Geothermal Risk Part 1: Muddy Business

/ 30/10/2021

Fly Geyser.

I am writing this the day before the already failed COP26 meeting in Glasgow. Failed in the respect that neither the leaders of China, nor Russia, will partake. Failed also in the respect that the leaders of Japan, Australia and Brazil are travelling there hellbent on stopping or slowing down any progress. Failed in the respect that the other leaders lack the testicular fortitude of making the decisions needed to save our planet.

Greta was correct when she referred to the COP26 as “a meeting of bla, bla, bla, bla”. We all know that there will be a depressing agreement coming out that contains even more of too little and too late, and that most countries won’t even stick to that.

It would be easy to be disheartened here, but there is hope. First of all, people are now in general onboard of the changes that are needed, both in regards of technology, and how we live.

The other and more surprising good thing, is that where the politicians saw Greta as just a cute little girl, she hit tremendously hard in many board rooms. The boards of large companies consist of non-to-cuddly types that are intelligent and highly risk-adverse.

In an increasing number of cases, they have been intelligent enough to correctly identify the climate change as a risk to their profit margins. And they also recognized that having an angry Greta showing up with millions of followers consisting of the future customers of their products, saying no to what they are doing, would rapidly hurt their wallets. Also, in some cases even their own children stopped talking to them.

When companies like Swedish Steel, mining-juggernaut LKAB, Mercedes, Volvo, Vargas Group, and so on start to pour untold billions in your favourite currency to become CO2-neutral, it will have a rapid and very noticeable difference.

What did they do? Well, their billions solved how to make better and cheaper batteries for cars and grid storage. And they solved how to get rid of the 7 percent of the global CO2 emissions that comes out of the steel industry.

As such, those companies have done more for the environment than all of the worlds’ testicularly challenged politicians put together, at least measured in CO2-net balance. There you have the Greta-effect put into practice.

I am ranting, you tend to do that when you believe in things. Let us return to the subject at hand shall we?

 

Risks of geothermal energy

H2 Green Steel Works built by Vargas Group in Northern Sweden, one of the two massive Hydrogen-reduction steel plants being built there. For size reference, note the massive iron ore trains in the image. Image was honestly stolen from the company.

Caveat of this two-part odyssey into geothermal risks: I am here writing from the perspective of geothermal energy extracted from, or adjacent from, a magma reservoir. Most of it should though be the same for any type of geothermal energy extraction.

As and when you are building a big power plant the local population will generally be worried about how it will affect their daily lives. I understand that completely, I would be worried and want to know things about a huge plant blooming up next to my house. Especially if I did not understand the technology used.

This is becoming more and more important since we live in the time of “expert YouTubers” making clickbait videos filled with false information, scaring the living daylights out of people.

Caveat: There are wonderful experts and informed non-experts out there making insightful, correct, and informative videos, but those tend to get lower ratings than the clickbait on YouTube.

So, you can either fight fire with fire via making your own videos, talk to influential science YouTubers, write articles, use social media, etcetera. Or, you can do something that the clickbait producers can not and will not do.

That is to quite simply walk down the neighbourhood and invite the locals to come over for a coffee to ask their questions. Local meetings are wonderful if handled correctly.

If you just start talking honestly about risks, and what you are doing to mitigate them, people will feel good and ask their questions. This is about your neighbours being heard and stating their opinions about what will impact their lives, take them seriously.

They deserve to know about the risks, but they also deserve to give input on operations in regards of their quality of life. And they also deserve to be part of the esthetical side of things like how the plant will look, and if there will be a garden. Gardens are very important, and a well-cut hedge will hide away things that are not beautiful in a nice manner.

If you fail at this you will have a lot of locals against you, they will in turn influence the local politicians and those will in their turn contact the permitting agencies, and you are sitting there without your sought-after permit.

If done correctly you will end up with local support, and probably a plant that is looking way better, and holding that expensive permit that you needed.

Now it is finally time for the risks associated with a geothermal plant. The risks are roughly presented in the order of when you build and start your plant.

 

Drill mud

A nice and sturdy example of a mud pit. Photograph stolen from the company Schlumberger.

Caveat: I am not a drilling engineer. Even though I have read extensively about the subject, there might be errors in this text. I hope that any honest mistake will be corrected in the comments below by the expert on the subject that is reading this (Greetings in the direction of Scotland).

Bet you did not see mud coming up? Drill mud, or drilling liquids, are the most common source of problems in the drilling part when you construct a geothermal plant, or during any drilling into the ground for that matter. If used in an unsafe manner it will cause harm to fish and wildlife (if it comes out into nearby streams), and it may make the soil surrounding the drill-pad toxic and impact the water-table.

Before we go into how to mitigate the risks, I need to explain what drill mud is, and why it must be used when drilling.

When you drill a geothermal well you need to keep the drill-head cool, cool down the bedrock you are drilling into, stabilize the borehole, prevent water ingress and remove the rock-waste that the drilling is producing.

Drill mud typically comes in 3 different flavours. The first one is water-based, it contains water, bentonite clay (E558 when food grade), barite (barium ore, barium is commonly used at hospital for enemas, so mostly harmless), lignosulfonate (food preservative), table-salt, and a few other kitchen chemicals.

So, what is that horrible lignosulfonate? It is the fibrous residue from papermills, it does not taste particularly good, but it is not toxic.

The risk associated with water-based drill mud comes from unsafe storage pits allowing the drill mud to flow out into local streams, and enough silt and clay will suffocate the fish in the stream. Great care must be taken when you build the storage pit so that no leakage is possible. This is also good business policy, drill mud is expensive and typically stands for 10 percent of the cost of drilling a borehole, so if the containment bursts your cost will be several percent higher.

The drawback with water-based drill mud is that it is not stable at higher temperatures. It is therefore normally used at shallow to medium depths where the rock is not too hot. It is mandated to be used in most places during the shallow parts of well-drilling due to it being comparatively environmentally friendly if handled and stored correctly.

Now, let us talk about synthetic drill mud. Synthetic sounds toxic, doesn’t it? Well, not really in this case. The synthetic part in the name comes from the use of non-mineral oil. In other words, it is drill mud containing either plant-based oil or biodiesel.

Otherwise, it mostly contains the same things that the water-based drill mud does, the biggest change is that it also contains emulsifiers to bind the water and the oil together in a suspension. If you just remove the barite and switch out the lignosulfonate to corn-starch you have liquid margarine.

You still must build a very sturdy containment and storage pit, otherwise the fishes might not be happy with you. It is also important to have a sturdy fence so that animals do not drown in your giant tube of industrial margarine.

Synthetic drill mud can withstand higher temperatures and is often mandated to be used at intermediate depths for environmental reasons.

Now it is time for the bad boy. As you get down to more extreme temperatures and pressures the synthetic drill mud will start to degrade at an alarming rate and you risk that your drilling venture will seize up.

It is now time to sadly start using oil-based drill mud. Typically, it contains mineral diesel, and the lignosulfonate is now being changed into fly-ash. This is something that you wish to limit the use of, and use at depth, and only when it is a must to use.

It must be used and stored in a safe manner. There is a lot of work going on to push up the temperature range of synthetic drill mud to further limit the use of oil-based drill mud. Sadly, we are for now stuck with it for uses in the last stretch of geothermal borehole drilling.

If you build your drill mud storage pit in reinforced concrete and in an interesting shape, you will not only get a safe containment. You will also after a thorough cleaning get a garden pool that you can stick fish and plants in together with a fountain.

Drill mud comes with a set of professionals like mud engineers, mud-loggers and compliance engineers. They will work hard to limit the risks, and to make certain that as little drill mud as possible is used and lost during drilling, after all they want to save money and avoid that the company is fined for environmental infractions.

 

Gas, gunk and heavy metal

A nice drill-tower. Image borrowed from the nice people over at Mannvit.

Volcanoes and volcano-related geothermal fields are natures industrial accidents. If you leave them to their own devices they will emit poisonous gases, heavy metals, and all sorts of interesting toxic minerals and chemicals.

This might sound counter-intuitive to the layperson, but if you think another step further you will see that volcanic activity and geothermal waters are busy constructing what we later will mine for metals.

During drilling the drill mud will contain gases that used to be trapped in the rock at depth like SO2, CO2, fluorine, etcetera. It will though most often not contain methane or ethane. It could though contain hydrogen and hydrogen sulphide.

Since the gases are toxic, obnoxious and in some cases could catch fire, the mud-loggers will take samples constantly for the mud engineers to test. The compliance engineers will in turn make certain that set limits will not be exceeded to safeguard the workers’ health and the environment.

Sadly, it is not possible at this stage to capture the gases that are released, but the release will be small compared to what the volcano is releasing anyway. This is an area where new technology will be needed.

The drill mud itself will drag up silicates and sulphur-compounds that often contain heavy metals, this needs to be removed from the drill mud during operations, and the waste must be stored safely and properly.

The third problem is natural geothermal water. It can be a hotbed for heavy metals and other unsavoury chemical compounds. During normal operations this water is cleaned and reused, but when drilling it is basically left in the drill mud and reused.

The gas is the big problem here. It will impact the lives of the local residents. Obviously, you will measure the levels of released gas diligently, but it will stink. Let us be honest, volcanoes are incredibly stinky.

If you have residents next door to the plant, you will have to limit drilling hours and avoid weekends. People tend to be accepting during the day, but at night and on the weekends, they are far less accepting. After all, who would like their garden salad, baked potato, steak, and beer accompanied by gentle wafts of rotten eggs?

On top of that, a drill rig is incredibly noisy, and who would wish that at night and during the weekends?

So, what to do as you are getting close to your target? After all, it is now to hot to stop the drill since it would seize up. One thing you could do is to buy up the properties around you, but you will find that a fairly large set of people are fond of their houses and gardens and flat out refuses to sell them to you for demolishment.

Let us be economical here, a seized drill will be insanely expensive, especially if you need to start all over again. 30 million Euro expensive, plus costs for delays and the risk of having to write off the entire venture.

Multiply that by several boreholes and it is well worth to open the wallet a bit. First you buy up a few houses, you can after all use them for housing staff, and when you are done, and the plant is operational you can sell them (at least if you build a good-looking plant and plant a nice garden around it).

So, what to do with those who do not wish to move? Well, pay them recompensation and when you need to go 24/7, send them on an all-inclusive cruise to the Caribbean, or if they need to stay and work, put them up at an all-inclusive 5-star hotel.

