ΩΩThe earth has been quite active lately. As I figured when the Boxing Day Great Quake occurred in Indonesia, this was a huge event that would force the rest of the planet to readjust itself. And certainly, a cluster of Great Quakes have now occurred and more are in store for us and of course, the volcanoes awaken during times of rearrangements of the local landscapes. For over a year, we had a lot of volcanic dust in the stratosphere. Most of it filtered out via snow and rainstorms. Now, a new group of volcanoes are shuddering awake and spewing out volcanic dust.
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ΩΩDirty eruptions are far more dangerous for all living things on this planet than Hawaiian-style eruptions. Throughout the history of humanity’s evolution, volcanic eruptions play a huge role. This is insufficiently appreciated by climatologists. For some reason, this has been a subject of a great deal of denial in the past, I recall, during the 1960′s, as astronomers and volcanic experts disputed the effects of volcanoes on climate with professional climatologists. It was a dirty, hard battle, getting any of them to admit that volcanoes effect global weather on every possible level and indeed, is responsible for us having big brains!
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Global Volcanism Program | Sakura-jima | SI / USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Reports
The Tokyo VAAC reported that during 7-13 April explosions from Sakura-jima sometimes produced plumes identified in satellite imagery. Those plumes, along with ash plumes occasionally seen by pilots, rose to altitudes of 1.5-3 km (5,000-10,000 ft) a.s.l. and sometimes drifted NW, E, and SE.
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ΩΩIndeed, this still eludes many people in the sciences even today: even as a larger and larger number of people recognize that wars, famines, revolutions and extinctions can all broil out of volcanic eruptions, the worst part is, our sun’s instability has amplified the effects of volcanic events which leads to Ice Ages, too. The nature of volcanoes is obvious: they can spew massive amounts of dust into the higher stratosphere and thus, blanket the planet.
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VHP Photo Glossary: volcanic ash
Volcanic ash is hard, does not dissolve in water, and can be extremely small–ash particles less than 0.025 mm (1/1,000th of an inch) in diameter are common. Ash is extremely abrasive, similar to finely crushed window glass, mildly corrosive, and electrically conductive, especially when wet.
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ΩΩAs the above photo shows us, microscopic volcanic dust is like a sponge: lots of jagged holes, ideal for collecting H2O molecules. And so, instead of these being small raindrops, the raindrops are much bigger. During periods of volcanic dust events, I note how huge raindrops are in ensuing storms. On top of this, the lightning can be rather ferocious, too. We know from photos of volcanic eruptions that are very dusty, lots and lots of lightning.
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ΩΩVolcanic dust is quite different from water-created dust via erosion of the landscape which then dries out and is swept away by winds. If we look at sands of the world’s sand dunes, the individual elements are all quite rounded by wind and rain. Whereas, volcanic dust is riddled with gaps and holes, as we see above. Both volcanic dust and erosion dust can obscure the sun and drop temperatures. But even here there is a vital distinction: volcanic dust can be ejected into much higher stratospheric levels and thus, covers more planetary surface as well as taking much longer to dissipate downwards. Worse, due to being full of holes, it ‘floats’ better and thus, drops even slower than simple sand.
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ΩΩIceland has been in the news a lot lately. As usual, human greed and stupidity exposed the good people of Iceland to total financial ruin just in time for a series of major volcanic eruptions. Everyone who parked their loot in private banks in Iceland are demanding the people there pay them back even though the benefits of all of this went strictly to the bankers who made false promises. Now, Mother Nature steps in to remind all of Europe, Iceland is a very dangerous place and this could, in these days of rising economic tensions, lead to catastrophe:
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ΩΩBoth the Pacific and the Atlantic are seeing volcanic eruptions. The Iceland eruptions are quite dangerous for thhe obvious reason, it sits smack dab in the center of the path of both the northern Jet Stream as well as the major warm ocean currents flowing in a circle between North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Northern Africa. Debris from Iceland’s volcanoes instantly effects many major population centers.
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ΩΩ11km plumes are very bad. This means a good proportion of this will remain suspended in the stratosphere. Worse is when it is at the 20km height.
