[HN Gopher] Eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula
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Eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula
Author : tosh
Score : 68 points
Date : 2024-02-08 17:39 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ruv.is)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ruv.is)
| throwup238 wrote:
| Man that video of the lava from the airplane looks gorgeous. The
| Reykjanes Peninsula has the best eruptions! Picturesque but
| without the threat of pyroclastic flows killing everything in
| sight.
|
| Are there volcano eruption chasers in Iceland like there are
| tornado chasers in the US? Seems like it would be a rather
| intermittent but exciting hobby since it's easier to get quite a
| bit closer.
|
| The Icelandic Civil Defense is also awesome. They have some
| guidelines for gas heater use during eruptions that includes:
| _Remember other heating options, such as cuddling under blankets,
| wearing the wool socks gifted to us at Christmas, and closing
| curtains over windows._
| meheleventyone wrote:
| This set of eruptions has already killed one person who fell
| into one of the cracks in Grindavik and the current lack of hot
| water could be dangerous if not resolved quickly. My wife's
| grandfather is in his mid-80s and is in hospital in Keflavik
| without hot water and there's nowhere to move him at the
| moment, just extra blankets on a day where it's -6C. So it
| might seem benign but that's not the case.
| avar wrote:
| The eruption didn't kill that person, gung-ho working
| practices and the lack of strictly adhering to something like
| OSHA killed that person.
|
| He was working around a newly opened fissure without being
| clipped into something like a safety harness, which I daresay
| is standard practice in most of the rest of Europe and the US
| in similar circumstances.
|
| The soil shifted, or he fell. In either case someone directly
| or indirectly working as a contractor for the government died
| as a result of unsafe and obviously dangerous work practices.
|
| The government then went into overdrive to push the narrative
| that these fissures were so dangerous in general that they
| had to evacuate the town immediately.
|
| That can _also_ be true, but the immediate cause is needless
| and dangerous expediency.
|
| In the end they fell into shit and came out smelling like
| roses, because the eruption happened to start a few days
| later.
|
| The issue of that easily preventable death was quickly
| forgotten by most (but e.g. [1], in Icelandic, raises so some
| of the same concerns).
|
| The evacuation order at the time had nothing to to with an
| imminent eruption, just the supposed general danger to the
| public from shifting soil and fissures.
|
| Some other eruption in the area was expected eventually, but
| that it happened so fast came as a surprise.
|
| 1. https://heimildin.is/grein/20601/
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > The eruption didn't kill that person, gung-ho working
| practices and the lack of strictly adhering to something
| like OSHA killed that person.
|
| The eruption killed them, however it's phrased. I'm aware
| of the semantic arguments, but it's a mistake to apply them
| to reality and I'm not going to engage with them with a
| person dead and more threatened, including the person who
| posted above!
|
| > the immediate cause is needless and dangerous expediency
|
| Why should we believe that and not the government?
| nottorp wrote:
| So when they say 'without hot water' they actually mean
| 'without heating'?
|
| For someone who isn't in Iceland that's not clear.
| avar wrote:
| Yes, it's being lost in translation.
|
| The notion that you might heat a house with electricity or
| by setting trees or dinosaurs on fire is so foreign to
| Icelanders that they don't think this is worth clarifying
| in the English translation of the news feed.
|
| It'll have other long-tail effects, e.g. some people with
| outdoor hot tubs in the area are probably scrambling to
| drain them and all their plumbing now. Some rely on
| constant drip heating to avoid the pipes bursting.
|
| Why are outdoor hot tubs full in the first place when it's
| -10degC (15degF) outside?
|
| Well _obviously_ when boiling water practically bubbles out
| of the ground for free you 're going to get in it at
| scalding temperatures even if you need to dig it out of the
| snow first. Doesn't that go without saying?
| samus wrote:
| I for sure hope they thought about the risk of that
| infrastructure being damaged. There better be backup
| heating sources at least for hospitals.
| avar wrote:
| In general the backup plan in Iceland is "Well, I guess
| we're having to wear all this clothing we put on so we
| don't die of exposure when we venture outside inside the
| house now.".
|
| I think the hospitals have backup diesel _electric_
| generators, but in general nobody 's got backup heating,
| except perhaps the odd free-standing electric heater.
|
| I don't know, but I'd expect someone at the hospital
| there is thinking of running those in select places.
|
| Icelandic media is now patiently explaining to people the
| upsides ("yay, heat!") and downsides (you might die) of
| running the propane gas heaters that have just sold out
| in enclosed spoces:
| https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/2024-02-08-ad-ymsu-ad-
| hug...
| samus wrote:
| Thanks for the information. Without electricity, the
| situation would become _really_ gnarly, as those heaters,
| hairdryers, and electrical stovetops could also be used
| for heating.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Yes, sorry!
