The 40,000-Mile Volcano (nytimes.com) 85
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times reports on one of the wonders of the underwater world: the extensive web of volcanoes and hydrothermal vents present where tectonic plates meet and grind against one another. "Welcome to one of the planet's most obscure but important features, known rather prosaically as the midocean ridges. Though long enough to circle the moon more than six times, they receive little notice because they lie hidden in pitch darkness." The magma seeping through these cracks generate massive amounts of heat — enough to sustain incredible ecosystems.
But as scientists have gained a deeper understanding of this geological phenomenon, they realize it's more chaotic than they had imagined. "The old idea was that the eruptions of oozing lava and related activity occurred at fairly steady rates. Now, studies hint at the existence of outbursts large enough to influence not only the character of the global sea but the planet's temperature. Experts believe the activity may carry major repercussions because the oceanic ridges account for some 70 percent of the planet's volcanic eruptions. By definition, that makes them enormous sources of heat and exotic minerals as well as such everyday gases as carbon dioxide, which all volcanoes emit."
But as scientists have gained a deeper understanding of this geological phenomenon, they realize it's more chaotic than they had imagined. "The old idea was that the eruptions of oozing lava and related activity occurred at fairly steady rates. Now, studies hint at the existence of outbursts large enough to influence not only the character of the global sea but the planet's temperature. Experts believe the activity may carry major repercussions because the oceanic ridges account for some 70 percent of the planet's volcanic eruptions. By definition, that makes them enormous sources of heat and exotic minerals as well as such everyday gases as carbon dioxide, which all volcanoes emit."
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Re:So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming" (Score:4, Interesting)
Issues like polluting and deforestation are separate from carbon.
On a slight tangent: I think it's worth saying though that those who are against GMO food and/or those in favor of organic food (which it seems a lot on the left are) are inadvertently proponents of deforestation. The reason why is because making way for farm land is the biggest cause of deforestation. Modern farming techniques are the reason why food yield is up 300% since the 1950's, while farm land used for food has only increased by 12%. Organic farming basically mandates that we go back to 1950's style agriculture, which means that if we do that, we have to choose between more destruction of natural landmass OR starvation. And to feed the growing world population, GMO food will be required to squeeze even higher yield out of existing landmass.
And by the way, paper and lumber are produced on tree farms these days; that is, they come from trees bread specifically for that purpose because you get better paper and better lumber from them, and we aren't going to run out of those trees any sooner than eating potatoes will make us run out of potatoes. Also by the way, the World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations, Academy of Sciences, and American Medical Association have all spoken in favor of GMO food.
Re:So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming" (Score:5, Insightful)
While development does play a role, it uses considerably less landmass than farmland.
Toilet paper and mansions (or even mcdonalds stores) are created from trees that are selectively bread like these:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/-6yvLBQRO... [ggpht.com]
Notice how they're perfectly straight with no branches? Guess what, normal trees don't grow that way. They grow these trees like this because it results in a better product. Nobody is cutting down forests to make that kind of stuff. If they are, then it's of such a small amount to be insignificant.
Also I'm not a republican, but you can take your greenpeace anti-science propaganda and shove it up your hippie ass.
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Hmm... I don't really want to argue but I'd like to point out a couple of interesting things.
I own a significant quantity of land, it was owned by the paper company prior to my purchasing the various parts at auction. Some of this is replanted some is natural regrowth. Some of it is still actively harvested, it gives me cause to say agricultural purposes for tax reasons and allows a small income stream that basically covers all the taxes on the property - and I have an obscene amount, numbers that might mak
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Not even slightly. Organic farming is perfectly compatible with all sorts of intensive farming techniques, such as hydro- and aero-ponics, permaculture, etc. as well as conventional row-cropping. I could even achieve 100% subsistence, organically, using only what I grow on my 0.2 acre (including buildings) urban lot [wikipedia.org], if I wanted to put in the effort.
