Images of Ocean Floor Show Effects of Tsunami 357
Iphtashu Fitz writes "This week the UK's Royal Navy presented images taken by the survey ship HMS Scott of the damage to the floor of the Indian Ocean that triggered the tsunami two months ago. The Scott has a high-resolution multi-beam sonar that let it generate highly detailed images of the sea floor, some 200m to 5000m below sea level. An image showing the scale of the damage, and the full presentation made by the Commanding Officer of HMS Scott (38MB PowerPoint) are available. The presentation contains a number of images that have more detail than those available on the websites."
***ERROR! Ignorance tolerance overload! (Score:3, Insightful)
BZZZT! The surface of the earth cannot be damaged. Changed, yes, but not damaged. Unless you're suggesting that we need to get back to Pangaea somehow.
Look, there are natural tectonic processes that have been going on for as long as the earth existed. Volcanoes and earthquakes are CONSTANTLY reshaping the surface of the earth. THIS IS NOT DAMAGE. This is normal behavior for the ecosystem.
Next we'll be hearing that the predator/prey relationship needs to be banned because it damages animal populations, or that animals need to poop more because the coprophilic bacterial populations are abnormally low.
tsunami WAS the effect, not the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
I think people really really like saying "tsunami". Too bad most don't even pronounce it the right way.
The floor was not the effect of the tsunami, it was the effect of the earthquake, of which the tsunami was also an effect.
See, I like saying "tsunami" too!
tsunami. tsunami. tsunami.
Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
To me, this is a huge reminder that the planet in itself is capable of incalculable (in terms of lives affected) violence. And also that there will be in due time, something comparable. Or worse.
And to think about the squabbles we have, our territorial ambitions, our day to day lives, it really means nothing in the face of these kinds of forces.
Re:Short attention span (Score:1, Insightful)
This just in: Poodle soaked! Tsunami still a tragedy! Goth's flock to Sri Lanka for mass suicide, just like lemmings!
Oh yeah, and some important stuff happened elsewhere too
Re:***ERROR! Ignorance tolerance overload! (Score:3, Insightful)
this is stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
These stories that reference some outside source are useless half of the time, because the source instantly becomes unavailable for a few hours until some new story comes up. It's getting really old.
Cause and Effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Images of Ocean Floor Show Effects of Tsunami
The damage to the ocean floor was a result of the cause of the tsunami - not the effect thereof. Tsunamis do not damage the ocean floor until they get into very shallow water (i.e. the coastline).
Re:Short attention span (Score:5, Insightful)
The lack of media coverage is just because nothing new is happening. The event has happened, and now the affected areas are entering a long rebuilding process. We're still helping them. It's just not a new story anymore. There's a reason it's called the news.
Re:***ERROR! Ignorance tolerance overload! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Save the server - download through Dijjer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:***ERROR! Ignorance tolerance overload! (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on now, you're not even attempting to understand what they are talking about. I don't know how this was modded insightful, but it is damage my friend. Animals died, habitats were destroyed, plant life uprooted/moved/destroyed, rare/endangered species killed (not that I know for a fact, can't see the webpage). This is damage. It doesn't matter that these animals would die eventually anyway, it doesn't matter that in 200,000 years that piece of ocean floor won't exist anymore.
Your cocky presumptiousness does not bely intelligence, it belies a refusal to understand something. Damaged, changed, modified, whatever it all means the same thing. And gee, the two "ridiculous" examples you list probably already happen somewhere in the world! People hunt to keep animal populations down (those bastard deer come to mind); I'm sure somewhere in the world predators are being kept away from herbavors to "protect" the herbavors from being "damaged". Hmm, maybe we should just ban the word "damaged", because obviously every thing that happens in the universe is due to nature. Therefore everything that happens would have happened eventually anyway, and it can not possibly be considered damage because it is "all in the natural order of things."
Why don't you use your self-proclaimed knowledge for something useful, like understanding that words can mean multiple things and not everything people write about is a semantic argument?
Re:'Damage' is a loaded term (Score:3, Insightful)
Heh.. I was going to make the same comment but you got it first.
When a tree grows out of the ground, it pushes soil aside -- would you then describe the ground as "damaged?" Is the moon damaged because it has craters?
The word "damage" is only meaningful in the context of human activities. As you succinctly stated, this is change, not damage.
