SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE?

The latest episode of the 35-year old Kilauea Volcano eruption surprisingly surfaced in the midst of Leilani Estates on Thursday.  Then yesterday, the strongest earthquake to hit the State of Hawaii in 43 years, measured at moment magnitude 6.9, struck close to where the seven fissures affecting this housing development were venting poisonous gases and lava.

Just prior to the initiation of this new venting, the crater, Pu'u O'o, where the whole process begun on 3January1983 (which I saw, because I was golfing at the Volcano Golf Course), experienced a caldera collapse, and released a gigantic plume of PINK gas thousands of feet high.  Why pink?  Something to do with iron compounds in the light ash, I think.

And, by the way, newscasters are confusing those gases emanating from the fissures.  Volcanic gas is usually around 60% water vapor, with almost all the rest being carbon dioxide.  However, a very small percentage in Hawaii (other sites get chlorine and florine, even more dangerous), is a combination of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and sulfur dioxide (SO2).  You can begin to smell H2S (which has a rotten egg smell) at as low as 0.1 parts per million and SO2 (has odor of burning matches)  at 0.5 ppm.  Eye irritation for H2S starts at 50 ppm, although difficulty sleeping and transitory headaches can be occur as low as 0.25 ppm, but this is probably more psychomatic (mental exaggeration) than real.  SO2 irritation begins at 10-20 ppm and 100 ppm can trigger serious bronchitis.  

A REMEDIATING POINT OF THAT PARAGRAPH IS THAT MUCH OF WHAT VICTIMS EXPERIENCE IS PSYCHOSOMATIC.  Mind you, I wouldn't want to be in those volcanic environments.  However, marketers in New Zealand and Japan tout the sulfur smells at their resorts and onsens as therapeutic.

So back to the Big Island, for, in addition to eruptions, there have been earthquakes.  But there was also a sizable earthquake in the Kohala area.  Could the whole island be at risk?

Chapter 6 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth is all about mega-tsunamis, and compares La Palma in the Canary Islands to the Big Island.  You can buy the book, but this blog site serializes that publication.  

The bottom line is that any earthquake at ocean depths will only induce a 30-foot high tsunami in the far field (thousands of miles away).  However, a massive landfall into the ocean can trigger mega tsunamis hundreds of feet high.

Last year some seismic activity around La Palma sparked yet another article about mega-tsunamis.  This links back to Simon Day's contention Cumbre Vieja from the Canaries could send an 80-foot tsunami to New York City.

How would Florida be affected?

So quoting my SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth:

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.

Well, 2012 came and went.  So what about today?  And why Seattle?  Well, I'm in the process of writing the Introduction of SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE, a possible future novel on these prospects.  Interestingly enough, a flight from Hilo to Seattle takes just about as long as a tsunami to travel that distance.

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PUNA AGAIN BECOMES THE MOST DANGEROUS SPOT ON EARTH

Well, my blog of yesterday certainly showed signs of prescience.  Almost four years ago I posted on:

     THE MOST DANGEROUS SPOT ON PLANET EARTH

I identified Puna as more dangerous than Ocean County, New Jersey, which TIME magazine noted to be #1.  The flow of lava was bad enough, but there were also Hurricanes Isselle and Julio.

It was on 3January1983 that Kilauea Volcano first erupted.  I just happened to be golfing at the Volcano Golf Course that day, when, on the tenth hole we felt the ground shudder:

Soon thereafter, we saw fountains of lava a couple of hundred yards high only a few hundred yards from where we stood.  This was the beginning of the current Kilauea eruption, which has now continuously gone on for three decades PLUS FIVE YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS.

Thus, this eruption has now been ongoing for 35 years and four months.

In the 1970's I suffered from numerous mosquito bites while I helped explore for and succeed in tapping geothermal energy in Puna:

While I was the reservoir engineer in the mid-1970's with UH-Hilo Professor Bill Chen on HGP-A, one of the only examples of anything renewable in Hawaii that actually worked the first time, my interest was more on the total product potential, as I helped get started the Community Geothermal Technology Program, also known as Noi'i O Puna (NOP), or the geothermal equivalent of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority for OTEC on the other side of the island. 