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Mount Pinatubo – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The volcano’s ultra-Plinian eruption in June 1991 produced the second largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century (after the 1912 eruption of Novarupta) and the largest eruption in living memory.[4]The colossal 1991 eruption had a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 6, and came some 450–500 years after the volcano’s last known eruptive activity (estimated as VEI 5, the level of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens), and some 1000 years after previous VEI 6 eruptive activity.[5]Successful predictions of the onset of the climactic eruption led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the surrounding areas, saving many lives, but surrounding areas were severely damaged by pyroclastic flows, ash deposits, and later by lahars caused by rainwater remobilizing earlier volcanic deposits: thousands of houses and other buildings were destroyed.[4]
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The effects of the eruption were felt worldwide. It ejected roughly 10 billion metric tonnes (10 cubic kilometres) of magma, and 20 million tons of SO2, bringing vast quantities of minerals and metals to the surface environment. It injected large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere—more than any eruption since that of Krakatoa in 1883. Over the following months, the aerosols formed a global layer of sulfuric acid haze. Global temperatures dropped by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F), and ozonedepletion temporarily increased substantially.[6]
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ΩΩThis eruption hit the 24km level which is very high. The effects on world weather as well as the quality of our sun rises and sunsets was immediate and tremendous. It was quite warm the previous year and I and my son moved with Chris to the mountain where we still live today. I didn’t have any worries about spending the next winter in a tent since I assumed it would be similar to the previous, warm winter. But suddenly, in June, the temperature plummeted. We went from being very warm to wearing our winter coats in late June.
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ΩΩI was frantic. I knew we would have a killer winter and was not wrong: it snowed very heavily and we had very little sunlight even on ‘sunny’ days, the lack of solar warming was obvious even sitting inside next to a window. I had to hurry and build a shelter for our sheep for I knew they would all die if exposed that winter. Normally, they don’t mind being out of doors. Even our sled dog struggled that winter.
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ΩΩThe present eruption in Iceland isn’t so dire because it is lower than the Pinatubo events. The problem is, this isn’t the end of the matter. We can still see a Plinian column event. To track the influence of this volcanic dust, all we have to do is put your hand over the sun and observe the color of the sky at noon. If there is a fine veil of white dust, it is obvious. Then there are the sunsets: if they are brilliant in color with a dome of deep violet colors high over the horizon with thick yellow colors near the sunset, this is another indication of high stratospheric dust.
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ΩΩTo see the effects of volcanoes on economic and political history, here is the classic example of a previous Icelandic eruption: Laki – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Laki or Lakagígar (Craters of Laki) is a volcanic fissure situated in the south of Iceland, not far from the canyon of Eldgjá and the small town Kirkjubæjarklaustur, in Skaftafell National Park….
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…The system erupted over an 8 month period during 1783-1784 from the Laki fissure and the adjoining Grímsvötn volcano, pouring out an estimated 14 km3 (3.4 cu mi) of basalt lava and clouds of poisonous hydrofluoric acid/sulfur-dioxide compounds that killed over 50% of Iceland’s livestock population, leading to famine which killed approximately 25%[4] of the population….
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…Around 80% of sheep, 50% of cattle and 50% of horses died because of dental and skeletal fluorosis from the 8 million tons of hydrogen fluoride that were released.[6][7]…
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…An estimated 120 mio. tons of sulfur dioxide were emitted: approximately equivalent to three times the total annual European industrial output in 2006, and also equivalent to a Mount Pinatubo-1991 eruption every three days.[6] This outpouring of sulfur dioxide during unusual weather conditions caused a thick haze to spread across western Europe, resulting in many thousands of deaths throughout 1783 and the winter of 1784.
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As I keep pointing out, one volcanic eruption can cause more pollution than humans humming away like crazy. Europe, in 1784, was just beginning the Industrial Revolution. The use of coal began its meteoritic rise. The haze from this and using wood to heat and cook meant much of Europe already was enveloped in a fair amount of haze. This toxic haze from Iceland was the ‘tip over point’ for pollution in Europe and this caused many ill effects, especially since it poisoned livestock and water sources and thus, created diseases and famine.
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The summer of 1783 was the hottest on record and a rare high pressure zone over Iceland caused the winds to blow to the south-east. The poisonous cloud drifted to Bergen in Norway, then spread to Prague in the Province of Bohemia by 17 June, Berlin by 18 June, Paris by 20 June, Le Havre by 22 June, and to Great Britain by 23 June. The fog was so thick that boats stayed in port, unable to navigate, and the sun was described as “blood coloured”.[6]
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I find the ‘hottest summer on record’ to be odd since this was just like the summer in the Northern Hemisphere right before Pinatubo blew up!