Comparatively this is pocket money in relation to the risks of having to scrap the entire project. Trust me, nobody will hate you as they sip on an Aviation cocktail in the Caribbean Ocean seated at their balcony cabin at sunset.

 

Conclusion

In the next instalment I will get into earthquakes, more gases, and the risks involved with drilling into a magma-reservoir. I promise to gently shake things up a bit.

CARL REHNBERG

761 thoughts on “Geothermal Risk Part 1: Muddy Business”

  1. La Palma. The violence of the gas emissions makes me wonder how the cinder cone can stay stable. I half expect it to blow apart at any moment!

      • Generally the volcanoes that do debris avalanches are those of dacite and rhyolite magmas, like Shiveluch. Such avalanches are usually accompanied an enormous explosion that sends devastating pyroclastic flows.

        • Thank you. I was thinking about that, but will never dare to write anything about petrochemistry. So glad that you added it.

        • Or are steep and consist mainly of volcanic rocks emplaced from Strombolian activity like Fuego (that really likes to meander off towards the ocean), and Stromboli itself.
          If you have a steep mountain built up by volcanic rock ball-bearings it will galumph away sooner or later.
          Sollid lava flow volcanoes tend to drop off in pieces over time instead of in one big go. Like Kilauea and La Palma.

  3. Does anybody have a web link to the Tortajukull(sp?) , Iceland tremor plot ??

    • Yes, here:
      To my untrained eye, there seems to be an increase in tremor.

      • Argh, it’s that spam filter again. New try: hraun.vedur.is/ja/drumplot/drumplot/sly_highpass_2.0.png

    • It is in a decline, it is easy to be fooled by a bit of glacial movement at Katla (SLY is sometimes noisy, and it is a Katla monitoring device primerily).

      The LF pulses are far apart now compared to earlier.
      Whatever it was it is most likely over soon. Probably some sort of geothermal fluid pulsing.

      • 🙁

        That whole area between Hekla and Katla is one of the areas where direct mantle eruptions can happen, just like Fagradalshraun. Mostly in the Holocene it has been between Hekla and Torfajokull and down at Vestmanneyjar, probably a sort of shared deep magma source to the whole area, but there is a few vents all around and of course also the eruptions in 2010. Probably wont be a world ending event, but would be another case if an eruption in a place where they dont happen often.

    • Yet visually the rear vent (NE) seems to be boiling away with ash, although the front vents are quieter.

      • Its confusing look at this graph the band of red is still strong.

        • The tremor has not disapear, only has reduced. Meanwhile, the eartquakes still high.
          4.8 mbLg W FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/02 17:15:54 13 +info
          3.1 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/02 16:54:36 13 +info
          2.4 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/02 16:49:16 10 +info
          2.7 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/02 16:33:21 11 +info
          2.9 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/02 16:27:57 11 +info
          3.6 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/02 16:26:11 II-III 12 +info
          3.5 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/02 16:16:49 III 11+info
          3.5 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/02 15:55:33 III 11 +info
          2.6 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/02 15:19:40 10 +info
          2.7 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/02 15:17:30 11 +info
          3.0 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/02 15:05:07 11 +info
          3.2 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/02 14:53:53 11 +info
          2.8 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/02 14:34:16 10 +info
          2.6 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/02 14:30:59 10 +info
          3.6 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/02 14:15:52 35 +info
          2.8 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/02 14:08:04 10 +info

          The eathquakes has migrate to 10 km depth. And deformation continue high:

          • The slight movement SE on the LP03 GPS station hints that magma displacement is still continuing. I would take this to indicate that the eruption is no where ending yet.

      • Tremor continues to be extremely small, but there is active lava looking fairly hot and dangerous:
        https://www.youtube.com/embed/INvrtMg5tSQ
        Furthermore there is still some smoke/ash from the volcano.

        Of course the lava could also be hot simply because most of the time it was protected by a tube.
        Anyways, there needs to be a good explanation why the tremor suddenly declined.

  7. There have been 5 recent yet deep quakes around mag 3 towards Santa Cruz de La Palma, is this an isostatic adjustment, or could deeper magma be making its way up? I don’t recall any really deep quakes in this area of La Palma recently.

    • Quakes in the la Palma area of depth >= 30km:

      mean(Latitude) = 28.58, sd(Latitude) = 0.048
      mean(Longitude) = -17.80, sd(Longitude) = 0.09

      • Also: there have been 276 such quakes (EMSC data) since 2021-09-19.

  8. Earlier today the news broke that the Chinese government under Xi Jinping is asking the population to hoard food. The reason for this is 3-fold. Failed Chinese harvest, failed importation due to transport problems, and a probable upcoming lockdown due to failure to mitigate Covid.

    What has been missed in most news is that large parts of China is on a running blackout due to lack of energy.

    Here is something I have said for a while now. Energy is money, or at least for now, if you own energy and the means of energy production, it is convertable into money.
    This relation will only become more important during this decade, and the decades that will follow.
    This is a wonderful video if you survive the insane level of Australian pronounciation.
    If you wish to read more I recommend Vaclav Smil’s books on the subject.

    • Bang on, Carl
      Of course, and its been obvious for centuries.
      Originally it was food production, that powered people. With a large well-fed population you could dominate your neighbours. Rome in its heyday; a string of bad harvests and the vandals come in….
      The rise and fall of the Mayas etc etc.
      Broken in england by using coal as an energy source, and that lead of a few decades made the british empire. Then cheaper coal in germany trumped the british.
      Then very very cheap oil in massive quantities put the USA on top.
      Then the middle east and other cheap producers blew it (for their populations) be being corrupt and selling it to the west for cash.
      Now we are in the sh+t with no replacement for the energy density our modern lives demand.

      Blackouts and shortages of many things will be relatively common, and don’t think it will just be the chinese buying cheap australian coal, or producing it themselves.

      Whilst the west will moan and groan, we do not own these countries and if its what they choose to do there is nothing much we can do about it.

      Reality tends to be a bit less appealing than one might wish.

    • In classical mechanics energy controls the possibilities and in quantum mechanics it controls the probabilities. You can always hope for a quantum fluctuation to get you out of the hole but might have to go into cryo-sleep and wait for some very long time.

      But I think here on earth we still have some room to maneuver by diverting electricity from population surveillance, pornography transmission and bitcoin mining to more productive uses.

      • So true IMHO.
        I’m not exactly sure how good of an idea 360° digitalization is in terms of green future.
        Actually how do you VC members think the following would compare?
        – Watching life stream 24/7 for 60 days on a laptop computer (this alone requires 100 W, but what about power for internet infrastructure needed here, and in La Palma..?)
        – Once flying to La Palma and living there for 60 days, then flying back, from Mid Europe?

        • The sitting at home and watching would be the far better option from an energy standpoint, the infrastructure is after all divided up by the million watching the event. Also, that infrastructure is on anyway.

          Bitcoin mining might be the most pointless exercise that humanity has ever endevoured into. It uses up a percentage of electricity that we can’t live without giving nothing back that is tangible or eatable.

          • You can say the same about physical money too, it also takes energy, trees,ink to produce and replace.

          • Yes you can, but it is considerably less.
            Even better is plastic cards, they use even less than paper money (baring that you enjoy the government knowing when, where and how many pints you drink).

        • Well, we are talking energy (Joules or kWh) not power (Watts, kilowatts).
          This difference is absolutely crucial and totally not comprehended by almost everyone, even here. Its routinely misused by eco-people who quote (for example) wind turbines as producing XXXGW (a power) and never XXX TWh/annum (an amount of energy).
          So your 15″ laptop consuming 60W on average for 60 days will consume 60x24x60/1000 kWh or about 100 kWh. Airline cost is about 3.5 l/100km-passenger or about 35 kWh/100km, La Palma is conveniently 3000km from london so its about 30x35KwH = 1000kWh.
          So flying would consume 10x the energy of using your laptop for 60 days. You could add a bit for infrastructure on BOTH sides. Of course for this to be fair you would NOT be allowed to use your laptop on La Palma, because then you would have to repay the energy credits.

        • Thanks for your opinions.
          Actually my charger is a 85 W one, and the computer gets rather warm when watching, so it may be more than 60 W.
          But still, interesting result. I would’ve done the math myself if I had known the airline figures and that you can neglect the infrastructure part.
          Yep, of course I wouldn’t use the computer on La Palma except maybe for some 10 hours in total 🙂

      • “But I think here on earth we still have some room”

        Good luck with that.

        Caveat: I’m an asshole, but a realist. I’m also a bit blunt. My apologies if it offends, but of the dragons here, I am the most likely to offend, though I really try to follow the cardinal rule of “Be Nice.” Hence the apology in advance. I know humans, we are not a very intelligent species. In my opinion, “Homo Sapiens” has been extinct for a long time. The extant hominid is “Homo Stultus.” (you, me, everyone we know) {Hence the “Florida Man” meme} And yes, I am technically a “Florida Man” just by my place of residence. But I at least attempt to think through stuff before I do it. (And by that measure, I am also a bona-fide Redneck and am quite proud of that moniker. Rednecks don’t generally give a shit what people think. By comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s definition, a Redneck is a glorious lack of sophistication…. so you may personally know a few Rednecks yourself.

        As for the “Florida Man” categorization. I have long stated my “Don’t Be There” philosophy in regards to Volcanoes… it’s a sound policy, but a bit “stupid” considering where I live at with regards to the Hurricane threat. I’ve been through some serious hurricanes (both at sea and on land), it is a threat I can deal with. At least I can see them coming due to the modern technology… and lambast the semi-official experts at their weather knowledge. (a northern hemisphere Low rotates counter-clockwise in the Northern hemisphere… hello weather channel idiot from a few hurricanes ago… Note: you haven’t had a ride until you do a hurricane at sea! {Hurricane Iwa 1983} The saving grace is that I was in a 414 foot long Frigate, I think Carl did one in a damned sail boat… but I’m not sure. We are both squids of some sort, me, USN… but Carl, I don’t know. But he holds a masters certification. I was just a dweeb crew member.

