pisgah

I’d reported a few days ago about a dust-up between a citizen scientist called DutchSinse who said he had discovered volcanic venting at extinct/dormant/inactive volcanic craters in southern and central California. The USGS had felt compelled to issue a press release denying that the anonymous videographer’s claim (but not that data existed showing something, only that he had interpreted it wrong.) In that exchange between the Government Agency and the anonymous videographer (a ludicrous event to begin with) the USGS had gone on record July 29 stating:

“USGS volcanologists evaluating the situation find nothing to indicate that the NEXRAD feature results from volcanic activity. Satellite images from the same period DO NOT SHOW the steam or ash clouds that accompany volcanic activity…” .

So…there’s a situation? Anyway…

The point of the essay was to discuss the difficulty in the average citizen to find truth in media reports and to trust what the government is telling us, a condition that exists in parallel form in the church with the warnings about false teachers, false doctrines and false prophesies. The stress of the average person in attempting to sort out what is undeniably increasingly horrific news just at the time when trust in media is failing most is getting to stratospheric levels. I was tickled to read that as Obama took the debt ceiling debate to twitter, he lost 40,000 followers. People are plainly disgusted.

So who to trust? Well, DutchSinse came back with two interesting videos. One was a clip showing MORE plumes of what he called venting, and right along the line of extinct/dormant volcanic craters in the Mono-Inyo chain. USGS says this about the volcanic chain–

“The Long Valley Caldera is only one part of a large volcanic system in eastern California that also includes the Mono-Inyo Craters volcanic chain. This chain extends from Mammoth Mountain at the southwest rim of the caldera northward 25 miles to Mono Lake. Eruptions along this chain began 400,000 years ago, and Mammoth Mountain itself was formed by a series of eruptions ending 50,000 years ago. The volcanic system is still active. Scientists have determined that eruptions occurred in both the Inyo Craters and Mono Craters parts of the volcanic chain as recently as 600 years ago and that small eruptions occurred in Mono Lake sometime between the mid-1700’s and mid-1800’s.”

In successive videos, he reported 6 vents in all. That, along with recent earthquake activity in the same area reaching magnitude 6.0 caused him to conclude that the extinct/dormant volcanoes were waking up. Not such an outlandish assessment as one might think, ever since the extinct chain that had never erupted in Eritrea woke up one day and killed 32 people. (Nabro). By the way that situation also had citizen reporters and amateur scientists alerting the world that the eruption had occurred. They were initially marginalized because Nabro had never erupted, but they knew what they knew and they persisted. Within days they were proven right.

The second interesting video is one where a second USGS press release denies their earlier denials. Or something. These things get tangled up if you don’t follow them in detailed fashion, but the USGS release states “Satellite images from the same period do not show the steam or ash clouds that accompany volcanic activity, and there is no seismicity in the vicinity indicative of volcanic unrest/eruption.” But DutchSinse shows that there is quake activity in the vicinity and that the satellites do show vent-cloud activity. Now, maybe the quake activity in the vicinity isn’t the right kind of quake activity, but there was seismicity, a 6.0 quake was recorded, and there were clouds. I looked at the radar and I looked at the quake charts…so…again, the dustup continues.

Below, NASA Pisgah Crater photo

Remember in 1997 two volcano movies came out at the same time, Volcano and Dante’s Peak? At the time I thought it was ridiculous to make a movie about such an unrealistic disaster as Volcano had in setting the disaster in LA with eruptions and all. But is is not unrealistic. There are active volcanoes in the Long Valley area.

This trailer is from Volcano and has the campy tagline “The Coast is Toast” and featured tough-guy Tommy Lee Jones.

Dante’s Peak was considered the more sober and scientific movie of the two and featured tough-girl Linda Hamilton. I’ve digressed. To the issue at hand- The back and forth between the government agency and the anonymous citizen will likely continue. But we can all rest assured that this information from the California Seismic Safety Commission is true:

“Volcanoes: More than 500 volcanic vents have been identified in the State of California. At least 76 of these vents have erupted, some repeatedly, during the last 10,000 years. Sooner or later, volcanoes in California will erupt again, and they could have serious impacts on your health and safety. — Miller, C. Dan, 1989, Potential Hazards from Future Volcanic Eruptions in California: USGS Bulletin 1847, 17p.”

My money is on “sooner.”
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I mentioned yesterday about the fight for truth in the secular world. I’d stated that the people know there is stuff going on, but the people who have access to the data or are otherwise in official capacities speak to the opposite of what we see and know. Or they deny completely what is going on, or they simply lie.

I’ve said a few times and shared the statements that the United States Geological Survey has said that there is no increase in earthquakes, then I used their data to show the opposite, earthquakes are regularly exceeding the USGS annual average. The same is true for volcanic activity. The US Government officials say we are in an economic recovery, or that TAARP has worked, when we can all see the economic outlook worsening by the day. Economist John Williams has made a career of showing the true economic data as compared to the information given to us by the General Accounting Office. I don’t think that I’ll get any argument that the value of the information being presented by official channels these days are usually tainted. It is wise to be skeptical in this day and age of any and all secular information we’re given. Search these things out for yourself and be a wary and critical consumer of information.

But when you do search you get a mishmash. Who to trust? Some people are simply crackpots. At the very least, most of us don’t know how to correctly interpret a monetary chart, radar, or scientific data. That’s why we leave it to the experts. Yet at the same time it was citizen journalists who spotted the Nabro eruption, revealed the false data in Climategate, and this week, made a claim of a volcanic venting in Southern California that even prompted a response by the USGS.

