The stupid, it burns like a magnesium flare.
Excerpt from the article:
Now, you can add yet another problem to the climate change hit list: volcanoes. That’s the word from a new study conducted in Iceland and accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere.
Iceland has always been a natural lab for studying climate change. It may be spared some of the punishment hot, dry places like the American southwest get, but when it comes to glacier melt, few places are hit harder. About 10% of the island nation’s surface area is covered by about 300 different glaciers—and they’re losing an estimated 11 billion tons of ice per year. Not only is that damaging Icelandic habitats and contributing to the global rise in sea levels, it is also—oddly—causing the entire island to rise. And that’s where the trouble begins.
Riiight.
Here’s the money quote:
“As the glaciers melt, the pressure on the underlying rocks decreases,” Compton said in an e-mail to TIME. “Rocks at very high temperatures may stay in their solid phase if the pressure is high enough. As you reduce the pressure, you effectively lower the melting temperature.” The result is a softer, more molten subsurface, which increases the amount of eruptive material lying around and makes it easier for more deeply buried magma chambers to escape their confinement and blow the whole mess through the surface.
“High heat content at lower pressure creates an environment prone to melting these rising mantle rocks, which provides magma to the volcanic systems,” says Arizona geoscientist Richard Bennett, another co-author.
Perhaps anticipating the climate change deniers’ uncanny ability to put two and two together and come up with five, the researchers took pains to point out that no, it’s not the very fact that Icelandic ice sits above hot magma deposits that’s causing the glacial melting. The magma’s always been there; it’s the rising global temperature that’s new. At best, only 5% of the accelerated melting is geological in origin.
So, Iceland has had melting glaciers, OK we’ll accept that, but Iceland is not the world, and a good number of volcanoes that have erupted in the last century are in the tropical parts of the world where there are no glaciers on the volcanoes or magma fields, yet somehow, this writer, Jeffrey Kluger, extrapolates Iceland’s glacier melt to volcano link up to to the entire world.
To the uniniformed (such as Time Magazine writers), graphs like this one might seem to be “proof” of such Icelandic-to-global extrapolation:
![volcano-2[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/volcano-21.jpg?resize=720%2C402)
Source data: http://volcano.si.edu/
Gosh, it sure looks like another slam dunk for carbon dioxide driven climate hell in a handbasket, doesn’t it? The VEI starts increasing right about the time of the industrial revolution.
For those unfamiliar: The volcanic explosivity index (VEI) was devised by Chris Newhall of the US Geological Survey and Stephen Self at the University of Hawaii in 1982 to provide a relative measure of the explosiveness of volcanic eruptions. (Wikipedia)
But, there’s a hitch, according to NOAA data, volcanic activity worldwide actually went DOWN in the 2000’s while the climate changing carbon dioxide went UP in global concentration:
![Volcanoes-figure-2[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/volcanoes-figure-21.png?resize=720%2C394)
![co2_data_mlo[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/co2_data_mlo1.png?resize=720%2C526)
Correlation isn’t causation, at least when it comes to CO2 and climate and volcanoes.
Something that DID increase during the study period was the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). Guess where Iceland is? In the North Atlantic, which has been in the warm phase since about 1980.
The Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) is a mode of natural variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean and which has its principle expression in the sea surface temperature (SST) field. The AMO is identified as a coherent pattern of variability in basin-wide North Atlantic SSTs with a period of 60-80 years.
![AMO_fig123[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/amo_fig1231.gif?resize=612%2C749)
Source: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/catalog/climind/AMO.html
Gee, do you think maybe, possibly, that Iceland might have more glacier melt when the AMO is warmer? The authors don’t seem to be cognizant of it, preferring instead to cite the universal bogeyman “climate change”.
Here is the publication that is cited in the Time article:
Climate driven vertical acceleration of Icelandic crust measured by CGPS geodesy
Abstract
Earth’s present-day response to enhanced glacial melting resulting from climate change can be measured using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. We present data from 62 continuously operating GPS instruments in Iceland. Statistically significant upward velocity and accelerations are recorded at 27 GPS stations, predominantly located in the Central Highlands region of Iceland, where present-day thinning of the Iceland ice caps results in velocities of more than 30 mm/yr and uplift accelerations of 1-2 mm/yr2. We use our acceleration estimates to back-calculate to a time of zero velocity, which coincides with the initiation of ice loss in Iceland from ice mass balance calculations and Arctic warming trends. We show, through a simple inversion, a direct relationship between ice mass balance measurements and vertical position and show that accelerated unloading is required to reproduce uplift observations for a simple elastic layer over viscoelastic half-space model.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062446/abstract
Again, no mention of the world here, only Iceland. Compare that to the baseless claim made by the TIME writer Jeffrey Kluger:
The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere.
Newsflash Mr. Kluger: Iceland is not “everywhere”, and the authors make no claim about the issue affecting the rest of the Earth.
WUWT reader Mike Bromley writes something on his Facebook page that I really can’t improve upon:
Plate tectonics….caused by climate change. No mention of the fact that Iceland has one of the highest geothermal heat fluxes on the planet, that its geomorphology is controlled by vulcanism, that many of the scientific terms for glacial melt features are in Icelandic Language, and oh boy, 11 billion tons of ice is really not that much, in fact, one eruption of Hekla or Eyjafjallajokull would release about that much ice.
These people have zero shame, and even less uniformitarian common sense. They elevate conjecture to the level of fact, for an uncritical media to spew around in alarming terms. This one takes the cake. Vote Green, everyone. Soon you’ll find out what living under nature is all about.
We’ll have more on this later, readers are encouraged to add comments regarding this inanity.
..and just last year it was magma
…they do grow up fast…
They sort of magnafy so to speak.
You’re having a larv…
Pointman
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/09/volcanoes-once-again-again/
?w=720
Willis found quite a different story. During the time when AGW was actually happening (if it was), during the rapid warming in the1980’s and 1990’s, here are the facts:
This separate article better explains the connections, and that there is a >2,000 year lag between the climate warming and the increased volcanic activity.
http://www.livescience.com/25936-climate-change-causes-volcanism.html
Looking at the graph in the original article, volcanoes started ramping up around 1800. Perhaps someone can explain how that was caused by human CO2 from fossil fuels?
Let’s remember what this WUWT post is trying to address – Jeffrey Kluger of Time Magazine said:
The authors of the paper talk about Iceland and not countries which don’t have glaciers but have volcanoes. The Time piece has already issued one correction [“Correction appended Jan. 30, 2015“]. Maybe it’s time it issued another.
Next year it’ll be smegma.
This the best comment !
Those so called science humans.Buach I vomit !
…which would pretty much prove they’re dick-heads?
A true Nut Job and Time Mag. as well as the “Authors” and GRL Editors; psycho-ward escapees!
Did the intrepid GRL Editors even notice the word, Geophysical, in their rags title, or for the Nut Jobs to read that Iceland is built on the Mid-Atlantic Spreading Ridge separating two lithosphere plates above the Iceland Hotspot!
Idiots all.
How important is that word in the scheme of things?
Is it possible that the “Number of Volcanic Eruptions Reported“ has trended up because of better observations?
Unreported volcanoes deduced from aerosols.
But some other experts have suggested that global cooling is causing more volcanic eruptions! And I thought the warming had stopped 18 years ago?
I just read the Time article, linked from Drudge Report, and came over here to see if had ‘surfaced’ yet.
http://time.com/3687893/volcanoes-climate-change/
Breathtaking conjecture that belies reason, sanity, even sentience.
Read that too. In middle of article is video of Jeffrey Kluger taking on Sen. James Inhofe using the 97% fudge. We know that attack. Shut it off, waste of bandwidth.
Here I have been blaming increased taxation for global change everything inclusive natural and unnatural… ufda!
“We’ll have more on this later, readers are encouraged to add comments regarding this inanity (insanity).”
I can’t imagine living with a mind that is so off the chart stupid…and I am not exactly anything bright. lol
Highflight56433
You’d be right to blame some increased taxation on climate change, or at least on crazy policies designed to counter the conjectured “catastrophic anthropogenic” variety.
highflight – As much as I have pondered this problem, I don’t know how I missed ‘higher taxation’ as a reasonable cause! I’m still laffin’ – and I’m grateful to you because, after reading the piece, I was in dire need of a jolly to help settle my stomach. Also, its been quite some time since I’ve seen the interjection ‘ufda’. This is a good word and should be used more often.
Actually, I suggest that higher taxation is a result rather than a cause. . .
JayB:
It is both.
More money in the government’s hands causes more wasteful spending on studies such as this. Studies such as this cause higher taxes, which gives the government more money to waste on studies like this, which cause taxes to go up…..
It is called a positive feedback.
Reblogged this on the WeatherAction News Blog and commented:
I remember the infamous ‘corrector of climate disinformation’ Jo Abbas scratching around in Mar 2011 following the Tōhoku/Sendai earthquake/tsunami as she was convinced it was all our fault. ‘Science’ has proved how right she was
/sarc
Just one year ago Time was reporting that volcanoes were slowing down climate change.
http://time.com/9717/volcanoes-may-be-slowing-down-climate-change/
So, actually this volcano effect would represent a negative feedback for the (infinitesimal) CO2 climate forcing.
We shall now all be saved from Anthropogenic Global Warming by erupting volcanos. Yeah!
it is ridiculous, should not be given any play.
Icelandic glaciers reached their Holocene maximum during the Little Ice Age.
From Ingolffson et al, 2009:
During the mid-Holocene climate optimum some of the present-day ice caps were probably absent. Ice caps expanded after 6.0–5.0 cal. kyr BP, and most glaciers reached their Holocene maxima during the Little Ice Age (AD 1300–1900).
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/iceland-glaciers-in-lia-biggest-for-8000-years/
And they’re surprised they’ve melted a bit since?
They did some retreating before 1949. Blame co2?
Even better, we have a new thermostat theory of climate control to added to Willis’s. Volcanos erupt and cause global cooling. Cooling causes Ice caps grow on volcanos. Weight of ice suppresses volcanic activity. Volcanic aerosols clear from the air, causing global warming. Global warming returns, melting ice caps. Volcanic activity is restored.
Yes , your comment it is the most competent !
Grosseclockner ( Austria) glacier was not there 2000 years ago, after that it grew imenssely to the valley 25 km long, after that smelted again and in that place it was a lake and again the glacier rise hugely , all that before the industrial era, and now it smelt slowly and those scientific bastards crys: disaster ! disaster .
If don’t obey to politicians and banks we will not get any salary. Therefore climat change.
Such imbecile tautology : climat change !
Gee..here in new Mexico we had volcanoes erupting millions of yrs ago…must have climate change
Cool! We’ll have Palm trees, pomegranates and olive trees in Germany, and volcanos in our gardens! Big fun!
Some people never learn to understand tectonic plates…. that’s one thing. Stupid as it might be….
Yes, kids, you too can play scientist with a degree from Acme School of Journalism!
Excellent rebuttal analysis, Anthony!
Too bad it’s not true — otherwise, this would be a major negative feedback mechanism.
Negative feedback against a warming that has stopped 18 years ago? How does a negative feedback work against a signal that refuses to change?
A related thread:
Another story about global warming causing volcanoes… WUWT Oct. 2, 2014.
I don’t buy it at all. Earth-Tides move the crust up and down 0.3 meters twice a day.
What I can buy is a drop in sea level during Global Cooling can cause volcanic eruptions by increasing the stress on thousands of volcanic islands with their lava skirts exposed above water.
What about a contest on WUWT as to what ridiculous geological or astronomical catastrophe will be caused by global warming. I’ll start with: “A significant change in the Earth’s axial tilt found from melting polar icecaps!” Try to top that one – without being too far fetched.
Disruption of the Earth’s axis die too much ice at the poles? Sorry, that one was done long ago, and several people still have the T-shirt…..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_shift_hypothesis
Ralph
How about:
Due to thermal expansion caused by global warming, the earth has a larger surface area and therefore is much more likely to be hit by an asteroid or comet.
Co2 causes asteroid strikes.
It looks like it should be a wash. As more ice melts, the sea level will increase, putting more pressure on those undersea volcanos causing less eruptions there. /sarc
I’m not sure if it’s a wash. Last year I proposed this mechanism informally. The way I see it, the ice ages should cause increased volcanism in sea floor spreading centers. The rhythmic ebb and flow of sea level oscillating about 130 meters should allow magma chambers to “reload” when the ice is growing and sea level drops. Once the sea level rises there’s a fairly large load imposed over a large area, this should increase magma chamber pressure.
If this mechanism works then we have a decreased local load where the glaciers melted, and increased load in the areas where there were no glaciers and were underwater. But this “kneading” effect should be at its peak when sea level rose and hit a high point. I would have expected increased volcanic activity from say 18000 to 8000 years ago.
I don’t think tying volcanic activity to anthropogenic CO2 has much to stand on, but the geomechanic effects do merit study.
Ice has a density of about 57 lb/cu ft and so exerts a pressure of 0.396 psi. At a depth of 1 mile, the additional pressure on the crust of the earth is 2,090 psi. Basalt has a density of about 190 lb/cu ft. I found one reference suggesting magma chambers lie around 11-15km below the earth’s surface. Crustal pressure from 11km of basalt above the chamber would be on the order of 47,500 psi. Doesn’t sound like a big change (~5%) to me. Even less, depending on the depth of the glaciers under discussion.
the entire ice cap would have to melt to change the pressure 5%. they are not even sure if the ice cap is shrinking or growing. depends on who does the measuring.
OK I’ll buy that and add a bit.
Iceland is ~40,000 mi² and the glacial coverage is ~11% of that or 122.6×10^9 ft². 11 billion tons of ice (I’ll even use long tons since they didn’t specify) means 197 lbs of ice lost for each ft². That’s a pressure change of 1.37psi. (Yes, I know that’s not how glaciers lose ice, but that’s what the article infers.) If we ignore the rest of the ice depth and just use the basalt’s pressure that’s a delta from 47,500 psi to 47,498.63 psi or a change of 0.002%. <sarc>I can’t imagine why the whole island isn’t now flooded by magma like a dam just broke with that massive pressure change.</sarc> Considering it takes more overpressure than that to break the average plate glass window this is another one I ain’t worrying about. What an inane article, but the loons that think crystals can heal them and Nature is benevolent will buy it hook, line and (lead free, all natural, approved by the State of California) sinker.
The scientific bastrads treat the Earth as it is an abces !
Strange ways to make clear what it is absolutely not possible to be known.
It is just an educated guess , not more . But they try to sell a fraud , just to please their masters of the NWO.
Yeah! I can’t tell you how many prospecting trips we had to cancel because of active volcanoes in Labrador when I was in the mining business. The whole Canadian Shield, as I understand, is completely untravellable because of constant lava eruptions. And it’s only getting worse as the air temperatures spiral upwards out of control. I understand there are similar problems in Hawaii with the glaciers there. And as soon as the mile thick ice is gone from Yellowstone we can expect another super-eruption – should be anytime in the next twenty thousand years.
Over at Bishop Hill, poster Michael Hart stated:
“The BBC aspire to educate the world, yet they cannot educate themselves.”
Reading this article from Time, it seems clear that the deliberate ignorance of the BBC extends to other media outlets.
It is fair to state that Time Magazine aspires to inform its readers, but declines to educate itself.