        Ref the “on land” Hurricane experience… it took me two days with a chainsaw to cut my way to my truck to retrieve my tobacco and my wallet from my truck after Hurricane Ivan in 2004. {extensive chainsaw experience cutting our way out of a tornado swarm in central Mississippi in the 1992-1994 time frame} I keep that same Stihl chainsaw in good condition out in my garage. {it was a birthday gift from my Mom}

        Nothing special about my endeavors… you make do with what you have. Yeah, my “Don’t be there mantra is a bit flippant… but it is sound advice. I don’t have ANY tricks up my sleeve about how to mitigate a Volcano other than not being there.

        For some people… it’s all they know and where they grew up. Leaving your home is difficult. But you have to weigh your risks with your existence. It’s part of being “human.” I live on the Gulf Coast because in the long run, I have spent more time here than in my Home town… and my Home town is a veritable shit-hole with a high homicide rate. For me, this is now my home town. It beats having to maintain a pack of Dobermans to keep my yard clear of transients and drug dealers. (But, I grew up with Dobermans and absolutely love the breed)

  10. Something is going on in the vicinity of 35.5N 3.65W (western end of the Alboran Ridge in the Strait of Gibraltar, see
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295531643_1_Seamounts_and_Seamount-like_Structures_of_the_Alboran_Sea,
    p 24).
    There is always some seismic unrest there but starting on 2021-04-16 and ever since we have had 4 or more quakes a day (mostly low energy but with some bigger days).
    This behavior represents a regime change from behavior before that date, where there were mostly fewer than 6 days per month with four or more quakes.

    Here are all the months (EMSC data) with at least 3 or more days experiencing 4 or more quakes
    before the onset of continuous activity on 2021-04-16:

    Month # Num_Days(Num_Quake >= 4)
    2021-03 # 10
    2021-01 # 4
    2020-12 # 4
    2020-11 # 6
    2020-07 # 3
    2016-03 # 7
    2016-02 # 6
    2016-01 # 8
    2004-12 # 3

    Note the huge gaps. The Alboran Ridge has a dropoff of about 500m in the are, so an underwater landslide with noticeable tsunami seems possible.

    • In this regard: on 2016-01-25 we had 35 quakes amounting to 3 mega tons of TNT
      (roughly a magnitude 6.3 quake) and no tsunami was discovered.

      • You generally need something above M7 to get a tsunami unless in perfect circumstances, most times much larger than that.
        And tallying together earthquakes spread out over time is pointless when discussing tsunamis or the Moment-magnitude scale.

        So, to get to the M6.3 I assume that you tallied together 35 M5s?

        • Yes I did. But as they say: the steady droplet hollows the stone.

          • There is though a big difference between the energy release of an M5 and an M6, that is a difference of 10 times.
            But, the destructive force of an M6 is 27 times larger (on average) than an M5.

            Since the comment was about tsunamis you can drop unto the stone until next year without getting a tsunami. We would still need well above an M7 at that location, probably towards an M8 since there is no megathrust fault there.

            In this case it is the regular African meandering towards Europe that is causing the earthquakes and those are fairly common in small swarms like this.

          • @Carl: the idea is that the tsunami is caused by an underwater landslide off the Alboran Ridge and there is no telling how much energy is needed to get one going.
            The ridge has a really steep flank at the southwestern end which is close to the quakes which drops off 500m in altitude. See the document linked to above, p26 at coordinates 35.6N, 3.5W.

          • The problem is that we would need a drill core and very detailed echo-sounding to even have something to discuss.
            What material are we talking about? If it is compacted silt, or if it is granite, it makes a big difference in how it will behave. Silt would be more prone to a large slide, but would have a different displacement pattern that is not as conducive to tsunami making.
            At the other end we have granit that is more prone to peel off chunks one after the other over time. The flank would need to be made of something intermediary to be conducive to massive collapses causing a tsunami.

            But we are still stuck with small earthquakes being less likely to cause a big slide than small ones, even combined over time.

            Third bonus point. There would be no net displacement of water, just water relocating to replace the volume moved, this is due to all of the moving material is sub-aquatic to begin with.
            An Island on the other hand has material entering water, creating ned volumetric increase causing a tsunami wave.
            This means that you need something in the order of the Storegga slide to cause a problem.
            The Japanese slide caused loads of net volumetric displacement since it flipped the lip up and outwards.

          • Supporting Carl with this:
            The collapse involved an estimated 290 km (180 mi) length of coastal shelf, with a total volume of 3,500 km3 (840 cu mi) of debris, which caused a tsunami in the North Atlantic
            (6225–6170 BCE). Victim: The Doggerbank east of England, flat like a floating pancake.

          • Could it have something to do with increased seismic activity in Iceland. Along the whole plate from Reykjanes to Katla up to Grimsvotn, through Askja and to the Tjornes. Could the rifting there be affecting causing any potential subduction at Gibraltar? Since Fagradalsfjall went up, Greece (SW of Nisyros) There has been quite a lot of activity. That would be my guess.

            National Geographic (not sure of it’s reliability).. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110419-europe-africa-mediterranean-earthquake-risk-increasing-earth-science

  11. And speaking of stinky… many years ago, one of the grandkids, easter egg hunting, found an egg from the previous years. It exploded in a puff of yellow sulfur bearing dust. Upon hearing the screach, I thought the kid had found a snake, but it was just the egg. I felt sorry for him, but his brother gave him quite a bit of crap over it.

  12. Got a question actually, about Icelandic volcanoes, when they occur in pairs do they compete? Kilauea and Mauna Loa definitely seem to compete, even if not directly hydraulically connected, there are a lot of similarities between Iceland and Hawaii so it got me thinking.

    Obviously Grimsvotn and Bardarbunga, but also Hekla and Katla. Hekla has been very productive this past century while Katla has been dead asleep. Hekla has also been active more often since Eldgja happened while Katla still has not really recovered it seems. Eruptions at Hekla before 1104 seem to have been big, plinian eruptions followed in a few cases by massive lava flows, but overall magma flux has gone up while at katla it has gone down?

    • I have no idea. But a plot I did a few years ago of interpolated Moho depths seemed to show what appeared to be an inverted valley that stretched from the Bardarbunga region towards and down the SISZ. Likely this is an effect of the MAR, but in my opinion, and that is all this is, an opinion, is that up welling magma treks up this inverted “valley” from the hotspot, occasionally leaking out via convenient volcanoes where one happens to be the weakest area found.

      REMEMBER, this is pure conjecture by a non geologist. Take it for what it is worth… which isn’t much.

      • I would like to expand on that.
        You will find those inverted valleys under many of the Icelandic volcanoes.

        Back to the question.
        Very few Icelandic volcanoes are connected such as you are asking about.
        They are though all partially driven by the MAR, and in the case of the central volcanoes (the big ones) they are also partially driven by the Mantleplume.
        So, the connection is that they are driven by the same things in general and that makes them at least related.

        For the big ones it is better to talk about these “inverted valleys” below them. Grimsvötns inverted valley (fissure swarm) has several central volcanoes on it. Those are from north to south: Greíp (proto-volcano), Grimsvötn, Háabunga, Tordharhyrna, Geirvörtur & Hágöngur.

        • As a Clint Eastwood character stated in one of his movies…”Bravo”

        • So your theories differ quite a lot from the magma mush theory Hector proposed. Is going to be interesting to test this then, when there is next a big rifting event southwest of Vatnajokull if it is like Holuhraun or a somewhat more vertical movement.

          To me it seems likely both are true, direct mantle eruptions do happen but it seems impossible for them to be of high intensity, the big fissure eruptions seem to need a big volume of magma to already exist, and a rift to drain into, Laki must have just been a magma chamber that was bigger and probably a bit deeper than typical, Holuhraun was a more standard case. I think direct mantle eruptions are what form shields instead, or cinder cones in the case of the areas between Hekla and Katla, so more long lived and relatively slow eruptions.

          • I cheat, I have had samples tested of the lava that was erupted at Lakí.
            Lakí was definitely direct out of the mantle except for the initial explosive part that blew out all the gunk.

          • Must be a deeper magma body, probably not right under the fissures but below the point where the magma we see erupt at Grimsvotn is distinct, still pretty much pristine mantle melt. We saw at Fagradalsfjall and also to an extent at Pu’u O’o that direct from the mantle can be separate thing from direct vertical line. So Laki was still a dike, going from northeast to southwest starting under Vatnajokull, but the magma was pristine. It also looks like the same thing happened at Askja, the lava erupted on the rift in 1875 was different from the basalt lava at the caldera erupted just beforehand, but we know it still came from there. Holuhraun also was a bit like this, rifting set off by deep magma injection. I guess Grimsvotn being where it is and not having a rift event for millennia just had the perfect storm for a real monster eruption, so when the next rift happened the floodgates of hell were opened.

          • Chad, I think I was unclear.
            Imagine the hull of a sailing boat that is turned upside down with the open part down towards the mantle, and the narrow point upwards to Laki and the central volcanoes.
            This hull is fairly narrow, but is about 200 kilometres long and stretches from the southern tip SSW of Lakí to North of Vatnajökull. This is the deep magma reservoir. From this conduits travel fairly straight up into the upper magma reservoir at for example Grimsvötn Proper.
            During the Laki Eruption either residual magma from the original Lakí eruption (Lakí 1783 is properly named Skaftareldár), or came from a dyke from a central volcano (Hágöngur or Tordharhyrna). But the bulk volume of the fresh magma came directly up, not sideways, from the closes part of the boathull.

            We do know the distance away from Grimsvötn for the origin due to different composition, it change according to how far away it is from the plumehead.

            I hope this made it clearer.

        • Carl

          How warm was the Laki lavas then?

          Fagradalshraun was up to 1240 C

          Laki lavas what I read was around 1150 C .. suggesting they have spent some time underground cooling. The igenous crust in Vatnajökull is very thick: 50 kilometers thick! So things cools on the way up

          A direct mantle eruption at Vatnajökull coud erupt at temperatures at well over 1500 C Thats the temperatures of the Iceland Plume But the magma cools in accumulation zones before

          • I am not so old that I was around to stick a thermometer up the wazoo of Skaftareldár (Second Lakí eruption).

