Beware of the volcanoes

Forget the Mayan calendar. Now, please, worry about volcanos.

Houston Chronicle,

13 December, 2012

Note: The calendar pictured is Aztec, not Mayan, as a couple of totally obnoxoid people have pointed out. Somebody should tell Google.

Something really bad will happen at some point. Of that much we can be sure. When, what and how are the variables. One writer went and talked to some experts about what we should be worried about and what we can do about it.

Here’s what the volcano guy said:

“The threat posed by volcanoes worldwide is greatly underestimated,” he tells me. Today, he says, we ignore the fact that very large eruptions occur from time to time. It gets worse when he adds, “This size of eruption may occur on average somewhere on Earth every 200 to 500 years. It will occur again.” And then it gets much worse: “This is by no means the largest, however.” He says we can expect eruptions 10 to 20 times as powerful as the Tambora eruption, which killed 117,000 people. That eruption led to the Year Without a Summer, in 1816, otherwise known as Eighteen-Hundred-and-Froze-to-Death. Since the new eruption Sigurdsson is predicting could be 20 times worse than that, winter really is coming.

By the way, when did professor emeritus become emeritus professor?

Other things we should worry about: asteroids, pandemics, earthquakes, tsunamis. But the writer points out that the real disaster is not being knowledgeable and not being prepared.

Not that I’m ruling out the Mayan thing.