired, with free parking because of my emeritus status. Many of the authors of papers cited above were there, and I had a field day asking, sometimes, ridiculous questions. When you are retired, you gain a sense of boldness, at least with respect to maintaining any kind of reputation. I specifically mentioned to several of these experts that I was thinking about writing a docu-novel called Five Hours to Los Angeles, about how a section of the Big Island would fall into the sea, causing a 1000 foot tsunami to hit Los Angeles. They smiled, were generally kind, and offered suggestions:

o First, while a mega tsunami of 325 meters (1066 feet) hitting the island of Lanai has been suggested, laboratory models show that 100 meters appear to be the maximum possible height of a tsunami caused by a landslide at any significant distance (more than a 1000 miles, for example).

o If I wanted a truly large wave to hit the West Coast of the U.S., the Continental Shelf, to some degree, protects Los Angeles. However, there is an open and deep pathway from the Big Island to Seattle, only a slightly longer distance away. Los Angeles has been damaged too, too many times, certainly in films, but also in reality, while Seattle has managed to escape catastrophic disaster, so what about Six Hours to Seattle? Of course, the time factor represents how long a tsunami generated in Hawaii can reach Seattle—and, coincidentally, the time of an airline flight of that distance. Such is how titles and novels get made.

The more prominent slope failure hazard for Kilauea was to the SOUTHEAST, targeting South America. The 2005 Tsunami page of George Pararas-Carayannis also points in this direction. Plus, all scientific observations show that, unlike the Nuuanu Landslide, this Hilina Slump is indeed, only creeping, and rather carefully and slowly, from 2.5 to 4 inches per year. Thus, any cataclysmic drop seemed unlikely.

Anyway, I needed another Big Island soft spot pointing in the direction of the United States, and, more specifically, at Seattle, and my speculations from thirty years prior came to mind. Unfortunately, I, by then, had discarded fully 90% of the paperwork I once had. So to re-create a scenario, let’s see now, Oahu is about 15% the areal size of the Big Island, and the Nuuanu landslide was supposedly 3000 km3, about one third of the island, six times larger than the hypothetical La Palma version. It would be too much to then say that the landslide could be 20,000 km3 (4,000 cubic miles), so let us settle only for half that, or 10,000 cubic kilometers. The bathymetry is such that if this huge chunk sheared off, it could fall to 10,000 foot depths as close as 30 miles away, and just in the direction of Seattle.

There is a wide variety of processes by which landsides can occur. In fact, there are 23 ways such collapses take place. It was further reported that ocean islands are particularly susceptible to these failures leading to tsunamis, and volcanic edifices are especially prone. Some Hawaiian landslides were measured to be as long as 300 km (186 miles), among the largest recorded. While these mega events might occur every 25,000 to 100,000 years, there is general uncertainty on when the next one will come. Thus, such an episode could occur today, but most probably not. Plus, most tsunamis occur in the Pacific Ocean and Hawaii is where much of this past landsliding activity has occurred, so, why not focus on a possible mega-tsunami from this fair state?

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Tropical Storm Sinlaku at 50 MPH is heading for Kyushu, and should bring considerable rain to Japan over the coming weekend. There is something brewing over the Mariana Islands.

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Crude oil jumped to $97.45/bbl today while the DJI crashed 449 to 10,610.

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THE SCIENCE AND CONTROVERSIES OF MEGA TSUNAMIS (Part 5)

After thirty years of conducting and administering over academic research, I can say with some authority that university faculties tend to be very conservative in their reportage. Reputations can be ruined by an errant article, or, maybe even a paper presentation at an important international meeting, so one is very careful about what is said. On the other hand, the person making the talk tends to be the expert in the field, and people in the audience, through respect or kindness, virtually never criticize in public. In all my years I was never involved in any particularly egregious confrontation regarding the science of a subject, and am not aware of anyone on my staff being so challenged. Well, there was that cold fusion issue, which I still think hasn’t yet been buried. Plus, I am now retired.

The scientific field is replete with honest differences of opinion. The oil companies find their scientists to discredit global climate warming, and some of them are quite qualified, if not respected. There are professors who are doomsdayish, and, in the eyes of their colleagues, perhaps exaggerate the truth to gain attention. Dedicated scientists absolutely detest those who prematurely publish or take liberties with the given facts. They are right, of course, and should continue to demand excellence and quality.

But take for example the line of reasoning asserting that most scientists support global climate warming as a problem because the review process is controlled and heavily skewed by those with this mentality. It would be like committing professional suicide to not be supportive.