    • A true full direct mantle plume eruption in Iceland and Hawaii woud involve melts at well over 1500 C perhaps as hot as 1600 C souch lavas woud be blinding white hot and flow almost like water because of lack of polymerisation. Souch an eruption woud be a true hell flood … very much like liquid steel erupting.
      Perhaps there is deep pools of Komatites below Hawaii and Iceland

      These deep hot lavas almost never erupts because its cools on the way up and is stoored in magma chambers and accumulating zones where it cools down to 1200 C and below

      • Fagradalshraun is not even close to 1540 C / 1600 C

        But it was not a true plume eruption either came from a cooler arera in Iceland. The 1250 C is local mantle temperatures in Reykjanes.

        1600 C you finds in the deeper astenosphere below Vatnajökull and Hawaii

      • Expansion causes cooling, law of thermodynamics.
        Bot just gases but liquids too when pressure differentials are large may be significant (I haven’t bothered to work it out).

      • NAIP in greenland erupted basalts at 1400 C eruption temperatures in some temperatures

        Hawaiian LIP been subducted long ago under Asia: but the Birth Of Hawaiian Hotspot .. must have been a true hell show, perhaps involving komatites among the basalts.

        Birth of Galapagos Hotspot also was superhot and involved Cretaceous Age Komatites At Island of Gorgona and the late Precambrian Winnipegosis komatiite belt.

        Earths deeper interior is still hot enough To form these lavas during Major Superplume breakouts. But the uppermost mantle have cooled too much to produce them in large ammounts today.

        Super Earth class exoplanets are hotter inside because of their greater mass, They haves even more vigorous and deeper mantle convection, They may have abundant Komatites for many billions of years. Souch large terestrial planets, maybe mostly oceanic worlds, with small protocontinents speeding around and greenstone belts and plumes everywhere

    • Carl whats the temperature of that magma decompression plume hull?
      Iceland Plume is little over 1500 C But Thats down in the astenosphere too.

      A direct Plume eruption in Iceland woud be as hot as liquid iron almost

  13. 7:27 AM Canarian time a mag 5.1 quake and the cones are gaseous on one side and the vents

    • East side of cone seems to have a curtain of smoke ascending

    • A note fore those of you despartely searching for a tsunami generating “Flank Collapse” it is PROBABLY not going to happens. What you REALLY need to search for, are quakes along a decolement line under the island. This will be in or near a 17 km depth if El Hierro is any indication. I did extensive plotting of El Hierro and that is about the depth where the islands transition to the juraasic era sediment layer. I have ignored La Palma due to a disdain for their Scientific Coordinator… but that is an issue between him an I. As such, I have refused to “give a shit” and have carried on with my life as if he doen’s exist. False accusations can kiss my ass.

      Mind over matter, I don’t mind and he doesn’t matter. If people die, it is his ball of wax. For me to say otherwise would make me a moon-bat. I don’t play that game. It is an ultra low probability. But I will not play that game. Even if it does occur, the US Atlantic seaboard is in far lower danger than the fear mongerers claim. Energy dissipation models state so. I would have written a post about it, but real world stuff prevents me from having the time to reconstruct previous work or authoring it. I’ve been knocking down a few hundred km per day just trying to keep up with real world stuff.1 Not “over the road trucker” level driving… but enough to take the fight out of you after a day of it.

      On a more beneficial note… the seismic systems are more oriented towards looking for collapse style seismic events. This was apparent from El Hierro and required additional equipment to deal with the eruption they got. It is something that they really pay close attention to. If there is a threat, you can pretty much guarantee that is where their focus is at.

      1 A printer manufacturer typically ships a part to a site as a resolution to a major issue with a printer. I am then tasked with proceeding to the site to install the part in order to honor the manufacture’s warranty. Today, I drove about 140 km to a site only to discover that the part had been inadvertently discarded. Yeah… I’m not a happy camper about it… but “stuff” happens. I really would like my shoulder blade to quit hurting after crawling around on the floor for a couple of weeks to replace the main gear assy on another printer. But, it’s the nature of the beast. {I’m 60 and not as limber as I used to be} and no, I will not state the model or manufacturer, or the client. I fell into this “job” by chance and it’s not a bad gig… but it can be a bit rough on you when you are on site.

      • It is far more likely that the collapses occur as blocking events where slices of the island would peel off, one after another for a hundred years or so.

      • Yay Carl!

        Listen to this man… He knows his shit!

        @ Carl, my apologies for skirting close to the Not Nice level of response.

        • In this case it was highly nicely put.
          I know what he accused you of, if someone deserves a lambasting it would be that person.

      • Someone live on canary islands and that has not a “apocaliptic” disaster as ones intent day to day put on internet. Flank colapses has a common on canary islands (I live on one of them) but that has only appears on significative event, no with “crazy end of worlds teories”.

  14. Chad perhaps …
    Do you know How tall Mount Everest will become? India is still pushing like crazy into Asia and Russia.

    Any prehistoric Mountain Ranges thats grown into 14 kilometers tall above the sealevel? Can Mount Everest reach above 10 kilometers in the future?

    Everests summit is already 9000 meters above sealevel and fantasticaly unsuited to human life.
    Althrough the Everest complex itself is just around 2000 meters high. Everest is so very tall already that the dayskies are dark blue up there

    • Everest is already so tall that the cold is enough to freeze death persons for ethernity. When frozen the gut bacteria is inactive and frozen as well and the Bodies cannot decompose at all. They are frozen meat like Green Boots

      • “green boots?”… no comprehende…

        {I am not Spanish… please answer in English… or Pearl CGI.}

        Java or PhP would suffice. Even C if needed.

        • Worse, he could answer in Swedish…

          I gave up on programming languages after Visual Basic.

        • “Green Boots” was a climber that died near the summit of Everest and serves now as sort of a haunting reminder of the dangers up there. He was wearing neon green mountaineering boots and so eventually was given the moniker.

      • The possible maximum height is a function of the bedrock below, the weight of the mountain and the range, the speed of uplift vs erosion-speed…

        This is a guess, but I would think that Mt Everest is nearing it’s maximum height.

        @Jesper: I am also interested in the Green Boots 🙂

        @Lurking: I always get confused by Appalachia. Every single american that I know pronounces it differently.
        A bit of tongue in cheek I have now renamed it into Appalappachiaseed…
        Appala-CHIA or AppalASIA? With further permutations on the theme, no wonder my poor European brain is hurting 🙂

        • After about 10 km subaerial max., erosion overcomes growth I read. Of course that process could start a bit earlier. There’s only the Himalayas to find out.

      • Some information is true and important. Some truth is disgusting. This piece of information is maybe true, certainly very disgusting and – in my humble opinion – utterly unimportant. Refraining from describing human beings as meat wouldn’t hurt truth very much I guess.

        • Not meant to offense at all.
          I just dont know how to be social. Thats one reason I plans to quit society competely 🙂
          The world is not adapted for my autism

          Im not going to climb Everest .. its almost suicidal.

          But I know persons that climbed the summit without oxygen acually, I wonder how thats possible even. Extreme acclimatization?

          • Autism is not an eternal barrier Jesper, it is not curable but one can learn to live with it. Think of it like being fluent in two languages, one is original but the other is comfortable with practice. But I guess we are individual, so each to their own.

            As for Everest it is probably near maximum height, as Carl says. Maybe 10 km is possible if two granite bases collide but that is only a guess, and probably can only happen in the final stages of supercontinent formation. Maybe some mid Permian mountains were like this, as Pangea first formed.

          • And since Eurasia is about to split apart again it should be it for Himalaya in geological time scale.
            I am obviously talking about the proto-cracking going on at Lake Baikal and the Baltic Shield trajectory divergence.

          • Eurasian continent about to split again? This is news to me, but then again I am rather new to this field?

          • Any further info you or anyone could supply about Eurasia potentially starting to split apart?

            That’s profoundly interesting.

        • I think that remembering that we are a very diverse group is a good idea prior to getting upset. We speak and write all sorts of languages as our mother tongue, and that may cause phrasings to be a bit off sometimes.
          We also come with our various problems, handicaps, backgrounds, etcetera.

          It is therefore quite a good idea to read anything with that in mind. Otherwise it is quite easy to get offended when no offence was intended. And this in turn might hurt the one who wrote the thing originaly.

          So, let us have a chocolate chip cookie and some mint chocolate drink and appreciate our diversity.

    • Purportedly… the mountain range of the Ouchita-Appalatian mountains were much higher in the distant past. Now the Mississippi flows through that region.

      • Speaking of such…. recently… a 2nd cousin of mine got marrieed.. I was tasked with writing an article about the geology of the area. I failed… horribly.

        Spent most of my time socializing with my 1st cousin and never got around to visiting the 80 myr barrier reef that the article was based on.

    • Still frozen in perfect shape on Everest. The gut bacteria is inactive so he cannot decompose in the cold.
      Frozen meat really. They should do a DNA analysis to learn more about him.
      The brain is probaly in perfect shape, just frozen. Still Ice Crystals form in his cells, so not perfectly preserved.
      He is in a cave, otherwise the UV radiation woud start to break him down. Bodies everywhere on Everest

      Jesper, let us stay away from images of dead people. M’Kay!
      Definitely a warning for breaking the Be Nice-rule.
      /Admin

      • Mount Everest is terrfying
        Im never going to climb it!
        Even with oxygen mask, you may have problems with the low pressurize. Every year There are fatalities there.

        So not intrested in climbing
        I also climbed Mauna Loa thats taller 🙂

    • The great Pangaen mountain range of which the Appalachians are a remnant, but also places in Scotland and Baltica, so Sweden and Norway, is assumed to have had a height of around 10 km.

  15. The IGN rejects the Ritcher scale for earthquakes in the Canary Islands
    The institute uses the same formula but calculates the attenuation, which is different in each territory | The seismic risk in the Islands is greater than what is stipulated

    https://www.eldia.es/la-palma/2021/11/03/ign-desecha-escala-ritcher-contemplar-59085494.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dogtrack&fbclid=IwAR0SvaJlx1N7erhF0oW-5tq64M_tu_h6WKb7tqGN7MbScQlGHB3CH1lMoIQ

    • Not surprising.. A LOT of geophsisical organizations have their own ways of interpreting seismic events.

    • A bit of technical nitpicking here.
      I am surprised they used the words Richter-scale here. Nobody has used that for a goodly long time.
      The one used today is the Moment Magnitude-scale (Mw, but most often just abreviated M).
      Mw that is attentuated for local conditions is often called Local Scale.

    • They don’t seem to do moment tensors either. It’s in the Canary Islands, but I still haven’t seen a single beach ball.