The elevated alarm raised by the ‘research’ is rather shocking, but the disgust should be directed toward the post doc PhD student from U of A who is principally making the claim, with total blinders on. Unfortunately, there are incompetent personnel at every institution.
I blame it on the schools, people are often taught how to write good English at the expense of never been taught basic logic. Common sense and actual fact checking are indeed a rare commodity to most in Journalism. This could have simply been blown out the water by just passing the paper under the noses of a few academics from true sciences first – the BS reaction would have been almost instant.
Good English? Where? Most kids (and many adults) these days think ‘their’ is singular.
Pedantry is all well and good but you run the risk of saying something silly. And you just did that.
Impersonal ‘their’ has been employed by speakers and writers, many of them highly esteemed, since at least the fifteenth century.
“Stupidest” vs “Most stupid” (more stupid/stupider) has also been bandied about for quite some time,
as has the usage of “bantered” vs “Bandied”.
I don’t care.
All I want to know is, where are the trolls?
Consensus of the esteemed? Oy.
Harold,
Doubling down on silly!
Their they’re – just relax, don’t listen to the loosers, there not to brite neway.
Isn’t as important as learning how to think, they could do that poor English could be forgiven.
Few graduate with any sense of “good” writing skills. Even some GRPs are scribbled drivel on TP.
ur n 2 smting
Warming causes volcanoes which causes cooling. Where’s the net “Change”? ….or is volcanic activity a negative freedback to the warming?
that’s feedback
“Perhaps anticipating the climate change deniers’ uncanny ability to put two and two together and come up with five, the researchers took pains to point out that no, it’s not the very fact that Icelandic ice sits above hot magma deposits that’s causing the glacial melting.”
There’s no need to be nasty about it. It’s a fine question: How sure are you which one causes which?
Only in climate science and a few other fields is asking such questions seen as evidence of bad faith.
Being one of those uncanny 2+2 = 5 folks (not really, but he’d say so), I’d further ask: How did they disprove that volcanic activity caused the melting? Were they open to the idea that it did, or did they start with the need to disprove this alternative? I’m hoping there’s more to it than “The magma’s always been there,” since their whole observed effect is *increased* volcanic activity!
Not that I am making this case; I’d incline, while confessing my relative ignorance, toward the AMO explanation nicely given above. But that’s the great thing about this particular “science”: You’re not allowed to ask, “How do you know that?” or say “Not so fast,” unless you have the right credentials and signal that you’re on the right team.
This.
“Being one of those uncanny 2+2 = 5 folks (not really, but he’d say so), I’d further ask: How did they disprove that volcanic activity caused the melting? Were they open to the idea that it did, or did they start with the need to disprove this alternative? I’m hoping there’s more to it than “The magma’s always been there,” since their whole observed effect is *increased* volcanic activity!”
Yep, the magma has always been there, at precisely the same temp, never moved, never had rock above it weakened by tremors, and sat 1C below its freezing point at high pressures. Only when AGW took away what, 2m of ice thickness? did volcanoes happen.
How do volcanoes ever happen anywhere else then???
But 2+2 = 5 for large values of 2.
+1
And after proper hominization, there is a 38% chance that 2+2 will equal 6!
Then let’s just chalk up volcanoes as being yet another negative feedback….
I was going to say that, but you beat me to it! Nature’s thermostat control much more advanced than ours.
Here is some more info on the state of their glaciers
http://earthice.hi.is/glaciers_iceland
Seems to have started in the late 1800’s.
Glaciers around the world have been in a general state of retreat since the end of the Little Ice Age (~1870). I vaguely recall that Icelandic glaciers have also been generally retreating with occasional advances.
What about land rise in Northern Sweden by as much as 3 feet per century. There are no volcanoes there.
It is still recovering from the last ice-age. The whole North Atlantic ridge from Jan Mayen to Svalbard is rising too, All that water has to go somewhere, hence the rising sea levels in the rest of the world.
It makes sense.
Volcanoes go with dinosaurs.
Glaciers go with mammoths.
Where dinosaurs stop you get mammoths.
So where volcanoes stop you get glaciers.
And vice versa.
QED.
Going with real science, volcanic activity and climate is the suns domain, the magma is in pools, balls of molten rock unconnected to the centre of the Earth. This makes them an electric-magnetic phenomenon caused by the moods of the sun.
I recommend reading the entire article (as usual), rather than only edited snippets:
http://time.com/3687893/volcanoes-climate-change/
A nice video documentary to boot!
I have read it and it is BS. They are speculating of the cause being man. It’s not.
How do I mess with NAO and AMO?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379113001145
Barry, as a matter of curiosity, have you EVER seen or read ANY thing that that supported your ardent belief in CAGW that you didn’t come and praise loudly? I’m sure if there was an article on ‘man-made global warming’ causing clowns make-up to run being ridiculed that you and Harry and David Socrates would all be there telling us how important it was, how foolish we were to laugh and what a nice video documentary it was.
Dave
Ist April coming up. Do tou think – –
Its complete bollocks and very misleading bollocks at that, An Isostatic rebound of an inch or so
a year can be found across most of northern Europe and America. It has NOTHING to do with current ice melting but is a reaction to the melting of the mile high ice sheets that used to exist.
See Journal of the Geological Society March 2010 vol. 167 no. 2 417-432
Take a look at the UK Met Office page on Iceland and you will see that eruption rates in the 20th century were LOWER than those in the 18th and 19th centuries when the region was still in the grip of the little ice age.
I’ll leave the last word to them.
“Iceland’s volcanism can be attributed to its location on the Mid Atlantic Ridge in the North Atlantic Ocean, where the Eurasian and North American plates are moving apart a few centimeters per year. In Iceland, this produces volcanic rift zones, regions where the Earth’s crust is being pulled apart and fractured, and here molten rock, or magma, rises up, and some reaches the surface and erupts as lava and/or ash. ”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/latest/volcano/iceland
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Global warming is like the monster in a bad 1950s science fiction movie: there is nothing it cannot do. Nothing.
And like “The Blob”, it moves very slowly yet it can’t be outrun.
Iceland actually straddles the mid Atlantic rift. That is why almost all of it is so active, and also why so many of the eruptions are basaltic. One part of the rift on Iceland is the Reykjanes Ridge, and the spreading rate there is on order of 2.5cm/year! This also changes elevations, but that is cross fault block and side (west/east) dependent. No glacier there now. Popular tourist spot. My daughter went last summer.
I am not going to read the paper, since is is impossible to disentangle tectonic uplift from ice mass loss isostasis no matter how fancy the model calculations are. All a differential GPS can do is measure change in elevation. Not why
Techtonic uplift under the eastern cauldron under the Vatnajokul glacier has been measured as high as 9 cm/day prior to sub ice eruptions causing jokulhlaups. Part of the monitoring/warning system.
So the papers Iceland conclusions are more models all the way down. Let alone that Iceland is unique. Time’s extrapolation to the world just shows how braindead MSM have become.
Good point implicit in your last line, Rud. There seems to be a good correlation between increasing MSM stupidity and rising CO2 levels.
Does global warming cause journalists to become increasingly dumb? Or is it that increasingly dumb journalists hyperventilating more CO2 are causing global warming?
The question seems right up there with the other recent profundities considered in climate science.
Was waiting for someone to bring up the Atlantic rift. The ( computer) modellers will have fun trying to allocate the various forces at play in that part of the world. Blaming any isostatic rise to an minuscule increase in air temperature would be just a tad of a stretch. Was playing tourist there last year. 27 of 62 gps stations show statistically upward movement, that is, less then half. Climate change does not affect the other 35? Do they have any model to explain that?
Here’s a current report from Vatnajokul.
Might help if I put in a link.
http://en.vedur.is/media/jar/Factsheet_Bardarbunga_20150130.pdf
Isn’t this kind of publication part of the campaign to scare politicians into “doing more” at COP21 later this year in Paris? The “Armageddon around the corner” setup? Another example is this one: “Grassroots sports at risk from heatwaves due to climate change, report warns” here http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/30/grassroots-sports-at-risk-from-heatwaves-due-to-climate-change-report-warns
They’re onto something . . . or on something . . . Is anyone minding the store any longer?
“planet has a fever”???
Maybe it’s just hot flashes and moodiness. If it is a fever then get ready for some chills, too.
Mann-o-pause….. causes all symptoms.
Mann-Made Mann-O-Pause… I like it!
If this speculation is at all substantial, one would expect to find evidence of at least regional surges in volcanic eruptions during the MWP. If the chart above had shown that period and a rise during it, it might have gotten my interest, despite the evidence that a LACK of volcanic activity shared causality of the MWP.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/175842/medieval-warm-period-MWP
Can anybody point me towards a source of data on medieval volcanic activity to check this out?
If you google it you’ll see that 5 out of 10 of the largest volcanic eruptions in human history happened in the last two centuries, beginning with Tambora in 1815.
…and the only prescription is more cowbell.
Reminds me, I’m hungry. I’m going to go eat a hamburger. A mile high one at that. if you’ve seen the ad you’ll know what I mean..
I may have experienced a sever arithmetic break down, but … isn’t 12-billion tons about the equal of a cube of basalt 150 meters on a side? That is, if you assume the first “tons” are short tons, and you estimate volume based on 3,011.5 kg per cubic meter of solid basalt? That would be not merely a small but an absolutely trivial effect.
Why don’t they use a multiple of kg to avoid the metric ton/funny(*) ton issue?
(*) I am French, so the idea that a ton is sometimes not 1000 kg is funny to me.
I did the math in a reply to D.J. above and got 1.37psi change of his calculated 47,500psi of basalt. I believe that’s a few orders of magnitude below “absolutely trivial.”
That would be a “severe” arithmetic breakdown.
The relationship between melting ice (on a grand scale) and volcanism is nothing new at all, it’s been known for years.And while the results are completely unpredictable, volcanism is rarely a good thing for human populations.
Yes, having all that annoying basalt and granite intruding and extruding all over the place is a true curse.
If only we could just cool the poor Earth’s terrible fever, we could force that rock down into the magma.
Thats just what geothermal energy extraction does.
Actually many people locate farmland near volcanoes due to it being among the “richest agricultural lands on earth“. [University of California at Santa Barbara, Department of Geological Sciences] I assume the food they eat is good for them.
Well, that didn’t work out too well for the folks in Pompeii & Heracleanum
Not too mention almost all (if not all) the world’s coffee bean production comes from volcanic hillsides with rich dark mineral-laden soils.
– Joel, a caffeine coffee addict.
I had never thought of that! What I was addressing was this:
I showed evidence of widespread good for farmers who farmed rich volcanic soils near volcanoes. Food is “good”.
@HarryFlashmann
Quote: “…volcanism is rarely a good thing for human populations.”
That’s a rather shortsighted view which is typical for most warmists who usually have a poor understanding of the geological perspective.
Without volcanos, life on the continents would have gone extinct long before the first humans could have roamed the earth. That is because volcanos are the main source of getting back life-giving CO2 (for photosynthesis – remember?) from the sedimentation process into the atmosphere. Hence volcanos do close the global carbon circuit and consequently the circle of life itself. Without volcanism and its carbon-liberating effect in the lithosphere, nearly all carbon would be now deposited in the gigantic carbonate sediments of our planet and in coal, fossil oil and natural gas, as well.
But in the long run, carbon-liberation by volcanism was weaker than the carbon sedimentation process. This is the reason why the CO2 levels in atmosphere gradually declined since the jurassic and cretaceous eras until it reached a dangerously low level of about 180 ppm at the end of the last ice age. Life on the continents was then shockingly close on the brink of extinction which lies below a CO2 concentration of 150 ppm because photosynthesis will stop then!
Therefore, in the long run again, it is a very positive and honorable action of us humans to help the volcanos delivering CO2 – THE GAS OF LIFE – back into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels ! Otherwise who can tell whether life on earth would survive the next real and probably 100 ka long ice age, when the atmospheric CO2 level could decline even more ???
PS: And don’t forget as well: Without volcanism and a liquid Earth mantle as its reason, we would not have our geo-magnetical shield against cosmic radiation and the erosion of our thin atmospheric air layer…
One might add this quote from a description of Earth’s carbon circuit:
“Some have calculated that if no CO2 is added at all, the atmosphere and the oceans will be emptied for CO2 over about 2.5 million years and all photosynthesis and thus all life will then cease.”
Any questions?
On the basis of ” Pompeii & Heracleanum”, watermelons would evacuate all human settlements within 100km of every volcano. Thats how their mind works on every issue. think of the consequences.
without the heat of the mantle to turn water to steam, our oceans would have long ago drained into the earth, and life as we know it on earth would have long been extinct.
given the density of water, and its ability to flow downhill through even the smallest cracks, the oceans are only held in place by a layer of high pressure steam underneath them.
@fredberple
Very funny indeed, but I’m not sure if all warmists could understand your joke. So let’s be clear: Water has a smaller density than the lithosphere and the oceans don’t need the help of volcanism to keep their rightful place… 😉
Well, being atop an active volcano may not be good.
Being under an ocean is also not good.
Being under fertile, arable land isn’t good either.
I guess I’m missing something here…
You are missing the negative perspective. It makes change of anything a threat, instead of an opportunity.
Troll alert
“It was only later that we appreciated that a planet running a fever is just like a person running a fever, which is to say it has a whole lot of other symptoms: in this case, droughts, floods, wildfires, sea level rise, species loss, crop death and more.”
The symptoms that we need to be concerned about are the effects of schedule 1 drugs on an entire generation, and their subsequent use of drugs on school children to keep them quiet in their public schools.
+1
how is it that large numbers of boys are prescribed Ritalin to keep them quiet in school? In some private schools I’ve heard the number is well over 50%.
You should have seen how upset they were when I said no. He knew every Thomas the tank engine trains, every pokeemon ( at that time there were 128) , but somehow the teachers weren’t able to teach him anything? He wasn’t hyper either, he could stand at attention for an hour or more. (went to basic encampment at Ft Dix part of the civil air patrol) We took him and the rest out and homeschooled.
Has anyone else caught the story that the shrink who “invented” ADD & ADHD said it was a “ficticious disease”? They wanted to put my son on that Ritalin crap. Not only no but hell no. I put him on a full-spectrum liquid mineral supplement and the complaints about “figiting in class” stopped completely. Our soils are depleted; if you can add cold water extracted, plant derived minerals to your daily diet do so.
But that’s good for Iceland more hot magma rising to the surface more Geothermal Energy.
It’s nice to have the geothermal energy. On the other hand it has been estimated that the 1783 volcanic eruption in Iceland resulted tin the death of about 25% of Iceland’s populaition. So it’s definitely a mixed blessing.
Mother Earth is simply making more Iceland. Why don’t warmunists like Iceland?
Not really. You want it near the surface, where water can penetrate and then get can be cycled through a turbine by judicious drilling and ducting. On the surface it cools right off and then you are left with aggregate base source material.
“But, there’s a hitch, according to NOAA data, volcanic activity worldwide actually went DOWN in the 2000’s…”
That’s not a hitch, that’s consistent with what the models are telling us. Global Warming ♫ causes more volcanoes and fewer volcanoes.
Thanks for the H/T, Anthony. Reading that article actually cause physical pain…with its liberal admixture of frumpy ad hominem and junk science alarm. Stupendous.
Hold on a second guys. I’ve been arguing with my liberal friends about “global warming” for decades now. I’m a complete skeptic.
