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First Evidence Of Under-Ice Volcanoes In Antarctica
An anonymous reader writes "The first evidence of a volcanic eruption from beneath Antarctica's ice sheet has been discovered by members of the British Antarctic Survey. The volcano on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet began erupting some 2,000 years ago and remains active to this day. Using airborne ice-sounding radar, scientists discovered a layer of ash produced by a 'subglacial' volcano. It extends across an area larger than Wales."
everyone was blaming global warming for the melting of the icecaps...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Then that really is a mighty volcano! What next, a volcano with an area larger than 100 elephants?
There are thousands of volcanoes elsewhere on the globe I don't see why antarctic would be any different. I understand before we never had any proof and that is why it is news but I wouldn't say it is Earth shaking news.
If volcanic activity is truly sending the glaciers into the ocean, local warming can have a real and serious effect on global climate.
It's funny, Here in Denmark, we here alot about the potential consequences of global warming, about the millions of refugees it will create.
Noone ever mentions that we'll probably be some of those refugees, Our tallest hill, has a height below 170,9 metres, or 560,6 feet above sealevel.
Time for me to buy that land in south america.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
One of the possibilities that this opens is that there is life that has been evolving separately from the rest of terrestrial life for millions of years. In theory life could live off the volcanic chemicals just as it does at undersea vents. This could be the really interesting part of the discovery.
Well, Monday January 21, @08:20PM according to the first post...
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
For those on the other side of the pond, the area of Wales is about that of New Jersey.
Actually, given that they've located an area of possibly steaming ash and dust, maybe they just found New Jersey by accident.
Ezekiel 23:20
Actually, whales are mammals. Wales is a rugged, Klingon-speaking country in the United Kingdom.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
This is very bad news (tm).
There is a quite thick layer of soot and ash trapped inside the glacier. At some point when the glacier melts enough, that whole layer becomes visible and thus the reflection of sunlight from the glacier surface diminishes. And the melting speed increases dramatically. To make things worse, the layer will stay there for some time as it is bit warmer than the ice and so it bores small holes where to stay put instead of getting flushed away.
And don't get me started on that active volcano under glacier. How it will react when the weight of the glacier eases rapidly? Possible earthquakes and that means tsunami.
Funny thing, a Finnish author named Risto Isomäki has written a hard scifi book about the subject only couple of years ago. It's called the sands of Sarasvati.
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1066484
Wales has, for decades, been used in the UK as a standard of measurement, not just of land mass but also of population, annual rain fall, tourist numbers and exports. Every large country's size was measured in 'Wales'es. Popular media, like radio and television have used the 'Wales', mainly in news reports.
"The Americans have invaded Vietnam. This country in south east Asia is 14 times the size of Wales."
"The Falklands have been invaded! These disputed islands, half the size of Wales, have been sought after by the Argentine government for decades."
etc
Yeah with all that data we have colected by scientists during the days of the Roman Empire makes it easy to see those long term ice melting trends.....
Now for proper insults and arguments when you saying raining all the time, you haven't identified where you from. I'm assuming Europe. I've only spent a real amount of time in England, Norway, and Cyprus so my knowledge of weather is limited to those places.
England does nothing but piss rain and rarely ever gets cold enough for snow, so you can hardly blame that on the US.
Norwary rarely get's warm enough for anything but snow (I've only been there during the winter, froze my ass off.) so you can't be from there.
Cyprus was nice and warm, and if that is what the world is going to be like after global warming then let's go for a drive in my SUV to go buy stuff that has alot of plastic packaging.
The more I travel the more I realize that people are full of it, and can hardly lay all the worlds problems at the US's feet. I haven't seen anything in Europe that impresses me of your Green life style.
You don't have any better driving habits than in the US. The only reasons you drive less (as in distance not in frequency, is your sky high taxes, shitty roads, and that you are willing to live shoulder to shoulder in town with barely any parking, is the only reason you guys drive small cars.
Mild winters and summers also let's you off the hook for cooling and heating bills and the fact that you guys are willing to again be gouged by the utility companys. I can see why you use less. I'm still paying twice as much here in the UK (without AC) than I did while living in the California desert(with AC) which supposedly is supposed to be in the middle of a power crisis and having raised rates drastically in the last few years.
Now the only point I'll conceed to you is the war in Iraq is pretty much a waste of time. The money would have been better spent buying everyone Priuses and solar panels for their homes and a nice candygram telling the Middle East to go fuck their mothers.
Of course if we want to look at who has really caused all the problems in the Middle East and just about every other corner of the world all we have to do is take a look European history book. 400 years of European global policies and Empire building has made a real mess of things. The US has hardly had enough time to be blamed for much of it, but man does everyone scream bloody murder when we try to clean it up.