  16. Notice to all

    I am “Fked”…. I may not offer sound advice.

  17. Lava continues to flow into the Halema’uma’u crater at Kilaūea

  18. Takes so long to fill up this pit
    I guess it just shows how huge halema’uma’us inner pit is! The inner pit is about as big as Nyiragongos caldera: huge!

    • Will take between 5 and 10 years to fill 🙂

      But I doubt it will get close before a rift eruption happens, the fill rate is currently only half of the total, the rest is going into the ERZ.

  19. Something for Carl Rhenberg

    Venus haves an insane basalt lava flow with a 10 km wide and almost 7000 kilometers long lava channel! Thats insane: Perhaps Earths CAMP ( Central Atlantic Magmatic Province ) event was the same?

    As Hector Noticed lava flows on the Mars and Venus can be on an INSANE scale really .. erupting thousands of km3 perhaps in a few days really .. They are preserved Flood Basalts
    One Mars old lava flows seems to have flowed 4000 kilometers in a few days

    Perhaps Siberian Traps and Central Atlantic Magmatic Province was just as crazy? On Earth things also tends to erode.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltis_Vallis

    • The Moon haves even lower bouyancy and gravity than Mars .. so you coud have gotten some really insane lunar eruptions .. in the Early Archean before the moon cooled off.

      Lunar magma chambers where massive .. large parts of the moon are sprayed with peles tears.. but it may also be condensed impact melt from impact rock vapour

    • No. Probably not. Venus is thought to have exchanged its whole crust in one blow, everything seems to be of equal age. That is assumed to have been around 500 Ma.

      • There is not much evidence for that idea though. The surface is all very young but there is no way to know with enough precision its age to say it was formed all at once.

        Instead I would say there is some evidence against it, for example, there are thrust faults almost all over the surface of the planet due to the worldwide compressional stresses. Some areas however have much bigger prominent thrust faults than others, these form veritable mountain ranges, and must be presumably in old areas. Some young lava flow areas do not have any thrust faults and are recent in age. So it rather seems to me that Venus resurfaces itself continuously through volcanism and tectonic processes like rifting, so that different areas of the planet have widely different ages. Although all of them relatively young compared to the whole history of the planet.

        • Possible. Waiting for DAVINCI and VERITAS. Very interesting mysterious planet. Albert’s beloved method to pull it further out could be interesting here.

          • Was thinking of this, Hectór and even underestimated the age:
            “Massive volcanic edifices do exist, however, perched above volcanic plains that cover 80% of the planet (Head et al. 1992). The remaining 20% has experienced severe tectonic disruption, possibly as a prelude to plains emplacement (Basilevsky and Head
            1995).
            The average crater density on Venus, as revealed by detailed
            radar images from the Magellan spacecraft, implies that the surface of the planet is 600–1100 Myr old (McKinnon et al. 1997,
            Phillips et al. 1992, Schaber et al. 1992). The nature and rates of
            the planetary resurfacing processes are recorded in the styles and
            distribution of modified craters. A distinctive feature of Venus’
            crater population is that only a small number of them are apparently modified by volcanism (Phillips et al. 1991, Schaber et al. 1992).
            https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.22.6440&rep=rep1&type=pdf

    • The youngest eruption of Mars was a radial fissure of the Elysium Volcanic Province, the eruption of Cerberus Fossae. This eruption issued from a series of giant parallel dikes that were up to 1000 kilometres long. It initially started small, for Mars, building up many volcanic shields and having fissure eruptions from various locations. At the end of the eruption a 400-kilometre long fissure opened up and released almost the entire volume of the event in a very short time, sending two raging floods of lava, one down Athabasca Valles the other down Marte Vallis. About 20,000 km3 of lava, at least, as a single flowing sheet. Lava that went down Marte Vallis was fast enough to erode down into the bedrock over a section ~80 kilometres wide of the centre of the flow. A few tens of meters of rock may have been removed in some locations. The Marte Vallis flow reached Amazonis Planitia. The bottom of Amazonis Planitia is a giant lava lake, but when I saw it I wasn’t very sure whether the lava lake came from the Cerberus Fossae eruption or from an earlier event of similar age, could have been the eruption of Grjota Valles too.

    • The volcanism of Mars is impressive in every way. Alba Mons for example has many lava tubes that issue from its summit and reach 900 kilometres downslope. What is sticking is not only their length but the thickness of the flow too, which in many cases is about 100 meters. The lava tubes keep making new outbreaks which over time raise the flow height. How long would such eruptions have lasted? I don’t know, but in order to construct such structures they clearly lasted far more than eruptions on Earth.

      • Mars coud still be active.
        Its a quite large planet.. much larger than our moon.
        Mars been volcanicaly active for most of its geological history. Mars is between Earth and the Moon in size, so the cooling rate should be between too!

        Mars is clearly in its dying phases today as the litosphere is thickening, it haves only 1/3 th of Earths geothermal gradient, but its still much hotter than Earths moon. But volcanism is winding down on Mars now

        Last Marsian eruptions happened just a few million years ago likley, some marsian lava meteorites on Earth formed 100 million years ago only as lava flows.

        Some Marsian surface flows maybe only 2 million years old. And the core is molten its been confirmed by INSIGHT

        • I personally think it is active. It is just a planet with different scales of volcanism compared to Earth, one needs to understand that if wanting to get how Martian volcanoes work.

          If 20,000+ km3 of lava come out in a single eruption there has obviously been a long build-up to it. Same with the radial fissures as with the summit shield overflows, which are also very large scale. Martian volcanoes have massive calderas, often 100 km wide and probably much more extensive storage areas, to hold magma for the giant eruptions, which require a very high supply to sustain. It would be difficult to keep such high supply permanently, and is more likely to come episodically in pulses.

          The closest comparison in Earth are Large Igneous Provinces, which are very rare and short lived. Hard to know, but maybe this is the character of Mars too. It is active but has much longer dormancies than Earth. Earth is a planet with tiny volcanoes that do tiny eruptions and very often. The scale of Martian and Venusian volcanoes is just different.

        • Héctor Sacristán

          Yes Mars is with certainly infrequently active: But remeber its 1/10 th of Earths mass: that have an huge impact on its cooling history

          Its hot enough for infrequent mantle plume outbreaks and flood basalts.

          But too cold and thick crusted for tectonics and small scale volcanism.

          INSIGHT have confirmed a litosphere thickness of around 480 to 570 kilometers, so its pretty thick. But Thats also very insulating

        • Yes, Mars is also different to Venus. During its early history there was some rifting, but it only affected a small part of the planet, and is gone now. Most of the highlands of Mars are haven’t been affected too much by tectonovolcanic processes. Volcanism has been reduced to the Tharsis area, and a few other small provinces. The floods of lava coming from these volcanic clusters may have inundated and resurfaced the lowlands. Mars only has 23 central volcanoes, 4 billion years of history but only 23 volcanoes, so no wonder they are gigantic if you concentrate the entire magmatic output of the planet through such a small handful of volcanoes. All volcanoes are probably very old, some of them billions of years old.

          Venus is much more dynamic with volcanoes and rifts covering the entire surface. In some regions you can see new rifts developing, and which might be active, that cut through all the volcanic units. One such area is Theia Mons, here there are several new volcanoes which have “recently” popped up. These volcanoes only have a handful of very young looking flows, with a strong white colour in the radar. They are very tall though but this must be due to endogenous growth. The older volcanoes instead seem to have sunk into the ground.

          But otherwise Venus and Mars have a similar style of volcanism, with giant eruptions and intrusions. Lava carved channels, coronas, wrinkle ridges (thrust faults), fields of satellite shield volcanoes. Perhaps Mars is a bit more violent though, its eruptions and intrusions seem somewhat grander in scale from what I can tell.

      • This is not the most accepted explanation for the channels. Many of the features seen in the large outflow channels are erosive. Lava does not do this well because of the high viscosity: the flow is laminar and therefore the flow speed at the contact with the surface is very low. Instead lava flow channels grow up rather than cut down. In effect they are roofless tubes.

        As an example, the tear-shaped islands seen in the flow channels fit with water but not lava.

        There are of courses massive lava flows on Mars and they do contain many flow features. But the large outflow channels are unlikely to be lava related. There is a lot of frozen water in the Martian crust. Volcanic heat can release water where it might not do on Earth

        • “Volcanic heat can release the water”.
          Q.: Can volcanic heat when it becomes overwhelming in the sense of too much oft it like possibly in Venus’ past also use up the water by total evaporation? And so end plate tectonics which need – it seems – water to a certain degree?

          • We now think that Venus never had liquid water. It was always too hot. On Earth, the water in the atmosphere condensed into rain during the first 100 million year, as the planet cooled down. On Venus it would have remained as a steam atmosphere. It was lost as water got into the upper atmosphere. Interesting, if you take Earth as it is now and evaporate all the oceans (do not try this at home), the oceans would not reform. It would become a stable steam atmosphere. That is different from 4 billion years ago because the Sun has grown brighter over time.

          • Thank you. Makes total sense.
            Your idea of pulling a planet out, was that a joke or do you think it could be done one day in the future?
            To Venus i.e.

        • Leverington makes a very good explanation of why to favour the volcanic hypothesis though.

          I could add a few things to his arguments though. One is that recent outflow channels are also seen on Io, another place with extreme volcanism and as far as I know no water. The channels of Mars and Venus are also identical and the floor is always a lava stream.

          The reason why I’m convinced of this view is that I know volcanic features very well. There are several examples of lava erosion from Hawaii that I have seen, particularly erosion along dikes. The great crack from which the 1823 eruption of Kilauea issued, the chasm opened up during the lateral draining in the Alae lava lake. So I know how to recognize them. Martian outflow channels always start from a similarly looking fissure although of much a larger scale, as expected from the much larger size of dikes.

          Some features are unmistakably lava made. For example, there are a few small channels excavated into the bedrock which issue from ring fissures in the slopes of the Tharsis Montes, why would water issue from a ring fissure? That is something magma does, as far as I know, not water. Also you can see secondary rootless dikes which are always present right next to the outflow channels. Sometimes the outflow channel ends in a dike and then reappears somewhere down that dike. Other times the channels turn into maze-like networks which do not look like made by water but could be explained by lava flowing along secondary dikes which intersect each other. Other small erosive channels issue from the top of small volcanic shields. Arguments could be endless when regarding their morphology which is very unique.