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Your grandfather-in-law must be alarmed, already in the
| hospital. I hope he and your family are safe.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I love a government entity with a sense of humor. In Minnesota,
| the feds can have our mildly entertaining road signs when they
| pry them from our cold dead hands
| https://www.kltv.com/2024/01/21/despite-new-federal-standard...
| (but it's 50 degrees right now so, you know, not particularly
| cold)
| jcranmer wrote:
| It's "just" a basaltic eruption characteristic of shield
| volcanoes, and Hawaii is probably the best-known example of
| shield volcanic eruptions. Kilauea has been essentially
| continuously erupting for most of its observed history, and has
| not to my knowledge ever produced a pyroclastic flow (although
| there have been some steam explosions resulting from magma
| overflowing the water table before the water table boils off).
| avar wrote:
| Neither this eruption nor any other recent eruption in
| Iceland is characteristic of shield volcanoes.
|
| A shield volcano requires a certain viscosity of lava and
| flow rate.
|
| There are a few shield volcanoes in Iceland, the term "shield
| volcano" even comes from Icelandic; From the eponymous
| volcano Skjaldbreidur ("broad shield"), but none are formed
| recently.
|
| Most Icelandic lava is too thick to form shield volcanoes. It
| forms mountains, ridges, lava fields etc.
|
| The lava that's now bubbling up in Iceland is referred to as
| "Apalhraun". Which in a fun bit of linguistic happenstance
| originates from the Hawaiian `A`a, Hawaii in turn borrowing a
| derivative of the word "Skjaldbreidur" to refer to the
| volcano type it's most known for.
| klausjensen wrote:
| There is a fair bit of "eruption chasing" going on. People want
| to see it up close.
|
| I lived in Iceland in 2010, when Eyjafjallajokull erupted and
| stopped most of the air-traffic in Europe. I was fortunate
| enough to go with some friends (in jeeps with very large tires,
| to traverse a snow-covered glacier) to see the eruption up very
| close. We were about 200m from the erupting lava. Most amazing
| nature-experience of my life - by a mile.
|
| Pic from that day: https://imgur.com/a/KbDyEuQ
| avar wrote:
| I believe that there's a translation error in this news story (I
| sent a note to the author).
|
| I think that they mean that they've turned off the ventilation
| system at the airport. I doubt that they've got air conditioning.
|
| If they do then presumably they could still heat the building,
| unless it's some industrial unit that works by exchanging heat
| with the incoming hot water?
|
| But more likely they're using hot water radiators, which now
| aren't getting hot water. So to preserve the thermal mass of the
| air they've turned off the ventilation in the building.
|
| Almost every house in Iceland is heated with hot water directly,
| which then just ends up in the drain. Wasteful? Yes, but there's
| some benefits to living on a volcano with abundant water.
| Forge36 wrote:
| Yeah, "hot water" is a bit of a misnomer with Iceland. It's
| their heating infrastructure. In the U.S. it'd be more akin to
| saying "natural gas shut off in -6degC weather" or "Electricity
| cut off in Texas during 20degF weather" (even in the U.S.
| heating varies by location).
| avar wrote:
| It's heating and "hot water". Icelandic building are both
| heated by the hot water supply, and that water runs directly
| to the hot water taps (sinks, showers etc.).
|
| Well, "directly". It's now common to make use of a heat
| exchanger, so you're getting warmed-up cold water instead.
| E.g. the capital area adds sulphur to the hot water supply,
| so some don't want to use it directly.
|
| But in either case, if the municipal hot water doesn't run
| houses have neither heat nor hot showers.
|
| They'll also have icy driveways, a very common use of the
| runoff is to have a water-heated driveway make use of the
| outgoing hot water.
| euroderf wrote:
| Free energy ! Who'da thunk it ?
| avar wrote:
| Well, the Earth's paying for it, and it'll turn into
| solid rock slightly earlier than it otherwise would have
| due to modern Icelandic district heating practices.
|
| As the Earth is mostly an approximately Earth-sized ball
| of molten rock it's generally agreed that this will take
| "a while".
|
| We've also decided that it's such a large value of "a
| while" that we're going to split the difference and
| proclaim that this non-renewable geothermal energy
| extraction practice is actually renewable.
|
| Nevermind that we're talking about time scales where we
| might expect all the non-renewable fossil fuel we're
| extracting to have been renewed several times over by
| natural processes.
|
| I think geothermal energy might get away with it on a
| technicality: The Earth won't actually turn solid. Before
| it can do that it's expected to be swallowed up by the
| Sun turning into a Red Giant.
|
| By that time geothermal heat might have become too much
| of a good thing.
| samus wrote:
| As long as the heat is not turned into other forms of
| energy (electricity, potential energy, chemical energy,
| etc.), it is actually not being "used". Just moved to a
| slightly different place. Such usage actually wouldn't
| speed up cooling off the Earth even by a miniscule amount
| since the heat is at the surface already.
| zh3 wrote:
| You can watch it live on the BBC.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-68237950
| davesque wrote:
| > Lava has flowed over Njardvikuraed, the hot water pipeline that
| runs from HS Orka's geothermal power plant in Svartsengi to
| Njardvikur, causing supply issues.
|
| I would think so lol.
| Maxion wrote:
| Checkout Shawn Willsey:s youtube channel, a geology professor.
| He's been covering the whole thing starting from last fall.
|
| Excellent videos, explains what is going on and makes you excited
| for geology.
|
| Here's his live stream from the start of this eruption:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DwU32IkzZI
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(page generated 2024-02-08 23:00 UTC)