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Icelandic volcano spews ash over northern europe, flights cancelled etc.  (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8623806.stm)

Originally I thought this was just an unfortunate natural event sending a dust cloud in the general direction of Northern Europe...

...until I saw the pic below, which demonstrates this that Iceland have clearly built some kind of very focussed VOLCANIC-ASH-BEAM-WEAPON which they have aimed specifically at Scotland.

(http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47652000/jpg/_47652360_ash.jpg)

I actually am on the phone right now trying to find out if my flight to Greece is canceled.  Leaves tonight but doesn't actually arrive in Frankfurt until tomorrow and Frankfurt airport is closed until at least 1800 GMT today.

Was this volcano big enough to affect the weather? I remember how crappy the summer after Mount Pinatubo went up was.

Nobody's sure quite yet from everything I'm seeing.   

Shockingly, the weather has been quite good in London for the past few days. Do relax though, usually the weather is infinitely shittier.

(http://hphotos-sjc1.fbcdn.net/hs433.snc3/24959_385772537084_240317507084_4330221_7586353_n.jpg)

You'll jinx it!

Nice cloud.  When does the giant alien spaceship come out of it?

Ack, I'm going to be heading over to that part of the world in about three weeks.  Hopefully the dust will have settled by then.

:groan:

Yay global cooling and nice sunsets.  It was already fucking hot in spring, so I'll be glad to lose a degree or two for summer.  Thank you for your awesome volcano, Iceland.

I was kind of hoping we'd actually see a nice summer for once since the last 4 or 5 have been shitty. Fuck you Iceland.

It's official, my trip to Greece is canceled.  Now I have to see if I can get my money back from the Greek Airline and island hotels I booked.

Al Gore must be pissed - his plan has been foiled by God.

From the bottom of the article eldaec linked:
Also, turns out that Eyjafjallajökull (the errupting volcano) has a larger neighbour called Katla which tends to get irritable around the same time. Something like three out of the four last times that Eyjafjallajökull has had an erruption, Katla has followed not long after. Or so the newspapers in Norway claim anyway, and I believe all I read in newspapers.

Such an awesome name.  Eyjafjallajökull.

It just rolls off the tongue.

What do you expect from a country whose main export was a girl with this last name: Guðmundsdóttir

Iceland is pretty, scenery-wise but holy shit on a stone that language is insane. Fucking vikings were hardcore in everything.

I'm teasing since I don't have as much trouble with such pronunciations as many do.  Thanks four years of Deutsch!  I can even say Sjofn and Signe right.  And wrong right.

Radio Massacre International (http://www.radiomassacreinternational.com/) are over here for a couple of gigs, and while they are over they are recording sessions of their highly improvisational music for some local radio shows. Last night they played a couple of pieces for The Gagliarchives (http://www.gagliarchives.com/), which they titled "We Might Be Stuck Here Because Of The Ash" and "No We REALLY Might Be Stuck Here Because Of The Ash".

Eyjafjallajökull continues it's war on culture, forcing a number of bands to cancel their appearance at coachella

http://pitchfork.com/news/38520-volcano-forces-coachella-cancellations

Or "NAMBLA".

Sorry, too much Daily Show.

Volcanologist Thor Thordarsson. I get the feeling the man picked his career path just to get that title to compliment his kick ass name.

They need Magnús Ver Magnússon to just go stomp the volcano closed.

I didn't exactly meet Magnus, but I saw him once. He was the special guest MC at a World's Strongest Man thing held at the Renaissance festival. It was him and some dude in a poofy hat and tights on microphones while a bunch of enormous dudes performed medievaly feats of strength, like pulling a wooden wagon full of logs around instead of a car. His barely-veiled contempt for the fruitloop in tights next to him was the icing on the cake.

Nobody I was with seemed to realize how awesome it all was.

If Katla goes, you can pretty much write off Europe for a few weeks. The papers had a nice seismic image this past week of a giant pool of magma from a slightly different vent just under Katla.

Should be fun times. I'm hoping the winds don't shift; Reykjavik has been totally clear of fallout from the eruption over the past few days.

I know a mountain guide named Jökull Berg Jökulsson. Translated: Glacier Cliff Glaciersson. One of the best named men for the job ever.

Damn.

(http://i39.tinypic.com/34929fb.jpg)

(http://i40.tinypic.com/25heatx.jpg)

Edit: The weather just cleared up and the wind is so still, I can see the plume rising from the volcano out my office window.  Jeeeeesus. I'll try to get a photo.

Can't wait for my classes in Old Norse in 1 or 2 terms.  :heart:

They have classes in that!?!  Time to move to Germany and go back to school!

