April 18, 2010
You were getting worried weren’t you? 100,000 British tourists unable to get home from their Easter hols in the Med – possibly stuck there for as long as 10 days. The longest no-fly-zone over British skies since the days of Alcock and Brown. A terrifying plume of volcanic dust which swats aeroplanes from the sky like some cashmere-sweater-owner having a go at clothes moths. But still no sign of anyone prepared to tell us what we were all yearning to hear: that it’s all the fault of yummy mummies in their 4 x 4s, chavs taking too many cheap holiday flights, and evil, AGW-denying journalists encouraging people to boost their carbon emissions by writing hideous lies on their vile Telegraph blogs. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)
Luckily, Scientific American – via Reuters – has finally managed to unearth one:
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.
Er well, sort of. In the next paragraph they’re forced to concede that the eruption below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier had nothing to do with global warming.
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.
But they’re not about to let a good story go that easily:
“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.
Phew. So AGW was sort of involved. Tangentially. This means that the report is able to deliver a nice little homily at the end about the seriousness of Climate Change – and its causes. Just in case any of us had forgotten.
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.
Related posts:
- Global warming is dead. Long live, er, ‘Global climate disruption’!
- ‘Global warming? What global warming?’ says High Priest of Gaia Religion
- ‘Trougher’ Yeo recants on global warming
- I’d rather stick my hand in a bag of amphetamine-injected rattlesnakes than put my trust in tonight’s BBC Panorama documentary on ‘Global Warming’
