Who Ya Gonna Believe?

Warning signs that Yellowstone may Erupt

Five Things Most People Get Wrong About the Yellowstone Volcano

Misconception #1: When Yellowstone erupts…. it'll be Armageddon.

Misconception #2: The Yellowstone magma chamber is growing.

Misconception #3: Yellowstone is overdue for a supereruption.

Misconception #4: Yellowstone is rapidly rising.

Misconception #5: Earthquake data indicates moving magma.

Scaaaary!!!

Warning signs that Yellowstone may Erupt

"If the Yellowstone Super Volcano were to erupt, it would be 2,000 times bigger than the eruption of Mount St. Helens in the 1980’s. Everything within 500 miles would be dead or destroyed within minutes, 2/3rds of the entire United States would be covered in volcanic ash and the climate of the entire planet would cool within a month."

That's roughly 550 miles from where I live.

New Island...

...forming.

Another Step Down

Inconvenient Study: Seafloor volcano pulses may alter climate – models may be wrong

"Vast ranges of volcanoes hidden under the oceans are presumed by scientists to be the gentle giants of the planet, oozing lava at slow, steady rates along mid-ocean ridges."

[---]

"Scientists have already speculated that volcanic cycles on land emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide might influence climate; but up to now there was no evidence from submarine volcanoes. The findings suggest that models of earth’s natural climate dynamics, and by extension human-influenced climate change, may have to be adjusted."

(Emphasis in the original.)

"Volcanically active mid-ocean ridges crisscross earth’s seafloors like stitching on a baseball, stretching some 37,000 miles. They are the growing edges of giant tectonic plates; as lavas push out, they form new areas of seafloor, which comprise some 80 percent of the planet’s crust. Conventional wisdom holds that they erupt at a fairly constant rate–but Tolstoy finds that the ridges are actually now in a languid phase. Even at that, they produce maybe eight times more lava annually than land volcanoes."

[---]

"Some scientists think volcanoes may act in concert with Milankovitch cycles–repeating changes in the shape of earth’s solar orbit, and the tilt and direction of its axis–to produce suddenly seesawing hot and cold periods. The major one is a 100,000-year cycle in which the planet’s orbit around the sun changes from more or less an annual circle into an ellipse that annually brings it closer or farther from the sun. Recent ice ages seem to build up through most of the cycle; but then things suddenly warm back up near the orbit’s peak eccentricity. The causes are not clear."

[---]

"Enter volcanoes. Researchers have suggested that as icecaps build on land, pressure on underlying volcanoes also builds, and eruptions are suppressed. But when warming somehow starts and the ice begins melting, pressure lets up, and eruptions surge. They belch CO2 that produces more warming, which melts more ice, which creates a self-feeding effect that tips the planet suddenly into a warm period. A 2009 paper from Harvard University says that land volcanoes worldwide indeed surged six to eight times over background levels during the most recent deglaciation, 12,000 to 7,000 years ago. The corollary would be that undersea volcanoes do the opposite: as earth cools, sea levels may drop 100 meters, because so much water gets locked into ice. This relieves pressure on submarine volcanoes, and they erupt more. At some point, could the increased CO2 from undersea eruptions start the warming that melts the ice covering volcanoes on land?"

[---]

"The long-term eruption data, spread over more than 700,000 years, showed that during the coldest times, when sea levels are low, undersea volcanism surges, producing visible bands of hills. When things warm up and sea levels rise to levels similar to the present, lava erupts more slowly, creating bands of lower topography. Tolstoy attributes this not only to the varying sea level, but to closely related changes in earth’s orbit. When the orbit is more elliptical, Earth gets squeezed and unsqueezed by the sun’s gravitational pull at a rapidly varying rate as it spins daily–a process that she thinks tends to massage undersea magma upward, and help open the tectonic cracks that let it out. When the orbit is fairly (though not completely) circular, as it is now, the squeezing/unsqueezing effect is minimized, and there are fewer eruptions."