In other words, land is not the barrier to sustainable agriculture. The problem is
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I can confirm that the latter portion of your post is quite likely to be correct. I was mentioning above that I have a company that comes in and does TSI and they do it the old way with horses and oxen - at least as far as the yard. They are in old growth or natural regrowth (80+ years some of it) and those logs sell at a premium. In fact, they can't actually harvest enough to meet demand. The quality is higher and there's a subset of people who will pay for higher quality or higher perceived quality or eve
Nope. (Score:2)
Depends on what you call "farmland". People are not burning down rain forest to make vegetable gardens. It is being deforested to make room for beef grazing.
However there are other ways that GMO food is a positive environmentally. Less pesticides are needed, less fertilizers, as you say greater crop density, likely more successful in less suitable soil, etc...
In my own opinion, most mass market "organic" food is complete BS. "Organic" is more a brand label than anything. There was an expose sometime ago on
Re: So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming (Score:1)
Re:So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming" (Score:5, Informative)
You're on the right track but actually plants and fossil fuels (which after all are largely derived from plants) have similar isotopic ratios. This is because organic processes prefer the lighter 12C to 13C isotope. But in the non-organic area there is no such preference so the 13C/12C ratio is higher than in organic sources. The dropping 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere is an indication that much of the extra CO2 comes from fossil fuel burning. Sources of non-organic CO2 include volcanoes and making cement.
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Re:So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming" (Score:4, Informative)
Umm...I'm not an expert on the subject, but I think I wouldn't be wrong if I suggested that volcanic CO2 is neither plant nor fossil fuel based.
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Plants have a different ratio of isotopes than fossil fuels.
But that difference is due to the age of the carbon released. Plants absorb carbon isotopes (CO2) from the atmosphere in ratios similar to its recent creation by cosmic rays. Animals that eat those plants release the same spectrum of carbon isotopes. Geological carbon that which has aged, changing isotope ratios (see carbon dating) and emitted by volcanic sources may be indiscernible from carbon which has aged in geological formations, pumped to the surface, processed and burned in internal combustion engin
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The evidence that humans are making a difference in the CO2 levels is found by checking the ratios of different CO2 isotopes.
That's doing it the hard way.
The evidence that humans are making a difference in the CO2 levels is found by double entry book keeping -- we know how much coal, oil and gas is being burned because we know how much money is being spent on it. From that, plus simple chemistry we can calculate how much CO2 we are emitting. That turns out to be about twice the observed CO2 increase, so we know 100% of the increase in CO2 is coming from fossil fuel burning.
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That turns out to be about twice the observed CO2 increase, so we know 100% of the increase in CO2 is coming from fossil fuel burning.
So you're implying (unintentionally) that the math doesn't add up (we emit twice the observed increase), and the conclusion is 100% manmade GW, rather than, "oops, we might've goofed the math somewhere", let's redo this? Where's the other 50% that we're emitting going? If it's absorbed, how do you know exactly 50% of is absorbed, i.e. how does that prove CO2 isn't also coming from other sources such as this volcano? I'm not disputing that man is belching CO2 into the atmosphere, and that pollution is bad. But there seems to be a few assumptions at play here.
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So you're implying (unintentionally) that the math doesn't add up
No, I'm implying that about 50% of what we emit is taken up by carbon sinks (ocean acidification, vegetation and so on).
It's simply not possible that the math doesn't add up -- we know how much CO2 is emitted when a given quantity of coal, oil or gas is burnt, that's simple chemistry. We know how much money is being spent on buying that coal, oil and gas, that's simple accountancy.
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Yes we do.
We know how much we're emitting. We know what the atmospheric increase is. The rest is "naturally absorbed". It turns out to be about 50% of what we're emitting. Nobody (sane) disputes this.
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The reason no one sane disputes it is because we can look at the ratios.
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climate scientists
... whose tenure and research grants depend on towing the party line.
