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Volcanic Ash Heading Towards North America
chocomilko writes "St. John's International Airport, the easternmost airport in Canada, has begun canceling flights due to worries of ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, leaving travelers stranded after the weekend's Juno awards festival. Early reports stated that there was a 30% chance ash would reach the island by early Monday; Air Canada has issued an all-day travel advisory. A thick blanket of fog currently covering the city isn't helping matters, either."
It's Eyjafjallajökull. I barely knew which volcano you were talking about.
Looks like Katla's getting ready to blow too
http://scienceray.com/earth-sciences/locals-believe-katla-volcano-in-iceland-near-eyjafjallajokull-will-erupt-in-seven-days/
ant
Longer version:
--
Dear Iceland,
We said "send CASH".
Yours sincerely,
United Kingdom
--
Dear United Kingdom,
You should have stopped to consider that there is no letter "C" in the
Icelandic alphabet before issuing your demand.
With best,
Iceland
--
The economy of Iceland's last request was to have its ashes spread across Europe.
Orwell was an optimist.
The US train system is excellent if you are coal, or liquid polypropylene, or the like. For humans not so much.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
I think we here in the US have had that experience not too long ago. Not to be overly grim here, but the week after 9/11, there were no planes flying in the skies above the US. Not hearing the planes landing and taking off at a near-by major airport nor seeing them high in the sky flying into other airports in the region was pretty odd.
A few more strong eruptions like this in different regions around the world, and there'll be enough ash in the sky to knock the temperature down a little bit. Global Warming is solved!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Kind of like everyone blamed Bush for anything that happened in the previous 8 years? Including a few hurricanes?
No one blamed bush for Hurricane Katrina. Just for sitting on his ass when it hit, for appointing unqualified and flagrantly incompetent butt-buddies, excuse me, political henchmen to run FEMA, and for deliberately underfunding and eviscerating FEMA and nearly every other non-military federal agency in order to deliberately make them incapable of carrying out their mandate. Which worked brilliantly in his war against "big government", until we actually needed that government to rescue tens of thousands of people.
Then we got our act together, at many times the expense, and with many times the casualties, than it would have entailed if a competent president had appointed a competent leader of FEMA, and not gutted the agency of funds and logistical support.
And yes, everyone (except the hard-core right) quite correctly blames him for that. And the illegal war he started, and the financial implosion that was a direct result of Republican lassaiz-faire bank regulation (and which the Republicans are trying to continue today by filibustering any meaningful bank reform).
It's bad enough they do these things and then try to make us feel bad for pointing out the error of their ways. It's even more disburbing how utterly incapable of learning from their mistakes, and correcting their ways, these idealogues are. They'd rather be stubbornly wrong regardless of the evidence, than have a hint of flip-flopping on an issue(what most of the rest of us would call "correcting a mistake")
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What is so odd to me is that many Europeans thought that Americans were laughing at them because the volcano interupted their air travel. I don't know anyone who thought that was funny at all. Do Europeans really think that we are that petty?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Dear UK, You should trust our files implicitly, but here's the hash anyway:
76D08CAB8B28C5F447D47519454F0D94
Yours sincerely,
The Netherlands
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
And don't forget the 'Desolé' since everything has to be in french. I assume they should draw a frowny face with a french hat and a cigarette as well...
Q:-(_...
The US train system is excellent if you are coal...
Not so much. I know what you mean - coal plants rely on the railroad system for the delivery of coal, and as a natural consequence, the railroad system is tailored for delivering coal. But, nevertheless, the coal plant owners are not happy with the US railroad system, and it is far from "excellent" to them.
Coal plants are completely hostage to whomever owns the railroad that goes up to their plant. For some plants, the last 10 miles or so is owned by a different railroad company than the one that provides most of the shipping, and the owner of that "last mile" has absolutely no competition in delivering coal to that one plant. And naturally, they charge an enormous premium, as compared to plants that receive their coal from other railways or other delivery methods (barge, or even trucking).
The US train system is like any other network infrastructure, including the internet - a robust "last mile" is just as important as a robust "backbone." And competition at each segment is a good thing, but rare because such capital-heavy infrastructure is extremely prone to consolidation, monopolies, and rent-seeking - all of which lead to stagnation, and all of which need to be regulated for the public (and economic!) good. In some ways, this might be one explanation as to why the airline industry is doing better than passenger trains - they rely on a completely different (almost "peer to peer," as in, airport to airport) infrastructure that allows competition; and despite the heavy capital investment required, its much harder to exclusively own part of the network and lock out competition.
This is all based on some readings I did in college on the American energy infrastructure. I don't still have those books, so I don't guarantee the accuracy of everything said here, but, consider this article a citation.