However!!! When my family lived in Sitka, Alaska we had a dormant volcano named Mt Edgecumbe that geologists think was caused by isostatic rebound. It last erupted 11,000 years ago after the last of the glacial (~3,000 ft. of it) ice melted. The geologists theorize this since the volcano isn’t located near any faults/rifts like most volcanoes are.
So, it might be possible in a few instances, eh?
Love your site and the work you do Anthony.
Marty
Marty:
“Mt Edgecumbe…last erupted 11,000 years ago after the last of the glacial (~3,000 ft. of it) ice melted.”
Are you sure?
http://www.sitka.com/Porky/porky.htm
Hey jps, my roadside geology book says 9,000 years.
Yeah, I’ve always wanted to recreate Porky’s stunt.
Bought a chainsaw from his son once..
marty
A masterful prank!
Thanks!
The complete melting of 1mile thick glaciar vs. a small % increas in the melt speed are two very different things.
It’s at the end of a fault that is presently a transform fault (Queen Charlotte) but may have had different modes of motion in the past. So, it’s in a bit of a different situation than the volcanoes on the Aleutian chain, but the entire coast of western North America has volcanism of all sorts. And, once there is an established plumbing system to store and transport magma, volcanism can go on for a few millions of years, anyway, after the primary cause is gone.
Ah, Marty, that whole landscape you lived in is defined by two major geological processes. One is glaciation. The other is tectonics. All the glacial rebound in the world can’t trigger a volcano unless there is a magma source very close to the surface (like Ice Land in fact, which has magma near enough to the surface to keep the island pretty warm considering where it is located latitudinally). More to the point look at the region on Googlearth from an altitude of about 2100 km. Find Denali. You will be able to trace a neat, smooth, approximately parabolic arc along the Alaska Range. Projecting the eastern side downward in a smooth, compatible curve will pretty much bulls eye Sitka and Mt. Edgecumbe. The Alaska range itself is a volcanic arc caused by the northern motion of the Pacific plate, which dive under the south coast of Alaska. Sitka, and thus Mt. Edgecumbe is sitting more or less on the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates.
hey duster.
of course you’re right.
what I remember was some geologists theory that mt. edgecumbe was unique. no other volcanoes within 100’s of miles. so perhaps isostasy and crustal rebound created a magma channel that terminated with mt edgecumbe..
marty
are you an isostatic rebound denier, duster?
sorry. it’s late..
Sitka, AK, is located near a diffuse transform plate boundary between the Pacific and North American plates. The islands and fjords of the Panhandle region are accreted and sheared slices of crust and their boundaries. Plenty of crustal weakness to provide conduits for magma movement. The big giveaway for subglacial to isostatic rebound vulcanism would be the presence of pillow lavas, as can be demonstrated by a similar Pleistocene eruptive phase in the nearby British Columbia interior, tectonically similar to the Alaska Panhandle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Mountain_(British_Columbia)
The mechanism is clearly known to occur, during and subsequent to the removal of more than a kilometer of ice….which would have the isostatic effect of removing 400 meters of rock load–in a geologically very short period–from a region fraught with a jumble of accreted crustal slices.
Iceland, however, is a living, breathing cauldron of inflating and deflating magma chambers and fissures, as recent activity has shown. To declare a set unidirectional ‘rebound’ rate for the island due to ice melt is very amateurish because it does not acknowledge the volcano-tectonic overprint which is impossible to predict. Basically, Iceland bounces up and down like a leviathan basaltic bronco on a short geological time scale….which is far longer than the tiny and partial GPS record these fellows have used to “sort of” develop their hypothesis….before it runs smack dab into the required climate change link.
excellent breakdown, mike.
I’ll second that, nice job Mike. Makes perfect sense.
Indeed, rocks do melt under lowered pressures; but, the pertinent question is “what is the partial derivative of temperature with respect to pressure on an adiabat?” It is a very small quantity. I recall it being possibly a couple of hundred degrees (K) when the pressure changes are those of, say, 600 kilometers of dense rock (3500 kg/m^3). One mile of ice seems like a lot of pressure until one compares it to a mile of rock, and removing a mile of rock at Bingham Pit, for example, has not lead to a magma discharge. Perhaps this changes the subsurface temperature by a measurable fraction of a degree, but it is not a measurable contribution to magma production.
“led” not lead.
Not a led mine, you’re saying? 🙂
The Puffington Host had a similar observation back in 2010: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-matai/are-global-warming-volcan_b_550936.html … And my contemporaneous take on it: http://stevemaley.com/2010/04/26/552443908/
ok, I can’t find the exact citation in my “Roadside Geology of Alaska ” book, so I might be getting it wrong.
The only pertinent quote is, “Local tectonic structures such as the Chatham Strait fault and other northwest trending faults became inactive several tens of millions of years before the Edgecumbe volcano rock erupted and thus cannot be involved.”
marty
Increasing CO2 = rising global temperature = melting glaciers = more volcanoes = global cooling = thickening glaciers = less volcanoes = global warming, ad infinitum.
This goes beyond plain stupidity; it is as insane as Caligula appointing a horse as Consul of Rome.
in a contest of common sense, I’d place my money on the horse.
+10 to ferd
JKluger@time.com is indeed breathtakingly stupid on the issue of Climate Change with regards to human-produced CO2 causation. Trying to make the Iceland findings appear as a global climate change issue is idiotic beyond belief. Ignorance can be cured with education, but as AW notes above, Mr. Kluger’s climate change stupidity burns white hot. Even more sadly, Kluger willfully deceives his readers.
I find it quite humorous that this lawyer-turned-journalist is the Time’s senior science editor. His only real claim to fame is co-writing a book on Apollo 13 with astronaut Jim Lovell, that was used by Ron Howard to make the movie. Sadly Lovell did not sign the April 10, 2012 open-letter (link below to a copy with signatories) to NASA Administrator Bolden, but 7 of his fellow Apollo-SkyLab era-astronauts did, along with Dr Kraft and Mr Griffin, both Directors for many years of Johnson Space Center. The climate change alarmists tried to dismiss this letter but a review of the names and positions of the signatories, reads like a Who’s Who of NASA, including many science and engineering PhDs and senior staff of the 60’s-90’s.
http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4
Joel O’Bryan, BSCE, PhD
An interesting observation . Just a few days ago certain individuals hostile to skeptics were dismissing the analyses of Lord Monkton because he was a classical trained graduate from Cambridge (no mean university ) turned journalist and therefore had no right to get involved in scientific debate.
I have not seen a similar dismissal from the same individuals , on equivalent grounds , of this lawyer-turned -journalist .
Hypocrisy is the word that springs to mind and risks devaluing any further contribution from those sources .
mikewaite, the whole argument of the form “he’s not a climate scientist” is bollox, no matter who makes the claim. It ignores the content, and offers no clear view of what those who make such an argument object to. I get pilloried often by this type of thing, because a geologist “is not a climate scientist”. Well, OK then. But a geologist deals with the rock record, a good proportion of which is sedimentary, and basically a data disk that recorded the actions of climate. Tree Trunks on Ellesmere Island sort of stuff.
But yes, you are right, the fact that those who skewer Monckton for his lack of credentials are not equality-minded in their distribution of targets.
Next week in Time “climate change causes sun spots.” You read it hear first.
Magma changes are under miles of rock, yet somehow the loss of a few feet of ice is critical.
These guys can’t do even simple math.
Well, climate mitigation in this case will be extra simple. First, gather the virgins…
If your climate control method inadvertently causes too much cooling, you can reverse the effect with timely bottle(s) of gin to propitiate Pele, the volcano goddess:
http://www.hawaiilife.com/articles/2011/10/visit-to-kilauea-volcano/
“We were told to bring a bottle of gin, flowers, fruits, and the song within us to honor the Goddess Pele, and when we went there, it was such a beautiful day! We could tell she was pleased to see us!”
I don’t know about the flowers, fruits, and song. When I lived there, it was gin. And it better not be the cheap stuff.
Before COP 21 Paris meeting this fall, if the lead post’s absurd kind of research garbage is a trend setting precedent, then I expect to see a paper entitled:
‘Climate Change caused by Changed Climate (Really so Run for Your Lives)’
If we see a paper like it, then what are the odds it would be favorably tweet peer reviewed by Dana, Cook, Ward, Oreskes and Mann?
John
Yes, but who could look forward to such a thing, as we would be swarmed by trolls- hating on us for questioning the “science”.
Alan Robertson,
On the brighter side, consider that anyone coming here to hate us is ‘sauce for the goose’ . . .
I enjoy your frequent comments on WUWT.
John
Alan,
Questioning science is fine. Required in my book. What causes this troll to swarm are the broad-sweeping, thinly evidenced (read:preposterous) allegations and insinuations of nefarious manipulation you are so fond of spewing. It’s difficult to have a properly skeptical evidence-based conversation when one party flatly and categorically rejects the empirical observations which don’t conform to their position.
Hey Brandon,
I think it’s doubly funny that mentions of trolls caused you to not only come out of the closet and admit that you are a troll, but that you also went on to mount an ad hominem attack against me. You weren’t even on the list of trolls I was thinking about when making those earlier remarks, but the shoe sure fit you, so you picked it up and put it on. Hilarious!
By the way, it’s almost heartwarming to see you recognize and list all of your traits and characteristics of which we’ve grown so wearily accustomed. For a moment, I almost had hope for your improvement, but I’m resigned that it won’t last… run along now and take your meds. The adults will still be here when you get back.
Alan,
I’ll put it in “scare quotes” next time. For ironically impaired donchaknow.
Says the guy who is fond of calling people trolls. See, I know my tu quoque too.
Of course the main point of my reply to you was the preposterous nature of your arguments about systemic data manipulation, and the near-impossibility of having a reasonable debate with someone when there is little or no commonly established basis for relevant facts.
Thphphththt …. “troll” is hardly encompassing of my most endearing qualities. Insufferably arrogant know-it-all is far more descriptive. And accurate.
How can I help but be perfectly charming with such good advice as that!
Brandon says “Of course the main point of my reply to you was the preposterous nature of your arguments about systemic data manipulation,”
—————————-
Since you have intruded yourself into this conversation, you’ve twice used those words and similar as a weapon of personal attack. Surely nothing I’ve said in this thread related in any way to your accusations. You pulled your smears out of thin air.
Your blatant defense of troll behavior makes me think that perhaps you are in fact, working in concert with some of the more ridiculous trolls who frequent these pages.
If you detest the term troll, then you should stop being a troll. You came out of the woodwork on this one, with sole point of making a baseless attack against me and now you’ve done it again.
Alan Robertson,
Not in this thread, but here’s a very current example from another one: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/29/a-sin-of-commission/#comment-1847758
Your manipulated graph and original statement did nothing but obscure the truth.
In response to a graph posted by rooter …
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/cCO2-to-T-volcano.jpg
… which if you click on you will find isn’t rooter’s graph at all.
You were saying something about pulling “smears out of thin air”?
I don’t detest the term “troll”, I object to its imprecise definition and selective, arbitrary application. Not just on WUWT but everywhere.
It is also a form of ad hominem argument. I don’t take kindly to “do as I say, not as I do” standards of behavior. If objecting to that is trolling, then I am guilty as charged.
Brandon, it’s simple, really… quit thinking of yourself as a troll and doing such things as outing yourself as a troll. Then, you won’t have to behave as a troll in order to maintain your self image and the rest of us won’t have to put up with it, either.
Alan,
I don’t think of myself as a troll. That I’m given to making ascerbic remarks about arguments which I think are crap does not cut it in my book. Especially not WUWT which is a gathering place for people given to verbally skewering arguments and people alike. Can you honestly tell me that my comments are any more a paint-peeling “personal attack” than your quote: Your manipulated graph and original statement did nothing but obscure the truth.? Are you ever going to acknowledge that it isn’t even rooter’s plot? Substantiate your assertion that it was somehow improperly manipulated?
Here’s my unsolicited advice to you. If you don’t want people to throw rocks at your arguments, don’t throw rocks with your arguments. I’m more a cinder block guy myself, dropped from a great height when I can manage it. The petty whinging you’re dealing on my alleged troll complex isn’t fit to be called gravel. You need a boulder here, and you’re not going to find it with amateur Internet psychoanalysis. I’d be heads-down in the data were I in your shoes.
“What causes this troll to swarm are the broad-sweeping, thinly evidenced (read:preposterous) allegations and insinuations of nefarious manipulation… ”
—————-
Again, it is apparent that the only one who has called anyone a troll in this thread is you, Brandon. You interjected yourself into a lighthearted banter about trolls and then also dragged another person into the conversation. It’s too bad that you haven’t yet realized that by your effort to besmirch and intimidate me for using the term “troll”, that you subtly and indelibly branded that other person as a troll. Surely, that couldn’t have been your intent?
Enough about trolls. That graph and rooter’s statements really do need more than my opinion given in passing…
First, I don’t care who made the graph originally, or where it was found. When rooter posted it and commented, he owned it and the graph became “your (rooter’s) graph” for purposes of discussion. Your machinations about ownership are a strawman, but you know that (don’t you?) Semantics aside, any graph could be viewed as a manipulation (hint: the “fitted” label in this case is a big tipoff.) That graph isn’t too bad, but was used by rooter to make a point about a causal logarithmic relationship between CO2 and temperature. If rooter’s statement and the graph’s correlation were together meaningful, then the ideas that atmospheric CO2 had no warming impact before 1950 and thus, could be responsible for only half of any warming since that time, would be wrong. By attacking my opinion of both the graph and rooters smartypants comment(s) at the time, you are saying that what we think we know of atmospheric physics is wrong, effectively claiming- CO2 was the driver which brought the planet out of the Little Ice Age. If causality attributed to the graph’s correlation were correct and the physics is wrong, then any early 21st century warming would have continued in step with increase in CO2atm and there might have been a closer “fit” during other periods covered by the graph. Is that what happened?
——
” the broad-sweeping, thinly evidenced (read:preposterous) allegations and insinuations of nefarious manipulation you are so fond of spewing…”
Really?
Alan Robertson,
Yes, please, by all means, enough.
More of a positive ad hominem in the form of an appeal to good reputation, if not authority. And yes, I’m fully aware of it. It was intentional.
A logical possibility, sure. It just happens that I’ve done that particular fit myself a number of times, so I natively trust it.
Here’s the plot again:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/cCO2-to-T-volcano.jpg
1850-1950 shows about 0.15 K of predicted warming, so yes I agree that “the ideas that atmospheric CO2 had no warming impact before 1950” is challenged on the basis of this plot alone.
That is not my position.
Magic didn’t bring us out of the LIA either. Here’s one well-known contributing factor to both the LIA and the rising temperature trends following it:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itsi_wls_ann.png
It’s difficult to answer that question because it hinges on the implicit conclusion that the physics is wrong. Look at 1880-1920 and 1940-1980, and then look at this:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iamo_hadsst.png
Yes, really. I don’t keep a tally, so perhaps I overstated. It’s a common enough theme in these parts and I do have my own prejudices working against me.
Just when I thought this was becoming an interesting discussion. Alas.
And there I was thinking that the linked song was exceedingly interesting (and ever so apropos.)
Mwahahaaa
http://www.nat.is/travelguideeng/thingvellir_sacred_site_for_all.htm
They should go stand in Thingvellir Valley where the first Althing met. They would see the spreading of continental plates and see magma that as come up from below. Such nonsense they write.
Definitely a natural wonder. As you say, you can see the Atlantic magma rising from the spreading earth.
