AI poisons everything » « I could have told her that would never work

I guess I won’t be visiting the Blue Lagoon soon

In progress right now: a huge volcanic eruption in Iceland, consuming the town of Grindavik. The volcano blew earlier, but this is a fresh eruption.

Live view:

I would leap at an opportunity to visit Iceland again, any time.

AI poisons everything » « I could have told her that would never work

Comments

  2. Ada Christine says

    the weather bureau had been saying this week that there could be as little as 30 minutes advance warning of the next eruption. this was about five minutes! oops. everybody is ok though.

  3. Ada Christine says

    @Deanna #1

    the lava is certainly not consuming grindavík. the damage from the seismic activity and ground shifting, however, is. it’s actually kindof a crisis. the state is going to have to intervene but it’s not clear to what degree they will cover the losses of property owners in grindavík

  5. Hemidactylus says

    I feel for those in the vicinity of volcanos. I can’t relate to that but in Florida we have high end hurricanes, low to mid range tornados, rare minor earthquakes (who would have thunk?), and Florida Man (which includes the twin disasters Desantis and Ladapo).

    Bath salts and measles. Yet people move here still maybe because that strange purple to red shifting allure. I see The ‘Burbs unfold across the street every day. Not kidding. At least lava isn’t a concern because watching Live at Pompeii forever seared stuff into my memory.

  6. Deanna Gilbert says

    @Ada. Iceland is going to buy out the property in Grindavik to about 90% of the insured value.

    That said, while there has definitely been damage in Grindavik, PZ’s statement says that the eruption is consuming…present tense Grindavik and that’s utterly not true. Not until lava either breaks the berms or a fissure erupts inside the berms.

  7. whheydt says

    Re: Hemidactylus @ #5…
    Depends on the volcano (and where you live). Stratovolcanoes…stay well clear. Ones like the ones on the Reykjanes Peninsula…the danger is lava flows that, once a reasonable distance from the vent, you can just walk away from.
    Iceland has two general sources for vulcanism. One, which we’ve been seeing for the last 3 years, is driven by plate tectonics, specifically the Mid-Atlantic rift. So you get very fluid basaltic lavas, some gases, and not much else. Other vulcanism is driven by a mantel plume, aka hot spot. When those volcanoes go off under glaciers, you get a lot of ash and pyroclastics. Worst (known) version of that was the Laki Fires in the 1780s. The biggest problem was the high Fluoride content that wound up killing a lot of grazing livestock and–ultimately–about 1/4 of the population of Iceland.

  8. birgerjohansson says

    Factoid: The Icelanders are planning to bore down to actual magma to test new geothermal energy ideas. The problem is keeping the hardware at the hot end functioning. But if they work out the kinks, it will be a big thing.

  9. Hemidactylus says

    whheydt @7
    I meant lava isn’t a concern for me. My neighbors across the street are now sawing their house into pieces. So lava isn’t a thing for me but hearing sawing and then seeing it has me going back to that Tom Hanks classic. My next door neighbor raised concerns about that before and I dismissed it as crazy. The Burbs!

  10. beholder says

    I would leap at an opportunity to visit Iceland again, any time.

    Fortune favors the bold If you’re feeling less than Plinian about it, you should wait until after the eruption.

  11. says

    As much as I hate Alberta, we had a tornado back in the eighties that hit us on the outskirts that we still talk about. I couldn’t even imagine living somewhere with constant threats of natural disasters.

  12. whheydt says

    Re: Tabby Lavalamp @ #11….
    Name some place that doesn’t have some kind of intermittent or recurring natural disaster.

  13. Rich Woods says

    @whheydt #12:

    Gloucestershire. I’ve lived here for 40 years and nothing interesting has ever happened.

    There was a very, very mild earthquake in 1988; it felt like a heavy lorry had rumbled past the building, yet the nearerst road to me was a hundred yards away. A friend who worked in an earthquake-proof building a few miles away phoned me to ask if the reports he’d just heard from colleagues outside on a smoke break were true. If he hadn’t called I would have doubted the experience.

  14. StevoR says

    @12. whheydt : “Name some place that doesn’t have some kind of intermittent or recurring natural disaster.”

    Do bushfires count? if not, then locally we’ve had one small earthquake back in 1954 and otherwise not much. Maybe the occassional flood or storm event.. Same for much of South Australia – the odd eruption at Mount Gambier, Mount Schank and perhaps others nearby aside the last about 5,000 years ago :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newer_Volcanics_Province

    Think the Nullabor plain (very roughly most of the southern coastline and inland between Perth and Adelaide) and much of central WA esp the Great Sandy, Gibson, Great Victoria, etc .. Deserts are similar here too at least in terms of geological natural disasters although I’m much less sure and know much less about those.

  15. StevoR says

    PS. Of course if you do count Bushfires – plus storms and droughts and heatwaves which are actually the deadliest of Climate disasters then its a whole other story.. Our whole state was blacked out in a storm not that many years ago now..

    Among the more surreal and enduring images from South Australia’s infamous statewide blackout are the photos of electricity transmission towers collapsed and contorted in foggy fields.

