Hawaii: Cane-Quake or Cane-Flows?

by

As I was contemplating the pending arrival of the hurricane now bearing down on Hawaii, an odd possibility crossed my mind:  Could the hurricane have some impact on the geological activity of the Big Island now in progress?

Let’s take it from the top and see where things lead.  Starting with the NOAA SitRep as of early today:

“SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT:

A Hurricane Warning is in effect for…
* Oahu
* Maui County…including the islands of Maui, Lanai, Molokai and
Kahoolawe
* Hawaii County

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for…
* Kauai County…including the islands of Kauai and Niihau

A Hurricane Warning means that hurricane conditions are expected somewhere within the warning area. A warning is typically issued 36 hours before the anticipated first occurrence of tropical-storm- force winds, conditions that make outside preparations difficult or dangerous. Preparations to protect life and property should be
rushed to completion.

A Hurricane Watch means that hurricane conditions are possible within the watch area. A watch is typically issued 48 hours before the anticipated first occurrence of tropical-storm-force winds, conditions that make outside preparations difficult or dangerous.

Interests in the the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands should monitor the progress of Hurricane Lane.

So far, just the kind of thing that the MSM is covering, sans the rain jacket-wearing reporter breathlessly covering falling palm fronds.

Now to our odd slant on things:

We know that earthquakes and lava flows are the result of crustal movement of the big=old Earth.

We also know that the atmosphere weighs something.  As one site summarizes:

“…This means that if you took a column of air one square inch wide that went all the way up through the atmosphere, it would weigh 14.7 pounds. So in order to figure out how much the whole atmosphere weighs, all we need to do is figure out how many square inches make up the surface of the earth.”

Next, let’s assume that there will be a major drop in atmospheric pressure (a common feature of all cyclonic rotations) of 2-pounds per square in.  Further, let’s assume the area impacted in not terribly big…how about we toss 25-miles square up on the white board, shall we?

This gives us (25X25) or 625 square miles of major weight change in what’s weighing down on (local) Earth over there.

Next, we run the weight calculations:

There are 144 square inches to the foot.  So the weight reduction is 299 pounds per square foot as the storm rolls through.

Converted to weight on a single acre, for which there are 43,650 square feet each, the weight-change is 12571200 pounds per acre.

We all remember 640-acres per square mile, which pushed the weight-change to 8,045,568,000 pounds of atmospheric weight-change per square miles..  8-billion pounds.

And last, but not least, we multiply this times our area of weather (the 625 square miles of maximal low pressure) and Viola!

5,028,480,000,000 pounds.  Five Trillion Pounds!

We are sorry for the heavy rains now hitting the Big Island and, if I’m correctly oriented, the surf on the (mostly rocky so who’d try it) Kona Coast.

But it’s reading headlines and having numbers like those above come flooding into the brain that make me nervous.

As the UK’s Express is headlining today “Ring of Fire MAP: Earthquake BLITZ hits Pacific triangulation points – MEGAQUAKE fears.”

I’m not predicting there will be any consequences of the passing low pressure system in the vicinity of Hawaii, but it may be a factor somewhere down in the noise-floor of natural events that sets off earth-changes.

That said, my intuition about Hawaii and current quake activity does indeed have some basis in fact as outlined in :”Earthquake Weather: Relationships between barometric pressure changes and seismicity...”  [West, J.D., Garnero, E.J., and Shirzaei, M., School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287  – 2015]

A short snip:

“t has been widely shown that seismic activity can be triggered by stress changes of a few kiloPascal s (kPa)
over periods of tens of seconds associated with passing surface wave trains from remote earthquakes. Less well
investigated is whether kPa range stress changes over periods of hours-to-days associated with changes in
barometric pressure can also influence seismicity.”

Also see the 2006 paper by Shingo Watada, Takashi Kunugi. Kenji Hirata, Hiroko Sugioka, Kiwamu Nishida, Shoji Sekiguchi, Jun Oikawa, Yoshinobu Tsuji. smfHiroo Kanamori, “Atmospheric pressure change associated with the 2003 Tokachi?Oki earthquake.”