This is indeed one of the most incredible sight on our planet, but I guess you have to be a geologist to appreciate it.
Volcanoes are bad . . . mmmkay?
As always happens with the alarmists, we are supposed to fear that which is “caused.” What’s not to like about volcanoes? Why is warming bad? I don’t like glaciers and sea ice.
Old news, Mother Jones were all over this 3 years ago ;
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/02/climate-change-linked-to-volcano-eruptions-earthquakes
My only surprise at this is that Jeffrey Kluger didn’t go full bore and throw earthquakes in there too. He missed a great opportunity to scare the crap out of the gullible Californians among Time’s readership.
Maybe just those countless Californians who have recently moved to Oklahoma…
I think you mean Arkansas or Missouri. The largest Earthquakes observed in North America were the New Madrid Fault Earthquakes in 1811/12. There were four big ones.
These were not just seismic reports like the recent hokum scare in Oklahoma. but actual temblors.
There was no glacier involved and little CO2.
Here in OK, we not only have recently exiled Californians all over the place, but multiple earthquakes every day. I sure hope that if there are any big ones, that they stay to the East, as you pointed out.
One thing noticeable about the past couple of years’ quakes here, is that they started out centered m.o.l. East and NE of OKC, but now are predominantly North and NW, occurring now also in Southern Kansas (West of center of OK.) A person could map these quakes’ path over time and find that it parallels the Arkansas River valley, although some miles to the West. I’ll make nothing of this…
Earthquakes are actually far more plausible than volcanism. Dam building in the Sierra foothills resulted in a couple of shakers when I was much younger. As far as “scaring Californians,” I wish. The state would be lots nicer if the aerospace industry had picked Oklahoma in the 1950s. Unfortunately, unless the quake is a magnitude 6 or above people simply are shaken up enough to leave. The recent spate of quakes and “aftershocks” up near Fortuna is a beautiful example of plate tectonics in action. The sharp linear boundary of the southern limit and the northern spread was due to the existence of a plate boundary right there handy to geologists.
“…aren’t shaken …”
They are taking the p&ss, right ?
So the only proof seems to be that 2 things (atmosphere’s and CO2 content and volcanic eruptions) went up at the same time? Since there are only 3 possible directions (up, down, unchanged) chances are 2/3 that climate change has a correlation or anticorrelation with everything.
And finding a murky theory that explains a relationship isn’t very hard too.
thesis:Global warming is a plot to increase the number of elected republican’s in the US congress.
mechanism:People in the south vote for republicans more often then in the north. The south ist warmer . heat-> reoublicans win.
proof: the number of elected republicans increased from 2008 to 2014 as did the CO2 content in that same time
Crop death is caused by weed competition, fungi, smut, scab, mold, blight, rot, rust, black spot, wilt, mildew, insects, worms, maggots, nymphs, etc..
There are plenty of benign chemical controls and inputs already in use to solve these problems.
Boomers have been seeking to remove these chemical inputs for several decades and the removal/replacement of these neutral, benign, and beneficial chemicals from agriculture would destroy the quanitity and quality of nutrition for all people and for all domestic animals.
To aggressively and treacherously remove the chemical inputs from agriculture would be malicious crime against many unsuspecting people.
To blame the use of electricity and cars before committing such a crime is called “grooming the victim,” – a method used by scheming criminals to prepare the victim beforehand both to accept the crime, and to blame himself.
ref: Paradigm Shift Urgently Needed In Agriculture: UN Agencies Call for an End to Industrial Agriculture & Food System “A rising chorus from UN agencies on how food security, poverty, gender inequality and climate change can all be addressed by a radical transformation of our agriculture and food system Dr Mae-Wan Ho“
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Hey that name rings a bell. An infamous anti GM propagandist.
High on dogma, low on discovery.
Many years ago (ca 1978) I stopped into a roadside produce stand in Arizona run by a recent arrival from Vietnam. At that time her command of English was still very weak. (last I heard her son was an honors grad at ASU though) A new age type was enthusing about how gorgeous the produce was, but kept asking “You’re sure you never spray this produce?” to which the answer was “We no spray.” Satisfied, the new ager purchased a box full of produce and went her way. I then asked the owner, “I’m a ag consultant in this area, and I don’t believe it’s possible to grow this quality of produce in this area without spraying. Are you sure you don’t spray it?” Her reply, “No, we no spray. We dust.” and proudly reached under the counter and produced a bag of Sevin 4 dust. When, a few minutes later, I was finally able to talk again, I bought several boxes of produce, and continued to do so all the years I was in that area.
That’s hilarious and made me think of the days I grew soft fruit, I was asked the same questions at farmers markets and as your lady I answered the same way, ” no sprays” ( we used fertilizers and pesticides through irrigation, bait and dusted and injected our trees). Lovely fruit. As with global warming or climate change and having farmed for 40 years I have a very hard time believing in organic foods.
Many years ago I was at a party in Albemarle County, which surrounds the People’s Republic of Charlottesville, home of UVa. I let on that I grew some pretty good vegetables, and one of the partiers asked me if I believed in organic gardening.
“Hell, yes”, I said, “with organic chemicals!”. All the greenies in the crowd nodded approvingly.
Yup, I applied my share of organic chemicals myself. organophosphates mostly… EM 6-3 Parathion even came in a green can. [grin]
Some will read this and think it is true, others will think it total rubbish.
About half the human population genuinely and honestly believe in the supernatural, supported by no evidence at all. This is just an example of who we are!
My own view is that most things in life don’t matter, and some things don’t matter at all.
john cooknell,
My almost 65 years of experience interacting directly with people in a couple of dozen different countries sadly leads me to think that about 9 out of 10 people “genuinely and honestly believe in the supernatural supported by no evidence at all”. This is even so among my science, engineering and technical corporation management acquaintances and associates.
John
“My own view is that most things in life don’t matter, and some things don’t matter at all.”
Good observation, and quite metaphysical at that. 😀
Ah, metaphysics. What is the meaning of wife? Is there wife after death?
If a man falls in the forest… and there is no woman there to hear it, is he still wrong?
john ; you may be wrong on the about half . I have read sixty three percent believe in Astrology .
The propaganda techniques at play are becoming easier to recognize. This may be a sign of desperation as the logical fallacies become increasingly more absurd. Just watch for the Useful Idiots to pick up the story and begin to spread the propaganda.
Interesting… Sigrun Hreinsdottir was the one auther from Ice Land, and this seem to be the only paper Sigun has written for the Journal. Seems Sigun went from being at the Univ of Iceland, to now being in Avalon New Zealand . I ask anyone from “Down Under” is Avalon N.Z. a nice place, pretty, good Univ. ?
Not that I’m suggesting anything.. Just things that make you go hmmm.
smile
michael
As an NZer the only Avalon I know was a tv studio in the Hutt Valley, I think
In related news, coast lines in Norway and the UK have recently been inundated with undocumented migrants arriving by canoe and sail boat from Iceland. Authorities were further perplexed by the fact that the migrants were exclusively young and female. Upon investigation, it turned out that the headlines in Iceland resulting from the article above had frightened a large percentage of Iceland’s female population due to the known remedy for stopping volcanic eruptions. Iceland’s political leadership apparently was quite upset about the incident, with at least one parliamentarian referring to the young women as unpatriotic.
davidmhoffer,
. . . thanks for some finely parsed parody on a fine Saturday afternoon in San Jose CA . . . I love it . . .
John
Saturday. . . FridayDavid,
I am tempted to reply in fashion. LOL
Delightfully-omitted sarc tag.
Thanks for the laugh David, I had just about given up on reading the comments and now it made it well worth it!
Unless said Icelanders of the distaff variety have gone severely against type regarding sexual activity in their peer group, they are likely to lack one traditionally very important qualification as a suitable candidate for the “known remedy”.
As you reduce the pressure you lower the melting temperature??
This phase is scientifically wrong , surely ??
Increased pressure increases the melting point.
Fail.
Not really. It just sounds counter intuitive. But the process is also complicated by chemistry – a lot. So the bald statement is pretty near meaningless. See this for instance:
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/~reiners/Leeetal2009.pdf
The phase diagrams of temperature vs. pressure are clear enough. The minerals that crystallize out of the melt change the properties of the melt. Which would result in the same melt at the same depth, and experiencing the same pressure change behaving differently over time. In terms of the original post though, the whole idea at a minor amount of melted ice could cause volcanism is, as Anthony said, so stupid it burns.
What could happen is that the magma is very near surface. In Ice Land it is very, very near. In fact it is so close that the heat from the magma might very well cause the ice to melt. The magma does carry some dissolved gas. With reduced pressure that gas might “froth” like a shaken bottle of carbonated beverage, forcing an eruption. The magma would have to be in a very, very special thermodynamic and chemical balance though.
Keep in mind that Iceland vulcanism is basaltic, and therefore relatively quiet. High-temperature, low-viscosity magma rich in Iron & Magnesium silicates. Entrained gas can escape with relative ease compared to the andesites and dacites of the much more explosive subduction-related volcanoes like Mt. St. Helens, which, incidentally, did not erupt until the cork was removed from the champagne bottle by one of the largest landslides in history.
Try “Decompression melting” in any vulcanology text.
Kruger’s education: [Wikipedia]
Since Eyafjalljokel blew its lid a few years ago, is there any chance a plume from the the deep crust simply took a few decades to rise, lifting Iceland with it, but being totally unrelated to atmospheric events?
Good question, and one that has an unequivocal answer of “yes.” Their model is only as good as their assumptions. On any temporal basis the earth’s surface bucks and heaves dramatically. It is in no way “as eternal as the hills.” The big quake in Japan changed elevations by meters in a few minutes. Similar events within the historical era in California have tacked on more than three meters of altitude to parts of the Sierra Nevada.
How can melting glaciers cause an island to rise? Aren’t islands attached to the ocean floor? The idea of melting glaciers allowing more volcanos to rise doesn’t make sense to me. I would think if a volcano were in the making it would come to be whether or not a glacier is sitting on top of it; it would slowly melt the ice…?
Rock is not solid on geologic time scales. You want to see the plasticity illustrated, read essay Reserve Reservations for the Monterey Shale folding. Some nice pictures from California state parks.
More silicaceous Continents and islands ‘float’ on denser basaltic magma many miles down toward Earths core. Cause granites and carbonates (limestone) and metamorphics (slate) are all less dense than basalts. Heavy is relative.
20000 years ago, Reykjavik was about 30 meters below sea level cause of ice weight. And that sea level was about 120 meters lower than today cause the ice was not in the oceans. Put more weight into a boat, it sinks lower into the water. Like a loaded oil tanker, even tho oil floats on water. Archimedes. Same principle here, except our boats are continents and islands, the extra weight is ice, and geological change is very slow on human time scales.
But you are quite correct that this paper is incomprehensible nonsense. There are volcanos erupting under the ice all over Iceland. The resulting sudden flood that rushes out from under the glacier edge is called a jokulhlaups (I omitted umlauts, and probably spelled it wrong anyway).
Put another way by other posters upthread, rock is just a lot heavier than ice. Regards. Hope you like my new ebook on this stuff. This paper and thread would have made a terrific additional essay. Too late, and it is hard to envision this level of Time mag stupidity and bias in advance.
hi Victoria,
here’s a link about isostasy:
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/isost.html
marty
Victoria, it is the principle of isostasy. The crust floats like a ship on the mantle beneath. If you load the ship, it sinks, if you unload it, it rises. However, the ship of Iceland is a special case: it rides higher on the mantle because of a “thermal welt” related to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The idea that removal of 11 billion tons of ice per year would cause isostatic rebound is sound, it’s just that that is a tiny amount of ice relative to the mass of the basaltic roots of Iceland…and to declare that rebound is measurable as such on a rather bumpy part of the earth is, well, not so bright.
And yes, you are correct, Icelandic volcanoes do not give a hoot about their glacial caps. They’ll erupt anyway…as Eyjafjallajökull did in 2009. The volcano’s name translates to “Islands’ Mountains’ ice cap”. These subglacial eruptions result in a catastrophic discharge of melted glacier water termed a “jökulhlaup”…or “running glacier”…a not-surprisingly Icelandic term adopted for such an event.
https://www.google.ca/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=isostasy+definition&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=ijjMVPHuBO3s8wfJ94JA&gws_rd=ssl
+10. Well said.
That makes sense. Thanks guys:)
; > )
Anthony,
Scientists, and indeed rational people in general, understand that things don’t magically change temperature.
True. That takes homogenization.
+10
Gunga Din,
Odd quip given that the AMO data upon which Anthony based his argument ….
… relies on homogenized, processed, interpolated data too. Make up your mind already guys: do you trust the data or not?
So….CO2 is out?……(8>))
So brandon, the story makes sense to you right? How many more eruptions around the world can we expect from the future warming and how does this affect the coming climate change? How is this accounted for in the models?
bob boder,
Yes, quite a bit.
The paper itself is paywalled, but from the abstract … We use our acceleration estimates to back-calculate to a time of zero velocity, which coincides with the initiation of ice loss in Iceland from ice mass balance calculations and Arctic warming trends. … I infer that the paper doesn’t make any forward-looking predictions about Iceland — to which the scope of this paper was limited — much less any global projections.
If AOGCMs take it into account, which I doubt, it would have been necessarily been based on prior research. I say that I doubt the CMIP5 ensemble accounts for any future volcanic activity because Figure 11.25 makes it pretty clear they don’t:
http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~ed/bloguploads/UPDATED_11-25.png
It would be nice if we could predict major volcanic eruptions before they happen, in the same way that I’d love the USGS to be able to tell me the next time the Hayward/Rodgers-Creek fault system is going to uncork another magnitude 7.2 temblor. Best they can do is tell me what the surface rupture and shaking intensity might look like:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/simulations/hayward/M7.2.php
Damned rent-seeking alarmist geophysicists. They’ve been saying it’s going to happen for YEARS and it hasn’t.
There needs to be a understanding of what is the dog and what is the tail. There are multiple fundamental errors/unknowns concerning the mechanisms that cause cyclic millennial climate change, cause cyclic changes in volcanic activity, and cause cyclic changes to the geomagnetic field.
It is a fact that there is a recent set of peculiar unexplained geological changes which correlates with past cyclic climate change and past cyclic abrupt climate change (same weird group of supposedly unrelated phenomena appear cyclically at the same time in the past).
It is an observational fact that the north geomagnetic pole drift velocity increased by a factor of 10 starting in the mid 1990’s), it is an observational fact that the reduction in the geomagnetic field intensity has increased by a factor of ten (the geomagnetic field intensity drop has increased from 5%/century to 5%/decade) starting also in the mid 1990s, and it is a fact that geomagnetic excursions correlate with the start and end of interglacial periods, and it is a fact that there is an increase in volcanic activity that correlates with millennial climate change. There needs to be a physical explanation as to why in the 1990s the geomagnetic field should suddenly start to change and why there is past correlation of supposedly unrelated geological phenomena and climate change.
It is an observational fact that something in the past has caused bipolar volcanism which in turn correlates with millennial climate change. Volcanic eruptions are theoretically random, there is not an internal earth mechanism to cause simultaneous bipolar volcanic eruptions. (i.e. There is more than one mystery, what causes an increase in volcanic activity both hemispheres and why does that increase in volcanic activity correlate with millennial climate change and geomagnetic field changes.)