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Inhaling sulfur dioxide gas causes victims to choke as their internal soft tissue swells. The local death rate in Chartres was up by 5% during August and September, with over 40 dead. In Great Britain, the records show that the additional deaths were outdoor workers, and perhaps 2-3 times above the normal rate in Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire and the east coast. It has been estimated that 23,000 British people died from the poisoning in August and September.
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It is a toss-up, what will happen when there is a major volcanic eruption. If the people are weakened by it and can’t run around, yelling, the chances of revolutionary outcomes drops. Also, if there are fewer workers, wages generally go up, not down. But in France, this colluded with going bankrupt on top of pre-existing revolutionary tensions brought about by the royals supporting the American rebels. The philosophical influence of the American Revolution on France’s bourgeoisie was very powerful. The peasants were too weak to fight but the city people were not outdoors a lot so they were not as affected by the wheezing and chocking sensations not to mention, they were not literally starving.
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Instead, they were being driven into poverty due to high food prices. Since France’s capital was one of the largest in Europe at this time (Berlin was very small, London was just beginning to take off) the concentration of population lent is power to contest with the rulers who depended upon taxes on the peasants to fund their lifestyles. The drop in tax revenues made it much harder to fight off bankruptcy.
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The haze also heated up causing severe thunderstorms with hailstones that were reported to have killed cattle until it dissipated in the autumn. This disruption then led to a most severe winter in 1784, where Gilbert White at Selborne in Hampshire reported 28 days of continuous frost. The extreme winter is estimated to have caused 8,000 additional deaths in the UK. In the spring thaw, Germany and Central Europe then reported severe flood damage.[6]…
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This was one of two ‘years without summer’ that happened in just 25 years due to volcanic eruptions. These disruptions drove many events including driving out many farmers from the Northeastern states seeking warmer climates, they flooded into the new Louisiana Purchase territories. The apex of farming in my region was around 1800 but by 1840, the flood of refugees swelled.
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…In North America, the winter of 1784 was the longest and one of the coldest on record. It was the longest period of below-zero temperatures in New England, the largest accumulation of snow in New Jersey, and the longest freezing over of Chesapeake Bay.
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ΩΩI would strongly suggest our ‘Constitution’ which was written right on the heels of this hideous year is directly connected to weather events caused by the Icelandic eruption: the US, like many European countries, was going bankrupt! The lose Confederation was shown to be a farce. It was totally unable to protect the mass population of workers and thus, was discarded. I keep warning everyone, a strong government usually does better than weak ones.
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ΩΩThe ability to produce social safety and care for the masses is a key element in any government. We see over and over again, desperate people overthrowing dictatorships thanks to dictators refusing to provide social services. Indeed, one reason why the USSR managed to float along for a very long time was due to this factor. The deranged rulers who were mass murderers still provided social services! Mao’s destructive path was tolerated for the same reason: even when he was at his most evil, he was better than the Japanese conquerers! Same with Russia: Stalin was better than Hitler.
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ΩΩThe romantic revolutionaries in America recognized a need for something stronger than a ‘state’s rights’ regime. Bit by painful bit, the US has provided social services and negotiating the path that could lead to too much dependence, the US still struggles between the social agenda and capitalism. All of these arguments about systems collapse when the ecosystem fails. That is, staying alive is a natural imperative.
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ΩΩJapan, by the way, is seeing eruptions this month, too. In the past, eruptions in Japan impacted the entire planet. One congruent occasion was the Mt. Asama eruption of 1783, one year earlier than the Iceland event. These two eruptions boosted each other’s effects to dangerous levels. In Iceland, a quarter of the population died. In Japan, it was nearly as miserable, too: Mount Asama – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mount Asama erupted in 1783 (Tenmei 3), causing widespread damage.[10] The 3-month-long plinian eruption in 1783 produced andesitic pumice falls,pyroclastic flows, lava flows, and enlarged the cone. The climactic eruption lasted for 15 hours; and there was pumice fall and pyroclastic flows.[6] The complex features of this eruption are explained by rapid deposits of coarse pyroclastic ash near the vent and the subsequent flows of lava; and these events which were accompanied by a high eruption plume which generated further injections of pumice into the air…
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….The volcano’s devastation exacerbated what was already known as the “Great Tenmei Famine.” Much of the agriculturally productive land in Shinanoand Kōzuke provinces would remain fallow or under-producing for the next four or five years.[15] The effects of this eruption were made worse because, after years of near or actual famine, neither the authorities nor the people had any remaining reserves.[16]
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ΩΩRemember: it was unusually warm in 1783. And this probably caused an El Nino event which disrupts rainfall patterns in Asia and New World ecosystems. One project I am going to do in the future is, when my oldest and greatest oak tree collapses in the near future (the crack running down the center is quite wide now!) is count the rings and see how fat or thin they are, indicating wet summers or lots of snow/cold winters. Back to Japan’s travails: as usual, this caused revolutionary changes in society as well as economic disruptions. These eventually led to the collapse of the power of the despotic warlords who ruled Japan while keeping the Emperor hostage.
