canspice.org

Gloria Baraquio is a weekly columnist in the Hawaii Tribune Herald. Occasionally she has her wingnut columns about speaking to hippies in Puna, but last week she went right off the chart. You can tell right from the beginning:

It’s my last day in Abadiania, Brazil, and needless to say … woah. My mind has officially blown up. In the last three weeks, I’ve been able to meet and converse with mediums, psychics and seers from all over the world. And they all seem to have similar visions of our very near future.

You can just see her mind opening up and her brain dropping out. Mediums, psychics and seers. Woah, dude. Time to turn off the brain and stop thinking.

One thing that sparked my curiosity and became a springboard for conversation was Gordon-Michael Scallion’s “Future Map of the World,” an illustrated prediction of what the earth’s geography will look like as a result of global warming and a dramatic polar shift.

Now this would be interesting if she’d left off that last clause. Global warming is undoubtedly going to change things, what with the rise in ocean levels and all. Interactive maps can show us the effects of various changes of sea level. Taking Europe as an example, Holland and Belgium are going to be especially affected, as are parts of England and Italy. Most of Europe is well above sea level (they have this mountain range called “The Alps” that you might have heard of) so will be relatively unscathed.

Not according to this Gordon-Michael Scallion wingnut, though. There’s much more than just global warming at work. Here’s Baraquio’s description:

Practically all of Europe on the map is broken up, as are parts of North America, while places like New Zealand appear to rise above sea level with more land mass than it currently has now.

It’s true, Scallion’s map not only shows the oceans rising over the tops of the Alps while lower lands are unscathed, it shows new land masses coming up off both coasts of North America, in the South Pacific, off the west coast of the British Isles, south of Australia, and off the southern end of South America. There’s absolutely nothing scientific about this and it has absolutely no bearing on reality. It’s complete tosh, complete nonsense. And Baraquio eats it up with a spoon:

I left the map conversation with much to ponder…

I’ll tell you, I’m pondering something too: why the hell Gloria Baraquio gets paid to write this drivel.

Oh, by the way, in case you thought Scallion was accurate, he isn’t. Here are some of his predictions: 9.0 earthquake in Palm Springs between 1995 and 1997. 8.5 earthquake in Sonoma County between 1995 and 1997. California under water in 1993. Denver on the Pacific coast in 1998. A shift in the Earth’s poles sometime between 1998 and 2001. Do you remember any of these happening? I sure don’t. Maybe Gloria Baraquio does in her little fantasy world where psychics are always right and are worthy of serious discussion. The only thing they’re worthy of is mocking.

And another by the way, Scallion doesn’t really care about helping people. If he did, he probably wouldn’t be selling his maps of death and destruction for thirty bucks a pop. Fifty-five if you want two! I’m in the wrong field, I need to start fleecing people by buying a two-dollar map and spilling some blue paint on it. Oh no! Alabama’s going to be in the Gulf of Mexico! Give me thirty dollars!

The year 2012 seems to come up repeatedly in these circles, in places like Abadiania and Puna (also referred to as “communities of light”). 2012 is the end of the seemingly accurate Mayan calendar, considered by different religions as the apocalypse, the End Times, or the New Era — which means it’s really considered the time of human enlightenment. I find that fairly exciting!

Jesus in a diaper is this idiotic. 2012 in the Mayan calendar (to be exact, she’s talking about 21 December 2012 in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar) is just the end of another cycle. It’s like 31 December 999 in the Gregorian calendar. It’s not mystical, it’s not the end of the world, nothing is going to happen. In fact, it’s just the end of the 12th Baktun. The 11th Baktun ended on 18 September 1618. The world didn’t end then, and it sure as hell isn’t going to end 4 years from now.

And what the hell is a “community of light”? The closest Puna comes to getting any sort of special light is when houses go up in flames from the lava flowing through them.

Edgar Cayce’s name keeps coming up … the Akashic records … Allan Kardec … extraterrestrial beings … Starfleets … Jesus Christ, Archangel Michael, Sai Baba. … All of this integration of knowledge is so incredibly new to me, straight out of Scriptures and science fiction novels, and I can’t help but think to myself, “What if some of it is true? What if all this is possible?” Travel without planes, life without death, Kingdom of God, peace on earth. … Sounds pretty cool to me!

Seriously, this is verbatim from her article. I didn’t put any ellipses in there. A weekly column that reads like a shitty MySpace blog. And with all the intelligence of a chimpanzee (no offense to chimpanzees out there, I know some of you are better at learning things than Baraquio). There’s only one correct word in that entire paragraph: fiction. It’s all made up. It’s all in the imagination of these psychic frauds. It’s all completely bogus. And according to Baraquio it’s “pretty cool”. Tee hee!

One psychic I spoke to said we don’t know what the future will look like, if Scallion’s predictions are accurate or not, if Cayce and Nostradamus are correct, but she did say that science fiction books and movies may not be far off from the truth.

Oh lord. Scallion’s predictions aren’t accurate. Cayce and Nostradamus weren’t correct. Science fiction books and movies are just that: fiction.

