Iceland

Here’s a joke that’s been going around the Intertubes — it was the Icelandic economy’s last wish that its ashes be scattered over the EU.

Speaking of which, here’s some cheery news. There may be a bigger eruption coming.

[Update a while later]

Here are some more. I liked this one:

Iceland goes bankrupt, then it manages to set itself on fire. This has insurance scam written all over it.

Heh.

19 thoughts on “Iceland”

  1. You know, if we had trans-atlantic, sub-orbital passenger service, it could just hop over the ash cloud and not ingest it.

  2. You know, if we had trans-atlantic, sub-orbital passenger service, it could just hop over the ash cloud and not ingest it.

    I read that an expert(TM) said that after a day the number of harmful particles at the relevant altitudes was less than that in a clean room, with the rest of the particles being harmless.

  3. We need to send large numbers of troops to Iceland so it will capsize and the ocean will quench the volcano.

    Wait, isn’t Iceland roundish? Clearly you’ve forgotten that the dimensions of the island are important to the capsize potential.

  4. You know, if we had trans-atlantic, sub-orbital passenger service, it could just hop over the ash cloud and not ingest it.

    Actually I have been seeing people using this event to justify building a transatlantic train. A Super Train with a disco dance floor, WOOHOO!

  5. “You mean an atomic-powered disco super-train like we had in the 70’s?”

    You know, that would make one heck of a TV show. 🙂

  6. Yea! With a mandatory bell bottom dress code and a cheesy intro where everyone smiles at the camera and shakes their head at all the zany Super Train antics.

  7. It is easy to make jokes about the situation but even Mount St. Helens had an eruption not that long ago. Not the largest volcano in the US either. IIRC Yellowstone has one that is bigger. There seems to be a lot more seismic activity worldwide in this last year than usual.

  8. I am sure somewhere, Homer is still pissed super-train was cancelled.

    Myself, I don’t care if Claude Akins is dead, BRING BACK SHERIFF LOBO!!!!

  9. Rand

    The big question now is how to link this to global warming.

    I know, global warming melted the glaciers whose weight was holding the volcanoes in check, making it easier for them to Erupt 🙂

  10. Rand,

    Darn, and I thought I would get the Noble Prize for pointing out the linkage 🙂

    Tom

  11. Rand,

    It also looks like the environmentalists are using it to highlight the need to end commercial aviation since it releases too much carbon.

    http://transitionculture.org/2010/04/21/reflections-on-eyjafjallajokull-let%E2%80%99s-not-waste-another-wake-up-call/

    [[[It puts into context what ‘misery’ actually means, and it goes way beyond a few days stuck in a foreign airport or composting roses. Runaway climate change, accompanied by 2 metre sea level rise, crippling impacts on agriculture and most other aspects of modern life, would be utterly catastrophic. While not wishing in any way to denigrate the experience of those who have had a stressful, costly and disruptive few days, perhaps looking at this experience as a dry run for an oil-strapped near future might be healthier.]]]

    [[[In this context, there really is little or no place for aviation, and that’s before we add in the question of what, by then, planes would even be running on.]]]

    Yes, never let a crisis of disaster go to waste 🙂

  12. So they are claiming the loss an icecap that likely repesents less than .00001 of one percent of the overburden weight of the caldera is the cause of eruption?

    Do they understand how utterly stupid they look to someone who has the slightest familiarity with Geologic processes?

    I will never be in any danger of purchasing another Discover magazine. It has pretty much been crap for the last 15 years. I used to eagerly await its arrival every month many years ago.

  13. My wife mentioned Discover mag to me a few weeks ago and I scoffed because I was sure it had ceased publication long ago.

    A few days later I happened to spy one on the rack at Walgreens and was flummoxed. Now I wonder what other magazines I thought were dead are still out there. Time? Newsweek?

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