Sorry, but I'm going to put my faith in chemists, physicists and meteorologists who have a broader educational experience and less professional reputation tied up in 'climate science'. More chance of an objective opinion. That's why they brought Feynman in to help investigate the Challenger accident.
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Sorry, but I'm going to put my faith in chemists, physicists and meteorologists
What exactly do you think "climate scientists" are if not "chemists, physicists and meteorologists"?
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All that matters is cheap energy and investors making money. Fuck absolutely every fucking thing else. Money is the only fucking thing that matters.
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All that matters is cheap energy and investors making money. Fuck absolutely every fucking thing else. Money is the only fucking thing that matters.
Um, didn't Wall Street barf over the price of oil dropping?
Re:So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming" (Score:5, Insightful)
News: Check out these undersea volcanoes you hadn't heard of. Studies are hinting that their eruptions may be more sporadic than regular.
Assumption: Scientists hadn't heard of these volcanoes either.
Postulate: This must mean any effect they have is new & unaccounted for.
Factoid: A volcano puts out lots of smoke & hot stuff.
Assumption: Volcanoes put out more smoke & hot stuff than people.
Preconception: My lifestyle couldn't possibly be bad in any way, therefore humans couldn't negatively affect the environment.
Oblig. Politicisation: Anyone who says otherwise is a "leftist"
Supposal: All these new volcanoes are increasing temperatures far beyond what people could do.
Conclusion: THAT must be the real reason for global warming! I KNEW it couldn't be us! This explains EVERYTHING!
Congratulations on your data-free chain of reasoning. Wrong from the beginning, of course - as the summary says, these volcanoes are already known to account for 70% of eruptions, so their thermal & CO2 output is already factored in. Plus of course, the data already showed that average volcanic CO2 output is under 1% that of humans, and their thermal output is far smaller again. New studies "hinting" that these eruptions might happen in bursts rather than continuously doesn't change that.
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right on.
Re:So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming" (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation: Oh look, there's another source of CO2, so quickly let's blame it for everything and we can go on burning fossil fuels unimpeded!
I love deniers. On the one hand, they deny that CO2 has the physical properties every fucking physicist has understood for over a century, and then, on the other hand, every time some other source of CO2 is found, they declare "You see, that's why there's AGW!" The fact that they, like all other pseudo-scientific proponents can hold mutually exclusive views doesn't seem to bother them. All they care about is removing any responsibility human civilization might have for negative impacts on global climate, presumably so they can just carry on as usual, or in some cases, continue profiting from climate and environmental destruction.
Perhaps, good poster, you can point out where exactly in any of the material surrounding this research that it says "AGW is caused by the mid-ocean ridges." Go on, I openly challenge you to provide these citations.
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Rest easy good sir.
Volcanoes are already a known factor.
And they are not significant.
Average yearly CO2 output from all volcanoes worldwide: ~300 million tons.
Average yearly CO2 output from all of humanity: 40+ billion tons.
In fact, because the overwhelming majority of what volcanoes release is ash and other particulate matter, in far greater quantities than the CO2 they release or cause to be releases through combustion, the effect of volcanoes on climate is actually a cooling effect rather than a warmin
Re:So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming" (Score:5, Informative)
A single volcano can have a greater environmental impact in a single day than millions of people have over their entire lives.
When there are many of these volcanoes, and they have ongoing eruptions day after day, they'd of course have an absolutely massive impact, far beyond even what billions of humans could ever do.
Goddamnit, do I really have to go digging through my post history to find that data again?
Here, from all the way back in October, the last time I saw someone pull some stupid assertion out of their ass like you just did:
Throughout the world, in a year all volcanoes combined (above and below water) emit around 145 to 255 million tons of CO2. In the US, forest fires release around 290 million tons every year. That's great. Maybe people have contributed to worse fires in recent decades, maybe overall not so much. Either way, it's in the range of several hundred million tons of CO2 every year.
