From “Scientific” American via Reuters, proof positive that global warming is omnipotent and is intertwined into anything you choose it to be. Why, even the inner Earth bends to its will. And we all know that once the inner Earth gets out, we’re doomed, because Al Gore tells us it is millions of degrees.
Ice cap thaw may awaken Icelandic volcanoes (link fixed)
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) – A thaw of Iceland’s ice caps in coming decades caused by climate change may trigger more volcanic eruptions by removing a vast weight and freeing magma from deep below ground, scientists said on Friday.
They said there was no sign that the current eruption from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier that has paralysed flights over northern Europe was linked to global warming. The glacier is too small and light to affect local geology.
“Our work suggests that eventually there will be either somewhat larger eruptions or more frequent eruptions in Iceland in coming decades,” said Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a vulcanologist at the University of Iceland.
“Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems,” he told Reuters. The end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago coincided with a surge in volcanic activity in Iceland, apparently because huge ice caps thinned and the land rose.
“We believe the reduction of ice has not been important in triggering this latest eruption,” he said of Eyjafjallajokull. “The eruption is happening under a relatively small ice cap.”
Carolina Pagli, a geophysicist at the University of Leeds in England, said there were risks that climate change could also trigger volcanic eruptions or earthquakes in places such as Mount Erebus in Antarctica, the Aleutian islands of Alaska or Patagonia in South America.
…
He said that melting ice seemed the main way in which climate change, blamed mainly on use of fossil fuels, could have knock-on effects on geology. The U.N. climate panel says that global warming will cause more floods, droughts and rising seas.
h/t to WUWT reader Sean Peake
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UPDATE: A rebuttal to this premise has been made by WUWT’s Steve Goddard. See it here.
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Richard Lynch (12:07:48) :
By that line of reasoning, the Earth is well on it’s way to a big cooldown.
Now, if we can only cure Al Gore Warming fever.
2012 approaches, and it’s not the Earth that is ending, it’s the sanity of our leadership.
Pam: Here’s the bar for PhD: Just get out your loudspeaker and proclaim something that Global Warming causes, and you’ll be instantly knighted.
Reuters should change their name to Rooters.
Why haven’t they found the link to earthquakes yet, or did I miss that?
One thing that AGW definitely has caused is the meltdown of too much scientific integrity, a flood of nonsensical propaganda, a dramatically rising levels of wasted money, and the migration of many cash-sensitive ‘species’ onto this bandwagon.
Dennis Hand (08:04:21) :
It occurred to me this morning, as I read this and other articles about the eruptions in Iceland, that no has given thought to the idea that maybe what is happening in the North Atlantic is a shift in magma in the area which is resulting in a localized warming of the land in Iceland, Greenland…. and that is what is causing the melting of the glaciers. This is just speculation on my part. I am far from a scientist and definitely not a climatologist or geologist, but I do read and think about what the implications are beyond just the surface information.
One of you, who is more skilled in this area, may want to do some research on this topic.
——–
REPLY: Dennis, you show good scientific insight! WUWT discussed this a while back:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/25/surprise-explosive-volcanic-eruption-under-the-arctic-ice-found/
Who knows?? I am sure that the AGW community far underestimated the negative feedback effects of volcanism in their models.
This puppy in Iceland may continue to belch ash for years, which may either (a) reduce global temperatures by increasing the Earth’s albedo and creating sulfur dioxide aerosols, or (b) increase polar ice cap melting if the darker ash settles onto the ice.
Anybody’s guess at this point, I’m willing to bet that we have a nice period of cooling to go along with our ongoing solar minimum.
M White (11:59:03) :
It’s all happened before
However not everything: “The prophet of evil” just once every two millenia and a half, every platonic month, the beast reiincarnates….☺
Back a long time ago when I was young and stupid (instead of being old and foolish!), I used to read the Scientific American. But as I got older I found more and more liberal talking points disguised as “science”.
