Major Iceland Eruption Disrupts All Of Europe
Courtesy of Elaine Supkis at Culture of Life News
The 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.
Dirty 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!
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.
Indeed, 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.
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.
As 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.
Volcanic 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.
Iceland 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:
Both the Pacific and the Atlantic are seeing volcanic eruptions. The Iceland eruptions are quite dangerous for the 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.
11km 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.
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]
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]
This 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.
I 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.
The 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.
To 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….
…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….
…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]…
…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.
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.
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]
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!
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.
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.
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.
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]…
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.
…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.
I 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.
The 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.
The 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.
Japan, 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…
….The volcano’s devastation exacerbated what was already known as the “Great Tenmei Famine.” Much of the agriculturally productive land in Shinanoand K?zuke 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]
Remember: 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.
Land and lordship in early modern Japan – Google Books
The 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.
Not 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.
In 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!
The 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.
Smart 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.
These, 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).
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….
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?
…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.
This 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.
As 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.
So 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.
Now, 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)….
. …The event would result in “a strong tsunami that could strike the coasts of Campania, Calabria and Sicily,” Mr Boschi said.
.
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.
The 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:
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.
More 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.
Life 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.