[---]

"The idea that remote gravitational forces influence volcanism is mirrored by the short-term data, says Tolstoy. She says the seismic data suggest that today, undersea volcanoes pulse to life mainly during periods that come every two weeks. That is the schedule upon which combined gravity from the moon and sun cause ocean tides to reach their lowest points, thus subtly relieving pressure on volcanoes below. Seismic signals interpreted as eruptions followed fortnightly low tides at eight out of nine study sites. Furthermore, Tolstoy found that all known modern eruptions occur from January through June. January is the month when Earth is closest to the sun, July when it is farthest–a period similar to the squeezing/unsqueezing effect Tolstoy sees in longer-term cycles. “If you look at the present-day eruptions, volcanoes respond even to much smaller forces than the ones that might drive climate,” she said."

This is what settled science looks like.

Another:
Unseen volcanoes may play role in Earth’s long-term climate

I'll Never Complain Again...

...about a prairie blizzard:

Another Volcano With An Unpronouncable Name

..in Iceland.

I wonder how many Icelandic kids have trouble learning how to read their language?

Oops!

UPDATED AND BUMPED:  Update below.

I must say, I'm getting a little tired of this topic, but it seems to be taking some time for the true believers (ie- the flat earth society) to accept that Anthropogenic global warming just isn't happening. This is not to say that global warming isn't happening, just that any explanation of it that doesn't blame human produced CO2 just isn't allowed. This entry, on Joanne Nova's website, documents a case in point:

That West Antarctic melting couldn’t be caused by volcanoes could it?

"Despite the 95% certainty of doom, it’s not like we have all the data on heat sources in Antarctica either. Until November last year we didn’t even know one particular volcano was smoldering under a kilometer of ice in West Antarctica. [Emphasis, mine]

Do volcanoes melt much ice? Could be…

“Eruptions at this site are unlikely to penetrate the 1.2 to 2-km-thick overlying ice, but would generate large volumes of melt water that could significantly affect ice stream flow.” Lough et al 2013

The fastest warming areas of Antarctica — the Peninsula and West Antarctica are part of the Pacific Rim of Fire. Not worth a mention in any “news” service? Not the right kind of propaganda…

Remember — if it’s broadcast on the ABC, BBC or CBC, the whole chain of one-sided-information is fully government funded. They have specialist science units trained not to ask hard questions."

I wonder which "CBC" she is referring to? Columbia Broadcasting Corporation or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation or is their an Aussie CBC? Certainly the North American ones could be guilty of this kind bias.

To read more of my entries about volcanoes, go here.

UPDATE:

The Myth of the Climate Change '97%'

"Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the "crippling consequences" of climate change. "Ninety-seven percent of the world's scientists," he added, "tell us this is urgent."

Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous." Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities."

Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research."

Waiting For The Big One...

...never mind global warming, climate change, the really big earth quake on the left coast, try dealing with this one:

Yellowstone supervolcano larger than previously known, study shows

"...beneath the famous caldera and the steaming pools, there is a supervolcano that could erupt with 2,000 times the force of the 1980 Mount St. Helens blast." beneath the famous caldera and the steaming pools, there is a supervolcano that could erupt with 2,000 times the force of the 1980 Mount St. Helens blast.

[---]

"The massive chamber contains enough volcanic material to match the supervolcano's last three eruptions."

[---]

"If the next eruption is anything like its last, which happened 640,000 years ago, it will spew large amounts of volcanic ash and material into the atmosphere, Farrell said. The volcanic material will circle around the Earth."

Hmm. First Time I've Seen That Admitted...

...underwater volcanoes, that is. According to Ian Plimer, 80% of earth's volcanoes are under the oceans, along the continental ridges, quietly spewing lava and various greenhouse gasses into the water. Something that past IPPC reports have chosen to ignore. Perhaps folks are starting to pay attention. Folks other than James Hansen, that is, who seems to think that what happens on American soil (droughts) amount to human caused "global" warming, while just to the north we've had one very, very wet year. But I digress.

In the meantime, you don't see many or any environuts fretting about this:

Super volcano could kill millions

Indeed, they'd probably be happy to see millions die.

