



The eruptions of Redoubt carry a lesson that Jindal did not learn back when he was a Rhodes Scholar: Don't sneer at science.

The lesson applies equally to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a potential Jindal rival for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. "Sarah Barracuda" spent last fall lampooning federal money spent on fruit fly research, ignoring that it is essential to the study of human genetics.

Jindal's remarks give pause, not only about this would-be president but the Republican Party to which he tossed red meat in response to President Obama's address to Congress. "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.," said the governor.




Any lawmaker from Washington, Oregon, California or Hawaii -- fellow states in the Pacific "Ring of Fire" -- could have written the same about their states.

In these parts, the U.S. Geological Survey has a 14,410-foot-high volcano to monitor: A major Mount Rainier eruption would send a lahar of gas, ice and mud down the White River into fast-growing Pierce County towns.

Our state has five major volcanoes. Mount St. Helens blew in 1980. A flurry of activity in Mount Baker's crater caused closure of recreation in Baker Lake in 1975.

Although quiet and largely hidden from public view, Glacier Peak is potentially the most explosive volcano in the Cascade Range. "Eruptions often spew curtains of ash miles into the air that impact communities hundreds of miles downwind, causing severe health consequences for our citizens," Begich wrote. "When there is a significant eruption, those with respiratory challenges must stay indoors."

How far? An ash cloud from St. Helens darkened the sky as I drove south out of the Canadian Rockies in '80. Once, touring the Mormon Temple in Cardsten, Alberta, I learned that it sits atop ash from a not-so-ancient eruption of Glacier Peak.

The Obama stimulus package allocates $140 million -- out of $790 billion -- to upgrade U.S. Geological Survey equipment . . . "with a tenth of that amount aimed at predicting events like the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, which in 1980 killed 57 people and caused billions of dollars in damage," Hendrik Hertzberg observed in the New Yorker.

Hopefully, some of the bucks will go to the Alaska Volcano Observatory, which monitors 31 active Alaskan volcanoes. It is a joint project of USGS, the University of Alaska, and Alaska's state Division of Geological and Geophysical Services.

Jindal is one to talk. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration monitors hurricanes as they rise in the Atlantic, and predicts their possible paths over Louisiana and other states.

Science and scientists are unsettling, especially to politicians with firmly closed minds. They can speak unwelcome truths.In our neck of the woods, a USGS researcher (and University of Washington professor) found a potentially active earthquake fault beneath the site for Puget Power's Skagit Nuclear Project. Skagit County voters cast a 75 percent vote against the project, which was never built.

Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, both erupted when the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment detailed how global warming was threatening coastal villages in their state.

My favorite example is Alaska's Prince William Sound. A major tanker spill was deemed impossible.

"Werner von Braun, you know, the spaceman, assured me that all of the technology of the space program will be put into the doggone tankers, and there will not be one drop in Prince William Sound," Sen. Stevens once assured a Cordova, Alaska, fisherman.

On the night of March 23, 1989, a Cordova-based fisheries biologist named Riki Ott spoke by speakerphone to a meeting in Valdez. She spoke of what would happen were there a major accident of a loaded tanker leaving Valdez.

"Gentlemen, it's not what if," said Ott, "but when."

Less than two hours later, the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef and spilled more than 11 million gallons of oil into the sound.