Mind you, there are incidents that might have nothing to do with science itself. Geothermal R&D in Hawaii was stopped by Judge David Ezra in the 1970s, who sided with the Hawaiians, environmentalists and pot (marijuana) growers. Into the 1980’s, the Hawaii Geothermal Energy Project, after our initial success, limped along, finally to be terminated by Judge Ezra in 1991 for a lack of an appropriate environmental impact assessment. In 2007, he still is the Federal judge in Hawaii and geothermal development has virtually stopped.

The arguments of researchers providing sound facts and doing good science are regularly overridden these days by public officials influenced by noisy public opinion. Some want to protect the environment, others their homeland and, in the case of stem cell research, religious beliefs.

Ah, but mega tsunamis are something like global climate change, for there is considerable controversy. You can form three basic scientific points of view to a major landslide causing a tsunami: (1) no one has ever confirmed a true mega tsunami over 40 meters; yes, it is possible to have mega tsunamis, but mathematical models say the max wave height is 100 meters; and sure, there can be waves of 500 meters or more.

Group one is inconsequential, for what can be exhibited by unknown past events cannot preclude future occurrences. Thus, the real scientific debate is between groups 2 and 3. This means that, for the purposes of this analysis, it will be taken that the 10 meter normal far-field maximum of a major subsea earthquake generated tsunamis can, indeed, be surpassed by the 100 meter major event from a very large landslide from land or flank of an undersea formation. A 33 foot tsunami is frightening and formidable. A 330 foot tsunami is for the movies, but theoretically possible nevertheless, and in fact, exceeded in my lifetime by a factor of 5 in Lituya Bay, Alaska.

To further differentiate, the meaningful scientific debate for the purpose of this quest is not whether a 1600 foot (488 meter) tsunami is possible or not. That is not as controversial, as such, for several natural and unnatural causes can create such a wave in the near field. From an asteroid, say. Anyway, as a 100 meter tsunami is large enough, the critical question is whether the conditions at the so-called hot spots, Cubre Vieja, Canaries and Kilauea, Hawaii, for example, are capable of causing a sudden massive failure. Most scientists think not. The subsidence process, according to this faction, is continuous and gradual. No catastrophic flank collapses have been experienced in recorded history for both sites, they contend. In apparent contradiction, though, a paper in the Journal of Geophysics Research concludes that there was a past catastrophic landslide along the southeast submarine slope of Kilauea, which eventually led to present day stable slumping.

A particularly good example is the collapse on Oahu of Koolau Volcano a million years ago (give or take 500,000 years). Known as the Nuuanu Landslide or Nuuanu Debris Avalanche, where an apparent earthquake caused one third of the island to break off and fall into the sea. This might have been the largest landslide in the history of the planet, for just one chunk, known as the Tuscaloosa Seamount, is 20 miles (32 km) by 11 miles (18 km) and just more than one mile (1.8 km) high, and is located 60 miles (96 km) northeast of the Nuuanu Pali at a depth of 8800 feet (2680 m). As you drive towards Kaneohe/Kailua through the Pali or Wilson Tunnels and look back at the mountains, what you are viewing is that inside portion of the volcano that remained, although over the years, there has been considerable erosion and land build-up. A web page by Paul Jokiel of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology provides good info (Google search: “Jokiel’s illustrated scientific guide to Kaneohe Bay, Oahu”).

Kenji Satake of the Japan National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology reconstructed the event and surmised on the resultant tsunami from computer models using digital bathymetric data obtained on cruises commissioned by the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center. Estimated were: volume of 3000 km3 and velocity range from 20 m/s to 100 m/sec. Calculated tsunami heights were 100 meters (328 feet) in north Oahu, but 30 meters (98 feet) on the opposite side of the island, Waikiki. Five hours after the slide, 10-40 meters hit the Pacific Northwest and 30-70 meters in California, and in eight hours, 5-10 meters on the Japanese coast. Satake indicated that the wave heights could well have been double those sizes in the Hawaii Islands. So, a noted scientist did write about the prospects of a mega-tsunami in the far field from a landslide.

Thus that potentially largest earth fall producing a mega-tsunami a million years or so ago just happened to be from the island where I was born and still call home, Oahu. I live on Nuuanu Avenue, and the event was the Nuuanu Landslide. At our virtual antipode, the most recent possible major landslide occurred about 4,000 years ago on La Reunion Island, my choice as the possible home of the Free Hydrogen Economy, and one of my travel adventures provided in Chapter 6 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity. As the Canaries have been so thoroughly chastised as a potential source of the next mega-tsunami, and so has the southeast side of the Big Island, tomorrow we look at another hypothetical potential.