With the literature checked, and Hurricane Lane rolling by, we felt rather than the usual feeding-frenzy of me-too-reporting of falling coconuts, we’d offer a science and data-based question or two.  Since that’s what we do.  This is not “alarmist” in the sense that the odds a relatively low.  It is a grand exercise in mindfulness given the recency of flows on east-southeast side of the Big Island.

Decrypting the Fed

Although the stock market has now moved into record territory on its (for now) present Bull Run, we would draw your attention to the economic modeling presented at the last Fed meeting centered around the problem that goes something like this:

“If the crap hits the fan, does the Fed have enough maneuvering-room to lower rates enough to deal with any crisis from interest rates in their present range?”

The Fed’s work (assuming you read their periodic economic papers) is exemplary.  They totally “get” something called the Effective Lower Bound – (ELB) the interest rate below which you can lower ad infinitum and not change the outcome.  In other words, when rates for to zero, or lower.

The co-opted press doesn’t focus on Big Problems like this, not when there are juicy porn star payoffs to sell papers.  It’s real work to think-ahead and it would actually sell fewer papers since we live in a country where critical-thinking and deep intuitive have been marched out back and shot by the Political Correctness Execution Teams.

For those of us remaining, though, the Fed minutes discussion of their in-house computer-modeling usefully guides our own researches.  Here’s what they’re reporting:

“The staff’s analysis indicated that under various policy rules, including those prescribing aggressive reductions in the federal funds rate in response to adverse economic shocks, there was a meaningful risk that the ELB could bind sometime during the next decade. That analysis also implied that threshold-based forward guidance and balance sheet actions could provide additional accommodation that could help support economic activity and mitigate disinflationary pressures in these episodes. In the model simulations, because of unanticipated shocks and lags in the transmission of the effects of monetary policy actions on economic activity and inflation, the effectiveness of monetary policy in general, including forward-guidance and balance sheet policies, was limited in mitigating the initial downturn in the economy. The staff noted that there was considerable uncertainty surrounding the estimated effects of those policies on the economy; in addition, estimates of how frequently the ELB could bind in the future differed across the models that the staff examined.

In the discussion that followed the staff’s briefing, participants generally agreed that their current toolkit could provide significant accommodation but expressed concern about the potential limits on policy effectiveness stemming from the ELB. They viewed it as a matter of prudent planning to evaluate potential policy options in advance of such ELB events.”

This got them onto the problem we’ve been pointing out lately, too, namely that REAL WORLD interest rates don’t seem to be swallowing the Fed’s “We’re gonna raise rates” tough-talk:

” Many participants commented on the monetary policy implications of the apparent secular decline in neutral real interest rates. That decline was viewed as likely driven by various factors, including slower trend growth of the labor force and productivity as well as increased demand for safe assets. In such circumstances, those participants saw monetary policy as having less scope than in the past to reduce the federal funds rate in response to negative shocks. Accordingly, in their view, spells at the ELB could become more frequent and protracted than in the past, consistent with the staff’s analysis. Moreover, the secular decline in interest rates was a global phenomenon, and a couple of participants emphasized that this decline increased the likelihood that the ELB could bind simultaneously in a number of countries….”

This last is important as hell.  What they’re talking about in polite, econometrician terms, is a Global Finance Crisis, which you can safely short-hand as “All the shit, hits the fan at once.”  (ATSHTFAO).

Here’s the thing around here:  We think there’s much to be understood in our own, small, tax-chattel, worker-bee lives when the people up the food-chain are talking about world-ending collapse.  You know, the kind where a crisis rekindled in Europe this fall, comes to America  – a country already sinking quickly into its (French Revolution cloning) Digital Uprising, Webolutionary Coup.