(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/eyjafjallajokull1271617346.JPG)

The airlines : of course it's safe to fly in this stuff (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8628323.stm).  3 tries, 3 successes.  Let's go!

What could go wrong? :facepalm:

Mostly, I think they're worried about wear-and-tear on the engines (it's dirty shit to be sucking in) and, of course, the visibility problems make emergency landings more dicey than normal. You COULD fly in it, it's just take-offs and landings are going to fucking suck and be far more dangerous, and your engines are going to be fouled and break down a lot more.

I suspect they're more worried about what their insurers would say....

Can't believe nobodys noted how this looks like angry skyfire god blowing hot shit down on everyone. Of course its late and things look weird tired.

It's a bit more than that. Planes have had all four engines shut down while flying through ash as it can cause stalls by building up on the fans. It also abrades the leading edge of the wings and clogs up the pitot tubes which messes with instrument readings. It's nasty stuff.

Basically it's sandblasting the front of the aircraft making windscreens and navigation light lenses opaque. It also damages the skin of the aircraft significantly leading to sudden loss of cabin pressure and it turns to glass inside engines, clogging them up.

BA Flight 9 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9)

Flying in freezing fog is also a bad idea.

I've got a ticket booked to fly to London in early May. Only paid a $25 booking fee so far, full payment is due next weekend.

Can't get ash-related cancellation insurance for tickets purchased after April 16 (when this ash cloud problem began), so if I pay up and it continues into May, I could lose bigtime.

Hoping they resume flights this week, so my holiday can go ahead or I can at least get cancellation cover. Otherwise I might just have to forget about the trip.

The bigger problem with the ash cloud is that density differs hugely in different places and at different altitudes and they lack the number of properly equipped planes to do much accurate mapping of it. The result is that probably a lot of flight routes are safe to fly but they can't say which nor whether those routes are going to stay safe. The airlines are justifiably concerned that they're being bankrupted when it's possible they could be flying while noone's actually wants to give the ok and have a 747 then run into a particularly thick layer of ash and crash into Birmingham.

In other news my friend who recently got a commercial piloting contract is now wondering whether the training company he's contracted to is going to collapse before the airline he's actually working for and is considering the serious possibility he'll end up spending the winter back on the dole or working in a call centre.

All the airlines and hotels involved in my aborted vacation to Greece have reimbursed me in full.  No fees or funny games.

Breaking news on MSNBC: Hekla has begun to erupt. I hear its larger and will have much bigger effects worldwide than that Eyjafjalljokullmmfaowtfomg. Shit just got real, or so I'm told from my geology friend in Michigan.

Hekla is not glacier-covered. Katla is the big nasty one. If Hekla's going up, it's also not being reported in the local Icelandic media yet.

Also, here's a webcam that's viewing Hekla live (http://www.heklubyggd.is/vedur.htm). I call bullshit on the Reuters alert. The left photo is Hekla (tranquil) and the right one is Eykafjallajökull - you can see a gray cloud of ash around the summit pretty clearly.

Yeah, I think MSNBC likes jumping the gun to try and say they are the first to report something. Katla is the one that is a world weather changer? I am going to stock up on sweaters now then...

(http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/9743/8873940756e6434a8520c5a.gif)

I don't get it.

Lost TV show smoke monster..?

It made me chuckle.

One of my friends had the suggestion that since the continuing eruption was continuing to spread ash into the atmosphere the best way to deal with this would be to bomb it with enough force to basically clear the magma or effectively get the whole thing over and done with in one big bang. When it was pointed out that this would at best involve the destruction of a decent part of the surrounding landscape he felt that we could write off Iceland's debt they are unwilling to repay as compensation. I'm not geologist so there may be a downside involving tidal waves or something but it seemed like a solid plan.

The best part of this eruption is how everyone is so concerned about the inability to travel and the terrible hit the airlines are taking (which ignores the fact that rental car agencies are fucking loving it right now).  I mean, clearly this is the beginning of the end.  Of the world. 

Bombing. Again.

I want to blow up Iceland. Fuckers owe us :why_so_serious:

Spoiler'd for size:

We closed our base there back in 2006, so your free to bomb it now.   :awesome_for_real:

C02 emissions - volcano vs airline industry: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/planes-or-volcano/

Ferry companies are raking it in too.

First time you asked for cash, you got ash.

You want to try a second round already?

No see this time we're giving you stuff.

Edit: Rather we're giving you stuff we don't want back.