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Land and lordship in early modern Japan – Google Books
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ΩΩThe Tokugawa shogunate was nearly 200 years old and rather ossified. The samurai who fought for the Tokugawa clan were allowed to live parasitical lives inside of the grounds of various castles and surrounding towns. Idle and proud, they basically partied day and night and issued forth to suppress any peasant unpleasantness. Suddenly, the overlords couldn’t afford to keep these guys happy and the government was also very upset about the sudden rise in worker’s wages as a quarter of the population starved to death. Uppity peasants, exactly like in post-Black Death Europe, demanded better wages and more respect.
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ΩΩNot only that, due to deaths in the towns and cities, they could flee near-slavery conditions and be more enterprising since workers were needed in cities. To fix this, the Tokugawa rulers decreed an end to samurai welfare payments and forced them to move into peasant holdings and to proceed to create more rice which was the fundamental basis of the economy.
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ΩΩIn all civilizations since the dawn of farming, the basis of all wealth is grains, not gold. This misapprehension as to what is wealth plagues many people who can’t see the obvious connection between agricultural surplus and how this is the bottom of the wealth pyramid. The people at the top find themselves dead very fast if the bottom of the pyramid vanishes in famines!
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ΩΩThe samurai, accustomed to a life of brutal leisure, suddenly were thrust into the peasant class. Only, they knew how to fight. At first, this made life even more miserable for the peasants who had irritable samurai trying to keep up class distinctions while farming. When peasants fought each other over various things, they used farm implements. But when disputing with a farming samurai, he would use his swords.
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ΩΩSmart samurai became community leaders and as things improved again, would gain social and political power by organizing and protecting their fellow peasants. This led directly to them challenging the Tokugawa regime. One other thing happened: the dawn of the Industrial revolution. The loss of tax revenues and social power coupled with being forced to finally do some productive work led to exploiting the right to have many wives turning some samurai’s homes into factories with the many wives and daughters working like slaves, producing silk products.
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ΩΩThese, in turn, eventually were the #1 export product of Japan when the peasant/samurai culture overthrew the dictators. This, in turn, bit into China’s silk export profits as the price of world silk fell in conjunction to the invention of the various cotton weaving/growing systems (which led to England becoming the world’s #1 exporter of value-added goods plus the US Civil War since slaves produced much of the world’s cotton).
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The party will aim to realize annual nominal growth of 4% in gross domestic product to achieve the target, while reducing the corporate tax rate from around 40% at present to below 30 percent. The draft manifesto mentions an increase in the consumption tax rate but does not state how much it should be raised by….
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HAHAHA. The LDP is totally not a social movement but rather, is a naked elitist operation. The working masses see nothing by pay cuts and cuts in hours in labor, one third now as part-time workers. And the LDP wants to get into power so they can increase taxes on workers seeing no pay raises? Wow. Will this wake up the workers at last?
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…In the draft platform for the upper house election, expected to be held in July, the LDP stresses that it can achieve annual wage increases of 3 percent by realizing nominal economic growth of 4%. It also plans to require that the Bank of Japan set an inflation target of 2 to 3% for consumer prices.
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ΩΩThis is pure insanity. If ‘inflation’ rises by 3% and wages rise by 3% plus taxes go up by around 3% you get…poverty. No, I see no rise in worker’s wages! Deflation is better than this program. But energy is not deflating. World energy costs has climbed astronomically over the last 12 years. This is horrible for the Japanese mired in depression. Inflation has been reduced to near zero only via dropping wages. Japan has to change direction soon or die. Will the death of the young drive events? The ability to raise children is vanishing rapidly in Japan as it is also an a number of other states like Italy or Greece, for example. Germany is seeing its young vanish, too.