Where, we note with interest this morning that PJ Media has reached pretty much the same conclusions we have.  Go read their report “Social Media Companies the Most Dangerous Monopolies Ever” and tell me if it sounds familiar…

Webolutionaries To Crash Market?

We know who president Trump will blame if impeachment goes forward:  “Trump says the stock market would crash if he were impeached: ‘Everybody would be very poor’.”

What the rest of the media misses is that ever since Obama (and even George Bush) the US has been on a path of industrialization and monetization of hate and division.

Foreign leaders are beginning to exploit the Trump versus webolutionaries gap as they’re trying to maintain asymmetric trade relations that don’t benefit the US.  Example: President Trump Seriously Misunderstands Trade, Japan’s Trade Minister Says.  Gee, why would he say that, you think?  Japan has an aged workforce and social payment structure balanced on unbalanced trade deals.  They Yen for a great deal…for them.  For the record, the Nikkei 225 index is still at levels just over HALF of what it peaked at in 1989.  Just sayin’…

Which is how/why social media works and why this all ends badly in a 1929-style global crack-up as soon at the next year, perhaps.  And why we won’t recover quickly.  We will be at – and below – the Effective Lower Bound of rates…the story and Big Picture stuff the MSM can’t understand, let alone report on.

Notice how we’re talking a lot more about prepping now?

Meantime, see how Trump is warning the Fed and how dems are saying it’s Trump who will crash things.  You know the shit’s just ahead since already, the fancy footwork to place game is beginning to ratchet-up.

You don’t need the business degrees.  Just freaking read and think a bit.

On Tap

PMI data out later this morning – and then some new home sales.  Durable Goods tomorrow morning…so be sure and come back then.

Stocks are flat going into the open.

And, in Other “News”

U.S. economy expected to slow, damaged by trade war: Reuters poll.

And in a showing of corporate something-or-other Volkswagen to invest $4 billion to build digital businesses, software.  Ever hear of Microsoft, or Edmunds.com meine freund? KBB.com?  App’s to sell cars?  ViseGrip me!

One Road to Coping with the “News”

Useful book came up on my reading list this week: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life.  Helps.

Off to breakfast…moron the ‘morrow…as moron the keyboard returns.

38 thoughts on “Hawaii: Cane-Quake or Cane-Flows?”

  1. Typhoons are electrical in nature(Birkland Currents) so are Volcanoes. Usually the Typhoons come in from the south east and are “ground” out by some underwater Islands out there. This one is coming up from the south and we have an incoming CME. its going to be an Interesting Event I imagine. lots of other factors, sun earth connection, where we are in the current return sheath where the Moon is, how the planets line up. Lots and lots of Energy involved.

  2. George

    Did you factor in the Ka-zillion pounds of water that will be dropped on Hawaii??

    That might null out the air pressure difference or over power it.

    • Actually, rain works the other way.
      Hurricanes are low pressure events, so the rain only offsets some of the lesser surface pressure
      And it runs off…

  5. George. Nice on economics lately.
    Tough time for you cheerleaders, though. If only Your Guy didn’t live in a cesspool of crime and corruption. Btw, how those trade wars going for you? And the extra $2 trillion on the national debt for rich guys? (Instead of school lunches for hungry kids? Your team is shameless.)

    And I see the farm where the murderer of that lovely young girl worked for 4 years owned by a Trump supporter. Explains why your team won’t do the one thing that would actually restrict illegal immigration — Much harsher penalties on employers. But oops, they’re mostly Republicans. Instead it’s all about some mythical Wall that a $20 ladder will foil. Best, Mike.

    • The fat lady is still off-stage.
      Remember, the John W. Huber FBI probe is still the equivalent of the Mueller fiasco – except on the other side where the media is not pointing the public.
      Yet.

        • Dems and pubs have both in the past, so why not? Don’t think Obama didn’t offer some “secret get out of jail cards? We’d love to see that asked…under Oath.

    • …”live in a cesspool of crime and corruption”

      Say what you want about him (I certainly do), but it’s not his fault that they built the official residence inside the District of Columbia!