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6341.abstract
This paper notes it is a fact that geomagnetic field excursions correlate with cyclic abrupt climate change. The question is what is causing the cyclic geomagnetic excursion. The geomagnetic excursions causes/could cause abrupt cooling from Svensmark’s mechanism.
http://www.iisc.ernet.in/~currsci/apr252003/1105.pdf
What caused an abrupt change top the geomagnetic (the geomagnetic field excursion) is what caused five geologically separated (different magma chambers, same location on the planet, same island) volcanoes to erupt simultaneously.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027284.shtml
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Courtillot07EPSL.pdf
This piece needs some additional input.
PLOS One The Human Impact of Volcanoes: a Historical Review of Events 1900-2009 and Systematic Literature Review explains the oddities from the graph of volcano numbers in the essay:
The time series used for Continuously Operating GPS Stations in this study were quite short — many of them less than ten years, some as short as seven years. It is of no great surprise that on this actively volcanic island, there is a great deal of “up and downing” of the land surface.
I should point out that there are many skeptic predictions that predicted that there would be a number of “predictions” from the alarmists that we could expect a significant increase in volcanic activity and eruptions which would, according to the alarmists, be directly caused by global warming.
It seems that based on the evidence from “Time,” those predictions by the skeptics made without any benefit of any models and using only observation appear to be correct.
Further skeptic predictions are that the alarmists will soon predict that solar output is directly affected by global warming.
We await confirmation of that skeptic prediction with considerable interest and with baited sarcasm although I have a suspicion I have already seen somewhere that that particular alarmist prediction has already been made.
So ….
1) Increased volcanism cannot be explained by melting ice. Check.
2) Volcanoes cannot explain The Pause: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/09/ben-santer-tries-to-explain-the-pause-in-global-warming/ Check.
3) Volcanoes can explain short-term cooling: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/18/get-laki-get-unlaki/ Check.
4) Volcanoes might explain rising CO2 levels: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/02/nasas-new-orbiting-carbon-observatory-shows-potential-tectonically-induced-co2-input-from-the-ocean/ Che …..
… errrr … wait a minute:
Paging Dr. Hovland. Anyone … anyone? Bueller?
“volcanoes might explain rising CO2 levels …Paging Dr. Hovland..”
Dr. Hovland only suggested that “tectonically-induced activity” might explain a few CO2 “hot spots.”
That’s very different to the strawman you attacked, isn’t it?
Khwarizmi,
He’s very careful to not spell it out. That didn’t stop others from running with it: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/02/nasas-new-orbiting-carbon-observatory-shows-potential-tectonically-induced-co2-input-from-the-ocean/#comment-1827003
If human emissions were the major driver behind atmospheric CO2 concentration, atmospheric concentration would be accelerating. It is not.
Or: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/02/nasas-new-orbiting-carbon-observatory-shows-potential-tectonically-induced-co2-input-from-the-ocean/#comment-1827051
Lake Nyos blew the whistle (unfortunately at the cost of thousands of lives) on another big Warmist lie. Analyses of the underlying vent and estimates of its flow rate reveal that it is a major source of CO₂. If the Lake Nyos vent is at all typical, estimates of total volcanic CO₂ are too low by one or two orders of magnitude.
The crux of my rebuttal to such silliness is in this post: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/02/nasas-new-orbiting-carbon-observatory-shows-potential-tectonically-induced-co2-input-from-the-ocean/#comment-1827015
Now here we have Anthony himself employing similar logic: Gosh, it sure looks like another slam dunk for carbon dioxide driven climate hell in a handbasket, doesn’t it? The VEI starts increasing right about the time of the industrial revolution.
The irony is too thick.
Tell it to the “it’s volcanoes whut do CO2” crowd, not me. They are the ones who read into Hovland’s essay that which you say is not there.
So if the VEI fell in the 21stC why didn’t temps shoot up? Is cooling worse than we thought?
See essay Blowing Smoke in ebook of same name. You logic is correct. The science is sketchy, the PR and MSM reporting based on the PR just awful.
Not only stupid, but arrogant with it.
I quote from Kluger’s article, “Perhaps anticipating the climate change deniers’ uncanny ability to put two and two together and come up with five……..”
Clearly ‘Great Brain’ Kluger thinks that anyone who dares question climate change is an idiot, not realizing, of course, that he may be the one with a problem.
Those seismometers they had back in the 17th Century, do we know how they were calibrated?
No seismographs they used a different method. It involved concentric areas of damage and destruction the Mercalli scale for earthquakes, is an example.
http://geology.answers.com/methods/scales-for-measuring-earthquakes
michael
I did not see somebody here mentioning possibility that there is dependency between volcanic activity and temperature caused by contraction/expansion of materials by changing temperature. It is simple, temperature is going down, earth crust is contracting, creating and widening cracks, thus increasing volcanic activity. And vice versa increasing temperature is expanding crust sealing cracks making volcanic activity to get to surface harder.
I found coefficient of expansion for rock like materials is around 10^-6 m/mK, water 69^-6m/mK, quartz 0.33^-6m/mK.
Taking average 10^-6m/mK and delta T between glacial/interglacial 10K, that means that earth crust is contracting 10^-5. This is 0.001%
Taking width of N. America as 4000km and width of Eurasia as 10000km it represents width of cracks 40m and 100m. That is enough if we imagine that even 1cm crack is probably enough to start magma venting.
This can also explain 4000 years time shift between Milankovitch insolation and actual start/end of glacial. It just takes a lot of time for heat to get to earth crust deep enough for make change. According rough experiences in Europe in winter it takes 6 months to change temperature in 1m depth. At around 2m is temperature more less same. 4000 years are needed to make change in 8km depth with 16km depth end of change, corellating very nicely with earth crust thickness.
Actually propagation of heat down through earth crust can be imagined as heat wave. So in time where cold wave is reaching depth causing increase of volcanism another warm wave could be on the way down as volcanism switching of mechanism.
This would be definite positive feedback for cooling. Earth cools, crust is cooling contracting more volcanic activity is forced causing more cooling.
@ Peter, it is simple, temperature is going down, earth crust is contracting, creating and widening cracks,
Correct me if I am wrong but if the Earth is contracting, would the cracks actually not become narrower?
If you think like cooling and contracting full sphere crust, holding together yes, cracks should be narrower. But if you think like cooling only patches – continents on otherwise liquid sphere covered by water cooling will make cracks wider.
Imagine that like cooling crust is squeezing molten core of Earth which is increasing pressure inside until it cracks somewhere creating magma outburst.
It should be similar mechanism as tidal contraction and extension is making cracks in ice of Europa moon. Or ground cracked by drought.
So….Kilauea is erupting now because of all those long gong …er… gone (I couldn’t help thing of the old “The Gong Show”.) because Hawaiian glaciers?
Does that mean we could shut her down by turning all the Man-made CO2 into dry ice and bombing Hawaii with it?
ecoGuy
January 30, 2015 at 11:40 am
I blame it on the schools, people are often taught how to write good English at the expense of never been taught basic logic.
Not to be too pedantic, but “stupid” is an adjective. I suppose this phrase was popularized on TV, but the noun is stupidity. Sorry to nitpick, but “…the stupid it burns” is in the same class with “expect great,” which was or perhaps still is the slogan of the WNBA, and don’t get me started about that.
-☺-
My understanding is perhaps flawed, but I recall reading recently that the existence of the long postulated mantle plumes has been disputed.
Textbook Theory Behind Volcanoes May Be Wrong
In the typical textbook picture, volcanoes, such as those that are forming the Hawaiian islands, erupt when magma gushes out as narrow jets from deep inside Earth. But that picture is wrong, according to a new study from researchers at Caltech and the University of Miami in Florida.
http://www.caltech.edu/content/textbook-theory-behind-volcanoes-may-be-wrong
http://authors.library.caltech.edu/49341/
Unknown cause, methinks.
“MAY be wrong” OK, it MAY be right. First I’ve ever heard of a plume as being a “Jet”. And what explains the progression of the Hawaiian chain in a northwesterly direction, with the youngest vulcanism at its extreme southeastern end? It can be demonstrated by seafloor spreading that the Pacific ocean plate moved over a stationary phenomenon that somehow localizes the effusion of magma. Seismic tomography has shown there to be a velocity (read thermal) anomaly under the big island.
Steve P,
You and I appear to be the frontrunners in the race for the WUWT most ludicrous comment prize.
You for your stupendously punctilious cavil and me (or is that I?) for this lame acknowledgement of your effort.
If you had stuck with mantle plumes, Sir Harry would have been a shoo-in.
Is there a word for using bad English to show derision ?
mebbe, but I don’t know what it is.
Good question. I’ve submitted it to:
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/submitaquestion.html
It’s called poetic license, or artistic license.
We’ve had an unusually pleasant stretch of mid-winter weather here on the 45th parallel. Three sunny days, moderate winds, and the barometer slightly to the high side of normal. As the sun slowly ascends so that it’s now above the tree tops from 10am until 5 pm we’ve also had an unusual number of racoons, possums, and skunks stirring. Of course we all know that skunks are dim-witted and prone to be hit by passing motorists. With this mild weather might I assume that climate change causes a skunk-like odor?
About skunks, I’m not so sure that skunks are dimwitted, or just have poor sight. A friend de- scents and makes pets of the curious little creatures. As house pets, they’re almost pests, as they crave attention and are constantly in your lap, or underfoot, seeking and giving affection. They’re too bothersome to be good pets for someone always busy about the house with work or hobbies, but might be ideal for couch potatoes. A home with pet skunks is insect free, as they are relentless hunters. Oh, they’re also kinda tough and slap my friend’s Yorkies around when they get out of line.
Oh, I should have told the skunk story as past history, since my friend raised his last litter of kits, last year. He’d accidentally left one of the little cuties in stock trim, unmodified, which didn’t ultimately go over too big with his wife. Right before her eyes, It opened fire on her wee Yorkie in the living room and didn’t do her any favors, either. She got new carpeting out of the deal and while my friend lived to tell the tale, he had to give away his skunks.
No, they’re dim-witted. Among small animals they show little in the way of problem solving ability. The only reason they survive is their potent defense mechanism, which doesn’t help them one bit against foxes, raptors, or dogs that haven’t had their hunting instincts bred out. Now if you want to discuss the intelligence of racoons I’ve got a few stories that no one would believe, like how we found the drip-pan from my gas grill 50 yards from the house, jammed between two logs so the fat could be licked-clean. In order to get the drip tray out you need to hold a spring-steel latch down, and pull the tray up at the same time.
Alan, thanks for your enjoyable comments. I have to say that the skunk’s bad smell is somewhat over-rated. It is intense and acrid, but not nearly as stomach-turning, imo, as some odors most of us would readily recognize, even in wee, tiny doses. Among my candidates for top stench would be the huge cattle-marshaling yards just south of I-80 in W. Nebraska.
But the opossum is winner, hands down in my view, for the ugliest critter on land. They seem not very bright in some situations, but like the coyote and ‘coon, they are survivors.
Finally, I close with the observation that Lockheed probably didn’t name its advanced developments projects after a dim-witted animal, however that would be measured.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works
Mark from the Midwest January 30, 2015 at 3:13 pm & January 31, 2015 at 5:06 am
Stupidity may stink, but just because it stinks doesn’t mean it’s stupid.
Getting run down in the roadway is no real indicator of intelligence among animals. Critters simply do not recognize cars; Ravens and Crows are among the few exceptions to this rule.
Coyote, for example, are not usually considered to be dumb animals, yet I’m sure I’ve seen more dead coyote/coy dogs lying dead alongside the roadway, than I’ve seen dead skunks. I’ve also seen what appeared to be an entire family of raccoon – 4 young, 2 adults – squashed on the highway. As you may know, when the corn ripens in the Midwest, the ‘coons come out at night to feast. In the morning, they toddle back whence they came, sometimes crossing (now) busy highways in process. It’s not a pretty sight.
here’s what owners of pen-bred, de-scented pet skunks have to say:
They speak of an animal who’s very intelligent, willful, stubborn, curious, ornery, friendly, playful and lovable. Their skunks enjoy playing tug-of-war and being chased. They love toys, especially fuzzy ones. They can figure out how to open almost any cabinet door and even refrigerators. They litter box train themselves. They love to investigate in, on, and under everything — sofa cushions, potted plants, drawers. They “steal” towels and clothing to add to their own bed. They don’t claw furniture or chew stuff. They understand and learn to correct their naughty behavior when punished with “time out” banishments to their cage. They get along with other pets and, like them, usually have the run of the house. Some love to swim. They appear to like to please their owners and they like to be cuddled.
http://www.welcomewildlife.com/?folder=pages/urban%20wildlife/mammals/skunk
Of the critters you mentioned, in my experience, I’d pick the opossum as the dumbest, but please read on:
The skull of the Virginia opossum is considered primitive (because it retains many of the cranio-facial features of early fossil therian mammals) and is characterized by a small brain case. The size of the opossum’s brain case has been measured by filling the cranial cavity with dried beans and then counting the number of beans it took to fill the cavity. It was found that if the brain case of an opossum, a raccoon and a house cat were compared using this method, the opossum brain case held 5 dried beans; the cat brain case held 15 dried beans and that of a raccoon held 150 dried beans. Thus, the opossum has one of the smallest brain-to-body size ratios among mammals and it was generally assumed that the larger the brain size to total body ratio the more intelligent the animal is.
[…]
In spite of their apparent primitiveness and small brain size, opossums have a remarkable capacity to find food and remember where it was found. When tested for their ability to remember, opossums scored better than rats, rabbits, dogs, and cats but did not score as well as humans. Opossums can remember the taste of noxious or toxic substances even a year after a single encounter.
Visual discrimination tests have shown that the opossum can learn to discriminate black versus white, different colors, patterns, and geometric forms. Additional studies designed to measure the opossum’s ability to solve maze problems indicate that mature opossums were superior to most species (rats, cats) in maze learning tasks.
http://www.wildliferescuerehab.com/all-about-opossums.html
Thanks for the great link, Steve.
A ‘possum lived here at my place for years and grew big and fat. I’d catch him occasionally and pet him, as his soft fur was irresistible and… just because. He would hiss and show teeth, but we never hurt each other. He liked to sit on a low branch near my garden and watch me work, then follow where I’d dug and challenge the Robins for exposed worms and grubs.
A coon that must weigh over 20 lbs has been wintering over in my shop. We are engaged in an arms race over points of entry. A neighbor kid has a large havahart type trap and is enthusiastic about turning him into a coonskin cap, but so far has only snared neighbor cats and the coon is getting fatter from stolen bait. I guess you could say that we’re getting outsmarted by a coon. I wouldn’t really care if it hung around, but raccoons’ reputation for cleanliness is only partially deserved, as he has befouled the shop in places. Must be getting soft, because there was a time when I’d have shot him on sight and been done with it.
An uberlib lady friend had a persistent coon in her attic. She’s quick with anti- gun screeds, but still bought a shotgun to kill the little bandit. Both killing raccoons and in- town firearms discharges are illegal. As she tells it, she waited in the shadows, with a pile of dog food on the deck as bait. As the coon appeared and she took aim, the coon alerted and stood on its hind legs with it’s arms raised above its head. She shot him anyway, but only wounded it, sending it rolling before it escaped. She tried a second shot but jammed the gun, then her natural anti- gun nuttiness reasserted itself. She hid the jammed gun she knows not where, in the house. Her tale was so filled with rationalizations that it would be shocking, were it not so typical of the similar- minded people I know. The men are no different, just quicker to follow their anger with threats, with even the most innocuous questioning of their rants.