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Sinlaku is now a Tropical Storm at 50 MPH, and should skirt Kyushu to the east in two or three days, bringing some rain to Japan. There is a weak tropical cyclone east of India, which is not expected to strengthen before landfall.

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Crude oil remained at $94/barrel. Venezuela might call an OPEC meeting to discuss what to do about falling petroleum prices. The DJI jumped 142 to 11,059.

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SO WHERE WILL THOSE MEGA TSUNAMIS COME FROM? (Part 4)

According to the Discovery Channel (August 8, 2005) and substantiated by a National Geographic Channel hour on “The Ultimate Tsunami” (June of 2007):

o Vasilios Lykousis of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research reports that historically, waves as high as 20 meters (66 feet) have been caused by earthquakes, and that the Corinth Rift, separating the Peloponnese from Greece is the most active seismic zone in Europe.

o Yildiz Altinok of Istanbul University reports that 100 tsunamis affected Turkey in the past 3,000 years, and a destructive earthquake can be anticipated in the Marmara Sea.

o The most recent tsunami in Italy occurred in December 2002 from a Stromboli Volcano slope failure creating a 10 meter (33 feet) wave. The 79 A.D. Mt. Vesuvius earthquake/eruption which buried Pompeii caused a tsunami, as reported by Pliny the Younger. The biggest current worry is 9,900 Mt. Marsili (Europe’s biggest volcano), located between Campania and Sicily Sea.

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o Fogo Volcano, on Cape Verde, an Atlantic archipelago, located off the coast of Senegal, Africa, has been feared by Simon Day of the University College London, to suffer flank instability, which, if a chunk slid into the sea, could create a mega tsunami.

o Similarly, Cumbre Vieja Volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, also off West Africa, is a particular concern for Simon Day and Steven Ward of the University of California. A combination eruption and landslide with a speed of 350 kilometers per hour would have an energy release equal to 6 months of electricity consumption in the U.S. Tsunami waves of up to 650 meters (2132 feet) would be created with a wavelength of 40 km (25 miles), traveling to West Saharan shores at an amplitude of 100 meters (328 feet), and Florida at up to 50 meter waves, eight hours later. On October 12, 2000, BBC2 showed, “Mega-tsunami: Wave of Destruction,” about this potential disaster, which became a most controversial TV program. This program is updated with regularity and again was shown in June of 2006.

o California is a potential target from submarine landslides. A West Coast seeking tsunami created by Mauna Loa Volcano could run up to 18 meters (60 feet) according to Gary McMurtry of the University of Hawaii. Dr. McMurtry mentioned to me that he would speculate that the Nuuanu Landslide (I live on Nuuanu Avenue) should have created a much larger tsunami, but there is no physical evidence remaining.

o The Cascadia Subduction Zone, stretching from Vancouver Island to northern California, is suspected of being able to produce a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, which would almost surely produce something approaching a mega-tsunami. Yes, the reference is a novel, but this whole chapter started with a similar premise for Six Hours to Seattle, my future novel on this subject after The Venus Syndrome.

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Ike is now somewhere in Canada and beyond. The death toll in the U.S. was similar to that of the train wreck near Los Angeles this past weekend, both around 25, should increase over the next few days, but not exceed Ike deaths in the Caribbean. Otherwise, Typhoon Sinlaku, now at 75 MPH, has left Taiwan, after causing considerable flooding, and, while originally heading straight for China, made a right turn, and now is moving in the direction of Japan.
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The price of crude dropped to $94/barrel. Gasoline prices, though, thanks to Ike, are surging. The Dow Jones Industrials sunk 504 to 10, 918, mostly due to the financial market crisis.
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HISTORIC MEGA EARTHQUAKES AND TSUNAMIS (Part 3)

Most major tsunamis, those that are triggered by subsea earthquakes, top out at 10 meters (33 feet) in the far field (thousands of miles away). Nearer the event, run-ups can be much higher. The report is that this maximum is due to the underground vertical separation generally being limited to this upheaval. For example, although 35 meter (115 feet) eyewitness guesses were reported in the near field (less than 30 minutes from the event), the December 26, 2004, Sumatra tsunami apparently had a maximum height of 10.04 meters in the farther field, and traveled around the world, even reaching Point Reyes, California, with an amplitude of 15.6 inches, Atlantic City, New Jersey (9 inches) and Brest, France (3.2 inches).