If I want liberal talking points, I can get bumper stickers for free at the Democrat Party HQ. The rest of the magazine, I found that I could not trust. Like the National Geographic.
I no longer waste my money on either.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
And volcanic particulates and sulphur dioxide, etc. will circulate the globe reducing temperatures in a natural self-moderating process. I find it interesting that AGW alarmists seem to predicate their dire predictions on the demonstrably silly assumption that we won’t ever see another Pinatubo, Mt. St. Helens or similar event that would tend to mute any AGW greenhouse effect. Now, by claiming that AGW may actually cause such events, it seems that they are admitting that there are feedback processes that tend to undermine their own conclusions.
Yeah, yeah, yeah…
Why are these guys given honor and “degrees”?
The “standard geologists” for years waved their hands and talked about the “continents” sinking because of accumulation of sediments, and this causing the formation of “sedimentary basins”.
PURE UTTER RUBBISH! Eventually satellite’s showed the actual MOVEMENT of the continents…and plate techtonics and continental drift was ESTABLISHED AS FACT.
As far as “sediment” causing the land to SINK…RUBBISH! What’s the DENISTY of basalt versus “sedimentary rock”? 2:1? SO sedimentary basins sank, and some “magic” process, uplifted the BASALT mountains (don’t take this for GRANITE, look it up).
SO LIKEWISE a MINOR coating of ICE is going to “push down” the basalt that forms ICELAND? Again, RUBBISH.
Now if these clowns had said 9 months ago, “There is a lot of activity in certain plate planes and joints, and there will be a major eruption in the spring of 2010, I’d be impressed.
This did not happen.
Max
I am not surprised. in an AGW mind, if a bit of CO2 ( say a couple of hundred PPM ) could be so deadly, why a not couple hundred feet of ICE make a volcano happen?
Retreating glaciers linked to earthquakes
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/glacier_quakes.html
“Our work suggests…”
For “work” read “modelling, adjusting, conspiring, cherry-picking, fudging, transposing, hiding, smoothing, extrapolating, exaggerating, manipulating, destroying, inventing.”
Did I leave anything out?
Jounalism is dead in America and science is almost dead.
Oh, I see, that was hypothesizing under the influence of CO2.
——————-
Pamela Gray (12:06:42) :
“Have we lowered the Ph.D. bar that much?”
Hm, hm. Soon they’ll be doing them on the web, with downloaded models.
Ok in all seriousness, is there anything that can happen on planet Earth that these fanatics won’t claim is related to global warming? I mean anything?
Sounds like we can expect this to be cited in AR5!
My God! I’m not sure what to think about this. Is this just a desperate attempt to scare ‘our leaders’ into action? Is it just fishing for research funding? Or both?
Are our institutions of higher learning now completely staffed by those educated in the politically correct era? You have to wonder, because a complete lack of understanding of basic principles is the only way this kind on nonsense sees the light of day. Or is it drugs? (prescription, illegal or otherwise)
At this point, I have to wonder if part of the intent of the the proponents of the AGW theory is to completely destroy the credibility of all scientific endeavors.
OK: Tectonics 101.
Iceland is an above sea level manifestation of the Mid Atlantic Ridge. The ridge is of course an active constructive margin (It is actually the principle prime-mover of continental drift at this point in time). Upwelling of hotter (ie less dense) magma along the ridge is pushing the Eurasian plate and North American plate in opposite directions at about the speed that human nails grow. The Eurasian plate heads east, the North American plate heads west.
So Iceland has about 200 metres of ice lying in a glacier across this active margin. Assuming plastic deformation, then this ice behaves like a fluid and exerts a hydrostatic head of pressure on the rock beneath. In other parts of the world, in the past, Glacial ice has exerted sufficient pressure to warp the crust. There is ample evidence all over Northern Europe of isostatic rebound in the Baltic, Scottish Highlands and probably North America. The ice mass required for crustal warping is in Kilometers rather than metres of depth.
