A Lesson in Plate Tectonics

UPDATE:

The air travel and freight disruptions are costing airlines at least $200 million a day and perhaps billions more to the affected economies, one industry group warned.

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"Meanwhile, the air industry in Europe -- already battered by the financial crisis and labor disputes such as strikes at Lufthansa and British Airways this year -- is putting on pressure to reopen the skies.

"This crisis is costing airlines at least $200 million a day in lost revenues and the European economy is suffering billions of dollars in lost business," said Giovanni Bisignani, director general and CEO of the International Air."

Not to worry. Saskboy has a plan. Trouble is, he is blissfully unaware that it would amount to the same thing.
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...for Saskboy.

Threat of new, larger Icelandic eruption looms

"For all the worldwide chaos that Iceland's volcano has already created, it may just be the opening act.

Scientists fear tremors at the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) volcano could trigger an even more dangerous eruption at the nearby Katla volcano — creating a worst-case scenario for the airline industry and travelers around the globe.

A Katla eruption would be 10 times stronger and shoot higher and larger plumes of ash into the air than its smaller neighbor, which has already brought European air travel to a standstill for five days and promises severe travel delays for days more.

The two volcanos are side by side in southern Iceland, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) apart and thought to be connected by a network of magma channels.

Katla, however, is buried under ice 550 yards (500 meters) thick — the massive Myrdalsjokull glacier, one of Iceland's largest. That means it has more than twice the amount of ice that the current eruption has burned through — threatening a new and possibly longer aviation standstill across Europe."

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"There are no clear answers, however, and even fewer predictions about what the future may hold. Volcano eruptions, like earthquakes, are difficult to predict.

"Katla can start tomorrow or in 100 years (emphasis mine), you don't know," said Palsson. "All we can do is be ready.""

Volcano's eruption getting hotter

"Located near the island’s southern coast, Eyjafjallajökull is actually one of the Iceland’s smallest and least threatening volcanoes, standing at just 1,666 metres.

It is not a beautiful cone-shaped volcano like Mount Fuji in Japan, but an elongated ridge stretching for more than two kilometres under a cap of glacial ice. Reversely magnetized rock indicates that there has been volcanic activity beneath the surface for almost a million years."

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"It has erupted only 10 times, but one incident lasted almost two years." (emphasis mine)

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"Unlike Mount St. Helens, which burned itself into the North American psyche with a fierce but short-lived eruption, Dr. Hickson said, Icelandic eruptions tend to persevere for days or months. In Hawaii, she said, a similar eruption has been bubbling since 1986.

“It would not be unexpected for this eruption to continue to carry on.”"

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"Trouble began at Eyjafjallajökull on March 20, when a red cloud was spotted above the glacier, and the first eruption occurred in a pass of ice-free land between Eyjafjallajökull and a neighbouring volcano called Katla.

Two weeks later, the current eruption began around midnight on April 14, in the glacier’s central calderra, or crater.

Glyn Williams-Jones, a volcanologist at Simon Fraser University, visited Iceland two years ago and said the entire island is essentially being ripped apart from below.

“It’s sitting on a hot spot, so you’ve got a big pulse of magma coming up from the core of the Earth,” he said. “ But it also sits on the mid-Atlantic ridge, which is where new ocean floor is created all the time.”

And while Eyjafjallajökull is a threat, it’s nothing compared to Katla, a larger and more dangerous volcano. In the past 1,100 years, every time Eyjafjallajökull has erupted, Katla has soon followed suit."

Frankly, I wouldn't want to be eating 100 year old lobster, nor would I wish my great-great-grand daughters to be walking down the aisle with dry, wizened up old bridal bouquets, nor latter day hippies to have to wear crumbling dead flower stocks in their hair.  Nor would I want an economic disaster that lasts a 100 years.

There's a limit to how well we can prepare for the consequences of a volcanic eruption, and that limit is first and foremost being sure the citizens who live below it can be safely and quickly evacuated. Planning meetings, international travel and funerals are not and cannot be among the list of to-dos.

And on top of all that, Saskboy, watermelon that he is, wants to create a perfect command economy. I'm sorry Saskboy, but to say you are naive is putting it mildly.