          • I think this needs images to illustrate the case. Perhaps a post.?

          • I think after this current article a post about volcanism again would be much appreciated, all this talk of politics and impending doom with no hope is a bit much especially with so many differing opinions.

            I am also always in support for anything involving Hawaii 🙂

      • Albert

        So Earth is now at the very inner edge of the habitable zone right?

        • The habitable zone is a bit of a fuzzy concept. It sounds easy but it ignores a lot of things. The earth has several stable ‘modes’ at its current location. One of them is fully frozen, one is fully boiled, and one is what we have. Only one of these is ‘habitable’.

          • You mean among other points that it ignores a magnetic field and vivid reasonable plate tectonics?

          • Those are minor and possibly irrelevant. E.g., plate tectonics has not always been present on earth. Important aspects include the amount of volatiles on a planet (very low on earth), thickness and opacity of atmosphere, and constancy of irradiation. Planetary sterilisation events are best avoided: no very big impacts, no massive stellar flares, no sudden superplume poisoning the oceans, etc

          • Thank you. I take from the following link that Earth might have had a sluggish lid regime during the “boring billion”, and that Mars might have a sluggish lid system.
            This means to me that Mars, contrary to Venus, could one day have plate tectonics, but possibly far in the future when the ice melts.
            https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2017.0406

      • Denaliwatch

        No Mars will not have plate tectonics In the future.
        Its litosphere is way too thick for that, and there is not enough internal heating todays to drive tectonics.
        Mars is simply to small and chunky.

        Mars is only 1/10 th of Earths mass, so it have cooled alot more, cooled too much for tectonics.

        Earth being the largest terestrial planet in this local solar system, have the most internal heating, and the thermaly thinnest litosphere,
        Our thin litosphere is why its mobile.. and having a relativly plastic astenosphere

        Mars will probaly die competely Volcanicaly the next 1 billion years as the litosphere thickens even more

  20. La palma, Seismic activity from 7:00 Local.
    2.9 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 13:35:23 13 +info
    3.1 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 13:26:53 14 +info
    3.5 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 13:14:16 III 13 +info
    2.5 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/03 13:04:32 10 +info
    2.5 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 12:55:57 11 +info
    2.9 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 12:44:38 14 +info
    2.5 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/03 12:09:43 10 +info
    2.5 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/03 11:52:31 10 +info
    2.8 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/03 11:44:04 15 +info
    2.8 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 11:19:25 11 +info
    3.4 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 11:18:17 15 +info
    3.2 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/03 10:53:52 11 +info
    3.7 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 10:43:37 III-IV 14 +info
    3.2 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/03 10:38:00 III 12 +info
    3.2 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 10:37:59 15 +info
    2.8 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/03 10:19:11 14 +info
    2.5 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/03 10:01:43 11 +info
    2.9 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 09:36:20 12 +info
    3.1 mbLg W VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/03 09:26:10 36 +info
    3.4 mbLg S EL PASO.ILP 2021/11/03 09:23:56 36 +info
    3.3 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/03 09:20:30 35 +info
    3.0 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/03 09:19:23 37 +info
    3.3 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/03 09:15:02 35 +info
    3.2 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/03 09:12:23 35 +info
    2.6 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 09:01:50 13 +info
    2.7 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP 2021/11/03 08:46:39 10 +info
    2.7 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 08:23:44 11 +info
    2.5 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/03 08:19:57 10 +info
    3.1 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/03 08:14:47 11 +info
    3.2 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 07:58:45 12 +info
    2.6 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 07:33:20 10 +info
    5.0 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/03 07:27:39 IV-V 35 +info
    4.8 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/03 07:27:36 S 36 +info
    2.7 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 07:18:06 13 +info
    2.9 mbLg NE FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.IL 2021/11/03 07:02:41 11 +info

    • I picked a few remarkable from that list above.
      M4.8 and M5.0, just 3 seconds inbetween. Also felt on some other Canary islands than La Palma.

      es2021vntvm 03/11/2021 07:27:39 07:27:39 28.5704 -17.8338 35 5.0 mbLg IV-V SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP
      es2021vntvk 03/11/2021 07:27:36 07:27:36 28.5746 -17.7923 36 4.8 mbLg Sentido SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP

      And there is another one. It took some time since the last long deep tremor event, these are the quakes associated with the long tremor about 36 km deep.

      es2021vnxtd 03/11/2021 09:26:10 09:26:10 28.5908 -17.8267 36 3.1 mbLg W VILLA DE MAZO.ILP
      es2021vnxrg 03/11/2021 09:23:56 09:23:56 28.5776 -17.8604 36 3.4 mbLg S EL PASO.ILP
      es2021vnxoh 03/11/2021 09:20:30 09:20:30 28.5888 -17.8143 35 3.3 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP
      es2021vnxni 03/11/2021 09:19:23 09:19:23 28.5654 -17.8530 37 3.0 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP
      es2021vnxjq 03/11/2021 09:15:02 09:15:02 28.5729 -17.8554 35 3.3 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP
      es2021vnxhi 03/11/2021 09:12:23 09:12:23 28.5684 -17.8519 35 3.2 mbLg N FUENCALIENTE DE LA PALMA.ILP

      Lists & graph credits IGN.

      The measured random seismic amplitude has gone down and is about the same as the first weeks of the eruption. Also the number of earthquakes larger than M2.0 has declined.
      Clouds are obscuring the volcano at the moment; this morning the fountains were less high/strong as in the past weeks. Not sure about the amounts of magma that come down; last night there was a cascade of lava at feed #1 visible though.

      • There is an extended quake event there on the seismograms, seems to be about 20 mins or so, is this some magma displacement? I see it on 3 Canary islands seismograms.

  23. #Pevolca update to Wednesday, November 3

    Positive signs are registered on the evolution of the volcano, with values of sulfur dioxide and the volcanic tremor downwards. These indicators, however, remain high to speak of the end of the eruption.

  24. OT. I just came across the following link to Aurora Australis, which may be of interest. This book was published in Antarctica during Shackleton’s 1907-09 expedition (with wooden boards and green twine binding).. It contains a fascinating account of the ascent of Mount Erebus.
    https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-AA-00003-00008/1
    I’m a long-time lurker who also needs to thank all the authors of the great articles and comments!

  26. Superhabitable Super Earth Alien planets?
    Yes maybe

    A Rocky Planet somewhat larger than Earth coud be ideal for life, If it orbits a somewhat smaller sun that lives longer. ( 3 Earth masses and a K class orange dwarf sun )

    Gravity wont be crushing either..
    3 Earth masses gives almost No diffrence in gravity. You needs 10 Earth masses for
    2X Earth gravity. So large Super Earths will haves a supprisingly earthlike gravity.

    A somewhat larger planet will be ideal for keeping Plate Tectonics active, beacuse of a hotter interior than Earths, The interior retains more heat from formation, and more radioactive decay in a larger planet. Plate Tectonics is crucial in recycling Carbon Dioxide and Minerals. On somewhat larger Super Earths 2 to 3 Earth masses .. Tectonics maybe very lively with a thinner litosphere under more stress.
    Moderate sized Super Earths may have very fast tectonics indeed, forming an oceanic planet with a chaos of microcontinents, and mountain ranges and volcanoes everywhere.
    Icelands and New Zeelands everywhere on souch planet. Chaos Tectonics maybe in Big oceans

    Tectonics is crucial for keeping the CO2 levels so biosphere can photosyntesis and breathe.
    On Super Earths plenty of volcanic outgassing and as well as fast subduction may keep the CO2 more steady than Earths and avoid snowball events and climate disasters.
    Tectonics is the planets CO2 thermostat.
    Moderatly sized Super Earth class planets maybe ideal at this recycling with their larger mass.

    Our Super Earth will also have a very powerful magnetic field, with core temperatures of over 11 000 C the entire core maybe liquid, and combined with the large planets fast spinn, You will have a very very powerful magnetic field.
    Thats very useful protection when orbiting orange dwarf stars that can flare often. Souch a magnetic field coud be much stronger than Earths. The core will be liquid for much longer than Earths too due to the planets greater mass.

    A somewhat denser atmosphere than Earths will also be very useful on these planets. Denser Atmosphere allows you to orbit further out in the habitable zone, denser atmosphere also evens out the temperatures, keeping the poles warmer and as well as helping the winters to get less severe. With more air pressure You gets supercharged creatures with oxygen and CO2, and needs less in PPM than Earth to keep the climate stable. Denser air also warms on its own, less temperature diffrence between Equator and poles, and poles maybe Ice Free.
    There will also be less deserts and more humidity, and rainfall.

    A somewhat smaller Star than Earths sun sounds ideal too: it lives longer

    • Souch planets maybe have very very very stable climates because of this
      And climate changes are less jumpy
      Forested Green worlds with overall temperate tepid climate.

      Perhaps being warm worlds similar to Cretaceous Thermal Maximum or Carboniferus

      Its also possible they will be competely oceanic: a hotter mantle stores less water than Earths: Earth haves many oceans of water in its mantle minerals acually

      • I thought the Carboniferous was generally cooler? Or was that just around the time of the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse?

      • Our Super Earth will be a green and lush world like early carboniferus, because of high volcanic CO2 emissions from the hot interior. Perhaps similar to the Cretaceous Thermal Maxiumum

    • Nice thoughts and pictures.
      What exactly to you mean by “chaos Tectonics” though?

    • Our Super Earth with a hotter interior may have hyperactive early archean style tectonics

      Super Earth would likely be very geologically active with numerous ocean ridges and hyperactive spreading centers and subduction zones.. chaos.. 🙂

      Many plates, rifts, ranges and volcanoes; possibly so hot inside that its plates are more elastic than Earth’s, storms written in stone

      The protocontinents are small and
      no or very small cratons because the high level of geologically activity.
      The result is an island world with no stable landmasses. Landmasses in style of Icelands, New Zeelands, Samoas, Mariana trench arcs dot the planet

      Many twisted Island arcs, rifts, small protocontinents, spindley small landmasses

      Very difftent from Earths chunky tectonics

    • Such very habitable planets.. are soure to exist around cool K dwarf stars

      They will be forested garden worlds
      But huge oceans too.. souch worlds will be a world of seafarers.