Oops. I lied. Lefty Huff 'n' Puff Post has covered it. And will you look at this:

"Such an event could make thermonuclear war or global warming seem trivial, spewing untold tons of ash into the atmosphere to block sunlight. The result would be many years of frigid temperatures, wiping out millions of species. A super-volcano that erupted 250 million years ago is now believed to have created the greatest mass extinction the world has ever seen, wiping out up to 95 percent of all plant and animal species. Some renegade scientists believe it was a volcano, not an asteroid, that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago."

And it stinks, too.

And Speaking of Nails and Cornered Rats...

...it seems science journalists are finally going to talk about underwater volcanoes. Perhaps some discussion of the role played by these volcanoes, which are far greater in number than the above ground ones, in global warming may not be far behind.

""A lot of luck was attached to this find," said Anthony Watts, a geologist at the University of Oxford who led the study.

His team's findings indicate that submarine volcanoes, some of the Earth's most mysterious features, may shrink and swell in dramatic pulses of activity.

Rotten eggs and compelling clues
As they surveyed the seafloor near Monowai seamount, which lies at the intersection of the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates at the Tonga-Kermadec subduction zone, Watts and other scientists aboard the ship noticed yellow-green water and gas bubbles rising above the volcano.

"As the ship was leaving the area, we went through a patch of discolored water with a very strong smell, like rotten eggs," Watts told OurAmazingPlanet. "We suspected that maybe the volcano was venting gases, but we didn't know that it was about to erupt."

A week later, while surveying another area, Watts got some compelling information. A seismic station in the Cook Islands had detected an intense five-day swarm of seismic activity and traced it to an eruption at Monowai seamount. Watts and the ship returned to find that parts of the volcano had collapsed and grown in dramatic fashion.

Using advanced bathymetry tools, the scientists saw that a large section of the volcano's flank had collapsed — a volume equal to about 630 Olympic-size swimming pools. The peak of the volcano, however, had grown by 236 feet, adding 3,500 swimming pools' worth of volume to the summit."

[---]

"To account for Monowai's growth between 2007 (the last time Monowai's height was measured) and 2011, the volcano would have needed 10 to 13 events like the one Watts' team documented. That's about 2.5 large, quick eruptions each year, with relatively long pauses between each eruption, Watts said."

[---]

"Submarine volcanoes like Monowai are much more difficult to study than volcanoes on land, which can be monitored with techniques that can't penetrate ocean waters. Because so little is known about submarine volcanoes, it's unclear whether others also grow in rapid pulses, or whether Monowai marches to its own beat, Watts said.

"Terrestrial volcanologists get very excited when they see differences of 10 or 20 centimeters," he said. "What we've seen here is on a scale that has rarely — if ever — been repeated."

Trust Anthony Watts to lead the way. For years, his blog Watts Up With That? has been a leading antidote to the "catastrophic global warming" nonsense being spewed out by leftards.

Blah, Blah, Blah...

...blah, blah, blah, blah.

Oh yeah, baby.

Must Be Another Climate Conference Looming

Amazing what sort of scientists our universities produce. Their faculties must be shared with journalism schools.  They certainly seem to be working in conjunction with one another:

Arctic sea ice in longest decline seen over past 1,450 years: study

"Research published in a top scientific journal says Arctic sea ice has declined more in the last half-century than it has any time over the last 1,450 years.

The study, which gives the most detailed picture ever of the northern oceans over the previous millennium-and-a-half, also concludes the current decline has already lasted longer than any previous one in that period.

“When we look at our reconstruction, we can see that the decline that has occurred in the last 50 years or so seems to be unprecedented for the last 1,450 years,” Christian Zdanowicz of the Geological Survey of Canada said Wednesday."

[---]

"“It's difficult not to come up with the conclusion that greenhouse gases must have something to do with this,” added Mr. Zdanowicz, one of the co-authors of the report in Nature. [ED: Here we go again with the so-called scientists pushing correlation as proof of cause and affect.]