    • You must be really upset at how the debt doubled in 8 years.

      No no , you can’t be upset , silly me , because it happened under “sheer perfection” himself !!!

      I totally forgot that adding to the debt is only an issue when “those” ((( ahem ))) guys were in office.

      Please continue…

  6. G,

    I like the concept –

    Low atmospheric pressure weakens the walls of the volcano causing a massive underwater landslide… which goes unnoticed until a 500′ wall of hot water starts bearing down on California.

    Hopefully the disaster is filmed in HD from helicopters.

  7. Mike’s comment right out of the gate shows how well the monetization of hate is playing.

    If you’re in the middle, and think both extremes are pulling everyone else down with, here’s some suggested reading about the end of empire, and what systems thrive during those slow-motion train-wrecks. Hint: clans, tribes, localized economies (maybe like a ‘state bank’, currently being discussed?).

    Forging the Hero, by John Mosby. WarhammerSix press.
    Subtitle: Who Does More is Worth More

  8. There is normally a tidal surge as the hurricane moves, so you will need to factor in the formula. All of this shifting and movement of water and atmosphere should have some impact on the plates.

  9. George,
    Great column today! Lot’s of info to ponder. One thing though… You Said.”What the rest of the media misses is that ever since Obama (and even George Bush) the US has been on a path of industrialization and monetization of hate and division.”

    That path of the monetization of hate and division started with Newt Gingrich in the 90’s…about the time Fox News was first broadcasting…

    …Here is a 2009 Excerpt from the LA Times writer Johanna Neuman…
    “I’ve made a point the last few weeks of asking people across Washington who’s to blame for the increasing dissonance in our politics. Why is it, I asked, that the extreme wings on the right and left are driving the nation’s politics even as public opinion clings to the good common sense of the center?

    The answers ranged from Fanne Foxe, the stripper who jumped into the Tidal Basin in 1974 after Wilbur Mills, the hard-drinking Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who was escorting her, was pulled over by the police, to Brian Lamb, the man who invented C-SPAN in 1979, opening government to public scrutiny and spawning a generation of posturing politicians.

    But the man who got the most votes as the man who ruined Washington was Newt Gingrich.

    It wasn’t that the Georgia Republican who engineered the toppling of Democrats from power in 1994 deliberately undermined political civility; it was that the crop of legislators he helped into power came in under redistricting plans that virtually guaranteed safe seats, which granted politicians a newfound power to ignore the center.

    In fairness, upheavals had already started to shake up the scene long before Gingrich’s arrival. President Lyndon Johnson’s success in winning landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s led to a realignment — Democrats lost the South, Republicans lost the Far West, and both parties hardened their politics along the lines of Barry Goldwater’s admonition that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” The twin legacies of Vietnam and Watergate coated the town with a cynical aftertaste. And Ronald Reagan swept to office in 1980 in a landslide that allowed Republicans to wrest control of the Senate from Democrats for the first time in 28 years.

    But it was Gingrich who presided over what was perhaps the most dramatic change: the Republican takeover of the House. Democrats until then had run the House for all but four of the preceding 72 years.”

    • Regrettably Mark, you have fallen into the democrat histerical revisionist trap.
      In the passing of the 1964 Civil Right Act, republicans in the house supported it 136-171 (80 percent in favor) while the demogogues were a more tepid 153 of 244 which pencils to 63 percent.
      And in the Senate, the Party of Lincoln was 82 percent in favor while the democrats only 69 percent.

      People who have not lived in the South, may not remember that such egregious groups like the Klan were mainly the efforts of democrats. Yes, the Big Lie is still out there.
      Remedial reading in the foreign press may help: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/republicans-party-of-civil-rights

      Or, don’t let a few stubborn facts revise you PoV.
      Side bet on the Housing data Tuesday next?