Gloria Baraquio, do yourself a favour next time and skip the empty-headed garbage. No, the world’s not going to end in 2012. No, Atlantis isn’t going to rise up in the South Pacific. No, Nostradamus wasn’t right. No, there’s no “collective consciousness”. Try living in and writing about the real world instead of this fear-mongering garbage fantasy world where psychics are only out to take money from the scared masses.

If you want to read all of Gloria Baraquio’s pig-in-trousers crazy, it’s available at the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. You have to register, and I have no idea how long it’ll stay up there (two weeks judging from the results you get when searching for “Baraquio”).

For friends and family (and my benefit so I don’t have to go to the horrible Volcano Community Association website again), here are some useful links for keeping tabs on what’s happening with Kilauea, specifically surrounding its recent increase in SO₂ output.

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory maintains a close watch on Kilauea. Its daily update is a wealth of information. They have one webcam on Halema’uma’u and another on Pu’u O’o.

The National Park Service maintains real-time SO₂ monitoring. For reference, we live in the cluster of roads between the ‘Kilauea Visitor Center’ and the KVC’s SO₂ reading labels.

The National Weather Service provides both a five-day forecast and an hourly forecast table for our area. We live to the ENE of Halema’uma’u, so winds from the WSW are of particular concern. Calm or non-existent winds are also troublesome, as the SO₂ doesn’t clear out from our neighbourhood.

And finally, the County of Hawaii Civil Defense Agency issues statements, advisories, and warnings in its Civil Defense Message when conditions warrant. If they mention any subdivisions, watch for Mauna Loa Estates, the one we live in.

KTA, one of our local supermarkets, put out an advertising flyer for Earth Day. What eco-friendly foods did they highlight on their front page? Local produce? Organic milk? Seventh Generation soap?

Nope.

Frozen prawns. Bleached white rice. Bleached paper towels. Apples from the mainland. Canned fruit drinks. Tortilla chips. And Dutch beer.

Only one local product, and that’s flavoured sugar water shipped in aluminum cans that have a 60% chance of ending up being recycled in Hawaii. Zero organic products. The products that could be unbleached weren’t. And the majority of them have to be shipped from the mainland.

Way to completely miss the point of Earth Day, KTA.

Three weeks ago, SCUBA-2 arrived in Hilo. Today, after putting it on the back of a truck and hauling it up Mauna Kea, the cryostat was successfully lifted into JCMT!

While this may not sound like that big a deal, for SCUBA-2 it is. Most astronomical instruments have cryostats that are relatively small, maybe a few cubic feet, and they typically get cooled with liquid nitrogen to temperatures in the tens of Kelvins (remember, zero Kelvin is absolute zero, or 273 degrees Celsius below zero, or 459 degrees Fahrenheit below zero). SCUBA-2’s cryostat is huge! It’s about 2.5 cubic meters (about 90 cubic feet) and weighs about 2500 kilograms (5500 pounds)!

Let’s put that another way: a typical hot tub holds about 450 gallons of water, which is about 1700 liters. 1700 liters is 1.7 cubic meters. SCUBA-2 is 2.5 cubic meters — larger than your typical hot tub. This happy coincidence wasn’t lost on the SCUBA-2 designers, as there’s a CAD drawing of the SCUBA-2 cryostat with four humans sitting inside it. SCUBA-2, the hot tub instrument!

And get this: the entire thing is cooled to four degrees above absolute zero!

To get the cryostat into JCMT, they had to roll back the protective Gore-Tex membrane, tip the dish over on its side, and use a giant crane to lift the cryostat in. This was a major effort and kudos to everybody involved!

Jonathan Kemp took a bunch of pictures of the installation. This pulled-back shot shows what I described in the previous paragraph — the membrane is rolled back, the dish is tipped over, and the crane is lifting the blue SCUBA-2 cryostat into place. This picture shows the scale quite nicely — compare the men to the blue cryostat. It’s huge!

A few weeks ago, the Halema’uma’u Crater started spewing out sulfur dioxide, eventually putting out gas at a rate ten times higher than normal. This caused the National Park Service to first close outlooks around Halema’uma’u, then to close the part of Chain Of Craters Road crossed by the gas plume.

Then, on March 19, the gas plume got stopped up, and the resulting pressure increase lead to an explosion, spreading rocks and debris across a 75-acre area.

Five days after that, the white gas plume changed to a gritty grey colour caused by ash and dust. Hawaii Volcano Observatory staff reported incandescence and found Pele’s hair, Pele’s tears, and spatter in the overlook area, which indicates that molten lava erupted from the vent.

This is the first time that lava has erupted at Halema’uma’u since 1982. It’s a small amount of lava, but it’s a good sign that activity is present at the summit of Kilauea instead of just near the Pu’u O’o caldera.

USGS press releases:
New gas vent in Halema‘uma‘u crater doubles sulfur dioxide emission rates
Explosive eruption in Halema`uma`u Crater, Kilauea Volcano, is first since 1924
Halema`uma`u gas plume becomes ash-laden