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ΩΩAs we see over and over again, rising incomes come in the wake of major waves of death. When the invention of vaccinations led to a surge in world populations, many of the beneficiaries of the vaccination boon moved to lands cleared of natives due to diseases brought in by the immigrants from Europe. So Europe didn’t see massive drops in income due to too many workers for quite a while. Then, two world wars prevented a population crisis there. And in the US as well as Europe, modern contraceptives began the process of cutting down on workers.
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ΩΩSo the question is, why is Japan seeing workers get weaker and weaker even as the population collapses??? The answer to this is also rather obvious: no nation has more robots at work than Japan. Japan is crazy for robots. The elites want to have everything possible, handed over to robots which are far less troublesome to rule than humans who can fight back.
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ΩΩNow, on to more volcano news: Volcano tsunami could sink southern Italy ‘at any time’ – Telegraph
The Marsili volcano, which is bursting with magma, has “fragile walls” that could collapse, Enzo Boschi told the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. “It could even happen tomorrow,” said Mr Boschi, president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV)….
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The undersea Marsili, 9,800ft (3,000m) tall and located some 90 miles (150km) southwest of Naples, has not erupted since the start of recorded history. It is 43 miles (70km) long and 19 miles (30km) wide, and its crater is some 1,476ft (450m) below the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
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ΩΩThe Mediterranean Sea is a huge bathtub and Italy is like someone lying right in the middle of this tub and thanks to a great deal of volcanic and tectonic action caused by Africa moving relentlessly northwards, we get lots of tsunami events of epic proportions. The likelihood of this is very high over geological time. Maybe this one could rival the 1600 BC event that destroyed Crete’s civilization? Now, back to the global warming issue:
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Laughing Gas In Arctic Bigger Threat Than Previously Thought: Study
Emissions of the gas measured from thawing wetlands in Zackenberg in eastern Greenland leapt 20 times to levels found in tropical forests, which are among the main natural sources of the heat-trapping gas. “Measurements of nitrous oxide production permafrost samples from five additional wetland sites in the high Arctic indicate that the rates of nitrous oxide production observed in the Zackenberg soils may be in the low range,” the study said.
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ΩΩMore than one wit has noted that this is why Santa Claus laughs all the time, that jolly old elf. We have a choice with glacial melting: it either is increasing or decreasing. There is no ‘stable point’ as far as I can detect. That is, since the dawn of the great emergency called ‘The Ice Ages’ we have brief periods of warm weather and then back into the freezer. We still don’t fully understand why this is so. All we know is, our present interglacial is now at the maximum length of previous interglacials. This means we could be at a tip over point but we don’t know why these happen. All we know is, the tip over point is always very sudden.
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ΩΩLife is full of these uncertainties. Certainly, we know which mega-volcano events that can happen in any given time but this doesn’t mean we can stop these. And if they happen to be very close with each other, say, Yellowstone blows up and then Mammoth Lake does the same, half of the US can be buried in volcanic dust…not to mention this will definitely plunge us into an Ice Age. We don’t know if this will happen but probabilities don’t look so good for us in the long run: this can and might and maybe even will happen.
Funny thing here in Finland.
The security check personnel in the airports here were supposed to go on strike tomorrow morning at 09:00. Their labor union is negotiating new wages.
But now it seems all airports here will be closed tonight at 21:00 due to the volcano.
So far only the northern airports are closed. So a bad time for a strike.
Also the Service Union United (shop clerks etc. wal-mart employees
http://www.pam.fi/in_english/)
were supposed to have their collective agreement negotiations tonight but the chief state intermediator was stuck in Lappland not being able to fly.
So they will no go on strike tomorrow too.
So no flying and scarcity on food already.
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And the smoke has not even arrived here in southern Finland yet
Heh, that´s volcanoes, unions and socialism combined. Eleina should like that a lot
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Didn’t China just have another quake that is threatening a dam?
I remember in high school in the early ’70s, some elderly folks telling me I was part of the
“earthquake and volcano generation.” Things are definitely getting interesting.
Elaine,
Playing ‘catch up’ here:
First, I appreciate your references to the mythological. It is more apparent in everyday life than most imagine. Witness the names of the week named for Norse Gods/Godesses: Tuesday (Tews), Thursday aka Donnerstag, English thunderday (Thor), and Friday (Freya).