      • Thats a little misleading George…Both parties have flip flopped a gazillion times on their platforms over the years.
        1. Third parties aside, the Democratic Party used to be favored in the rural south and had a “small government” platform (which southern social conservatives embraced), and the Republican party used to be favored in the citied north and had a “big government” platform (which northern progressive liberals embraced). Today it is the opposite in many respects…Other examples that bely todays norms…

        2.President Nixon created a council in part to consider how to organize federal government programs designed to reduce pollution, so that those programs could efficiently address the goals laid out in his message on the environment.

        3. Bill Clinton Signed two banking de-regulation bills. Perhaps the only domestic issue George Bush and Bill Clinton were in complete agreement about was maximizing home ownership, each trying to lay claim to a record percentage of homeowners. But credit a big portion of the meltdown to then HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo.

        4. The dems flip flopped post 2008 by initiating the Dodd Frank bill…which the GOP wants to dismantle.

        5. In Charlottesville we saw the Dixie battle flag of the Southern Democrats being waved by Republican Trump voters who were standing up to protect the statue of the Southern Democrat rebel army leader General Lee. Meanwhile, the progressive American liberal-ish antifascists marched against these groups with the progressive social justice movement Black Lives Matter in abolitionist spirit.

        6.Today, unlike the past… the Republican party doesn’t have a notable progressive left-wing and the Democratic Party doesn’t have a notable socially conservative right-wing. Instead both parties have establishment and populist wings and the parties are divided by stances on social issues. In other words, regional interests and the basic political identities of liberal and conservative didn’t change as much as factions changed parties as party platforms changed along with America.

        Its not revisionist to say that Newt Gingrich changed the way we looked at Dems and the GOP. He will be the first to admit it. According to the Washington Post…

        “Gingrich’s proposition, and maybe accurately, was that as long as [Republican leaders] and our party cooperate with Democrats and get 20 or 30 percent of what we want and they get to say they solved the problem and had a bipartisan bill, there’s no incentive for the American people to change leadership. You have to confront, delay, and undermine and impose failure in order to move the public.”

      • Clinton signing of the “Financial Services Modernization Act.” “The bill, also known as the Gramm-Leach Act, was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate, and signed into law by an enthusiastic President Clinton. It paved the way for the creation of banking behemoths like Citigroup, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase. A decade later, the repeal of Glass-Steagall was widely considered a major cause of the 2008 financial collapse.”

        https://billmoyers.com/content/glass-steagall-dodd-frank-and-the-volcker-rule-a-primer-and-resources/

        Clinton, Mr. and Mrs. are Criminals, and that’s a FACT.

    • George, what exactly are you taking umbrage with? Wasn’t Johnson president and didn’t the passage of the legislation mark dramatic shifts in the party bases?

      I too agree that Newt has an outsized share of the blame. He dismantled many of the non-partisan institutions in favor of external partisan replacements.

      Seems much of the Republican plan for retaining power today rests with gerrymandering and suppressing the vote of their opponents.

  11. The Sun article triangle is ridiculous. I could draw a triangle on the earthquake maps any day of the week.
    It will be interesting to watch the volcano during this storm. I hope USGS has some plans for testing the potential reactions. Not that I trust them to report their findings. With all the earthquakes they choose not to report they are undermining their own credibility.
    If you aren’t checking in with Dutchsinse you should be. He’s on to something.

  12. Just a thought on the “longest bull market”. If you disregard the 20% decline rule for a bear market, we had one bull market 2009 to 2011, 2011 to 2015, 2016 to 2018, and now we may have started a 4th bull market in July 2018.

    • Those are not discrete bull markets, but you have just pin pointed the 5 Elliott moves nicely, saving those less advanced in the class today’s homework, lol

  13. I have observed the passing of two hurricanes near to the Big Island that have triggered earthquakes with their close pass. Around 4 to 5 magnitude if I recall. The volcano seems to have reached a pressure equilibrium now that the summit collapse earthquakes and lava flows have stopped. We have had two small quakes in the volcano area, around 2.6 magnitude, in the past two days. I keep watching for a bigger one as the storm bears closer to the west side of the Big Island.