“We cannot account for this decline by processes that are ‘natural.’”

"Climate change is thought to be occurring faster in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth and sea ice is considered one of the main indicators. The ice is crucial in northern ecosystems because it provides habitat for everything from plankton to polar bears.

Its gradual disappearance is also opening previously inaccessible areas to the possibility of resource development, as well as to commercial shipping.

Mr. Zdanowicz and his team combined 69 different data sources to determine the extent of sea ice for every decade going back about 1,000 years and every 25 years beyond that.

The team examined tree rings, ice cores from glaciers and lake and ocean sediments. To check the validity of their approach, scientists compared their calculations for the last couple of centuries with real-world observations from satellites, ship logs and other historical accounts.

They found that by the mid-1990s sea ice had fallen even further than in previous lows such as the so-called Medieval Warm Period between 800 and 1300.

Team members were also able to conclude that sea ice is influenced by more than just temperature. They discovered that ice actually shrank during what's known as the Little Ice Age, a period between 1450 and 1850, due to relatively warm ocean waters moving north.

That's what's happening now, said Mr. Zdanowicz.

“In the last 50 years what has really dominated the changes that we see in the Arctic Ocean is the rise in air temperatures and the rise in temperatures of the waters below.”

His study didn't look specifically at the impact of feedback loops in which open water absorbs more of the sun's heat than reflective ice. But Mr. Zdanowicz said indications are that that is starting to take effect.

“If you take this reconstruction and you put it in parallel with a number of studies that have emerged, the indications are pretty strong that the warming of the Arctic is accelerating.”

He acknowledged that although he has been able to get more detail on ice fluctuations than ever before, the time span considered in the paper isn't very long by geologic standards. [ED: Duh!!]

However, he points out he was involved with a previous paper that went back 10,000 years. [ED: And that is long by 'geologic standards????] That paper found sea ice was lower between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago — and also explained why.

“At the time, due to changes in the Earth's orbit, the northern hemisphere was receiving more solar energy than it does now,” Zdanowicz said.

“That process cannot account for what we are observing now. In fact, we should be heading into a gradual cooling trend right now if our climate was strictly controlled by orbital factors.”" [ED: Who said it is "strictly controlled by orbital factors?"]

So, 1450 years (a millennium and a half, almost) or even 10,000 years is supposed to tell us something incontrovertible about human impact on arctic sea ice. Folks. The Earth is over 4 billion years old. Throughout that time there have been many periods with no polar ice caps at all. And don't forget, only 20,000 years ago most of North America was covered with ice. Those miles-thick sheets of ice have been slowly melting and receding since then, without any help from human beings. [I wonder if he considered the impact of all those underwater super volcanoes and continental drift, two factors that aren't either "orbital factors" or the sun.]

The journalists do their bit to ramp up the scare, and make excuses.

On the other hand, who are ya gonna believe:

Large variations in Arctic sea ice

"For the last 10,000 years, summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been far from constant. For several thousand years, there was much less sea ice in the Arctic Ocean – probably less than half of current amounts. This is indicated by new findings by The Centre for Geogenetics at the University of Copenhagen. The results of the study will be published in the journal Science.

Sea ice comes and goes without leaving a record. For this reason, our knowledge about its variations and extent was limited before we had satellite surveillance or observations from airplanes and ships. But now researchers at The Centre for Geogenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, have developed a method by which it is possible to measure the variations in the ice several millennia back in time.

The results are based on material gathered along the coast of northern Greenland, which scientists expect will be the final place summer ice will survive, if global temperatures continue to rise.

This means that the results from northern Greenland also indicate what the conditions are like in the ocean.

Less ice than today

Team leader Svend Funder, and two other team members and co-authors of the Science article, Eske Willerslev and Kurt Kjær, are all associated with the Danish Research Foundation at the University of Copenhagen.