Second, regarding separation of price inflation vs speculation, via a recent article from Richard Daughty, which quotes Julien Garran of UBS, the “rind index” is an index of commodities that are sold at spot price only with no speculative futures markets, and lists lesser-followed commodities such as ” metal scrap, burlap, hides, tallow, gum rosin and wool tops.” This index is up 50% Y/Y.
Third, when I worked in SoCal, I worked side by side with one of President Hamid Karzai’s nephews. His father is the Afgani ambassador to the Czech Republic, or at least was then. I asked him about his uncle once having been a high ranking official in the Taliban, as claimed in the book “Crossing the Rubicon.” His reply was “Yes, it is true. He has never hidden that fact, but the U.S. government has.” So the correct terminology here should be RE-join the Taliban!
“Dirty eruptions are far more dangerous for all living things on this planet than Hawaiian-style eruptions”
Living here on the Big Island, I can tell you that the non-stop eruption of Mauna Loa is filthy dirty.
The eruption doesn’t eject ash but it does spew gases that are trapped in an eddy on the leeward side of the island in a constant gaseous fog called vog.
People who live in the Kona area don’t seem to see it even though it smarts the eyes and gives everything a gray pallor.
What little research on the health of the people that live there seems to indicate that there is a higher incidence of asthma on the wet sides of the islands that hardly get vog. Go figure.
“We don’t have C in the Icelandic alphabet, so when you ask for Cash, all you get is Ash”
“Sorry for the flight delays, Europe. We were aiming for London, but it’s hard to be accurate when firing a volcano”
Icelanders are having fun at least
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I have been hoping this would not happen. Magma flows can not be stopped with hope, that is for sure. But I knew, as sure as the sun sets in the West, that you would be all over this one. Launch right into it. Pedal to the metal. Full bore. California or bust. Like white on rice. I have petitioned Washington to withdraw from military adventures worldwide and put up one hundred percent tariffs on all imports. Israel will withdraw to its sixty seven borders and the white settlers will start looking for another place to live. (They are partial to reliving the Leathestocking Tales and settling around the old Mohican farmsteads, if that is ok with you.) China will now print as many trillions of foreign currency as they want, and the people there will be in full revolutionary mode until the ink runs dry. All, to soothe your restless hand and calm your discomfit for a spell.
Btw, India has now started buying up our natural resources. Marcellus shale is up for sale and Reliance is bidding. I had tried to alert you to this voracious company specifically this summer, but you did nothing. You kept on with the peripheral geological commentary or repackaging the Japan story again and again. Even Ecuador now does not let foreigners buy up its mineral rights. But it’s ok here. Canada and Australia as well. Where is sovereignty?
Elaine
Not a good time to fly. From today’s Crikey
The problem with volcanic ash is that it comprises gritty and glassy particles that were molten when they were blasted at the rate of tens of tonnes per second out of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption for two days earlier this week.
Jet engine combustion replicates the temperatures and pressures of a pit of volcanic magma. When a jet or turbo prop engine ingests the cooled particles of gritty dust they melt them again, coating the internal surfaces of the engines with what in lay terms is hot volcanic glass.
In short, volcanic dust kills jet engines. They are almost always irreparable afterwards, assuming there is an afterwards. When volcanic grit is struck at mach 0.82, the typical cruising speed of your average A380 or 777, it behaves like a high pressure sand blaster, and can quickly destroy visibility through cockpit windows.
In 1982, two 747s, one flown by British Airways and the other by Singapore Airlines, lost power without warning passing through an ash plume at night from Indonesia’s Mount Galunggung volcano. Both flights were saved by engine restarts and emergency diversions, and a KLM 747 suffered a similar crisis in an Alaskan ash plume in 1989.
Since then airlines have been ultra sensitive to flying anywhere likely to be affected by volcanic ash.
The Icelandic eruption is predicted to colour and even slightly cool much of the world for long after this disruption to air travel is over.
The large Eyjafjallajokull ejection of massive plumes of volcanic ash earlier this week was no Tambora (1815) or even Mount St Helens (1980) in terms of volumes but at the very least meteorologists and vulcanologists in Europe are predicting it will bring vivid long lasting sunsets and a bit of a chill to parts of the northern world for months to come and perhaps affect southern skies in due course.