    Passing rain bands in East Hawaii, 8 inches in past 24 hours… some areas more intense. Flooded roads. I would not want to be in Honolulu right now. That sharp left turn predicted is dependent upon wind shear to weaken the storm from Cat 4 down to Cat 1 and the timing is everything! If it doesn’t weaken fast enough it will continue on course and roll directly over Honolulu. It is WAY too close for comfort!

    Everyone lumps Hawaii into the “Ring of Fire”, but technically we are NOT part of it. No crustal faults in Hawaii. We are a mantle hot spot that generates a shield volcano. Very much different than the subduction zone volcanoes around the rim of the Pacific.

  14. The weather has been a mess around here to and nothing out of the garden.. no bee’s.. no pests either…. amazing.. then there is stormy controversy that keeps popping up in the news.. I wish they would all just stop unfortunately it won’t until the presidents term is over with.. amazing how you never hear anything about any of the other scandals that are way worse in many ways even if the russian thing was true which I doubt seriously.Most of the people figured that the DC two steppers were a hoaky bunch already. I still think Trump paid to much for stormy.. .. LOL..

  16. The surface area of the outer reaches of the atmosphere is larger than the surface area of the Earth’s surface. Your 1″ rectangular columns are actually wedges and several square inches by the time they reach space. Bottom line is the weight of the air is actually greater than your estimation.

  18. Your team, my team, blah blah. We are all one team out here in manifest reality. Get your head out of the tv. If your team is affected by global monetary calamity so is the other. This open wallowing in shallow partisanship is gross and offensive. What would happen if we all agreed that the parties are controlled by people who are not like us, and therefore do not deserve such loyalty? Are you just like the “team” you so rabidly spew about? Are you so unlike your fellow citizen who just wants to go home at night and eat dinner with his family? Sickening, childish, foolish, blind idiots. Rise above it.

    • Excellent commentary, but one cannot get this across to whom it matters. Extremely said, but it is what it is. There is just too much truth in your commentary ;-(.

  19. Lol who is responsible for taking us off the gold standard. That is where the monetizing begins! Even then it does no good playing the blame game. Every politician is an “opportunist”. Every single one of them. No exceptions. Not even Kennedy. Kennedy took us into vietnam. Lol

    Not much thinking outside the box lately round these parts.

    Im scaling my output down as much as i can. I got rid of my monstor truck and bought a $500 subaru legacy. Runs like a top. Ac and hear works and or doesnt leak or burn. $30 to fill it on empty, its 4 wheel drive and gets over 30 mpg.

    Cutting everything down and may even take in a roomate or move into a mens house and pay $500 -$700 a month for rent. My birthday was last Sunday (48 years old) i make over $100k a year. Im just trying to bank as much as i can before rhe $hit house goes up o flames. And it will in the next year from my perspective. I wanna make damn sure i can thrive and have a happy life on max unemployment if that comes into play. $690 a week here in Washington.

    Best to plan accordingly. Been forum free for a while. I dont say much to anyone anymore online these days. But God and i Talk alot.

    Well, i have a hot date with a stunning 25 year old. Hope you all a good day. Remember not to get sucked into giving all your energy to “things” you can do nothing about
    Do the things you can do. thoughts are “things”. whatever hold your focus, has you in its grasp.

    ;)

  20. George, sorry for the lateness of the comment–been busy.

    For many reasons, I have been daily watching the weather forecast for Oregon on Windy.com. Relentless heat and dry. Then, a few days back, Windy showed a wee fat finger of cooling and moisture sneaking up alongside the coast from N. CA, past Bandon and Coos Bay and Reedsport, then arching in toward Roseburg with a forecast for showers where I had been praying for it to land.

    Then right after that finger, boom, a 6 pointer out there off the Bandon/Coos coast by that volcano out there.

    Thinking about it…just, well, because…

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