However, the bathymetry (physical underwater conditions at the coastline) can complicate things, as the 8.3 magnitude earthquake in the Aleutian islands of March 9, 1957 produced a 16 meter (52.5 feet) tsunami on the North Coast of Oahu. There is an amplification factor, sometimes, caused by the bathymetry, when the wave hits. Then there is the confusion between the actual amplitude of the wave relative to sea level, and the so-called run-up, which can be higher, caused by the momentum of the wave.

The Great Kamchatka Earthquake of October 17, 1737, supposedly produced a tsunami greater than 50 meters on the North Kurile Islands, but this was still generally in the basic neighborhood. The Santorini eruption of 1638 BC produced a tsunami also estimated at 50 meters and the 1490 BC eruption might have caused the end of the Minoan civilization in Greece, but there were no long-distance catastrophes. 50,000 died from the tsunami that hit Taiwan on May 22, 1782 and 36,417 from the Krakatoa explosion on August 27, 1883. The bottom line is that a mega-event in or near the ocean can cause great damage in the near field, but generally does not exceed 10 meters thousands of kilometers away. Of course, a height of ten meters, or 33 feet, is a heck of a large wave, and considerable damages do occur. Also, there is something about volcano flank failures and landsides that seem to magnify the effect, at least in the vicinity of the event.

There is no scientific definition for a mega tsunami, but anything over 40 meters (130 feet) should qualify, and Charles Mader has suggested 100 meters. Gary McMurtry of the University of Hawaii has told me that a 1,600 foot (nearly 500 meters) wave appeared on the Big Island of Hawaii 110,000 years ago, probably caused by a submarine landslide from the undersea flank of Mauna Loa Volcano. This remains a controversial incident.

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Tropical Depression Ike is now at 35 MPH, but, interestingly enough, could further strengthen to gale force winds (45 MPH) and leave the U.S. through Michigan into Canada. There will continue to be huge personal inconveniences, as electricity will be out in large portions of the Galveston-Houston area into southwest Louisiana for several weeks. Search and recovery operations are just beginning, but it is not anticipated that the current number of deaths (20) will match the 80 in the Caribbean. The feared tens of billions in damages might settle at, perhaps, $10 billion.

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Typhoon Sinlaku is continuing to dump considerable rain on northern Taiwan (up to 6 feet), and, now at 80 MPH, should weaken, but head north towards Kyushu, Japan, largely missing Okinawa. However, this has been an eratic and unpredictable storm.

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Crude oil is now selling for just UNDER $100/barrel.

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A 1720 FOOT WAVE (Part 2)

Whether it was a tidal wave or tsunami or what, the Alaskan Lituya Bay wave of August 9, 1958, was particularly memorable for Howard Ulrich and his 7 year old son, Junior, on the 38 foot Edrie. They “rode” the 1720 feet (524 meter) wave on their salmon troller, got dumped intact after riding the wave and survived. The father made one of the more famous mayday calls:

“Mayday, Mayday – Edrie in Lituya Bay – all hell broke loose – I think we’ve had it – goodbye!”

An earthquake of magnitude 7.5 triggered a landslide in this bay, which had an entrance only 10 meters wide, so the tsunami/wave quickly dissipated in the open ocean. A more scholarly treatment, written by Charles Mader and Michael Gittings, reported that the run-up was 520 meters, and that there were 5 earlier giant waves over the last century and a half, with the most recent previous one of 150 meter height in 1936. Yes, you will want to avoid Lituya Bay.

Some basic principles regarding earthquakes and tsunamis:

o About Richter magnitude—7 is a major earthquake, with an equivalent TNT explosive weight of 32 million tons, while an 8, which is ten times more powerful (one billion tons of TNT), is a great earthquake. Only a very few 9’s have been recorded, including the monumental December 26, 2004 Sumatra quake. A 10.0, which has never been measured, would be the equivalent of 1 trillion tons of TNT and would represent a San Andreas type fault circling the Earth. There was a four hour ABC TV movie, 10.5 Apocalypse, in May of 2006, but this one was, of course, fictitious and literally divided the United States into two. A theoretical 12.0 magnitude has a seismic energy yield of 160 trillion tons and is said to approximate a fault through the center of the planet, and coincidentally, in energy terms, is about the daily reception of all the solar energy. Finally, seismologists are more and more using moment magnitude, which more closely represents the danger, and is represented by M with a subscript w. However, for our purposes, as the Richter magnitude and that of professionals are about the same, we’ll stick with Richter.

o There have been 3667 significant earthquakes since 1977, which created 107 major tsunamis.

o Nearly 90% of all earthquakes occur in the Pacific Ocean, usually in the vicinity of the Ring of Fire, that starts through New Zealand, wends north of Australia, up the coast of Orient to the Aleutians, east to Alaska and down the western coastline of North and South America.

o Of the 1488 recorded tsunamis, 76% occurred in the Pacific, with 86% being caused by earthquakes, 5% volcanoes, 3% landslides and 5% combinations.

