Reporters really are the dumbest profession. In the morning they couldn’t figure out if Chile was ahead or behind EST and by how much, then they ask what is “meters” in English, they show tape recorded hours earlier while displaying Live on the screen, and then a reporter wanted to know what time low tides happen at Waikiki beach. The confused person on the other end of the phone said: “eh, well it’s different every day”.
It’s like none of these dolts have even the most basic scientific or geologic education. Not surprising, but still pathetic.
ETA: Someone asked what “meters” translated to in english, like it’s a foreign word, or that they wanted to know what the metric conversion was in feet? (about 3, btw). 
Watch television news much?
Media is about hype, looks, ratings and ego. It long ago ceased to be about anything substantial where reporters were hired for their intelligence, news-gathering expertise, fact checking, and the ability to write a coherent and grammatically correct sentence or three. And all of that under pressure much of the time.
And did anybody catch the hours of live footage of a perfectly still shoreline in Hawaii? Just cut to it when the wave actually arrives, for christ’s sake.
Of course, the media also needs to talk to tourists on the phone to ask if there are bathrooms at the golf course where they are drinking. And if they anticipated there would be a tsunami on their vacation.
CNN had fourth-stringers up earlier this morning, who probably couldn’t believe their good fortune to be on-air for a breaking story. The woman was a dimwit who couldn’t stop herself from grinning at every opportunity. The guy had the tsunami ‘expert’ draw a line from Chile to Hawaii and to Mexico. I guess that’s for the benefit of viewers (and newsreaders) who think that Hawaii (and Alaska) reside just off the coast of Baja, CA.
And scaring the shit out of people. It doesn’t even have to be true. Just so long as it’s a “good” sound bite. Just last night, the so called “History” channel had hour after hour, about how we are all doomed - hypercanes, caldera supervolcanoes, simultaneous global super quakes, gamma ray bursts, global red tides, all signals of a coming apocalypse of Godly wrath. All “verified” by people I’ve never heard of (except for one “expert”, the guy who wrote the Left Behind nonsense).
They almost certainly have taken none. The Journalism majors I knew in University were not just proud, they were God-damned proud that they were able to skip having to take any math past Intro to Algebra and any science past the 3-hour remedial course (called “Physics for Poets”, it covered science that I pretty much had down pat in 6th grade).
But they’re only a reflection of the Average American Dumbass, a scientific ignoramus of breathtaking proportions.
Direct quote: “what’s 9 meters in English”.
It’s 9 meters? :eek:
Of course, if they read your sentence, those people might also think that Baja is in the US state of California.
It’s not Baja, CA.
It’s Baja California (no comma).
I had the unfortunate luck of turning on CNN at that very moment…“now draw a line to Costa Rica.”
I turned it off about 5 seconds later…
Right. In English:
Which doesn’t really make sense, but if someone asks, now you can tell them.
How long before they try to blame global warming for it?
Since it’s quite common to refer to yard/feet/inches as the ‘English’ system of weights & Measures, that’s a perfectly reasonable question.
You didn’t really have any difficulty understanding what was being asked, did you?
It makes sense when you realize that, when talking about geographical location, bajo/baja also means “lower.”
No no no, it’s the other way around. See, the moment magnitude scale describes the amount of energy released by the quake, right? And that energy is dissipated in vibrations and waves, some of which are racing across the Pacific as we speak. If I remember my thermodynamics correctly, dissipating energy within the system invariably results in waste heat. Ergo, global warming is caused by all of these big earthquakes we’ve been having lately.
If I’m right, the water off my beachfront property in Hokkaido should be like a hot spring in *checks watch * a couple of hours, so I’m going to go make some lemonade and soak in the geothermal heat.
None at all. Just having some fun with it.
Don’t be ridiciulous! Baja, California, is west-southwest of New, Mexico!
Anybody who attempts to ascribe any particular major earthquake specifically to climate-change influences is an ignoramus (and I’m looking right at Danny Glover here, much as I may admire his acting talent).
However, last September’s Conference on Climate Forcing of Geological and Geomorphological Hazards suggested that it may be true that climate change, by changing the relative weight of, e.g., ocean water and ice sheets on the earth’s crust, could affect the “fine controlling” of seismic activity and lead to more seismic events.