However, in this case, the insignificant weight and pressure of the ice is no where near enough to reduce, mitigate or hold back the massive pressure of the upwelling magma – which is sufficient to drive two massive continental plates in opposite directions.
A simple test: If The Atlantic ridge can operate and create new crust at depths of 3000 metres of water, how can 200 metres of ice stop magma at the surface of the planet?
Iceland has had a period of relative quiescence over the 20th century. Could be that quiet phase is becoming less so. (But predictions are difficult – especially about the future)
This is just so silly it is barking mad and frankly it is a good example of the magical thinking prevalent in post modern science and education.
The person suggesting this could either be a Fool (magical thinking) or a Knave (hunting for more research grants).
I could understand the latter since Iceland is technically bankrupt.
But what really sucks is that a supposedly educated scientist fais to grasp that a globally significant eurptive continental margin cannot be stopped by any known human agent or started by human agency in the form of melting ice.
If it is melting, I should imagine that the very high geothermal gradient and proximity to magma at 1300 deg C might, just might, have something to do with it.
And yes, right at the top of this thread, someone suggested a link between global warming and male pattern baldness. This is correct. My MPB commenced about the time that Hansen triggered global warming. It also causes male pattern waist thickening (beer is not believed to be a sufficient forcing agent at this time).
Sooooo; as long as the world’s oceans keep rising cos of all that nasty melted ice, the increased weight on the sea floor ridges and thermal vents (where 70% of the world active vocanoes live & breathe) should basically shut down 70% of the largest single contribution of non-AGW CO2
Wot’s the problem?
Gaia has struck, we’re back on track for cross country skiing in Florida and Saint Paul of the 70’s global cooling gig has been vindicated and might now get a richly deserved Nobel gong too
I am all in favour of believing that volcanic eruption can be related to Global Warming.
It seems to me this can be just one more internal mechanism the planet has to manage the climate. This eruption may very well cause a cooling effect.
Another reason we don’t need to worry about tipping points, if they exist. There may be untold ways that they can be un-tipped.
We really haven’t a clue. I just think after 3 or 4 billion years, the balance and equilibrium (such as it exists, see Lindzen) has a lot more systems worked out than we understand.
I think that the weight of the B.S. being piled on by the AGW proponents more than makes up for the loss of ice weight, so there is no way that volcanoes are going to erupt more frequently, if fact they will likely erupt less frequently, and the earth will be more fertile as well from all the fresh excrement.
Paul Daniel Ash might be right saying there is some correlation between melting glacier and volcano activity, but I guess this is not the main problem.
The main issue here is whether the AGW is the one that is responsible to make such a great impact on volcano activity.
As we have always been arguing, the global temperature was DECREASING for at least 10 years, so these supposedly glacier melting of Iceland don’t even seems to fit the trend of global temperature, regardless whether this trend is cause by human or not. Moreover since the temperature never really fit the trend of carbon dioxide emitted, as the world was quite warm in the medieval period (as we have always been arguing) while there is nearly no industrial activity that emitted carbon dioxide (beside straw burning), it made the case that we human somehow can cause all these volcano eruption absurd.
Also, although I am not a expert in volcano, yet in the paper Ash shown us seems to only contain data that show correlation between the pressure of volcano and the amount of glacier ice, it makes us wonder that is the real causation pattern. Perhaps it is the volcanic pressure that cause the melting of ice! If one look closely at the paper you can also see the devil in the detail, as they claim
“The processes described here have broad relevance as global
warming causes extensive world-wide ice retreat. Modification
of mantle melting by ice retreat requires relative large
ice caps whereas important changes in crustal stresses due
to ice retreat may be more widespread at ice-capped
stratovolcanoes. Areas affected may be locations such as
Mount Erebus, Antarctica, the Aleutian Islands volcanoes,
Alaska and the volcanic zone of southern Patagonia.”
