On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:22:17 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

Got this out of a Yahoo article today:

A group of more than 100 scientists and experts say in a new report that
California faces the risk of a massive "superstorm" that could flood a
quarter of the state's homes and cause $300 billion to $400 billion in
damage. Researchers point out that the potential scale of destruction in
this storm scenario is four or five times the amount of damage that could
be wrought by a major earthquake.

It sounds like the plot of an apocalyptic action movie, but scientists
with the U.S. Geological Survey warned federal and state emergency
officials that California's geological history shows such "superstorms"
have happened in the past, and should be added to the long list of
natural disasters to worry about in the Golden State.

Yep. All the mailing lists that I'm on have had comments about this,
except the ARES mailing list. Go figure.

I did some digging in order to find out where this alarmist mess came
from. Apparently (not sure yet) the government commissioned various
agencies to produce reports on the worst case environmental scenarios
so that emergency services could be adequately prepared.
Unfortunately, one of the reports read like a warming of impending
doom instead of a training exercise. I traced the source back to:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1312/
The summary on this page is slightly alarmist, which the new media
expanded to apocalyptic proportions. The actual 201 page PDF report
(plus appendixes) treats it fairly and logically. The summary does
not. The bottom line is that this hypothetical storm has about the
same chance of happening as the next big earthquake. Both are
inevitable, but the timing is indeterminate.

With all the parnoid rants, this would probably be a good time to
unload a surplus boat, inflatable, or submarine.

Of course, more reasearch (money) is necessary. Sigh...


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