The largest coal power plant, in Taiwan, releases 40 million tons per year. That means that, at the low range of estimates for volcanoes, only 4 of those power plants would emit more CO2 than all volcanoes on the planet. China alone emits over 10 billion tons per year. That is far more than all forest fires. The US is about half that, about 5.3 billion tons. Overall, people emit over 30 billion tons in CO2 through burning of fossil fuels (power plants, cars, etc), and that level has nearly tripled in the past 15 years.
So, Mr. Fucking Genius, if you think that volcanoes would "of course have an absolutely massive impact, far beyond even what billions of humans could ever do", tell me, is 255 million tons more or less than 30 billion tons? Because, and I'm not a math major or anything, but it sounds to me like we would need 117 times as many active volcanoes on the planet to reach the level of CO2 that is output by human activity. I'll post your assertion here again, just to highlight how goddamn stupid and completely uneducated it is:
A single volcano can have a greater environmental impact in a single day than millions of people have over their entire lives.
When there are many of these volcanoes, and they have ongoing eruptions day after day, they'd of course have an absolutely massive impact, far beyond even what billions of humans could ever do.
At 30 billion tons per year, it takes an average of FOUR DAYS for us to emit more CO2 than all volcanoes do in a year.
As soon as I read the summary I knew that some idiot was going to post something about global warming, I didn't expect that the very first post would be some idiot saying "therefore, this explains everything."
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Let me get this straight. You think that the reason that the climate has been warming over the past couple decades has nothing to do with the fact that humans have been pumping tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year at an increasing rate, but instead it's caused by volcanoes tens of thousands of feet below the surface of the oceans, because the magma is heating up the water at the point of eruption.
Tell me, what changed over the past couple decades to cause all of those volcanoes to
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Holy fucking shit. If you can't read TFA, please read TFS. Volcanoes aren't the constant that we thought they were. They're fucking with the global temperature -- both air and water. All the readings and graphs and models took it for granted that they always just bubbled out the same constant temperature all the time, but they were fucking wrong.
You ARE the fucking idiot because you can't fucking READ TWO FUCKING PARAGRAPHS, and yet you have the fucking AUDACITY to try to repeat yourself to me like a ch
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Sure, buddy. I'll just leave these here:
A single volcano can have a greater environmental impact in a single day than millions of people have over their entire lives.
When there are many of these volcanoes, and they have ongoing eruptions day after day, they'd of course have an absolutely massive impact, far beyond even what billions of humans could ever do.
Those assertions are laughable. Still. Blatantly wrong.
These environmentalists/leftists have been blaming humans the whole time, yet now it turns out that it's undersea volcanoes that are responsible, and not people.
Right, solid concrete proof that people have no impact, it's all volcanoes. Certain, undeniable proof that people are 100% blameless. Clear, unambiguous evidence that putting tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year has exactly zero impact on anything regarding the climate.
This isn't going anywhere, this isn't productive. You're going to continue making false claims regardless of what m [rationalwiki.org]
Re:So they're likely the cause of "Global Warming" (Score:5, Informative)
This sounds like a very plausible source for the extra heat that's causing what environmentalists/leftists like to call "Global Warming".
These environmentalists/leftists have been blaming humans the whole time, yet now it turns out that it's undersea volcanoes that are responsible, and not people.
It actually makes a lot of sense that volcanoes would be responsible.
A single volcano can have a greater environmental impact in a single day than millions of people have over their entire lives.
When there are many of these volcanoes, and they have ongoing eruptions day after day, they'd of course have an absolutely massive impact, far beyond even what billions of humans could ever do.
Undersea volcanoes heat the water. The water melts the polar caps. The polar caps add more liquid water to the oceans, which is heated by these volcanoes. The water heats the air.
This explains all of the "Global Warming" that has been blamed on humans by environmentalists/leftists. It explains the sea level changes. It explains it all.