Regarding the research results, Funder says:

“Our studies show that there have been large fluctuations in the amount of summer sea ice during the last 10,000 years. During the so-called Holocene Climate Optimum, from approximately 8000 to 5000 years ago, when the temperatures were somewhat warmer than today, there was significantly less sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, probably less than 50% of the summer 2007 coverage, which is absolutely lowest on record. Our studies also show that when the ice disappears in one area, it may accumulate in another. We have discovered this by comparing our results with observations from northern Canada. While the amount of sea ice decreased in northern Greenland, it increased in Canada. This is probably due to changes in the prevailing wind systems. This factor has not been sufficiently taken into account when forecasting the imminent disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.”"

[---]

"“Our studies show that there are great natural variations in the amount of Arctic sea ice. The bad news is that there is a clear connection between temperature and the amount of sea ice. And there is no doubt that continued global warming will lead to a reduction in the amount of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. The good news is that even with a reduction to less than 50% of the current amount of sea ice the ice will not reach a point of no return: a level where the ice no longer can regenerate itself even if the climate was to return to cooler temperatures. Finally, our studies show that the changes to a large degree are caused by the effect that temperature has on the prevailing wind systems. This has not been sufficiently taken into account when forecasting the imminent disappearance of the ice, as often portrayed in the media,” Funder says."

[---]

"In addition to giving us a better understanding of what the climate in northern Greenland was like thousands of years ago, it could also reveal how polar bears fared in warmer climate. The team plans to use DNA in fossil polar bear bones to study polar bear population levels during the Holocene Climate Optimum."

Settled science, my ass.

Eyes Rolling

UPDATED AND BUMPED:  Financial Post responds:

"Claims that the deep oceans absorb the missing heat are an admission that temperatures have stalled.

A study from the Boulder, Colo.-based National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) claims to have found all that missing heat from global warming’s “lost decade:” It’s lurking in Davy Jones’s locker.

According to official science, global temperatures were meant to rise this century in line with increasing levels of man-made carbon dioxide, but didn’t. Now the puzzle has allegedly been solved: the heat is more than 300 metres below the world’s oceans, where it appears conveniently safe from physical verification."

======Original Post Starts Here======

Exaggerations about climate change

"Scientists claim that the new Times Atlas has got it wrong on the melting of the Greenland icesheet. What other exaggerations have been made about climate change?"

A great article detailing several doom and gloom predictions that have failed to materialize.

But they won't let that stop them. Here's another piece of idiocy:

Oceans may pause warming of Earth's surface

"Deep areas of Earth's oceans may absorb enough heat that warming of the surface pauses for as long as a decade, a new study has found."

That'll do it. Had to find some way of explaining the lack of catastrophic warming in the last decade or more. But I wonder why they left out the heat pumped into the oceans by all those underwater volcanoes where the Earth's tectonic plates meet/pull apart?

God Has Something Against...

...the Japanese. Now it's a volcano!

ROTFLMAO!!

h/t Barce Pundit

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.

[---]

"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.
==========================================
...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."

[---]

"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."

[---]

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

[---]

"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.”"

[---]

"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.

There's Roughly a Dozen..

...videos at CTV's website about the economic impact of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption and one at CBC's website.

And then there's this astute analysis from Saskatchewan's most naive blogger.

"This is what happens when you base your economy on businessmen flying in and out of countries instead of using the Internet and telephone to its greatest capacity." (emphasis mine)

As if, Saskboy.

"If everyone didn’t try to live on the wire, and had some patience, things would work a lot more simply when nature taps us on the shoulder and says, “Hey there, slow down and do something else for a day or two.”"

Yes, Saskboy. Try importing flowers from Holland before they wilt, or exporting lobster to France using the Internet and telephone.  Try running a tourist resort by the Mediterranean without tourists. Try finding hotel rooms for those thousands of stranded travellers, whose rooms are now occupied with people who had arrived just hours before the volcano blew. Try making up the lost wages of those passengers who would have been back at work by now, not to mention the taxes collected on those wages.

Try using your brain, once in a while, Saskboy. Use it, or lose it, if it's not too late. I presume you know what the term "watermelon" means. Or maybe you don't