la palma volcano

[Screwdriver]

30 years ago we were worried an ice age was coming, I recall.

I think the next lit. "ice age" is fifty thousand years away, global warming has kicked that can down the road.

Glacial periods happen more often and our current interglacial is also scheduled to last for thousands of years yet. Again I'd hazard a guess that's going to be delayed or possibly even skipped completely. Google glacial, interglacial, ice age etc. and they are all well defined terms, usually regular as clockwork but things are a bit out of kilter so...

 

[mike os]

Well defined but still with a wide latitude

 

[Screwdriver]

Well defined but still with a wide latitude

Yes exactly. Give or take a few thousand years at least! Having a similar discussion in another forum where people are complaining that climate science is a failure and "the models are wrong" etc. Turns out, if you bother to search for the results of prediction vs. observation, they have been pretty damned accurate. One chap won a Nobel prize for the accuracy of his climate model!

Just goes to show how precarious our existence here really is. Compared to Mother Nature, we are still pretty helpless. Not even sure if anyone knows how long this volcano is going to carry on going. I **think** volcanic activity falls under climatology or at least environmental science. Would be interesting to see the calculations for CO2 emissions from this one... Apparently, magma is stuffed full of CO2, almost like a can of Coke.

Incidentally, magma vs. lava reminds me of the asteroid vs. meteorite confusion. They change name depending on where they are. An asteroid (or comet) which penetrates our atmosphere is called a meteor ( or meteoroid, a meteorite hits the ground). Asteroids typically become meteorite!

Oh and magma is called lava once it reaches the surface. I don't think there is any practical difference other than once magma has lost it's pressure, it then loses its ability to hold onto CO2. I think it's why lava is so friable and crunchy.

 

[mike os]

Then the models have improved dramatically in the last couple of years because they were complete ******** a bit like their predicted ice caps gone by xxxx, Tuvalu underwater by xxxx etc. Yet here they still, inconveniently, are.

Magma contains quite a lot of alsorts of gasses, that some consider a problem... but are part of a natural cycle.... and it's principally geology that deals with volcanos.

 

[brightspark]

all that lava has surfaced so somewhere the ground must have subsided

 

[Pete.]

all that lava has surfaced so somewhere the ground must have subsided

Yeah a whole tectonic plate sank 0.00001mm

 

[mike os]

P.ate tectonics are the reason for the volcano... on the boundary of the African plate margin

 

[Screwdriver]

Yeah a whole tectonic plate sank 0.00001mm

The island may drop locally a fair bit more than that. ISTR reading that it is the collapse of the magma chambers which will switch this thing off. Could be several metres over a substantial area...

I don't think there's even the remotest possibility of a Tsunami caused by half the island falling into the sea but there's been a lot of talk about it. Probably wishful thinking!

 

[Morrisman]

I first moved to the Philippines six months after Pinatubo volcano spewed its guts skywards. There was very little lava, but over a billion tons of pyroclastic cloud shot out, along the ground and up into the atmosphere. Apparently the dust in the atmosphere lowered the earth average temperature by over a degree for several years.

It also spawned this classic picture.

 

[julianthegypsy]

I was in Indonesia when one went up near Bandung. Jakarta was raining black dust for ages, and two 747's made emergency landings after getting it in the engines, but there was no lava flow, it just spewed ash everywhere. I've been down into Tangkuban Perahu near Bandung. They boil eggs in the sulphurous pools of water. It's quite a sight. The volcano I mean, not the eggs!

 

[Screwdriver]

The AD79 Pompie eruption is still having effects today.
The soil is very good for crops etc.
But has still got a lot of green houses gas trapped within.

The same fire mountain in 1944 was more gas and ash, but again the toxic gas is still escaping.

Not everyone in Pompeii burned or choked to death...

 

[Gareth J]

While the climate remains unbalanced, it may swing wildly around typical norms, hence the effect we refer to as extremes of weather.

Don't confuse climate and weather, the increase in extreme weather events we are seeing and expect to continue to see aren't due to climate instability per se. You could have a rock stable climate that included, as part of it, many more extremes of weather than we see. Though it's fair to say that a warmer climate will have in general, more "weather". If that makes sense!

Having a similar discussion in another forum where people are complaining that climate science is a failure and "the models are wrong" etc.

This is likely a direct result of the efforts of fossil fuel companies and exporting nations to conflate model "uncertainty" as in, there's a level of confidence associated with a certain model, with "uncertainty" as in, we're not sure if this model is at all right.

Big tobacco did the same with smoking and cancer and both worked for a while. Both have since more or less stopped but the hangover is still people thinking that human induced climate change is unproven.

Point your other forum guys to "how they made us doubt everything", a BBC podcast, that's presented in an accessible way, if they want to see just how duper we were. Turns out it was an actual, real conspiracy.

 

[Screwdriver]

Don't confuse climate and weather, the increase in extreme weather events ...

Big tobacco did the same with smoking and cancer and both worked for a while.

Yes, sorry. My comment is somewhat ambiguous. One of the many proven accurate predictions from the climate models is the increase in "extreme weather events" both in number and severity caused by a warmer environment. That is an increased number of "events" with an increase in extremes of hotter/colder, flood/drought etc. since any developed weather system has more power to play with.

We may even need more words to describe storm levels "super hurricane" springs to mind or "ultra cyclone" (no doubt a Dyson trade name). Perhaps "super hurricane turbo", which is ironically somewhat more accurate!

I am familiar with the "big tobacco" strategy and yes it is very similar to the "big oil" climate change denier approach. "Big tech" are using the same tactic to support the same handful of super rich global corporate interests in the USA (and therefore the entire Western world). It is yet another example of the super rich developing psychological techniques to protect their vested interests

Thanks for the tip about the podcast, I'll have a look at that now. I am sure you are already familiar with "Potholer54" where I typically go for my fact checking info.

 

[Gareth J]

Regarding big tobacco and oil companies, they employed literally the same guy (Fred someone-or-other, I forget) to use the same playbook of misleading tactics. A fascinating story

 

[Keith 66]

I think the tsunami thing is fake news. Wrong type of volcano, too far from the shore etc.

I would not discount it. The scientists seem to be going out of their way to say it wont happen, maybe to try & stop people panicking.
The fact remains that flank collapses of marine volcanoes are relatively common in the geological time scape, many such volcanoes have debris fields spreading miles out to sea. The ocean around Las palmas is approx 4 miles deep & the gradient steep. A big enough earthquake & it could go.
So if a tsumani happens? how many nuclear reactors are on the US east coast?, answer 15 to 20, nearer to home the French coast?

Mutate now & avoid the rush.

 

[julianthegypsy]

Regarding big tobacco and oil companies, they employed literally the same guy (Fred someone-or-other, I forget) to use the same playbook of misleading tactics. A fascinating story

The story of lead in petrol is pretty much the same. The scary thing is that they knew all along how bad it was, there was never any doubt.

 

[Screwdriver]

I would not discount it. The scientists seem to be going out of their way to say it wont happen, maybe to try & stop people panicking.
The fact remains that flank collapses of marine volcanoes are relatively common in the geological time scape,

Well this is one of the better videos and the whole side of the cone did just collapse...

 

[the snooper]

Bit off to laugh at other people's misfortune

It happens in all walks of life and all subject's and probably always will, just human nature

 

[brightspark]

all that power and heat and it cant be harnessed

 

[mike os]

all that power and heat and it cant be harnessed

Iceland manage it ….