The question you need to ask is has the rate of eruptions on the mid ocean ridges changed significantly over the past century. The mid ocean ridge in the Atlantic has existed since the breakup of Pangaea 150-175 million years ago. There have undoubtedly been times of greater and lesser activity over that time period but to postulate that all of a sudden 100 years ago or so the activity increased enough to force the changes we're seeing is pushing it. You will definitely need some scientific evidence to back that up.
The thing about volcanoes is yes, they are spectacular from a human perspective but the amount of CO2 they emit and heat they release is relatively insignificant compared to human emissions and the amount of heat pouring on to the Earth daily from the Sun. Even a 40,000 mile long volcano is not going to release much heat compared to daily insolation.
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I was under the impression that one of the major warming effects, from volcanoes, was not the CO2 but the particulates? What should be noted, of course, is these underwater volcanoes shouldn't actually be putting particulates in the air at all. It should also be noted that they're more sporadic than previously assumed which means the warming estimates are, if anything, too high and will need to be adjusted.
As I'm intimately familiar with massaging data and making adjustments, I'm quite positive that all sor
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The aerosols that a volcano emits actually have a cooling effect, particularly in a major eruption that injects sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere. The effect can be seen in the temperature record with a 2 year drop in temperatures after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June of 1991 (an effect predicted and well modeled by climate models BTW). As you note these underwater volcanoes won't be putting any aerosols into the atmosphere.
I don't see any reason to believe these volcanoes on the mid-ocean rid
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That's what it was - cooling. And the thing I think might matter (and should be taken into account) is that these are sporadic while they were assumed to be constant. If anything, that means that the increase in ocean temperature (perhaps slight, perhaps localized, etc - they're at varied depths) is slightly less attributable to the volcanic activity. Also, they take temperature readings at more than surface depth - I'm sure you're familiar with that. In other words, this should impact the data even if only
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That is kind of rambling and I was wondering if you'd been drinking but then I saw you were ill which can have similar effects :)
I don't think geothermal energy output is much more than at the level of a rounding error compared to the incoming solar radiation. I doubt climate models take that into account at all except perhaps as a constant input. When averaged over climatological periods that seems to be a reasonable assumption.
At this point I see no reason to think that the mid-ocean ridges are doing an
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And all those volcanoes just happened to start really acting up at the start of the industrial revolution, thus explaining climatic change without implicating human activity...
Sure.
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This sounds like a very plausible source for the extra heat that's causing what environmentalists/leftists like to call "Global Warming".
No it doesn't.
It's not heat that's causing global warming, it's extra heat.
There is no trend in the heat coming from these volcanoes, therefore they can't be the cause of the observed trend in temperatures.
Simultaneously if the observed warming was being caused by undersea volcanoes what is the mechanism that is stopping warming due to the observed increase in greenhouse gasses?
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your grasp of science is weak.
no, volcanoes don't emit more than people.
no, it doesn't explain it all.
no, you haven't miraculously discovered the mechanism not seen by the entirety of the world's scientists.
Average yearly CO2 output from all volcanoes worldwide: ~300 million tons.
Average yearly CO2 output from all of humanity: 40+ billion tons.
that means there's nowhere to go (Score:2)
So... (Score:1)
By definition, that makes them enormous sources of heat
Well how much heat? TFA doesn't say. Enough to pilot El Nino or something similar? More?
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El nino influences the pacific. THe mid ridge which moves the continents apart is in the Atlantic which since Pangia has moved Europe, Africa, and the Americas apart about 2 inches a year
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cows (Score:1)
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No, that's Walmart beast farts causing that.
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Actually cow burping does more than farting.
http://news.psu.edu/story/1417... [psu.edu]
Not about AGW (Score:3)
Also, check out this picture [discoveringthedeep.com]. If there is anything related to AGW, it's probably just a little nudge to open the door to more funding.
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This is about Global Warming.
Prepare to be disappointed. It isn't about global warming in any way. Talk about motivated reasoning.