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Hurricane Ike is beginning to impact the Gulf Coast, with the storm surge being particularly large and ominous. As of this writing, the diameter is 900 miles and growing. The eye is not expected to strike Galveston until much later in the evening, but Ike is now "only" expected to reach 110 MPH before landfall. The damage should be in the tens of billions and gasoline prices will zoom up until refineries recover.

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Typhoon Sinlaku continues to somewhat confound, as it is now at 115 MPH and should bring considerable rain to northern Taiwan before EITHER heading west towards China OR through Okinawa to Japan. The odds are that Sinlaku will weaken because it is beginning to get disorganized.

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With the danger of Ike, crude oil dropped to $100.89/bbl at this writing. The Brent spot price is actually at $95/bbl. Part of the insouciance is that Saudi Arabia has increased production to 9.4 million bbl/day and will continue to support the demand. The price of gasoline in the USA will, however, rise because of refinery reductions induced by Ike. At 3:45PM New York time, the DJI is lower by 48 to 11,386.

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SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE (Part 1)

Large Waves, Tsunamis and Mega Tsunamis (Part 1)

The next set of postings have nothing to do with energy nor global warming. Much of the series will be excerpted from Chapter 6 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth. I added this topic because the genesis can be traced to the early 1970's when I was on the team of the Hawaii Geothermal Project, and National Science Foundation funding supported an effort I led on geothermal reservoir engineering, where I noticed that a series of faults, if connected, could lead to a monstrous landslide. In those days, I was not aware that the result could be a cataclysmic tsunami.

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What caught my attention thirty years later is that a major 9.0 undersea earthquake will not cause a tsunami greater than 10 meters in the far field. However, a huge chunk of an island falling quickly and deeply can be calculated to induce 100 meter and greater tsunamis.

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A tsunami is a Japanese term for harbor (tsu) waves, and can be triggered by an earthquake, volcanic eruption, landslide or asteroid impact. They are also low frequency sea waves, meaning that the period or distance or wavelength between crests is quite long. Normal waves have periods of seconds, while tsunamis are in the range of a thousand seconds and more. It is not a tidal wave, as such, nor a rogue wave.

But there are non-tsunami monster waves in excess of 27 meters (90 feet). The Naval Research Laboratory, measuring water pressure changes at the bottom of the ocean during Hurricane Ivan in 2004, recorded such waves. Dan Moore won $68,000 at the 2005 Billabong XXL big wave competition by surfing a nearly 21 meter (68 foot) wave at “Jaws,” located on the north shore of Maui in December of 2004. But this wasn’t as large as the 2003 21+ meter (70 foot) wave ridden by Peter Cabrinha. Not to fear, though, as all these waves peter out at the shoreline, where, in surfing tournaments, hordes of fans sit right where the waves lap. Remember The Perfect Storm, the movie? The largest reported wave, maybe even the one that sank the Andrea Gail, was all of 39 feet.

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Hurricane Ike is at 100 MPH and is expected to strengthen to 120 MPH, with the eye heading straight for Galveston. Now officially a monster (term used by newscasters), Ike has a diameter of 700 miles. The Texas (and even Louisiana) coastline should by Friday begin to suffer from high winds, floods and major storm surges, even as far away as Mississippi and Alabama. The terrifying official government warning is that there will be almost certain death for anyone remaining in and near Galveston, so evacuation is mandatory. Houston will be seriously impacted on Saturday, and, as of today, projections are that as many as half of homes in this area could well be seriously damaged. Offshore oil platforms will be in jeopardy and refineries will almost surely be compromised.

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Tropical Depression Lowell whipped through lower Baha, and now weakening below 30 MPH will further weaken through Mexico.

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Typhoon Sinlaku is at 120 MPH and will mostly miss Taiwan to the northeast, but should head towards Okinawa. This is a strange typhoon, as movement and strength have defied expectations. It is now moving very slowly and could intensity into a super typhoon, or weaken into a tropical storm by the time it nears Okinawa.

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There is a tropical depression that moved away from Kyushu.

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Ike is not scaring the fiscal/oil community, as oil is now just above $100/barrel and the DJI jumped 165 to 11,434.

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