    On the afternoon of September 28, 2016, twin tornados ripped through SA’s mid north, damaging critical infrastructure and shutting off power to the entire state. More than 20 of the giant pylons were knocked out, folding in on themselves as if Uri Geller had somehow magicked them into submission. Around 4:00pm, more than 850,000 homes and businesses were plunged into a darkness that lasted for hours, with some properties going without power for days.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-28/sa-statewide-blackout-anniversary-energy-impacts/100496564

    Wait.. Five years!? Already?

    Note also :

    Have you noticed that Adelaide’s heatwaves seem to be getting longer? Well, you’re not alone because a study has revealed that Adelaide has the nation’s worst heatwaves. If you live in Adelaide, South Australia, you will have noticed that the scorchers are a regular occurrence. Adelaide has been known for its extremely dry conditions, particularly from November to February.

    Source : https://www.metropolitanairconditioning.com.au/blog/adelaide-the-heatwave-capital-of-the-nation/

    Lats week we had a shocker with multiple days in the high thirties and breaking the forty degree mark a few times too – that’s degrees Celsius.

    Oh and we’ve only just had some raininthelast few days too this weekafter getting noeain at all during February and into thsi month

    After 46 days without rain, and a heatwave that felt as if it might never end, the skies have finally opened over Adelaide. Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) duty forecaster Hannah Marsh said Adelaide had experienced five days over 35 degrees Celsius, but the cool change had now arrived.

    Source : https://www.willyweather.com.au/news/140950/dry+spell+ends+in+adelaide+after+46+days+without+rain+as+authorities+urge+for+caution+on+sa+roads.html

    Only 5 over 35? Felt like more and regularly been 30 degrees C long after midnight w very high minimum daily temps.

  20. outis says

    Best webcam coverage here:
    https://www.livefromiceland.is/multiview/
    some weeks ago one could see lava engulfing a road in real time, with crews raising earth berms to block or redirect it as much as possible.
    As far as I know, Grindavik has lost three houses so far, and there’s a big berm around that geothermal power station visible in the Svartsengi cam.
    Much as Icelanders are used to such things, it must be quite unsettling having lava spew out all over the place like this. The glow of the present eruptions can be seen from the capital during the night… quite ominous.

  21. says

    It looks like the infrastructure damage this time is limited to the main road north of Grindavík (once again, just after it had been reconstituted over the previous lava field); the main lava field running to the west towards the power plant and Blue Lagoon doesn’t seem to have reached the hot water pipes heading north-west to Keflavík, and the two main streams of lava running southward appear to have puddled beside the eastern berms guarding the town of Grindavík, well short of getting to the main east road along the coast or getting to the sea. When I looked an hour ago the long line of a fissure eruption had scaled down to about five or six vents going at a much lower ebb, so those won’t especially help the lava field expand any further.

    Recently I’ve been following the YouTube videos of Shaun Willsey, who’s an American geologist working at a college in Idaho; he’s been providing good analyses of the recurring eruptions over the last several months, and occasionally doing remote drone flights over the area.

  23. VolcanoMan says

    Man, I take a 24 hour internet vacation, and THIS happens!? Reminds me of the time I went to visit literally the most reliably-erupting volcano in the world (the island of Stromboli, north of Sicily, the proverbial “Lighthouse of the Mediterranean”) for the purposes of witnessing those (relatively safe but spectacular) eruptions firsthand, only for it to take a break for a few months that happened to coincide with my trip (I still climbed to the top and explored a bit, and witnessed one of the most surreal sunrises in my life…the sea around the island was so calm, reflecting the growing light so evenly that my eyes lost their depth-of-field, creating a true trompe-l’œil experience wherein boats on the water felt like they were floating in front of my face).

  24. Ada Christine says

    @outis #20

    Grindavík has lost three houses directly due to lava flows. There are numerous other homes that have been rendered uninhabitable by ground shifting and subsidence caused by magma intrusions. The town is all kinds of fucked up. The latest news is that Svartsengi power station is currently evacuated due to high concentrations of toxic gas in the area.

    @Deanna

    I see that now, heh. The agreement is 95% of the home’s value according to its fire insurance policy.

  25. says

    Name some place that doesn’t have some kind of intermittent or recurring natural disaster.

    The DC metro area. And most of Virginia for that matter; at least the parts that aren’t really close to rivers near sea level.

    I also don’t hear much about tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes or tornadoes in the NYC area.

  27. Ada Christine says

    @Raging Bee #25

    In 2012 Hurricane Sandy did massive damage to the New York City Subway, flooded basements, destroyed homes. There was flooding just last year. There have been numerous tornadoes, but few of them notable.

  28. says

    whheydt @12

    I guess I should have named the city. Edmonton. A tornado on the outskirts almost four decades ago. We just don’t get natural disasters. Even the river that cuts through our city is so deep in a valley with so little infrastructure that floods aren’t really a concern. I live in more fear of slipping on ice in the winter and breaking my wrist than I do of any major catastrophe taking my life.