Drowned out by admirable but deafening calls for debt relief and an end to poverty, masked by the critical debate on climate change, and buried beneath news of the London bombs, the G8 leaders recently took the first steps towards establishing a global threat identification and warning system designed to ensure that we are never again caught napping by extreme geophysical hazards.
No image available
/ 19 December 2003
In the second half of the 20th century we planned for the nuclear winter that would follow an atomic exchange, but we now give little thought to the similar conditions that would certainly prevail after an asteroid impact or volcanic super-eruption. Global geophysical events could devastate the planet, so why aren’t we more frightened?
No image available
/ 23 January 2003
Decades of poorly researched Hollywood movies have conditioned us to think of molten lava flowing like water, pouring from a volcano in red-hot torrents to overwhelm people and property alike. Fortunately this perception is seriously flawed.