Fucking CCP...

http://volcan-islande-live.media.officelive.com/default.aspx

http://www.businessandfinance.ie/cat_news_detail.jsp?itemID=1445

I did some reading on Katla and there seems to be a well regarded theory that that seismic patterns between Eyjafjallajökull and Katla suggests the formation of a cryptodome at a depth of about 1.5km in the Goðabunga area west of the caldera. If true, that would give the potential for a very fast and explosive eruption. Obviously that might not be what's happening but I certainly wouldn't hang around an overdue volcano that's suggesting that while it's neighbour is erupting.

I just thank the greek gods it's not 2012 otherwise everyone would be touting this as end of days shit and I'd need to punch jackasses on my way into work.

If you want a dose of that kind of crazy check out Godlike Productions (http://www.godlikeproductions.com/).

Not enough tinfoil hats for that crazy crap.

But a little down is a thread titled:


Pretty much says it all.

In regards to all those awesome volcano pics:

http://www.weather.com/outlook/videos/spectacular-volcano-lightning-explained-17053

It'd be like Christmas though!  Only with punches instead of presents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6KQhiiYTtA&feature=player_embedded

Dude, if you still live in texas in 2012, thats all you're going to be dealing with anyway.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/04/23/weisman.volcano.iceland.earth/index.html?hpt=C1

Seems we can explain EVERYTHING with global warming. Its just that awesome.  :why_so_serious:

:facepalm:

I sent this story to my brother for a laugh.  He told me a story about how when he was in Brazil some guy on the bus tried to convince him that earthquakes were caused by CO2  :uhrr:

A right wing message board I go to because self-harm is too visible has a thread full of how this volcano is producing 2 million times the annual output of human produced CO2 and totally invalidates global warming because we aren't all dead and therefore CO2 doesn't really have any effect on the atmosphere. It's not as crazy as yours but people seem to get weird once things start going into the atmosphere and it may or may not impact the world in general.

So all human activity is producing only 55 tonnes of CO2 annually? I would imagine that the windbag that wrote that piece of disinformation produces more on his own. The estimated output from Eyjafjallajokull is between 150kt and 300kt per day. If that was extrapolated over a full year, it would place around 50th on the league table of countries' CO2 output.

Tale posted a link to this handy chart earlier in the thread:

(http://s3.amazonaws.com/infobeautiful/planes_volcanos.png)

It's impossible to predict but there's no risk?  That last statement is just fuckstupid.

Its from the Irish met office here (http://www.met.ie/news/display.asp?ID=61) so take that for what you will

Derail time.

A little background. This coming Saturday are the Reykjavik city elections, electing both the governing city council (15 people) and the mayor. This is a big deal seeing as how Reykjavik is about 2/3 of Iceland's population and the only major city.

The usual parties have been campaigning on the usual platforms. Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn (The Independence Party) wants to shrink government and privatise shit. They're also the guys who privatised the banks and fucked up in general. Samfylkinginn (The Alliance) wants to... well, god knows, they're currently in power, like it, and think things are peachy. Vinstri-Grænir (The Left-Greens) are batshit crazy and hate men. Framsoknarflokkurinn (The Farmer's Party) thinks the entire country should just go back to farming sheep and catching fish.

Everyone hates them with various levels of passion and usually vote for the people they hate the least.

Then along came this guy named Jon Gnarr. He's a comedian. He decided, on a lark, to form Besti Flokkurinn. That translates rather literally to "The Best Party". His platform was that he didn't really have a platform, he just kinda needed a steady job during the recession.

Besti Flokkurinn is currently polling in the high 50%s of the vote; as Reykjavik uses a proportional voting system, that's a blowout and means his party is likely to control 8 or more seats on the city council plus the mayoralty.

They've since developed a "platform" of sorts. And they've just released their campaign video.

Sorry, campaign music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBW4mPzv6E), I should say. It's got English subtitles. And their platform statement at the end.

Icelandic politics make your country's politics look boring.

So, basically the Tea Party without the racism?

It seems more like democracy by awesome.

I'm only not fully behind it because I know if it was figures I was familiar with I'd presume their total lack of political knowledge made them hilarious but dangerous and I'd never vote for them.

Every time I see an Icelandic name I am gripped with the fear that I am suddenly becoming dyslexic again.  God.

But good on for the comedian.  I hope he wins and manages to be an honest fucker and shows people what non-lifer politicians can do.

All he has to do is scare the shit out of the parties in power. Like Michael Moore's school board win when he graduated highschool.

That is AWESOME.  :awesome_for_real:

They'd have my vote  :oh_i_see:

'close to failure'? Sounds like 'close to success' to me.

Katla discussion here:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=19284.0