I lifted the link from Denninger, but it’s a good game: Crack Shack or Mansion, set it Vancouver. I only got one right from about ten tries, but I don’t have the Coryphaeus’ keen eye for property. Anyway, print Hu baby, print. And you too Harp. Hey Ziff, hope you are selling.
http://crackshackormansion.com/
PA , yes, as the faulty Mr Denninger has pointed out, Vancouver has the perfect storm of a housing bubble. After the bubble broke in the US prices and demand recovered quickly here making fools of the naysayers. Plus we have a large gov. stimulus spend underway and CMHC is now engaged in subprime like activities ,w/ securitization. No i won’t be selling.
Canada is sitting pretty thanks to it being a major energy export power (this includes hydraulic electricity) so anyone yelling about ‘bubbles’ in relation to any OPEC-style power is nuts. And Dubai is NOT an OPEC power. This is why it had a true housing bubble that had no underlying strength, that is, no PRODUCTION to sustain values.
China has PRODUCTION values so its ‘bubble’ isn’t a bubble like the US bubble. All growth isn’t a bubble. Growth based on piling on debt is totally different from growth based on rising capital. This distinction is hard for people to understand. China is in danger of its capital-based bubble turning into a toxic debt bubble. This is why raising interest rates and capital ratio of bankers is so important. And this is what the US refused to do during the recent bubble.
Is it any wonder then that because of the billowing plumes of ash coming from the Eyjafjallajokull glacier near Reykjavík, Iceland, hundreds of thousands of passengers now find themselves ‘fortunately’ grounded?
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/04/under-proverbial-cloud.html
On the topic of climate, here’s a shocking thing to read from a British paper (considering they are always screaming about the Earth turning into another Venus).
“…scientists are now warning that Britain can expect to endure a series of extreme winters – the like of which have not seen for more than 300 years.
Researchers have found that low solar activity – marked by a decrease in the sun’s magnetic field – influences the weather conditions across northern Europe. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7589931/Coldest-weather-in-30-years-marks-the-start-of-a-series-of-extreme-winters.html
I want to congratulate the Coryphaeus on bringing charges against GS. Thanks for letting Zero Hedge tag along. So are you saying I should be buying some of those Vancouver listings now?
Ziff, Denninger has been pounding this particular tranche of CDO that Goldcrap and Tourre just got indicted with. Hopefully Paulson goes with them. I would not dismiss Denninger out of hand just on the strength of his abililty to go through a banana sheet, as what we call balance sheets now.
Elaine when the liberals came into office they had several billion in revenue,
“we are facing a loss of $2 billion in expected revenues in the current fiscal year”. How interesting it is, then, to look at the B.C. budget and see expected revenues falling by only $720 million in the current fiscal year. Darn those pesky numbers.
So if revenues aren’t down by as much as the government says, just what is sending B.C.’s deficit to new heights? Out of control spending. Government spending has skyrocketed to $40 billion in 2009, up $2 billion from 2008. If the government had held spending at 2008 levels, the deficit would have been $642 million, not all that much more than the original estimate. So the massive $2.8-billion deficit is a result of a spending blow out, not falling revenue.
The deficit adds to an already huge debt, which is expected to balloon to $53 billion by 2013, up from $38 billion in 2008. This move in the wrong direction creates three problems: higher debt servicing costs; young people left saddled with a financial burden they didn’t create; and once the boomer generation retires, there won’t be enough taxpayers working to pay the taxes to finance the debt and pay the pension benefits of future retirees. This spending spree endangers the retirement security of the boomer generation. ”
The Federal gov. is similarly increasing debt, but you may be right.
I should add, that one would think that in a truly robust economy, such as what we experienced for decades ,such spending would be unecessary.
OT
Nearly half of foreign-born workers in America’s largest metro areas work in white-collar jobs, including management, sales or administration, according to a new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/16/immigration-debate-nearly_n_540187.html
“This court hearing is going to be very dangerous,” said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas. “It could lead to Germany itself being catapulted out of the currency union. Once investors begin to fear this, there will not be single euro in further financing for the EMU periphery.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/7591027/Greek-aid-in-doubt-as-German-professors-prepare-court-challenge.html
WASHINGTON — For several years, Afghan police recruits under the tutelage of private U.S. government contractors couldn’t understand why their marksmanship never improved.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/15/92287/us-contractors-failed-to-train.html
@payattention,
You are awfully hard on Elaine, yet you keep coming here for information that you cannot get elsewhere.