      Numerous small continents woud increase land biodiversity alot

    • Our Super Earth will be locked in an ethernal Cretaceous like climate
      Beacuse of lots of volcanic outgassing and a somewhat denser atmosphere. Tectonics and ocean removes excess CO2

      No Ice on the poles .. and perhaps
      No deserts either .. humid and rainy and quite cloudy

      Populated by reptilian like lifeforms 🙂

        • You and me both. I live in a place with reasonably cold winters and I long to be somewhere colder.

          One day. I’m not made for heat and humidity. 15F is more my style.

          Maybe one of those isolated volcanoes not near many people could toss me an explosive assist and knock down the temps for a few years?

          • I come from one of the colder parts of the world (northern Sweden).
            Like most who come from there I hate cold with a vengence.
            My plan is to retire at the equator in our little beach house in Guatemala (if it is still above water then).
            Nice, warm, and drop dead gorgeous sunsets over a black lava sand beach. Heaven…

          • If you lose your house go to the Canaries, best climate I’ve seen so far besides Mauritius, similar setting concerning latitude on the other side of the Equator. Guatemala must be a show. Hope you don’t lose your house.

          • It all depends on if the ocean level rises to much. Or a hurricane takes. Or if a tsunami takes it away…

            Anyway, my family lives there, so I love being there.
            The beach is known as Hawaii Monterrico, it is probably the most beautiful beach on the planet, and I have seen quite a few contenders around the globe. Also, my wife comes equiped with a house overlooking the Amatitlán Caldera and Pacaya, Fuego and Agua… So, we have mountainviews for when we get tired of the ocean. 😉

      • Climate will be warmer than Earths .. But not as extreme

        Earth – 90 C to +57 C

        Our Super Earth
        – 8 C to + 34 C

        Denser atmosphere evens out the temperatures

      • might as well make them amphibian if it is always damp

    • Entire core maybe Liquid .:. 🙂
      Very poweful magnetosphere
      And the active sun .. will create some serious Aurora.. over the poles

    • Landmasses coud be very Earthlike .. But more volcanoes and mountain ranges. Alaska and Samoas, New Zeeland, Hawaiis everywhere.

      The climate is warmer than Earth.. and yet milder at same time under the dense atmosphere

      Big oceans and many isolated protocontinents and High biological diversity

      1, 3 Earths gravity

    • Very fascinating consecpt:

      Equator the same as Earth .. But much much milder poles .. Thats temperate and forested at same CO2 levels as Earth .. denser atmosphere combined with a little weaker sun

      A mild and tepid global climate
      No Antartica or Sahara

      Also a huge geothermal potential in souch large terestrial planet.

      Chad .. perhaps
      Woud evolution get more sluggish under souch gentle stable superhabitable conditions?

      Evolution likes climate changes and disasters perhaps?

    • Lots of volcanoes, mountain ranges, trenches, spreading ridges, alpine orogeny, metamorphism, granite generation, mineral recycling

      Thats What you get on these ”Super Earths” If they are in habitable zone

    • I think everyone is a bit simplistic about what life needs.
      It definitely, by definition, needs an energy source. This could be geothermal/geochemical or radiation from the local sun.
      We have no idea what other chemistries can produce ‘life’, which I would define as a self-replicating structure powered externally and preferably with enough local variation to comprise and ecology.
      So in my book there is no de-facto reason why venus does not have some sort of life and I would expect it in the Jupiter cloud tops (perhaps floating on gasbags if evolved enough).
      Earth lost much of its atmosphere in the collision with tethis, otherwise we would be more like venus with a very deep atmosphere. Venus out somewhere near mars may well be perfectly inhabitable with a big greenhouse effect.
      I can see no reason why pressure at the surface (or in the atmosphere) should be relevant.
      I can see no reason why water should be important per se, although from our experience it works.
      Photosynthesis on earth is tricky, requiring the ‘simultaneous’ absorption of TWO (different) photons. It would be easier round a hotter sun with more UV.
      Other photosynthetic pathways for other electromagnetic wavelengths could be imagines, particularly longer wavelengths on cold planets.
      We should try to be less parochial.

      • There is no comprehensive definition of ‘life’. We only know of one form of life, which is a bit limited. Lots of definitions exist, but they are descriptive rather than definitive. For instance, some could describe the growth of a crystal, which after all is a self replicating structure. The bottom line is that life is a process, not a specific structure, and that it is uses sub processes also found in the non-living world. It differs from those by extreme complexity. It is a bit like the difference between a transistor and a computer. On Earth, perhaps the fundamental process that allowed chemistry to become life was the development of the cell membrane. We know there was only a very brief window of opportunity for life to form, because life only developed once: all life we know has a single common ancestor. Perhaps Earth never was an ideal environment for it. So yes, we should be very open and be aware that we may not recognize other forms of life. But perhaps life really was a ‘once in a lifetime’ event, and will be very rare.

        • You make me cheerful here. I always saw mountains as a form of life, and when the kids were smal I talked to them, and the kids liked that. So, it’s very interesting what you wrote about crystals.

    • I see it as a very intresting idea
      Even taken seriously by astronomers
      ”Superhabitable Exoplanets”

      Only Chad the paleo: expert maybe answer this: But will evolution go sluggish under souch gentle superhabitable conditions?
      Souch planets may have little or no climate changes and changes in atmospheric compositons over long timescales.

      Always gentle and mild conditions on the surface, But with lots of geological activity.

      Earths climate jumps between
      Ice Ages and Greenhouses

      A Super Earth may not do that at all with their very highly efficent plate tectonics gas recycling

      • Evolution isn’t powered by change, although that helps. If there is no change then you end up with a local maximum of survivability but there is always the chance of jumping to a bigger local maximum, just its less frequent. Even in a test tube bacteria will compete until one is the best adapted and change tails off (not unexpectedly).

    • Earth’s core is currently believed to be 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

  27. Jesper

    You wrote: “Not meant to offense at all.
    I just dont know how to be social. Thats one reason I plans to quit society competely.”

    I say: No, you must not. There has never been a world with so much understanding for all kinds of limitations as the world of today. Be thankful. Concerning differences it is a better world than everything before. Think about how the National Socialists could get a large majority to help in killing Jews (different religion), Roma (different people), homosexuals (different sex) and people like you (different way of looking at things). You should read about the T4-Program, T for Tiergartenallee 4. After that be glad you didn’t live then and there.
    And be proud to be Swedish. The Swedish got the Danish Jews out in an overnight action when the NS started invading Denmark, and helped them to survive.

    • Besides though you should try to grasp that people don’t understand the way you think esp. when they don’t know you and esp. online. I’ve gotten to know you a little about ten days ago, so I just skipped the frozen section. Chad knows you very well. Be thankful for VC.

    • I was pointing out a disgusting description of human bodies at Mt.Everest as “frozen meat”. Jasper said that he can’t see the point because he is autistic and repeated his statement about the human bodies. I said that it is still disgusting no matter who’s painting the picture, but I accept that Jasper can’t feel that. It’s o.k. To include here into the discussion the most horrible and inhuman crimes that have been comitted, the criminal acts of the Nazis, seems to me very strange and very wrong. More so since the most brutal and primitive individuals of these ethically underdeveloped criminals would have had no problem with calling dead human bodies by the very phrase that was used here.

      I hate to give this statement in such a nice place, the wonderful VC, but it seems that I had to.

    • Jesper seems to socialize just fine to me, I adore reading all his thoughts and musings (like above).

      Some wonderfully imaginative and interesting thoughts coming from him.

      We’re all “abnormal” and different in our own ways.

      Keep on writing Jesper, I for one care about what you have to say.

    • I like how precisely they conserved the eruption style!
      You can clearly see the familiar explosive and effusive vent in the picture!

  33. Denaliwatch, Jesper & Quinauberon.
    I’m off to bed. Just because I am out, it does not mean that I have not roped in an Admin in a completely different time zone to keep an eye on you 3.

    The discussion up above is over.
    If I find any more on it when I get up in the morning I will be about as polite about things as the southern end of a north-going mule.

  35. It always easy to criticise politicians.

    But the kicker is that as a free citizen of a democratic society, if you think that politicians are that bad, then you have a civic responsibility, a duty even, to stand for office yourself, and try to put yourself in a place where you can make what you consider to be the right decisions.

    It’s a shame that not enough people have the rocks to do that.

      • We do vote, which is free.
        So as a population we get the politicians we deserve.
        Trump was voted in legally by americans. Its their right, whilst we can deplore much of who he is and what he stands for he is not remotely as bad as most developing world ‘leaders’, many of who strip their country bare and impoverish their populations and we still invite them to buckingham palace.
        Not many demonstrations against Mugabe for example, back in the day.
        Too many people seem to have it in for our (UK) politicians and all americans for no good reason than sever prejudice, as far as I can tell. Every country has its Trump and its extreme left and right and all of them are not good for society IMHO.

    • You are absolutely right, being a politician is hard.
      There are also many poliiticians who are good people with good intentions, I would even venture out and state that most politicians fall into this category.

      Problem is that for all politicians the name of the game is to be reelected, this means compromising, adjusting themselves to current political trends, voting yes on things that they dearly believe should a no, and so on and so forth.
      This is the political game. It is part of democracy, and it is a part of our checksume to not be in the hands of the politicians that do politics out of bad faith. The last group is thankfully far and few between, but they sure do a lot of damage if they get into power.

      Most often all the politicing is a good thing, we tend to forget that.
      But, once every few decades comes a problem that can’t be solved on consensus making and politics. Watered out compromises did not solve the problems behind the second world war, Chamberlain tried for dead life this method and it got him nowhere rapidly.

      The problem is that a politician is following the trends of the people to get reelected,, but a centennial problem requires someone to point in the right direction and take the lead in a direction that may be uncomfortable and unpopular in the short run, but that will save countless lives and uphold democracy.

      Problem is that true leadership is a rare beast. My gripe was not against politicians, my gripe was against them not leading and being leaders showing leadership.
      I hope this clarified what I wrote.

      • Perfect. But I think Chamberlain didn’t want to see the Elephant in the middle of the room, and there are many like him today. It’s more comfortable to walk around the elephant all the time.
        Somebody once suggested to me to come join their party and become a politician. I didn’t because I can’t talk well. Talking is my deficit, hear, hear, Jesper. Regularly, when I’m in England, I stop talking, and on the boat I start a conversation in French. The French, contrary to rumours, are a lot more tolerant with foreigners having an accent than the British. They are extremely happy when people speak some French.