It was in January of 1960 that Puna experienced over a thousand small earthquakes, sort of like during the past week, a similar eruption occurred just above Kapoho town and buried the town, destroying 100 homes and businesses, including a hot spring resort.  The town is gone...expect scattered are some very expensive homes valued at more than a million dollars each.

In 1955 something similar also happened, and, perhaps, this event can serve as a clue to what will occur in Leilani Estates (that orange spot on the island), for yesterday a 500-foot fissure opened up here, throwing lava fountains to as high as 150 feet.  Close by is the 38 MW Puna Geothermal Venture power plant, which was forced to close down operations, for lava would flow in this general direction should that occur.  There were more than 1500 people living in this area, and they were mostly evacuated.  Leilani Estates is just to the left of the geothermal facility:

So, to summarize, the flow from upslope Kilauea Volcano towards Pahoa took several months in 2014 and 2015.  The 3May2018 eruption jumped a few miles downstream from where the flow stopped just short of Pahoa in the Kapoho direction, and in a worst case scenario could wipe out all geothermal electricity production in Hawaii.  In many ways, this should not have been too surprising, for the following map shows past lava flows:

As information becomes available, I'll continue to show updates.

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SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY

I promised RAIN as my next posting, but I will release that article some time early next week.  Today, I will provide a grand perspective of this ten-year blog series, Simple Solutions for Planet Earth and Humanity:

• There were 3807 postings.  I would say I averaged 1.5 hours/posting, which is the equivalent of being on my computer 8 hours/day for 1.5 years.
• Divide by 365, and again by 10, and you get 1.043, which means I more than made up for a few missed days, mostly in China, for Google, which manages this site, has a continuing squabble with the country.  

• This site has been visited about 1.844 million times, which averages to around 550 viewers per day.  My most popular day was on 18December2018 when I posted:  STAR WARS:  A Religious Experience.  A record 27,775 pings were registered.  Incidentally, Solo will be released this month.
• While this site started with renewable energy and the environment, it evolved into my reporting on just about anything legally publishable (Google is touchy about sex, and I've been warned...but kept those presentations intact anyway.  Which ones???  You'll need to read through the whole series to find them.).  Otherwise, at this moment today, the following topics were the most recently clicked-on (note the range of topics and date those particular articles were released):

Posts

Entry	Pageviews
WHERE ARE THE OSAKA WHALE SHARKS??? Jun 24, 2012, 4 comments	20
WHAT ARE OPIOIDS? Dec 4, 2017	14
HOW TO GET TheBus ANNUAL SENIOR PASS Sep 23, 2016	12
SOUTHEAST ASIA IS UNIQUE Dec 3, 2013	8
GREEN OBAMA VERSUS BLACK ROMNEY Oct 4, 2012	8

• Typically a little more than half of the viewers who tune in are from the USA:

• Notice "others" at 18.5%.  That is because 221 countries (Antarctica, for example, is a domain) have looked at this site.
• Why did I continue for ten years?  
• Mostly to keep educating myself.  
• The Saving Planet Earth and Humanity theme was wishful and wistful, but unrealistic.  
• I don't think I influenced anyone to do anything of any real consequence.  
• Yet, I keep telling myself that those seeds of sustainability and peace I planted will someday bear fruit.  

• As for example, suppose Kim Jung-Un in a month or so appears in Singapore or wherever in his monumental session with Donald Trump and says something impossibly sensible like, I have today stopped any nuclear and missile development, and promise not to ever again re-start, but only if the rest of the world begins pledging to reduce its similar capability by 50% as soon as reasonably possible, and for the United Nations to initiate a program to, over time, totally eliminate this scourge, which could well have destroyed Humanity.  The UN can immediately guard all my labs and test sites, and when the 50% goal is reached, everything will be dismantled.
• He would have smartly taken immediate action, while giving the rest of the world time to head in the same direction.  Read my blogs of 4July2017 and 9March2018.