I tried to read this, but the first few quotes were so stupid that I couldn’t go on.
There was a post here several years ago about a guy who claimed that global warming was going to make the planet explode. Someone found his page where he was marketing these goofy shirts with some sort of weird patterning on them – fractals or some such. This article is about as loony.
Stupid is as stupid does.
And what about these volcanoes? Krakatoa, Santorini, Vesuvius, Tambora, Mount St. Helens, Pinatuba to name a few. There was such a lot of ice over these bad boys that when it melted all hell was let lose.
It fits. A while ago some one claimed that it was the volcanoes that delayed the global warming, so here is the negative feedback.
It is amazing with all the explanations that points in all directions.
Svend, in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. See essay Blowing Smoke in ebook of same name for references. You nailed it. All feedbacks in all directions.
Reblogged this on Head Space and commented:
New science from the media of the absurd
Wow! As I read this I’m about 20 miles from Villarrica Volcano in Pucon, Chile….and it has snow on it…and its 23c outside….in January! No wonder I saw all of the Time journalists fleeing town.
now gentlemen, I think we should applaud Time magazine for taking steps to accommodate the developmentally delayed…
Not even close, last years newsreader linked meteors to global warming, at least volcanoes are terrestrial.
At least 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko “remained outside the global warming”, according to French minister of the environment and former presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal.
If you want to check, the interview is here:
http://www.franceinfo.fr/emission/l-interview-politique/2014-2015/segolene-royal-ou-l-art-d-esquiver-les-questions-qui-fachent-13-11-2014-07-45
This is à 5:50.
You cannot make that up.
Google Translate does a really decent work here (trivially edited):
As a presidential candidate in 2007, she said during a debate that the EPR reactor at Flamanville was a “prototype”, not a real plant (maybe she thought is was an experimental toy for scientists like ITER?).
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1vxnw_l-epr-dans-le-debat-royal-sarkozy_tech
Nicolas Sarkozy was slightly less pathetic during this debate.
She doesn’t have a clue, but she isn’t alone.
Another minister of the environment believed Monsanto added genes to Roundup. (Not RR crops, the herbicide Roundup.)
Just found a quote from Mark Twain that I thought was appropriate for the warmist.
“It is easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled.
Call your doctor immediately if you have a eruption lasting longer than 4 hours …
Streuth. The guy can’t even get his insults right. If I was in his shoes, I would have at least accused “climate change deniers” of “putting two and two together to make three“. Now he wants us to do his job for him.
Amazing any volcanic islands exist .
There is nothing really controversial about the idea that a loss in pressure (i.e. weight) *could* allow a volcano to erupt sooner than it would have if the pressure had been stable. It is completely possible that over geologic time, the loss of ice thousands of feet thick over a large area could lead to an early eruption – i.e. the loss of pressure triggered the event.
Anyone who thinks they can measure such an effect over decades is either on drugs, or maybe should be on drugs.
Such a loss in ice happens (in geologic time) all the time and has nothing to do with CO2 released by industrial activities..
It’s much like saying that the disposal of fracking waste water “causes” earthquakes. Well, sort of, if the waste water is injected with enough pressure and volume into a geologic structure that is already under stress and likely to shear (in geologic time) soon, then it will lead to a demonstrable increase in earthquakes. Did the injection cause the earthquake – well not really – it triggered it.
Isn’t that the intent of fracking … to cause a whole lot of small/tiny/miniscule earthquakes?
So, fracking leads to smaller quakes by triggering the quake before its “natural” time. We release the stress and avoid the big one.
We should be offering incentives to fracking operations and thanking them for keeping the large catastrophic quakes at bay. And, if we melt all of the ice we will have more, but less explosive, volcanic eruptions. (i’ll avoid the sex analogy).
Is there grant money somewhere to study this completely logical phenomonom? (Is there money if I include the sex analogy?)
We must engage all residents of China and India to jump on the spot in unison to fix this problem! In all my years as a geoscientist I cannot recall such a moronic linkage of CAGW and volcanism. The warmanistas should be tossed into a vent to appease the gods.
One thing I don’t see mentioned is that volcanoes are constantly erupting under the sea, and until about 50 years ago we had close to zero knowledge of what was going on down there. We still have nothing like synoptic data on undersea volcanic activity.
To even begin to have empirical opinions on long-term trends in volcanic activity around the earth, we’d want to understand what was going on with ALL volcanic belts. Some of them function relatively independently of surface conditions, and comparing the different sets would be indispensable for a really valuable analysis.
I would expect surface conditions to have an impact on any volcanoes whose cones are above sea level, but the Time article implies a level of certainty we can’t possibly have, especially without more comprehensive knowledge about volcanoes under the varying conditions in which their activity occurs.
Anthony is right; the Time article really is just idiotic.
This is ever funnier. Our resident “environmental” commenter at the Australian Sydney Morning Herald has this to say about climate change, and sport!
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sweating-it-out-climate-change-extremes-to-impact-on-sport-20150130-1328cq.html
But…but…….if we have too many eruptions from global warming won’t we then have a precipitous global cooling as a result?
Sheeeesh…..just can,t win can yer?!!!
Just can’t win………
I sent a note about this article to letters@time.com , please send more with appropriate comments.
In that the lead “Author” a graduate student and who happens to be a NSF Grant PI against UA rules is not surprising.
The ‘Graduate Student’ supervisor appears under pressure to “deliver” and the graduate student is just a foil for the ‘game’.
Very sad situation for Graduate Student, Graduate Student Advisor and University (if it can be called such) Arizona.
Title IX might be invoked.
AS a matter of.
Where are the Hudson Bay Volcanos!
Ha ha.
after volcanos going of every where the next one is sport it will be to hot in Australia to play sport in the open .http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/01/31/00/04/climate-change-threatens-sport-report
Expect to read said “Graduate Student” attempting to Game Main Stream Media and the Graduate School UA saying as such, “The ‘date’ are fake. I did this to expose the worthlessness of the UA and the AGU.”
Brave Lad! UA firing squad dismissed. UA SWAT Team armed and approaching suspect; “within Kill Distance! Over.”
Ha ha
Don’t volcanos increase radiation-deflecting ash into the atmosphere and thus cool the earth? If so, we’re witnessing the great “balance if nature” effect that will cool the earth thus reducing volcanos thus re freezing glaciers thus causing global warming thus melting glaciers thus triggering volcanos thus cooling the earth ….
Friends
Having read all the comments I am surprised that I have not seen this link which is to the ‘warmlist’ of articles reporting supposed effects of global warming.
Some things linked in the list are as daft as a post from Brandon Gates or the claim that global warming causes volcanoes. Read it an laugh.
Richard
richardscourtney,
This one gave me a chuckle: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2008/03/27/today-food-editor-claims-global-warming-making-napa-valley-wines-p
“‘Today’ Food Editor Claims Global Warming Making Napa Valley Wines Passe”
Oh the humanity! Next years’ best wines might come from … South Carolina?!! Say it isn’t so! IIRC, 2008 was a pretty dry year in SC. Or was it ’07. Looked pretty brown from the air, which the locals did not at all care for. Wine grapes apparently like it that way. Some win, some lose I guess.
It just begs: Oy VEY!
40 times as many eruption as 400 years ago? And the pause is blamed on volcanoes? We should be plagued by polar bears by now.
Do you think the y axis title on Anthony’s graph might explain what the plot really means?
That article should warn people, in advance, of the potential for brain injury, if read in one sitting.
Hmmm those are reported volcanic eruptions not actual. Correct?
Ignorant feel-good liberalism went up too, as did funding ‘for climate change’.
“As the glaciers melt, the pressure on the underlying rocks decreases,” Compton said in an e-mail to TIME. “Rocks at very high temperatures may stay in their solid phase if the pressure is high enough. As you reduce the pressure, you effectively lower the melting temperature.”
To melt dry granite at 800 C, you have to reduce lithostatic pressure by 2,000 bars or 202 MPa. 11 billion tons of melted ice a year spread over 10,000 km^2 gives a pressure reduction of 11 kPa per year. At 30 mm/yr velocity and 1-2 mm/yr^2 acceleration, the melting has been going for 15-30
years. At 30 years, total pressure reduction is 0.32 MPa. Less than 1% of needed pressure reduction to melt granite.
The following are additional peer reviewed paper links to support my assertions made that the geomagnetic field has changed orders of magnitude faster than theoretically believed possible in the past (multiple proxy evidence, multiple periods), that it has changed orders of magnitude faster than theoretically believed cyclically with abrupt changes in the geomagnetic field correlating with abrupt climate change.
As noted starting in the 1990s the geomagnetic field north pole drift velocity increased by a factor of 5. Due to the abrupt change sudden change to the geomagnetic field and due to the fact that the earth’s geomagnetic field has decreased by 60% over a large region in the Southern Atlantic the Europeans launched a trio of specialized satellites (called SWARM) to measure the total geomagnetic field and small geomagnetic field changes. The SWARM data found the geomagnetic field intensity is now dropping at 5%/decade, ten times faster previous 5%/century and 10 times faster than believed possible if geomagnetic field is due to internal movement of the liquid core.
As noted in the last paper link, geomagnetic field research has confirmed for some unexplained reason the geomagnetic field intensity drops by a factor of 5 to 10 every 30,000 years and 100,000 years (correlating with the abrupt climate change events on the earth including the initiation and termination of the interglacial periods.)
The point is something is physically causing cyclic abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field that is orders of magnitude faster than possible if the earth’s magnitude field is due to liquid core motion. There are two paradoxes: 1) There is no mechanism to cause cyclic abrupt changes in the earth’s liquid core, 2) As noted in the Wikipedia summary the liquid core acts like a low pass filter so it is physically possible for changes in the liquid core to abruptly change the geomagnetic field.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010EO510001/pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
http://gji.oxfordjournals.org/conten…/1110.abstract
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar…than-expected/
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/416/
Actually there is fairly strong evidence that volcanic activity is influenced by glaciation. The pattern of eruptions in Iceland is different in glacial and interglacial times. There are even volcanoes that only ever seem to erupt during interglacials and vice versa. This is fairly easy to see determine since the lava from subglacial eruptions is very characteristic (it is called móberg in Icelandic). There is however no evidence that the total volcanic activity changes. This also seems extremely unlikely given that volcanism in Iceland is driven by forces deep in the Earth’s interior (that are also causing the Atlantic ocean to widen).
Note that volcanoes are perfectly capable of erupting right through continental ice-sheets, though it is also possible for smaller volcanoes to spend their entire “active life” buried in a water-filled “cave” underneath an ice-sheet (Gaussberg in East Antarctica is probably the best-known example).
By the way there is some evidence that important volcanic fields in Europe are of the “mostly active during ice-ages” type. This includes the Eiffel field in Germany, the Auvergne field in France and the Campi Flegrei field in Italy. They all saw quite extensive activity during the last (and previous) glaciations and have been quite quiescent for the last 10,000 years. However this pattern might be illusory and simply due to the fact that interglacials are only about 10% as long as glacials.
Note that all this only applies to volcanoes that are in the “near field” of the glaciation where the ice-sheet affects the isostasy. During the current interglacial this means Antarctica and some subantarctic islands, Iceland, Jan Mayen (and nearby submarine volcanoes), subglacial volcanoes in Greenland, if any (evidence for subglacial volcanism there is ambiguous) and, just possibly, volcanoes in Patagonia and southern Alaska.
Actually that Smithsonian graphic of volcanic eruptions is rather informative. It shows that for really big eruptions with world-wide effects we have fairly good data going back several centuries (=constant low frequency). For middling sized eruptions (VEI 2) we have fairly good data since the early 1900’s (frequency rises during the 1800’s and stabilizes by c. 1900) but for the small ones (VEI 1) we only have reasonably good coverage post-1950.
Actually we don’t have 100% coverage even after 1950. For example, in 1958 a ship visited Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic and found that sometime since the previous visit in 1955 there had been an eruption large enough to cause major changes to the island, nobody knows when this actually happened.
Also historical data can be deceptive. Iceland has an exceptionally good historical record, for example making it possible to reconstruct changes in sea-ice extent several centuries back. However the early records almost never mention volcanic eruptions, though we know from geology they occurred. Apparently eruptions (unless large enough to cause real damage) were simply considered uninteresting, while sea-ice extent affected fisheries and summer temperatures and were therefore important
Is this accurate? The actual research data only measured GPS stations over 5-20yrs, then speculated that the island rise could be projected back and be caused by melting ice. The paper didn’t even whisper about increased volcanic activity
The Time writer then took the island rise projection and determined it would cause increased volcanic activity. I’m lost on how a scientifically measured rise converted to volcanoes blowing
Is this bloke’s other claim to fame as the person after whom Toyota named the SUV they sell in Oz as the “Kluger”?
Why is ‘climate science’ all about theory, models and manipulated data, as opposed to actual observations?
I am fortunate enough to go salmon fishing in SW Iceland every summer. On our river, which cuts through lava beds, like every other river in Iceland, there is something quite extraordinary: the remains of volcanoes which erupted under the ice. As these are prominent structures, I can only assume they occurred during the last ice age which ended circa 10,000 years ago.
There are eleven of these structures over a distance of approximately five miles. Whether or not these eruptions made their way through the ice sheets, possibly up to a mile thick, I do not know.
The point is that in the higher latitudes, climate change can have an effect on observed eruptions – climate change of the perfectly natural type!! Anyhow, as a geologist, I can confirm the guts of this article are complete BS.
Oh my gawd!! High CO2! High temperatures! This explains the Siberian Traps! And the Deccan Traps! It would even explain the Snake River flood basalt a being less extensive —less CO2, lower temperatures. It’s time to write a paper. After all, correlation-equals-causation, as proven by climate science!
Well isn’t climate change causing Mt Everest to rise? Isn’t climate change causing Los Angeles to move 2.5 inches north each year (recall that it has been proven that earthquakes are caused by climate change)?
Climate change caused the condensation of the galactic disk.
One claim to rule them all!
Muuuuhhahahahhahaaahaaaaahhh!
During the last ice age the area from New York north was covered with an ice sheet almost two miles deep. When the ice melted there were no volcanos.
i like theories…if i pee in the ocean, the level will rise..it is a fact…but i can so the calculation..
well am i able to do the calculation on the how more volcanoes will cause any climate change?
NO?
well it is even better i can say whatever i want…
“i like theories…if i pee in the ocean, the level will rise..it is a fact…”
Not necessarily so… The level will only rise if you’re not already swimming in the ocean while you’re peeing.
It’s outside the box and creative, yet remarkably conformist with prevailing attitude. Behold, the New Science.
It’s another casting from the latest mold in Academia.
It seems to me they have cause and effect backwards. The frequency of volcanoes contributes to the internal variability of the climate. As an engineer, I’m frankly amazed that the earth’s temperature doesn’t vary far more that +/- 1 Kelvin. My oven at home can’t make the same claim — and its a much simpler system.
But I guess when there are grants to be had you need to play the game. This is what modern climate science has become:
“Repent ye WUWT sinners! Behold, as Nobel Laureate Mann said unto us, our climate hath been in a period of idyllic stasis for 2000 years with an invariant average surface temperature of 288.00 Kelvin. Then, modern humans spoiled Eden by eating the fruit of Fossil fuels. The Earth’s temperature has now skyrocketed to a hellish 288.80 Kelvin imperiling all of the creatures of the forest. Our burning atmosphere is incinerating the ice caps and glaciers, allowing the devil himself to escape from his confinement. Oh what a canny adversary this devil is! He is using Volcanoes to lull the ignorant masses into complacency; foisting upon the earth a false pause that will cause the sinners to forestall thy needed conversion. Heareth me now, deniers! Repent, or face thy ultimate fate!”