It's still "damage" (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't say it's not damage, I would rather say that it's this type of damage is just a normal part of the Earth's processes. It's still damage, although I understand your point that that is probably too abstract for Joe Public to grasp by him/herself, and so the term is misleading to the public, who only think of damage in purely negative terms.
Next we'll be hearing that the predator/prey relationship needs to be banned because it damages animal populations
Similar but true: For a long time people thought that forests and other ecosystems such as grasslands and vynbos should be "protected" from fires, because it "obviously causes damage", or so people intuitively thought. This causes problems such as excessive amounts of flammable material building up on forest floors, making fires far worse when they do occur, and complicating necessary natural decomposition processes. More importantly, fires have been burning in these ecosystems for so long that the plants and animals have evolved to in some cases require them to occur, for example some types of seeds will only germinate once they have been burned or smoked. Nowadays the focus is usually on better management through controlled burnings so as to avoid the burnings causing problems for human activities.
As with all complex systems, the natural world is not always intuitive. Also, wanting to protect nature and *understanding* nature are two different things. The problems stem from incomplete knowledge (as with global climate change). The answer is always more knowledge.
Re:Short attention span (Score:3, Insightful)
He wasn't bashing the US rather he was being a little critical of the US media which in my opinion, not only needs a little ribbing, but also a full on figure-four-leglock. And maybe a few kicks to the skull for good measure.
If being critical of the US media makes a person an american agitator , then forward my name to the committee of Un-American Activities.
btw, i find your username particularly ironic in contrast to the tone of post. back to the quaaludes for you, baby.
Re:Short attention span (Score:3, Insightful)
How much have you PERSONALLY given to the cause? And then, can we see how much you have spent on other, not-necessary expenses?
If you want to cast stones, one should be ready for the return volley.
Re:Not very nice (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Short attention span (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether or not the money is sufficient, the fact remains that we're willing to spend 1000 times as much money per capita on war as on humanitarian activities. No matter how you slice it, there's something wrong there. Iraq is not like World War II which had to've been won at any cost.
My argument about your personal giving is valid. If someone doesn't but their money/actions where their mouth is, then they are generally not worth listening to.
I didn't say it was an invalid argument, merely that it's silly because I could simply lie and tell you I donated $1000 personally and you'd have no way of checking. So what's the point in telling you whether I've donated? You can conveniently claim I'm just making it up.
Some would say every possible solution is wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)
Some people will say we are not spending enough no matter how much we spend. Sure Iraq was a war of choice -- it was also a war I opposed. Once we made a commitment there as a nation we had no choice to follow through with that commitment. Iraq is our obligation at this point.
What happened to the people effected by the tsunami is tragic. Of this there is no question. However, our obligation there is not the same as our obligation in Iraq. In many ways it is pointless to compare the two situations.
When peole bash Bush, just to bash Bush they loose a lot of credability. If you want to criticize his private social security accounts thing, hey there is a lot to support your critizism. Fell free to criticize how he handled the occupation of Iraq. I personally think he fucked that one up. However, if you think everything he touches turns to poo, you're just going to be considered a left leaning extremeist.
So what about.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Joint Academic Network also pays per unit of data transferred over the transatlantic link. You've just bankrupted them!
On a slightly more serious note, I think the fact that Slashdot can bring down some fairly beefy servers demonstrates that there is a fundamental flaw in the architecture of the Internet. Slashdot is "popular", but not overwhelmingly so. I don't think I've ever seen a topic go above a few thousand posts and it's very likely many people posted more than once. Slashdot's total circulation is probably in the 5,000 - 7,500 bracket. In comparison, a typical British broadsheet might be read by 175,000 people. Give Slashdot 30 times the readership, and admins of even the most powerful sites would cower in terror.
Network overload is not confined to the realms of Slashdot, however. The tsunami early warning system is to be placed in a highly active region. There may not be many real tsunamis, but there will be a great deal of information flooding in. Unless those monitoring and administrating the system have a reliable and effective means of filtering out what is useful and what isn't, they'll either be causing a panic on a daily basis, or blithely ignore the next catastrophe as it unfolds.
Raw information is like raw chicken - hazardous in that state, but beneficial when correctly processed.
Re:***ERROR! Ignorance tolerance overload! (Score:2, Insightful)