About /. clickbait (Score:3)
Re:Not about AGW (Score:5, Informative)
Note that "midoceanic ridges" doesn't entirely mean "underwater ridges". I happen to live in a place where the ridge breaks the surface - by several kilometers in places. You can investigate the mid-Atlantic ridge (at least a small part of it) right here on the surface, no subs needed. You can also check out part of the ridge in freshwater [google.com].
One of the common misconceptions is that there's a single fissure that makes up the "ridge". The reality is that there's a whole chain of meandering but largely parallel grabens (sharp-sided tectonic valleys), fissure-volcanic ridges, and individual volcanoes. It doesn't always break at the same place, it breaks over dozens to hundreds of kilometers on either side of the "average" centerline of the ridge. Also, the volcanism can be quite diverse. Here we have everything from basalt to rhyolite, deep-sourced and shallow-sourced magma, gas-rich and gas-poor magmas, widely varying levels of sulfur and fluorine emissions, etc.
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Re:Not about AGW (Score:5, Interesting)
It's drysuit diving. It would be stupid to do it any other way. ;)
There was a guy that on a dare from his family jumped into one of those flooded rift canyons last year, naked. He had no clue what water that cold does to your body, he's lucky he didn't drown. He quickly lost all energy, and combined with there being no easy way out was stuck half in the the water trying to get out, unable to climb any further. He was lucky that the rescue services got to him in time.
FIle that under "stupid things tourists do", along with "go hiking alone on a glacier with no prior experience and without telling anyone" and "walking up to the edge of a mud pot, not giving half a thought to the fact that they're standing at the edge of a boiling cauldron of liquid water that's actively eroding the clay around it." There's never any shortage of people to rescue. There's one team that's been hiking across Iceland this winter that's already had to be rescued three times ;)
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along with "go hiking alone on a glacier with no prior experience and without telling anyone"
ok, that one actually sounds kind of fun, though
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If dying in a crevase is your idea of fun, then go right ahead ;)
Okay, to be fair, the flat-topped ice sheets are generally pretty safe. It's where the ice flows over contours and descends into the lowlands that they get dangerous, what we call a skriðjökull. They end up looking [markvanlaere.nl] like [vdweerd.net] this [lindseytopham.com]. And oftentimes these crevases form beneath before they become visible [mountainso...photos.com] on the surface. The glaciers can also be (surprise surprise) very slippery [squarespace.com] at times.
Sometimes idiots actually try to drive passenger cars
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Oh, and don't be anywhere near the flat tops when there's volcanic activity going on, because they often overlay volcanoes. And when there's even a small "burp" of heat, you get what's called a sigketill [google.com] forming, and that would be very bad news for you ;) And in case those little "ripples" on the edge of the bowl-shaped ones (as opposed to the "sheer drop" ones and the "boiling lake" ones) don't look so bad, here's what they look like close up [www.lhg.is]. Think video game-style bottomless pits. Into a volcano. ;)
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People have crossed Greenland, though (I assume it has similar problems), and did it a long time ago before GPS. How do you do it to get across safely?
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For the stuff on the ice caps, glacier tour guides run professional operations where they keep track of every rift as it forms and relay the information to each other. For the more dangerous stuff like on a skriðjökul, there's some of that as well, but also in general it takes about extreme care, constantly testing the ground in front of you, and being tethered to each other to help arrest unexpected falls, among other things. And even then it can still be dangerous.
Ironically, though, sometimes
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People have crossed Greenland, though (I assume it has similar problems)
Greenland is a hell of a lot less volcanically active than iceland.
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I have no idea why they do that, tourists that is. We lose a few every year. We go out and rescue them every year. We said we were going to start charging them but we haven't. I go out with them every year. I have attended lots of training classes and kept up with it so I go. We have them go through the ice every year. We end up having to wait until spring before we can recover the body - every year. Sometimes we don't get to recover that in a timely fashion and they make it all the way to the ocean, someti
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Thanks. It's a bit costly for a coffee table book but I ordered a copy. It has pictures so I can look at it and fool people into thinking I'm learning.