Some of us cannot talk about some things. I helped do the title search on the Marcellus Shale formation for an American company that wants to buy it. I believe a number of companies are interested in this natural gas producing area. How many are American? I don’t know, but this is what US capitalists always wanted — until the table is turned on them and they are outbid in their own country.
This is exactly what we did to countless third world countries, and now they are doing it do us. How can we complain?
Retrieving the gas from the Marcellus formation requires horizontal fracturing at depths of 4000 feet or more. This kind of mining is energy intensive, and may not be feasible if oil costs too much or no one has the money to invest in the machinery necessary to accomplish this. I also suspect that this gas will cost more than previous natural gas supplies, especially if a company intends to pipe it out of the region and then overseas.
If the US government allows that, then yes, we have truly lost our sovereignty, but Elaine has been complaining about that for a long time now.
Some things should be nationalized. Water and heat being foremost among them.
Good comments on the volcano. I was in Oregon right after Mt. St. Helens blew up, and volcanic dust is not fun. The stuff is gritty and sticks to everything (like Velcro), and is quite difficult to remove. I have also spent a fair amount of time camping around Mt. Lassen, and the volcanic soil is the same way. One’s skin feels like it is being cut by a million small knives.
I have to take my hat of and take a bow to Elaine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull
The last eruption lasted 2 years.
Eyjafjallajokull has erupted only two times and on both occasions the 10x bigger Katla has erupted too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katla
and
solar minimum (I´ve been waiting for the next sunacitivy forecast next month) no spotties today…
http://spaceweather.com/
Mini-iceage for 2010-2020?
Seems like a pretty likely scenario now, the ash will stay in the atmosphere for a decade.
The warming period from 1930-1970 is being reversed due to things humans can’t control. We are in for some unsettled conditions. No surprise to me. I said, just three years ago, that the major quake in Indonesia would lead, IN FIVE YEARS to many volcanoes waking up during this time. So it has been: as soon as the dust from one eruption settles, a new eruption creates more dirt in the stratosphere.
Unlike Mt. St. Helens, this latest quake is going pretty high in the stratosphere. I plan to photograph its effects once the big storm here stops. Oh, and it SNOWED in TOKYO today! Wow. Heh. Just ‘weather’ not climate!
“I plan to photograph its effects once the big storm here stops.”
It´s raining here now (7 pm) but yesterday at sunset there were magnificent red clouds.
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I agree with JT. If it had not been for Elaine, I might have fallen prey to the “global warming” scam.
I am upset that Greenpeace has signed onto it. I used to support them (20 bucks a year) because they confronted polluters directly. Now, who knows what they will do. I will not waste money, not even 10 bucks, on fighting the universe and everything in it.
Hello Elaine,
On Sunday May 18, 1980 I was walking home from Holy Mass with Wife and Son and saw friends playing tennis at the university courts.
While chatting, I noticed a very ugly black thunderhead approaching from the SW and told Todd & Kathy they should knock-off the game and seek shelter. “What’s a little rain?”he replied.
After lunch, the sky had turned almost jet black and we thought we were in for a real Spokane thunderstorm, especially with the lightning coursing thru the clouds.
I turned on the radio to confirm my weather prediction and was shocked to hear that Mt. St. Helens had exploded killing 70+ people and blanketing Washington state with up to a foot of ash!
For the next two hours a steady rain covered our city with up to 6 inches of dry, gritty barbeque-like ash. I swept off the walks and didn’t note any discomfort other than dusty taste to the mouth.
The next day I walked to work thru a moonscape of city streets to an essentially deserted stock brokerage office, Kidding Nobody, Inc.
There were guys on the sqwak-box from all over the country trying to get Spokane’s attention to see if it was true the rivers were full and the hydro-dams plugged up so they could short Washington Water Power, Idaho Power, Montana Power, etc.
I told em, “Hang on a minute I have to go out and dig a trench to divert some lava. I’ll be right back”. Some idiot actually took me seriously and shorted the hell outta all the public utilities in the Northwest; My bosses were not amused.
Within a month rain and lots of sweeping had cleared most of the ash from streets and sidewalks. The lawns and wheat crops all grew a foot higher that summer! Europe had amazing sunsets and we all adjusted.
Somehow this time, I think it will be different.
Regards,
PFO