• I still think that the Blue Revolution is the optimal pathway for society to take today.  Space maybe in a millennium, but today our oceans, particularly if we can produce sustainable products and create exciting new habitats, while enhancing the marine environment.  I have created two spin-off blog sites to continue the effort and donated my home to leverage development:
• Blue Revolution Hawaii
• iBlue Revolution to inspire a billionaire or two to undertake this effort
• Three years ago I gave my personal penthouse to the University of Hawaii to initiate a long-term educational program.

My next posting this weekend will be on the prospects for Six Hours to Seattle.  Why?  The Big Island is rumbling, and underground conditions are building for, perhaps, some major activity.  It was only three years ago that Pahoa was again under watch for inundation by lava.  But something even worse can, theoretically, occur.  What if a large chunk of the island around Hilo falls into the sea, could a mega-tsunami be generated headed for Seattle?  Almost surely this won't happen, but this could well be the introduction of one of my other books I'm now experimenting with for this blog site.  Then, next, for sure, RAIN.

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MY LIFE CONTINUES

Well, a one day vacation and I'm back.  However, nothing special, just photos of my more interesting activities this past week.  First, I participated in a once/month "party" to see if this venue could promote the Blue Revolution.  Sponsored by a variety of enterprises, there was a suggestion that I could meet people who knew people who could influence a billionaire.  Those Koi indicate that this event was held at the Pagoda Hotel.

Featured were Byington wines and Korean sochu (the colored bottles were of different tastes, such as kiawe and hibiscus/mint) and whisky:

Basically, around 50 people showed up to pay $25 to drink and eat as much as they wanted.  The food assortment was good:

There was some entertainment, followed by karaoke.

Will I return?  Sure, if I want to join a party.

I had lunch at Sushi King, my usual step one before going on to watch the Rainbow baseball team:

I walked by two areas between the Manoa Campus and King Street where Sushi King is located and saw two patches of sugar cane.  Note the purple color.  In all my years with the sugar industry this was the variety which had the sweetest stalk with minimal fiber.  However, all the productive canes actually harvested were greenish yellow.

The University of Hawaii baseball team plays just good enough to win more than lose, sometimes.  However, nothing like a Sunday baseball game with Diamond Head in the background.

May the first is Lei Day in Hawaii.  Why?  The tradition started 90 years ago to commemorate the presentation of floral wreaths to say aloha.

I had two options.  15 Craigside had our own celebration, but I chose to catch The Bus into Waikiki, and began with lunch at Yauatcha:

Hot sour soup and Shanghai Soup Dumplings.  Well fortified, I walked to the Waikiki Bandstand where there must have been a hundred vendors selling something.

There was entertainment, a procession beginning the formal program, a whole lot of leis and hats:

I had defrosted a Miyazaki wagyu beef for dinner, so stopped by Safeway to buy a small amount of ahi to make an enhanced Hawaiian poke.  I added Hawaiian mix (kukui nut, sesame oil, limu), chopped green and white onions, kazunoko marinated in scotch, chili pepper and soy sauce.  What a meal on my lanai:

I later took a full moon photo from my lanai:

I'm set to go golfing at the Ala Wai Golf Course, where the Star Advertiser this morning announced that the driving range will get a $50 million face-lift.  At one time this was the busiest golf course in the world with 220,000 rounds of play per year.  This is now down to 120,000, which I love, because I usually can show up and be on the tee in minutes.

My next posting will be entitled RAIN.  Portions of Houston got five feet of rain over a whole week from Hurricane Harvey.  Last month the Wainiha area on Kauai got more than four feet of rain in 24 hours.  Wainiha is where my grandfather's hydroelectric plant is located.  Coming:  everything you need to know about rain.

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