There is a YouTube man named DutchSinse who regularly posts information concerning weather, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. I’ve listened to him and I find that his approach is careful, measured, and best of all, he shows how he arrives at his conclusions. He doesn’t make outrageous claims but instead puts forth conclusions reasonably based on what he sees from the data. This week he posted three videos showing data to support his claim that there has been volcanic venting at an ancient volcano in the southern California desert, Pisgah.

Pisgah Crater is located between Barstow and Needles CA about 2.5 miles from I-40. It borders the Mojave National Preserve. The Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program says the crater and attendant lava beds are from the Holocene Era which according to secular scientists is a geologic era that began about 11,000 years ago and continues to this day. Its last known eruption is unknown.

In his first two of videos from Sunday July 24 he shows a Nexrad radar of the area with what looks to be a stationary plume of moisture emerging from ground level and hovering for hours before dissipating. He mused that it was volcanic venting.

The next day on the 25th of July DutchSinse posted another video showing the same thing. Dutch moved his audience through his thought process and showed us step by step how and why he had come to the conclusion the volcano was venting. He sent the video and his findings to the USGS. In response, the USGS issued a press release denying that was what was going on.

What I found interesting about the press release was that they didn’t deny something was going on, they simply stated that Dutch had misinterpreted that data. Here is the press release:

“BARSTOW • A YouTube user who claimed to have discovered a volcanic eruption in the Mojave Desert over the weekend was mistaken, U.S. Geological Survey officials said Monday. A YouTube video posted Saturday evening displayed radar images and Google Earth maps as a narrator described what he believed to be evidence of a volcanic eruption over Pisgah Crater, a young volcanic cylinder cone between Barstow and Needles about 2.5 miles south of Interstate 40. “There was no indication of a volcanic eruption on that date and time, and nor is there one brewing today,” USGS spokeswoman Clarice Ransom said.Dr. John Eichelberger, program coordinator of volcano hazards for USGS, said the video didn’t appear to be a hoax, but rather a misinterpretation of the data.”

Now, I find this fascinating for many reasons. Dutch has a Youtube channel and a website complete with blog, images, and video. But his name is nowhere to be found. So a United States Government Agency found it necessary to respond to the information from an anonymous guy putting out a few videos. I find that extraordinary. It is telling that citizen journalists have made such an impact that the official channels of information react knee-jerk with immediate denials.

Equally interesting is that the USGS referred to data but only said it was not interpreted correctly. However the USGS failed to interpret it for us. They did not tell us what it meant. They admitted there was data, and that there is an interpretation to be made. What it is though, the USGS stopped short of revealing. And therein lay the problem: in any information vacuum, people will fill it in with their own ideas. In some cases like DutchSinse, they will come to reasonable conclusions. In others they will be off the wall.

The next day, by the way, Dutch posted a third video showing what he interpreted to be venting for the third day in a row. It was then that he said he felt 100% certain that what we were seeing is volcanic activity near the Mojave, notwithstanding the USGS denial of his interpretation (but not his data).

People are clamoring for truth to make sense of what is happening all around us. Context and solid information helps us feel less anxious. Recall the Fireside Chats from President Roosevelt during the Depression. Those chats either contained authoritative information or were simply Presidential encouragement to help the people through a dark time- the Depression. We needed to know the officials were “on it”, were “with us”, and we were united in our goal to get through it with unity and dignity. We don’t get that any more. All we get from the people in charge are denials and lies.

As to the immediate point, whether Pisgah is about to erupt or not, I don’t know. Dutch made a good point when he said it was not military, it wasn’t cloud cover, nor was it a brush fire. It was moisture in the hottest part of the desert, stationary to that location, and from the ground. Brush fires move. Clouds move. This didn’t. If it wasn’t venting, what was it? It is not far-fetched to wonder if the volcano will erupt at some point, I mean, Nabro in Eritrea recently did, and that was a volcano that had never erupted. Again, that was an event spotted by amateur radar and satellite aficionados. Chaiten in Chile erupted fairly suddenly, and that volcano had not erupted in 9500 years. From the bible we know that the earth will act in increasingly aberrant ways with earthquakes, super-hail, volcanic eruptions, and more. (Rev 6. I believe that the Revelation verse noting the sun went black as sackcloth is from volcanic ash blanketing the sun’s rays. More here.)

Now to the main point. The end time will be rife with falsity, the bible tells us. In terms of the Gospel, there will be false doctrines, false teachers, false prophets, liars, and seducers. (2 Peter 2; 1 Tim 4:1; 2 Tim 3:8). In the secular world we are told that men will be boasters, slanderers, lovers of themselves, traitors- all conditions that at their root have a lie at the center. (2 Tim 3:1-5). In other words, in both the secular and the Christian world, the truth will be harder and harder to find. As the world veers inexorably toward falsity, it will culminate during the Tribulation with “THE Lie”. (2 Thess 2:11). Though the lie is not defined in the Thessalonians verses, many people (myself included) believe this to be the lie that the man who appears in the Tribulation is Messiah. They did not receive Jesus when He came, and but they will accept another. (John 5:43). Truth will be increasingly hard to find until the Tribulation when lies will be ALL that people will find.

As a Christian I urge one and all to be deep into your bible. We have to cling to Jesus and walk closely with Him to avoid being prey to religious fads, false doctrines, and wolves in sheep’s clothing. Jesus is the only truth and as he revealed Himself to us in His word we must take it to heart and seriously study. We, being flesh, will and do often fall prey to lies. The flesh wants to believe lies but the Holy Spirit in us wants to regenerate us into His likeness. (Titus 3:5). An active prayer life, a close walk with Him and daily dying to flesh will go a long way to the Holy Spirit to grow us to righteousness and glory.
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Category: pisgah

About that volcanic activity in California…was DutchSinse right?

Pisgah Crater volcanic activity: DutchSinse vs. USGS and the rumble in the desert