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Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

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Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#41

Post by gojomo »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #23
gojomo wrote: post #12

As soon as my 2nd vax dose was 14d behind-me in May 2021, I went to Iceland – which had just recently reopened to vaxed travelers – to see the Fagradalsfjall eruption. It was just a ~50m drive from Reykjavik, plus a ~1h20m hike. It was spectacular - launching large lava plumes on a roughly 8-minute, reliable cycle, and feeding ever-growing lava fields out around both sides of one hilltop that was ideal for watching t…

I did the same on. I got a chance to get reasonably close on May 29, 2021. Here's the coolest selfie I'll ever take. https://i.imgur.com/pCA1gSr.jpg Two days later the hill on which I took that selfie was cut off from a new lava flow.

That hill was amazing! Almost like box seats over the show, close in, but high above places where dangerous gasses most likely to collect, and offering 360° views of surrounding valleys slowly filling with lava.

Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#42

Post by ChrisArchitect »

Iceland continuing to thank its lucky stars (or elves or whatever they believe in) for these absolutely perfect tourist attractions. I mean, a crazy but not too crazy eruption, continuous flow of lava just a stones throw from Reykjavik? And now it's happening again? The Earth's gift that keeps on giving.

Makes me wonder, what if the mayor or head of tourism or something found a way to 'poke' the mantle and make the lava start flowing again after the last one dried up earlier. haha

Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#43

Post by runarberg »

lostlogin wrote: post #27
runarberg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an eruption in the same location last year, that lasted for about 6 months. I think it emitted between 1 and 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases. In comparison humans in Iceland emitted around 2-10 million tonnes (depending on what you include) during the same period. Another fun comparison is that Elon Musk’s 50 min flight in his private jet last Friday between Brownsville, TX and Austin,…

Are you sure? Unless I’m messing it up, 1.5m/180=8333kgs. Flying would struggle to make that in an hour wouldn’t it?

You are right. I’m off by a factor of 1000!

I used this article (https://kjarninn.is/skodun/eldgos-og-co2/ [Icelandic]) which states that the eruption emitted between 4,000 and 7,000 tonnes of CO2 a day. And then I used the @ElonJet twitter bot (https://twitter.com/ElonJet/status/1553102092327321601) to get the 4 tonnes.

Elon’s 12 hour flight back from Greece a couple of weekends ago emitted 65 tonnes of CO2. That is 1/100 of what the volcano emitted over 24 hours. So he has to fly 50 hours to emit the same amount of CO2 as the volcano does in an hour. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are 50 CEOs flying their private jets at this very moment.

---

The Icelandic tendency to write out the word thousand plus all the weirdness of the tonne weight unit (as opposed to Mega-grams and Giga-grams) caused my confusion.

Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#44

Post by gojomo »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #42

Iceland continuing to thank its lucky stars (or elves or whatever they believe in) for these absolutely perfect tourist attractions. I mean, a crazy but not too crazy eruption, continuous flow of lava just a stones throw from Reykjavik? And now it's happening again? The Earth's gift that keeps on giving. Makes me wonder, what if the mayor or head of tourism or something found a way to 'poke' the mantle and make the l…

I whimsically considered the same! Iceland, using its secret volcano-control technology, creating easy-to-reach new post-pandemic tourist attractions.

But I don't think the government has that capability. The Huldufólk, on the other hand, might: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulduf%C3%B3lk

Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#45

Post by lisper »

kvetching wrote: post #38
lisper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could possibly go wrong?

Actually this is already being done in Iceland. "Geothermal energy is a major source of energy in Iceland, with about 25 percent of the country's electricity generated from tapping the Earth's heat, according to the National Energy Authority of Iceland. About 90 percent of Icelandic households are heated with geothermal energy." Source: https://www.livescience.com/57833-scientists-drill-volcano-c... .

Obviously geothermal is possible. Equally obvious: it is not economically viable as a global replacement for fossil fuels or it would have supplanted them already, especially in Iceland.

Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#46

Post by godtoldmetodoit »

kvetching wrote: post #33

It's amazing that Energy is such a major issue for our civilization, yet we ignore that we are sitting on top of many millions of gallons of lava

We don't ignore it, it's just very expensive to drill with current technology which limits the locations geo thermal can profitably operate in.

Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#47

Post by djcapelis »

lisper wrote: post #45
kvetching wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually this is already being done in Iceland. "Geothermal energy is a major source of energy in Iceland, with about 25 percent of the country's electricity generated from tapping the Earth's heat, according to the National Energy Authority of Iceland. About 90 percent of Icelandic households are heated with geothermal energy." Source: https://www.livescience.com/57833-scientists-drill-volcano-c... .

Obviously geothermal is possible. Equally obvious: it is not economically viable as a global replacement for fossil fuels or it would have supplanted them already, especially in Iceland.

It definitely has supplanted them in Iceland. Even the most remote places that used to use oil are generally switching to geothermal for heating. Converting the heat to power isn’t always worth it because the island has so much plentiful hydro power. Fossil fuels account for basically 0% of Icelandic power.

Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#48

Post by Melting_Harps »

MrDresden wrote: post #2

There is also a live video feed[0] available from the coast guard helicopter as it flew a reconnaissance flight over the eruption with scientists today edit: sadly the stream has been cut down to minutes from its original hour+ length. [0] https://www.ruv.is/frett/2022/08/03/beint-streymi-ur-thyrlu-...

> edit: sadly the stream has been cut down to minutes from its original hour+ length.

Damn, I opened this when you posted it and wanted to come back to it when I had some down time later in the day and saw it's been clipped; it was interesting to see how close all those camera men got to the active site. I was on Maui in 2014 when Kilauea happened on the Big Island and brought back to those days.

It was pretty crazy because I was waiting on tons of equipment coming in from the mainland which got delayed because of this, even though the route was coming in from Oahu before departing to Maui. Luckily this eruption doesn't seem like the one in 2010 which would compound and already horrible flying experience this summer.

I found a link on youtube with an alt live stream, its not as lose but still shows a pretty good vantage point [1].

0: https://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/28/us/hawaii-volcano/index.h...

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF2-ecAINWg

Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#49

Post by eesmith »

djcapelis wrote: post #47
lisper wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously geothermal is possible. Equally obvious: it is not economically viable as a global replacement for fossil fuels or it would have supplanted them already, especially in Iceland.

It definitely has supplanted them in Iceland. Even the most remote places that used to use oil are generally switching to geothermal for heating. Converting the heat to power isn’t always worth it because the island has so much plentiful hydro power. Fossil fuels account for basically 0% of Icelandic power.

FWIW, about 12.8% says https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/iceland#how-much-o... . (Wikipedia says 15% at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Iceland but that uses a 10 year old source.)

Re: Volcanic eruption starts in Iceland (Live webcam)

#50

Post by vkou »

bilsbie wrote: post #11

How much co2 will this release and can we afford it?

A year's worth of volcanism emits some amount of CO2, and an ~equivalent amount is consumed and stockpiled by other natural processes. It's why in the long-term of hundreds of thousands of years, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are more or less stable.

Unfortunately, when humans started emitting millions of years of CO2 stockpiles, the natural processes of the carbon cycle that take CO2 out of the atmosphere haven't magically scaled up to compensate.

Volcanism slowly drips water into a bucket that has a small hole in the bottom. Over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, the water level in the bucket stays more or less the same. Humans come along, and start filling the bucket with a firehose, and then start questioning if they, or the volcano are the reason the bucket overflowed.

This is basic stuff that's covered in any high-school-level textbook on the subject.

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