Iceland Volcano Update

Met Office: Iceland Volcano Update.

The volcano in Iceland continues to sputter and spew, sending plumes of ash skyward. The random winds distribute over Europe, and aircraft fly or they don’t. The meteorologists suggest it will go on for months – including, I suppose, the weeks we will be in Spain. Prudence suggests money in the bank account, space on the credit cards and a sense of adventure. There could be worse places to be stranded than Andalucia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ztg0wUqKY

The link above is to a youtube video of the volcano in April.

NASA has a new satellite picture of the cloud available at:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=43945

The effects of continuing volcanic eruption at the current level remains uncertain. The European Geosciences Union currently is meeting to discuss the volcanic eruptions, among other topics. One speaker, whose remarks are reported at the link below, spoke of the need for improved remote sensing in order to better define the risk to aircraft, and the environment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8663884.stm

Volcanic eruptions, sinkholes, earthquakes – Mother Nature is restless this spring.

Nature or Politics

One modest belch, endless green moralizing – The Globe and Mail.

Brendan O’Neill writing in the Globe and Mail this morning expresses the opinion that the crisis in the sky resulted from  the EU’s usual risk-avoiding reaction.

I’ve heard that same opinion about the recent pandemic: too much hype, too much money spent, not a “real” pandemic. Tell that t0 the people who languished in emergency rooms or intensive care units, or who watched their children die. I admit those events happen in any regular flu season as well. But if no immunizations had taken place, and the population had developed wide-spread illness, and the subsequent bacterial infections, would that have been serious enough?

The same journalists who suggest the government over-reacted would have been the ones to call it to account if  one plane had fallen from the sky, its engines clogged with volcanic dust. It was the airplane manufacturing firms that wrote the specs and  manuals. Were their cautions to be disregarded?

The pandemic is over; the skies are clearing; tragedies averted or farce?

BBC News – The eruption that changed Iceland forever

BBC News – The eruption that changed Iceland forever.

Why the Icelandic volcano eruption could herald more dirsuption – Times Online.

Volcanic eruptions created Iceland and in 1763 almost destroyed it. But in 1816, another volcano, half way round the world in Indonesia, caused widespread weather change, dropping temperatures in Western Europe and Eastern North America. Not much, just an average of a degree or two, but enough to cause widespread crop failures and famine. Eastern U.S. farmers moved West; German farmers immigrated; as did the Irish. Mary Shelley, housebound by the miserable Swiss weather, wrote Frankenstein.
A foot of snow fell in Quebec in July of that year. A contemporary account is available at the following website.

http://tinyurl.com/y27wurs

It was called the year that summer never came. Events in many countries are detailed in a Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer#Cultural_effects