        • I meant talking well enough, rhetorics, important for politics. In my country we have another problem: Those people suggested I do health politics. Later on we had a lady who could have done that well. She ended up doing first family politics, then the army (a catastrophe), and now she is the boss in Brussels. She is a doctor. We have this kind of thing all the time. We have somebody doing health politics now who was educated as a banker.
          If I had to do health politics today I would boldly cut down on all the superfluous stents for healthy people, unnecessary implants which means neglecting conservative therapy first – we are leading in the world in these things and consequently! we die two years earlier than the French, Spanish, Swiss, Italians or Swedish on an average. Americans also die earlier, but there are mixed reasons for that.
          I would therefore be the Health Minister for one year max. It’s all business and lobbyism, Carl. And when people are intelligent and bold enough to go against it the media writes them off. I believe the system is rotten inside.

        • Mo, Chamberlaine didn’t want to be responsible for another bloodletting on a global scale bigger than The Great War and including bombable civilians. Sadly he didn’t quite see that dangeld never works, you just get enslaved.

          • @ admin: Sorry, not aware sometimes that simple comparisons might lead to this thinking. A simple commoner though isn’t responsable for these things though. A simple commoner is just a simpleton in the end. But right, this kind of analyzing belongs elsewhere where it is done all the time. Thinktanks i.e.

        • French are often quite happy to speak English if you are not a native English speaker.
          They tend to see it as that you are on level ground since neither are speaking the others language.

      • My gripe with them is that they are, by and large, good talkers and poor thinkers.
        Not surprising, nobody with a brain would want to be a politician.
        Your private life is pried into, you are slandered, you are threatened and generally abused, and get paid not much.
        In bygone days (say 1950) politicians were typically self-made men or inherited wealth kicked out of the family business by their kids.
        Most had significant experience of running things (if just their own estates) because those that didn’t tended to go bust before they got old.

  36. Aurora seen widely across the UK tonight. May be more intense storming to come later so worth a look north for anyone with clear skies.

    https://twitter.com/RareBirdAlertUK/status/1456027988303167498

    RareBirdAlertUK @RareBirdAlertUK
    38m
    Aurora Borealis burning bright in the skies over North Norfolk tonight, seen here from @CleyMillNorfolk
    . Thanks @chunder10
    for the heads up. @EDP24
    @BBCLookEast
    @_SpaceWeather_

    • Space Weather Message Code: ALTK07
      Serial Number: 117
      Issue Time: 2021 Nov 04 0001 UTC

      ALERT: Geomagnetic K-index of 7
      Threshold Reached: 2021 Nov 03 2359 UTC
      Synoptic Period: 2100-2400 UTC

      Active Warning: Yes
      NOAA Scale: G3 – Strong

      NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at
      http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation

      Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 50 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude.
      Induced Currents – Power system voltage irregularities possible, false alarms may be triggered on some protection devices.
      Spacecraft – Systems may experience surface charging; increased drag on low Earth-orbit satellites and orientation problems may occur.
      Navigation – Intermittent satellite navigation (GPS) problems, including loss-of-lock and increased range error may occur.
      Radio – HF (high frequency) radio may be intermittent.
      Aurora – Aurora may be seen as low as Pennsylvania to Iowa to Oregon.

    • Guess who a) missed it, and b) had cloud cover anyway. Yes. Me.
      On the UK storm watchers community my tag line is: “I am the space between storms.” This appears to be true for geomagnetic ones, too. 🙁

  37. Hey Albert, how much energy does a dwarf nova have? I am preparing an article.

  38. La Palma constant earthquakes until 06:30 then all have suddenly stopped.

    Could this be a blockage or something else ?

    Tremor is still high though.

    • When all of a signal disappears like that it means that the either the equipment has gone dark, or the connection has gone.
      There is always a little bit of tremor from waves, wind, squirrels… etcetera. And we are seeing nothing on it, so dead.

      I guess a technician will give the sleepy seismo a wakeup call soon enough. 🙂

  39. Also Chased By Sea Monsters / Walking With Sea Monsters is souch an INSANELY GOOD tv series! As Nigel Marven travels back in time and dives with prehistoric sea predators. It really is my childhood this TV series. And its now almost legendary… From the producers of Walking With Dinosaurs. Chased by seamonsters was released in 2003.
    I knows its fake as hell, But its soure is fun!
    For me its massive nostalgia to the 2000 s 🙂

    They did an amazing work with the soundtrack and the atmosphere in this series. Megalodon, Dunkleosteus, are pure terror and tought it was real as a child when I watched this TV series.
    The CGI still holds up very well until this day.

    You can see all the Episodes here:

    http://www.documentaryarea.tv/player.php?title=Chased%20by%20Sea%20Monsters%201of3

    https://www.documentarymania.com/player.php?title=Chased+by+Sea+Monsters+2of3

    https://www.documentarymania.com/player.php?title=Chased+by+Sea+Monsters+3of3

    • Really is an INSANE tv seriers and Im so happy its archived on the internet Jasper James is the producer.
      This was the best of the Walking With Series.. Terror of the Seas

      Nigel Marven is souch a good host too for this and he was really taking it seriously too.

    • Chased by Seamonsters made me nervous to swim for years hahah : O

      • Nice. I’ve feared swimming in the ocean since the movie Jaws. I prefer üools. Not on boats though (Thunderball) 😉

    • When I was a kid I had several books on Dinosaurs – of course. One of them was a huge book with the wonderful pictures of Zdanek Burian. Tarbosaurus showing off? Yes! Trilobites twiddling around on the silurian sea ground? Sure! Sea monsters fighting? Bingo. C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate? I don’t think so.

      But a pale sun on a Wednesday afternoon in Carboniferous with Meganeura wobbling through the muggy air? Here you are:

        • Insects existed in enormous abundance in Jurassic.. They got on land as far back as in Silurian

          In Cambrian to Ordovician you had gigantic sea Crustaceans that grew to the size crocodiles! So atropods been around for a very long time

          • You are right. I read that somewhere once, but it was wrong. It might also have been something about insects that need blossoms. It might have been about bees. Wasps were there before. Bees: late Cretacious.
            Ashes on my head. Not overly interested in insects. Saw a gigantic hornet in France recently.

    • Link to all episodes in HD there
      Amazing TV series this this

      Nigel Marven really is the only ideal host that They coud chose for
      Chased by Seamonsters

      Its the best of the Walking With franscise in my opinion: even if its fake as hell with time travel

    • This series is totaly nuts …
      And Nigel Marven takes it with absolute passion 🙂

  42. So Carl. Quinauberon, Jesper and I are still talking to each other. This time about monsters, better maybe. Hope you have a nice day. No war on VC.

    I was wondering the other day whether the topic land slide, also submarine, in the past might be a good topic for somebody on VC.
    We have a nice subareal guy in Tyrol (no volcanism involved): Tschirgant, about 3000 years ago:
    https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Geological-map-of-the-Tschirgant-rockslide-area-at-the-confluence-of-the-Inn-River-and_fig5_266383672

    PDF accessible.

  44. The ash is but gone, and there is only white smoke/steam left.
    Wonder if there is still active lava after all, as somehow the volcano seems to have internal issues?
    Btw, TV Canarias, which feed both into afarTV and the http://www.youtube.com/embed/INvrtMg5tSQ link, have a problem as well.

  45. La palma new “3.0” earthquake (revised to 2.9). Interesting 2 hours pause
    3.2 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/04 12:37:16 15 +info
    2.9 mbLg SW VILLA DE MAZO.ILP 2021/11/04 12:27:06 11 +info


    I waiting to more 4+-5 earthquakes.

    • That’s loud!
      And thanks for the links, I was looking in on the Afar camera with the sound off, thinking the volcano had gone quiet. Obviously not!

      • The activity seems more stable with less tremors, quakes, ash and lava… but lava can be less visible, flowing on lava tubes.

  47. A bit off-topic: I was looking for volcano craters in the big african desert (there are quite a few!). Didn’t expect to find this:

      • Yes. I was already reading through Wikipedia’s explanations of the Tibesti volcanos. Not even for the first time. Another interesting volcano: The one very close to Medina (lava once almost swallowed the holy city).

    • Mantle Plumes there…. Under the thick Saharan Litosphere.. and you gets isolated small volcanic provinces, the crust is moving very slowly there too. Compositons varies from mafic to sillic depending on How fresh the magma is. There is both calderas, stratovolcanoes, cinder cones and pahoehoe flow fields in Sahara.
      The plumes are probaly not extremely powerful: litosphere is 130 km thick there. Emi Koussi is already huge, But been growing there for a very long time slowly. Libya haves a gigantic pahoehoe flow field, thats the dark 200km wide spot there. Quite marsian in landscape: with Big volcanoes and Only one plate and deserts, althrough Mars dont have the sillica rich crust.

      If Hawaii Plume was under the Saharan Litosphere you either get something bigger than Siberian Traps or perhaps Shield Volcano Thats many 10 s X Olympus Mons size if it was placed there for 70 million years.
      Thats how productive Hawaii is,
      its the fast moving seafloor in pacific that limit the size of the hawaiian volcanoes in the pacific.

    • No, it just means that as the southern part where the eruption is has moved away from the northern site. It’s part of the deflation of the volcanic area.

      • I speak French. They are happy with my French, and the Italians use to say about my Italian: Parla molto bene l’italiano. Wrong. Parlo molto rotten l’italiano. Only the British aren’t happy with the language I speak best. The Americans are, though. Americans are mostly fun to have around.

        • Tu ferais mieux d’aller au VC bar.
          You better head to the VC bar.
          (Friendly but persistent tone).

          • Misunderstanding of yours. Not looking for anything except science. A bit distracted yesterday maybe as a friend has C.

        • Any Icelandic speakers here? Wife and I have been three times and have taken courses.

          Challenging but very fun language, doable with practice like any other hard language to learn for non-natives.

          It took me, no joke, 2-3 years of saying Ellafjallajökull in my head before I was able to get the pronunciation down close enough to where an Icelander won’t immediately burst out laughing lol.

  49. There are lots of talks about Io’s, monsters (politics included) and other chitchats lately at vc.
    Can’t we take them to the bar? As that’s the spot where these belong and there are the free drinks.

    Pardon me.

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