And as we now all know the ice cap have been regenerated in Arctic location, and relatively unchanged in Antarctica, the paper still assume the glacier in following area are shrinking, proving their paper consist some error that need to be noticed.
Jon Jewett (12:47:33) :
Back a long time ago when I was young and stupid (instead of being old and foolish!), I used to read the Scientific American. But as I got older I found more and more liberal talking points disguised as “science”.
———-
That became most obvious when they launched their tirade against Bjorn Lomborg’s book ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist.’
As for National Geographic… LOL. Nice photos though.
This reminds me of a tried and true expression:
There is nothing worse than an educated fool!
The 8 comments on the Sci Am site to date are all negative.
If, as these guys say, the release of the weight of ice will increase volcanic activity why isn’t Scotland Scandinavia bubbling with volcanos since the end of the last ice age?
Paul Daniel Ash (11:27:20) :
Thanks again for the link, seriously. It was an interesting topic to explore on a Friday. Be informed, I consider 90%+ of the conclusions drawn from otherwise reliable empirical data (not just AGW conspired) to be tunnel-vision garbage. But that aside here are some assumptions involved in that paper:
The ice retreat history assumes isostatic equilibrium in 1890 and
gradual thinning of the ice cap between 1890 and 2003.
We must believe that the ice only began melting in 1890. umm…
Allen et al. [2002] indicate that crustal thickness in Iceland varies from 15 to 46 km. We use an average thickness of the crust of 25 km.
Good compromise.
We also assume that the melting is restricted to the area underneath the Vatnajo¨kull ice cap, where ice thinning influences the melting regime.
2007b], when 0.45 km of magma erupted.
Sounds good, continuing:
Based on the variation of eruptive activity and lava composition after deglaciation, the vertical ascent velocity of melt in Iceland is inferred to
be >50 m/yr, without a well defined upper limit [Maclennan
et al., 2002].
Which is in line with the eruptive activity of 5,000 – 10,000yr post-ice age from your earlier citation ( 25 km / 50m/yr = 5,000y).
Coupled with:
Our inferred melting rate due to present day glacial thinning is over 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the inferred melt production rate during deglaciation [Jull and McKenzie, 1996], that was about 3.5 km3/yr over an unloading interval of 1 kyr.
Don’t know where the 1ky comes from because the previous paper you referenced estimated that volcanism started 5-10 kyr after initiation of ice melt. Regardless, they actually admit that we can expect volcanism solely from the current ice melt rate to began approximately 5,000yrs (lower end of 5,000 – 10,000 estimate) X 100 (2 orders of magnitude) = 50 kyr.
Now that’s a time frame that scares me to death. Oh there’s some uncertainty involved:
This estimate is, however, uncertain as a large part of eruptive products
accumulate sub-glacially, and volumes of sub-aerially deposited tephra are not well known.
And lastly:
Glacio-isostasy may thus have facilitated or triggered the anomalous sequence of reverse faulting earth-quakes from 1974 to 1996 at Ba´rdarbunga, although a prior event at the volcano is likely to be the original source of a compressive stress field.
Hmmm… So this proposed effect only functions where there is already volcanic activity at the location. Well, how much effect does this mechanism have?
In order to generate 30 km thick crust over the 300-km north-south length of Iceland spreading at 1.9 cm/year, a magma generation of 0.17 km3/yr is required. Thus our inferred magma volume increase of
0.014 km3/yr corresponds to 10% increase in magma production.
Which is in line with my previous calculations indicating this effect contributing to volcanism in the year 52,010 A. D. Wake me up when it happens.
Oh but there’s more:
In any case, our model indicates that a significant volume of additional magma, as high as 1.4 km3, could be produced every century under
Vatnajo¨kull due to present day glacial retreat, suggesting that increased volcanic activity may be expected in the future.
So, to sum up;
1. volcanism exists already in Iceland regardless of surface features.
2. we can expect increased volcanism in the future,
3. our estimated effect adds 10% of activity.