I guess this sort of thing works on some people (mostly Liberal Arts and Journalism majors, as far as I can tell).
I, too, have been working on a theory. Although the Icelandic hurricane season is decidedly very short, it is still theoretically possible that the extremely low atmospheric pressure of an Icelandic hurricane could suck molten magma up through existing volcanic tubes thereby forming gigantic columns of angry lava. With 100+ mph winds pulling whole sheets of ice off of the glaciers, my fear is that the oxygen in the ice will combine with the carbon of the magma creating more CO2 and thus creating a permanent feedback loop. The hurricane which will then be considered a “permacane” could potentially last for centuries, wreaking its havoc until either the earth runs out of magma, or the glaciers run out of ice. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
“The stupid, it burns like a magnesium flare.”
Yes., Just not in Time Magazine.
To the uniniformed (such as Time Magazine writers), graphs like this one might seem to be “proof” of such Icelandic-to-global extrapolation ”
Ummm … for the still uninformed, the graph only goes up to VEI of 4, which is volcanoes smaller than Mt St Helens. It would include Eyjafjallajökull. So basically the graph says “we have gotten much better at detecting and recording small volcanoes over the last 400 years.
Yawn.
“Newsflash Mr. Kluger: Iceland is not “everywhere”, and the authors make no claim about the issue affecting the rest of the Earth.”
Newsflash Mr. Watt. You need to learn to read the whole article, not just look for what you want to hear. The answer is clearly laid out in the article:
.
The claim is that volcanoes in Iceland can impact more than just Iceland. The Eyjafjallajökull eruption had a major impact on flights to/from/within Europe. And since flights fly to/from Europe from pretty much everywhere around the globe, that means a global impact. And this was a relatively small eruption (VEI=4 on a 0-8 scale)
“Again, no mention of the world here, only Iceland. “
Again, the volcanoes in Iceland impact Europe strongly, which subsequently impacts the rest of the world. A relatively small eruption (Eyjafjallajökull) was significant enough. If a series of similar or larger eruptions are ‘uncorked’ (eg similar in size to Pinatubo or St Helens), that would have a continued global impact.
Newsflash:
If jet engines weren’t so intolerant of volcanic ash, your “popcorn fart” would have never made the news.
So there.
Ya, Anthony really misread this sentence
“The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere.”
The bad news for iceland is volcanoes
The bad news for the rest of the world is that the effects are not limited to iceland.
In other words, the volcanoes in iceland cause problems in other parts of the world.
Simple misunderstanding.
Peer review caught it
Airspace in and around Europe during the erruption a couple of years ago was shutdown purely based on model predictions of ash cloud spread. The actual risk was ZERO! Models at work again!
I’d say: relax. The current Icelandic ice cap is tiny compared to what was present at the end of the ice age. Measured (not modelled) warming is also insignificant and slow in comparison. Eyjafjallajökull erupting is not so much “a nasty taste of what” any proposed apocalypse will be like, it’s more of a normal event on an island that is part of a mid-oceanic ridge and perhaps also sits above a mantle plume.
Yes, temperature of the rock’s solidus decreases with decreasing pressure. Nonetheless, the way the effects are described in the “money quote” provide a skewed view of what drives volcanoes in Iceland and elsewhere. The situation is not one of rock constantly on the verge of turning liquid, only kept in check by the weight of a bit of fragile crust and glaciers.
What really drives volcanism:
Below most of the Earth’s surface, the geothermal gradient does not intersect with the crust’s or the mantle’s solidus, thus no molten material can occur. Magma-formation only takes place in three different geological settings, two of which are related to plate tectonics.
* Subduction zones:
Likely not fully explained by but attributed to a solidus-shift towards lower temperatures due to higher water content, introduced by the subducted slab of oceanic crust and wet sediment. Here it’s a change in composition that allows for melt-formation at a normal geothermal gradient.
* Mid-ocean ridges (which includes Iceland):
An upwelling movement of the slightly ductile but initially solid mantle material occurs. It fills the gap in between plates pulling (to some extent also being pushed) apart. That upwelling leads to a faster-than-usual increase in temperature with depth — thereby creating a zone in a few kilometres depth where the rock’s solidus intersects with the geothermal gradient, allowing for melt-formation.
* Hot spots:
The surface manifestation of what is referred to as mantle plume, not related to plate boundaries and plate movements. Existance of such a plume below Iceland has been suggested.
The driving forces behind magma-formation are solely determined by plate tectonics and by whatever drives mantle plumes, whether or not the cake has a top-layer of icing.
Glaciation can not inhibit volcanism, as the wording of the quote implies. Plates move apart and dykes will inevitably form to fill the gap. During deglaciation, the declining ice-pressure might temporarily lead to a reduced interval length in between eruptions. Once the deglaciation has halted, things will settle for a new equilibrium and magma-formation and eruptions will continue at the usual pace.
And, while we’re at it, some fearmongering: for human dwellings downhill of a volcano, absence of glaciers is desirable from a safety perspective. Look up the term ‘Lahar’ if in doubt.
Ahh the age-old question which came first the volcano or the climate change. Who knows and I don’t care. It’s a stupid question. Climate changes, volcanoes erupt, deal with it.
What I do know and can be validated (unlike this ridiculous Luger speculation) is that AGW has increased energy costs via regulation and taxation negatively impacting peoples quality of life.
Global warming has magically changed January 31 to April 1, and overnight as well!!! How could that be? There is still snow on the ground where I live in the Northern Hemisphere.!?
Brandon Gates,
Your mode of expression is condescending; as if you lack intellectual self-confidence to debate anything without claiming authority on climate focused science.
I agree with your philosophy of science completely, thus, clearly the corroborated objectively observed observations of almost all major climate parameters does not support the purposely exaggerated main positions of the IPCC’s AR5. Those who critiqued AR5 should be honored. So let’s honor the independent people using applied reasoning (aka skeptics) who are serving the best interest of science focused on climate in the best sense of Feynman’s view of science.
John
John Whitman,
It goes hand in hand with arrogance.
Hmmm. Elsewhere on this blog I’ve gone out of my way to disclaim personal expertise. I often use the construction, “my understanding about X is Y”, but not always — I do know of myself a tendency to wax professorial and pontificate.
I disagree that you agree with my philosophy of science completely. For one thing your statement above makes subjective claims about purpose and unquantified claims about unspecified exaggerations. That’s not a scientific discussion in my book.
In principle I agree that all skeptical thinkers deserve honors. But I would not award honor to all critics of AR5, or any previous IPCC report. For a specific, see above my objection to criticism of motive.
I’d start with the IPCC contributors themselves. AR5 is full of robust debate about its own conclusions. The persistently broad range of ECS estimates are one clear indication that charges of motivated conclusions to conform to some pre-conceived narrative are a lacking argument. So also are the long-running debates on the magnitude of water vapor and cloud feedbacks, aerosol direct and indirect effects, ice sheet dynamics … large uncertainties are identified and discussed throughout. By my reading, far more is unsettled than not.
It irks me that accepting the better-established conclusions of AR5 are considered by many here at WUWT a lack of skepticism. And that rebutting that notion with prejudice is considered a condescending appeal to authority.
As with any charged debate, I observe that both sides do tend to reserve the right to engage in ill-behavior. By the law of large numbers, there will always be at least one dummy who drags their own side into the muck. I try to not be that guy, but I’m human and am fully capable of getting pissed off … same as anyone and everyone else who participates here.
Brandon Gates
February 2, 2015 at 9:12 am
“My agenda is leaving the planet in the same or better shape as we found it for future generations. ”
====================
Such hubris.
“The planet”, never missed a beat during WWII (even the nukes).
Make no mistake, She is out to kill you or toughen you up.
u.k.(us),
No, such respect for other PEOPLE.
The PEOPLE of the time didn’t fare so well.
In that sense the entire universe is out to get us. We’re but an extension of that. Look. I don’t give two shits for the planet itself. It’s not sentient so far as I am aware. Were it not for other sentient beings who depend on it for their existence, and for whom I actually do have varying levels of empathy, I’d love nothing more than to see the Moon crash into it, blowing the whole kit and kaboodle into smithereens just for the spectacle. From a safe distance of course. And with some place more pleasant to live out the rest of my days with my loved ones. Plus pretty much most of the rest of us.
You know the George Carlin bit about the planet and plastics? It’s a classic. If you understand why I stood on the couch and cheered the first time I watched it, you may begin to understand my particular brand of environmental concern. Until then, I’ll renew my note to steer away from the more orthodox forms of the standard enviro talking points so as to allay any further confusion about my priorities.
Well said, seems we’re on the same page.
‘course there is that damned catch…….why??
Maybe it is plastic, I would like to think I’ll see it all play out (in heaven ?), but I’m pessimistic.
Brandon Gates,
The community that created the IPCC’s AR5 followed a process that produced a fundamental claim on climate that is wrong in the Feynman sense of what correct science epistemic is. Their internal ‘debate’ failed. It doesn’t matter what motives they had during their process that created their wrong fundamental claim; although to avoid being wrong again in any future AR it seems rational to expect that reasonable responsible professionals in the IPCC community would want to do a root cause analysis and develop lessons learned on how they got it wrong in AR5; motivational bias might be a finding. Also, the IPCC’s AR5 development process should be independently audited; fortunately there are many independent critical people versed in objective applied reasoning who would leave no intellectual stone unturned during an audit of the IPCC’s AR5 development process. Let’s AUDIT, AUDIT, AUDIT from the outside looking in.
WRT my observation of your condescending comment manner, it appears to be totally consistent with the type of commenting behavior dominating Cook’s blog, Gavin’s blog and HotWhopper blog.
Aside note, I disagree with the many regular WUWT commenters who call you a troll. You are not one by my concept of ‘troll’. In fact, virtually all of the individuals who are called trolls by many regular WUWT commenters are not trolls. The whole spectacle of name-calling people as trolls is puerile.
John
John Whitman,
I obviously disagree for reasons I have cited previously. The IPCC is by no means a perfect organization, there are warts in the form of egos and agendas. As with any human endeavor. But calling their output categorically wrong because of _________________ ? is something which my personal belief cannot abide.
And this blog. We are, most of us in this debate, fundamentally pissed off at the standard-bearers for the other side. I’m far less diplomatic about it over at HW.
I appreciate that, thank you. I especially agree with your last sentence and commend you for saying it openly in this space. You and I may disagree on much else, but now I have a reason to respect your integrity. Cheers.
John,
I agree, Gates is no troll. But when he says:
And this blog.
…referring to the commenting, and comparing it with Hotwhopper and others, then that is not a good comparison IMHO. This site is very different — and much better. The internet world seems to agree, too. But some folks do not like that.
Anyone who goes back even six months to a year here can see that a small handful of real obstructionists have invaded and begun cluttering up numerous threads. They do it by taking advantage of this site’s ‘no-censorship’ policy. There is a thin line between not censoring, and allowing obstructionists to take over. The big difference between Brandon and them is that Brandon admits it when he’s been wrong [as I have], and his mind is open enough to be one of the normal commenters here.
The small handful who have appeared here recently have one thing in common: they find it impossible to ever admit that they are wrong, under any circumstances. They are fixated on their alarmist Narrative, to the exclusion of everything else. They have no interest in finding out Why, but rather, they want to shove their discredited climate alarmism down everyones’ throat. So of course they’re going to get push-back. I’ve repeatedly offered to ignore the worst of them, on condition that they ignore me. But the response is ‘No Deal’. They love the controversy. But where is the science?
There are many times recently when I’ve noticed other Saul Alinsky tactics at work. For example, one Alinsky tactic is to demand ‘a forum to wield their power to oobstruct’. That forum is WUWT. They abuse that privilege no end. Certainly, their comments are not fact- or evidence-based, but rather, they are intended to cause endless obfuscation. Nothing is ever resolved like it was before. Instead of discussing facts and evidence, threads turn into their Alinsky playground.
It is clear to even the most casual observer that their tactics do leave any room for admitting when they’re wrong — which is quite often. Incessant arguing, and constant demands for “Citation, please” are intended to gum up the works, and imply that the writer has fabricated a comment.
The normal way to converse is to make a statement, and if the writer wishes, he will post a supporting link. Then if someone disagrees, they will post their own response, and then provide a link for support. But that has been turned backward, by constantly demanding ‘citations’ of whatever the original commenter writes, no matter how minor or unimportant. When done enough, it implies that the commenter being attacked is lying, or making things up. This tactic is used all the time. Alinsky again.
They ask questions incessantly — but they never seem to answer anyone else’s questions. I have a dozen or more questions I would love to get answered, but despite asking them, I have yet to receive a clear response — if I get any response at all. Most times my questions are simply ignored, or deflected with more misinformation.
Many others have questions, but they’re not answered, either. At first, I tried my best to answer every question asked, and to post links, citations, and graphs when demanded [I have literally thousands of charts and links, in dozens of folders]. No more. Now I see that it’s just a tactic. If someone disagrees with a comment, then anyone disagreeing should just say why, and then post their own link if they want for support. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
But these people do not want answers. They just want to peddle their alarmist Narrative. How many times have we seen their Appeal To Authority fallacy posted? But despite the fact that it is a logical fallacy, and thus cannot contribute to knowledge, it is used incessantly. All it really amounts to are opinions. It has nothing to do with either facts or evidence.
I’m sorry B. Gates got caught up in this. At first it seemed that he was just another of their ilk. I was wrong.
Anyway, I wanted to vent. For a long time I was willing to discuss facts and evidence with everyone. Generally the truth is sifted from nonsense that way. It works well, too; I’ve learned a lot here by reading comments. But a few obstructionists have decided they don’t like the discussion rules we’ve always used here. IMHO, they need to be shut down. They are not here to learn, but rather, they are here to obstruct. There are a million other blogs where they can dump on scientists they disagree with. That’s where they need to be if they want to carry on like that, not here. This is the internet’s Best Science site, and I hate to see it invaded by a few obstructionists who only want to cause trouble, instead of honestly trying to find out if there is anything to the MMGW conjecture. I suspect they know very well that has been discredited by now [even though the CO2=AGW conjecture is probably correct, on a minuscule and unimportant level]. So they’re obstructing others who want to find out for sure that it’s nothing to worry about.
/rant
dbstealey,
I’m at an uncharacteristic loss for words. Thanks.
Ah wait, there’s my tongue. Firstly, I don’t see myself as any less trollish than rooter or Socrates, so I wouldn’t want your recognition of me to be at their expense. Of course I respect your opinions as your own, so I’m not making any demands here either.
Nextly, I would like to make it clear that I participate here by choice, fully expecting to NOT be treated with kid gloves — especially since I’m not exactly shy about expressing disdain for what I consider to be some absolutely terrible arguments. I don’t generally point out the derision WUWT collectively heaps on those who carry the consensus side of the debate, and especially not by way of complaint. In the current context, I brought it up with Alan in the sense of, “Well what did you expect?”
Hate the game, not the player is pretty much how I try to operate, so I expect that when folks have sharply-worded things to say that they’re not going to take great umbrage when the response is in kind. I don’t always carry it off that way either.
I prefer straight up debate. Even better is an open exchange of ideas. When I don’t get that despite my best efforts to do otherwise, I unrepentantly snark. Seems as fair a set of ROE as any.
Brandon Gates,
Since yours was the only name mentioned, I’ll reply by saying there is no comparison between the blogs you mentioned and this really excellent, award winning science site. I wanted to make that clear. There is no comparison.
Anyway, some folks seem to forget the basics. When a question like MMGW arises, whether it’s the UN, or the governments, or organizations telling us what to think, the burden must be entirely on them to support their conjecture. In this case, we’re being told what to think: that the addition of a trace gas will cause runaway global warming.
Make no mistake, that is the message. What is the agenda?
That question needed to be investigated. It has been, for more than thirty years now. Way more, really, and by tens of thousands of scientists; by governments, by universities, individuals, and now by blogs. So, what have they found?
Nothing. There is zero indication of any global harm or damage from the rise in CO2, from 0.00003 of the atmosphere, to 0.00004. It is a good thing that we investigated, because the concern was serious: runaway global warming would have caused alll kinds of harm. So we’re lucky that it was a complete false alarm.
Certainly, if there was any truth to the carbon scare, we would need to do something. But after all those eyeballs and brains worked on the problem for all those decades, they could not find any difference between the current climate and past climates. [the Null Hypothesis]. They cannot find one example of damage or harm. So unless something new and unexpected appears, CO2 must be deemed to be “harmless”.
Where are we now?
The whole issue/scare/alarm has been co-opted by the UN, and by various governments, as a means of literally taxing people for the air they breathe — based on a false alarm. Being governments, it is probably asking too much for them to resist that tempting tax money. Because it is all about money at this point. Our money, and how they can get their mitts on it.
So our job is to say: “Prove it!” Or at least, show us credible evidence that adding CO2 would be a problem. Since it is a non-problem, and since more CO2 is a net benefit, we should be very happy. Poor folks have more to eat, the biosphere loves the fertilizer, and all the many $billions wasted every year on “climate studies” can be re-directed into areas that are starved for funding. Because there is no evidence at all that this was anything but a false alarm.
That’s what governments should do. But the MMGW issue has been made political, therefore science does not matter. Poltics and science are as different as religion and science. As a result, Alinsky-style tactics are used when we should be concentrating on science. I wrote that screed after being frustrated about how things have changed here over the past year, due to a few people who cannot ever admit to being wrong about anything. It seems that science, including evidence and facts, no longer matters. Some folks took a CAGW stand before they understood the issue, and now they are unable to admit they were wrong about it.
I’m serious about being a skeptic. If any credible evidence appears showing there is cause for concern, I will look very closely. If it turns out to be valid, I will change my mind, 180º if necessary. I don’t have the kind of ego that won’t allow that, like they do. If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it and push for solutions.
I don’t understand why the other side is incapable of admitting they have been on the wrong track. But for whatever reason, they have dug in their heels, and no facts, or logic, or rational debate have any effect. All they need to do is find evidence that CO2 does what some folks claimed. But try as they might, they can’t find anything. No one can find any verifiable evidence that the added CO2 is a problem. And CO2 — “carbon” — is the basis for everything. Without being able to demonstrate harm from more CO2, there is no reason to keep arguing. Everything else is a side issue.
That should pretty much be the end of it. But it’s not, and that isn’t the fault of skeptics. The alarmist crowd is trying to keep the scare on the front pages. They *must* be right; they can never admit that they were mistaken. Silly as it sounds to us, it almost seems like a matter of life or death. They are doing Big Government’s dirty work, and now that has bled over into this great science site. That’s a real shame, because most readers here have an interest in science; in the Why of things. And I see how politics has affected this site. For years, when a point was raised by someone, it was normally hashed out and settled. But now it just goes on and on. That is not the fault of skeptics.
You’ve admitted being wrong several times recently. We are all wrong at times. But when a handful of people refuse to ever admit they were wrong, but instead argue incessantly using Alinsky tactics, that tends to poison the discussion. So I’m glad you are able to admit error [I see similarities between you and tjfolkerts, who has been around here a long time]. When you’re able to acknowledge new facts, evidence and logic, I am confident that you will finally come to a reasonable conclusion [even if you have to be dragged there kicking and screaming]. As we see, not everyone is like that.
dbstealey,
My agenda is leaving the planet in the same or better shape as we found it for future generations.
My experience has been that no one single thing was convincing in and of itself. And I’m beyond skeptical about the most dire predictions of woe. I rest on the policy of discretion being the better part of valor. In my perfect world, where I am the benevolent dictator, I’d be weaning us off fossil fuels and into nuclear fission and biofuels regardless. Such has been my desire since before I’d even heard about global warming.
Easy. They’re as certain of being right as you are that they’re wrong.
Well see now DB this is a major part of the problem I have with the way you argue your position. Above you say, “So our job is to say: ‘Prove it!’ Or at least, show us credible evidence that adding CO2 would be a problem.” which is a burden of proof I accept, and almost always uphold. Now here you are saying to me, “when you’re able to acknowledge new facts, evidence and logic” I find myself asking where you think those are going to come from. This is exactly why I bust you up about showing me a GCM(-like) model which beats the CMIP5 ensemble on prediction skill. As crappy as you guys say they are, they’re currently off by only a quarter of a degree. Granted, that’s 12.5% of the 2 degree Do Not Exceed policy target, but considering that those estimates are the product of planet-scale simulations I don’t think it’s terribly shabby.
You want me to consider new facts and evidence … show me some new facts and evidence in the form of: THIS physical mechanism is a better candidate than CO2 for observed temperature trends, here’s what happens when we plug it into our GCM and it’s got 50% more skill than the CMIP5 ensemble.
I’m all but stone deaf to just about every “CO2 didn’t diddit” argument out there. Like it or not, the science is at the point — for me — where the burden of proof is on you guys to roll up your sleeves and do some very rigourous calculations about exactly what natural variabilities better explain the past … oh, half million years would be nice … without invoking CO2 as a major player.
I repeat: gridded output from a state of the art model from 1860 to present which handily beats CMIP5 would be damn compelling. I wouldn’t be the only person on this rock that would sit up and take notice.
dbstealey,
I appreciate your discussion. I think that exposing the type of problematic commenters you mention to critically focused dialog on them is very educational for many viewers of WUWT. It is a tiring task though.
The balancing act done on this wonderful venue to allow open discussion is hard work for all participating.
John
Brandon Gates,
You and I will fundamentally have different root concepts of the philosophy of science. That’s good, one less thing to worry about.
The important thing on this venue is to stimulate relevant intellectual argumentation through keeping it civil and respectful.
John
John Whitman,
I think that’s good policy in any venue. I find that I frequently don’t live up to my own policies on that note. I have all the standard justifications for that of course.
I have looked between the lines on this one. They discovered that the increased reports of volcanic activity were due to increased reporting. Just like with hurricanes, tornadoes, diseases, snowmageddons, downpours, heat spells, etc. But that realization was scrubbed from the records as being inconvenient. Instead, the sexy media campaign began that would convince us of this volcanic sciencysoothsayer-sourced anthropogenic “truth”. The campaign is based on this: We report experiencing more of whatever the media says there is more of; storms when the media says there are more storms, getting hotter because the media says it’s getting hotter, etc. The power of suggestion is the key component to fashionable, grant-sucking science, getting the sheeple to open their wallets even wider, and coaxing them into the bend-over and grab-your-ankles “you-are-f***ed” position necessary for this gig to reach its final conclusion desired by all watermelons.
The power of suggestion – and mass hysteria on a scale we’ve never seen before. The alarmists have completely lost touch with reality.
“the researchers took pains to point out that no, it’s not the very fact that Icelandic ice sits above hot magma deposits that’s causing the glacial melting. The magma’s always been there; it’s the rising global temperature that’s new. At best, only 5% of the accelerated melting is geological in origin.”
And they know this how? Are they actually suggesting that regions of high volcanic activity have magma underneath that is an equilibrium state, with no significant fluctuations?
“The magma has always been there”, that was the dumbest line in what is being declared the dumbest article of the year.
In German: Klug = clever, smart, intelligent, wise, skillful, prudent.
te he he
“As you reduce the pressure, you effectively lower the melting temperature.” The result is a softer, more molten subsurface, which increases the amount of eruptive material lying around and makes it easier for more deeply buried magma chambers to escape their confinement and blow the whole mess through the surface.”
Vivid imagination but scientifically incorrect. Magma underneath a volcano is already molten. I suppose by “more molten” they mean decrease in viscosity. But viscosity is not dependent on pressure, it is dependent on temperature. Higher temperature, lower viscosity for liquids. The plastic (solid) rocks are in the mantle, which is 30 km below the magma chamber. The lava in volcanic eruptions comes from the magma chamber.
I think it is true that high pressure tends to liquefy rock, so the converse is no doubt true as well. Pressure is a form of physical work, which creates heat. However, their apparent assumption that conditions are constant in a zone of known volcanic activity seems to me to be poorly founded.
No, high pressure will crush solid rocks. Pressure creates heat in gases. Molten rock is almost incompressible. The pressure will not be converted into heat. The pressure will be transmitted to the surrounding of the molten rock.
I was talking about solid rock, not molten rock, and I was thinking in terms of heat generated by physical work such as that transferred by bending metal or drilling a hole in solid material. To some extent, I think solid rock is compressible and its compression would likely generate heat. How much, I don’t know.
I’m talking about molten rock. Magma is molten rocks. Drilling a hole in solid materials generates heat because of friction. Bending metals generates heat because they are elastic. The molecules slide past each other generating friction. Solid rock is a rigid body. Rigid bodies don’t bend, they break.
Dr. Strangelove says: “Vivid imagination but scientifically incorrect.:
Ah … the irony.
The melting point DOES depend on pressure. Google “melting temperature as a function of pressure for rocks” and you will find lots of hits, with articles and graphs confirming that pressure is indeed an important factor. Reducing the pressure (eg by removing glaciers) will result in more magma (from additional rock melting without needing to raise the temperature). And since molten rock has a WAY lower viscosity than solid rack, removing pressure greatly decreases viscosity.
So Dr. Strangelove’s claim that “viscosity is not dependent on pressure” is definitely wrong. (Much of the rest is correct, but this key misunderstanding belies his main point.)
Read carefully. Melting point DOES depend on pressure. Read my previous post where I computed how much pressure reduction is needed. Viscosity is dependent on temperature, not melting point. Melting is a phase change from solid to liquid. Viscosity is a property of fluids.
I think you might be unclear on the fact that I’m talking exclusively about the potential effect of severe pressure on solid rock. It’s the phase transition that is of interest to me. I don’t care about the possible effects of pressure on liquefied rock. I don’t know how susceptible solid rock might be to a phase change under conditions of extreme pressure. Maybe it’s not that much, but your insistence on discussing magma is not shedding any light on my question. If it’s magma, it’s liquid, and therefore is not relevant to my question.
“I don’t know how susceptible solid rock might be to a phase change under conditions of extreme pressure.”
Read my post on Jan. 31 at 1.23 am. To reduce melting point of dry granite from around 900 C to 800 C, you decrease pressure from < 2 kilobars to 1 bar.
Also, when you say “rigid bodies don’t bend, they break”, I’m not at all sure what you are talking about. Is it your contention that neither solid steel nor solid iron is a “rigid body”? Those materials certainly bend when heated. Other examples abound.
Metals are elastic (“non-rigid”) Rocks are inelastic (“rigid”)
“In physics, a rigid body is an idealization of a solid body in which deformation is neglected.” – Wikipedia
No solid body is perfectly rigid but inelastic bodies are almost rigid. Their deformation is negligible.
Upon further review, I think we probably agree with respect to the quotation from the original article. Lower pressure certainly would not promote liquefaction of solid rock. My apologies if I have created a rabbit hole.
Sometimes rabbits need holes, and solids are not quite.
I have not had time to read all the comments in this post. So the question is: where in the study does it mention volcanoes? I did not see any mention in the abstract. Anyone?
At best, only 5% of the accelerated melting is geological in origin.
The most self-delusional aspect of such narratives is the belief, based on no facts, that they can limit, Canute-like, the contribution of geothermal energy to the melting to “5%”. This is based on nothing but wishful thinking and computer models – which are actually the same thing.
Of course a volcano in Iceland can literally be felt around the world….it has an economic domino affect.
This is a hypothesis that can be tested.
Shocked silence…
embarrassed coughs;
Relax, please, I’m a scientist in industry so I can suggest testing a hypothesis without it amounting to professional suicide.
So the meme goes, warming melts ice over volcanoes freeing them up to erupt. OK when did real warming happen? Yes – at the start of the Holocene and other interglacials. So were these strong warming episodes accompanied by increased volcanic activity? It’s a simple matter of mass-spec ing sulphur in the ice cores.
Did such an obvious and easy test of their hypothesis even cross the minds of these authors?
“A study of the last 11 centuries reveals over 200 eruptions, with around three quarters of these explosive, and with an average frequency of 20-25 events per 100 years (Thordarson and Larsen, 2006). The apparent increase in eruption frequency over the last few centuries can be accounted for by improved documentation of eruptive events. Studies of longer timescales e.g. the last 10,000 years since the last ice age, suggest similar eruption rates to historic times.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/latest/volcano/iceland
Phlogiston ponders: “Did such an obvious and easy test of their hypothesis even cross the minds of these authors?”
You might look in the actual article. Did such an obvious and easy solution to your question even cross your mind?
http://time.com/3687893/volcanoes-climate-change/
Yep, it looks like people did consider past melting events and found confirmation that melting of ice leads to more eruptions.
30-fold increase in volcanic activity compared to today or compared to last ice age? The D-O event 11,500 years ago was more rapid warming than today. Greenland warmed by 8 C in 40 years. Since the end of the D-O event 10,000 years ago, eruption rates are similar to historic times.
Well, thanks, I’m reassured that some scientists even in climate still retain an instinct for hypothesis-testing and real world observation. A ray of hope.
BTW there is a chicken-and-egg question about the start-of-Holocene volcanism – did it result from the melting or did it cause it? Some (e.g. Maslin) speculate that what triggers the sharp rapid warming at the deep end of glacial periods could be volcanism due to weight of ice.
Mauna Loa is a dormant volcano and what better place to take CO2 measurements, given that all volcanoes exhale CO2, even dormant ones.
Bezotch February 1, 2015 at 10:31 am says: “How about:
Due to thermal expansion caused by global warming, the earth has a larger surface area and therefore is much more likely to be hit by an asteroid or comet. Co2 causes asteroid strikes.”
Or in the same vein, “How about: extraordinary levels of CO2 and SO2 gases emitted by volcanic activity on Iceland now anthropogenic. OCO-2 now suddenly can “see” the anthropogenic emissions on Iceland!”
Question for the study’s authors …
You claim that global warming causes volcanic eruptions. Can you please provide an estimate as to what percentage of volcanoes in the world have been caused to erupt this way?
Expected answer …
97%
cue laughter
Just wondering if we could detect a volcanic signal via compounds trapped in ice cores around the Holocene, Roman, and Medieval Global Climate Optimums? This might be a robust method to falsify or verify the thesis.
Don’t laugh. If this keeps up Iceland might tip over. http://tinyurl.com/plgyw3k
I found the answer. 97% of everything is caused by climate change.