Nordic news!

[wavewright62]

Thanks for the update, Jitter! 
When my daughter was small, I took her to the exhibit in the local museum on volcanism.  Auckland is built on top of over 50 volcanoes, some officially extinct, most officially dormant, and includes one which popped up in the harbour only about 600-700 years ago.  Anyway, small wavelet saw the video of lava flows and trees igniting before being subsumed under under lava, and the graphic about where Auckland's volcanoes are, and became distraught, demanding to move to Pluto right that evening. (Because there are no volcanoes on Pluto, you see.)
I had the live stream of the Reykjanes eruptions going, and while she was okay with seeing a vent spitting lava somewhere, but no way would she view the video of the drone flight over Grindavik surveying the damage to the houses. She reminded me that volcanoes still kind of freak her out, and moving to Pluto was still a thing. 
She was only half-joking.

[Jitter]

Oh Wave, I absolutely empathize with wavelet! I wasn’t exactly small but quite young, perhaps about 12, when in a book I read there was an earthquake and the main character’ family and tribe was swallowed into the ground. I’m still highly uneasy about earthquake risk, although I have been able to visit California and would probably be happy to go to Japan if I had the opportunity. I know now that while earthquakes can be extremely destructive, this sort of swallowing things is not the usual way it happens. I also know earthquakes are a major risk in other areas than California and Japan, and are in fact a lot more dangerous in many other places. But in my mind Japan and California are strongly linked with earthquakes while other places such as Auckland are places where there could be one, yes, but it’s not an immediate concern in my head.

The point of all this is that fears or concerns formed when young can stick strongly! Even when the real information and rational thought tell me the realistic risk, the underlying feeling about it remains. Give my greetings to wavelet!

I wouldn’t recommend Pluto though. Not even a planet!

[Keep Looking]

Earthquakes and volcanoes are fascinating because they're so.... outside of our control. I've been through a few very mild earthquakes when about 6 years ago there was a weird bout of seismic activity in Western Australia (the "huh i just got woken up from sleep. why is my bed vibrating" kind of earthquake), but big earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are quite scary, and there's not really much we can do to stop them. In some ways it's humbling to be reminded that we still live on a dynamic and seismically active ball of rock and magma in space.

As far as I know, the people who are worst hit by earthquakes are people in less developed countries or isolated places where the infrastructure won't stand up to earthquakes and the government isn't willing and/or able to provide enough relief after it happens (see what happened with the earthquake in some of the mountainous regions of Morocco last year). With the proper infrastructure and funding, there's a lot that can be done to mitigate the effects of earthquakes, but not everyone has access to this (Natural disasters don't discriminate, but there are many inequalities in how countries can prepare for them or deal with the aftermath).

I'm also being reminded of the website I made when I was 11 in a school extension program about volcanoes. It's actually still up on the internet, you can look at it here if you want (https://volcanotastic.weebly.com/). Truly my web design skills knew no bounds.

[Róisín]

Fascinating! What an excellent project. I hope your teacher of the time appreciated all the hard work.

[JoB]

(Because there are no volcanoes on Pluto, you see.)

Erm ...

... may I suggest the Moon? Much easier to reach, in the Goldilocks zone, and since it's already in gravitational lock (and Earth not heavy enough), volcanoes are currently absent and virtually guaranteed not to pop up later.
(Not sure whether it would be possible that a volcano on Earth sends ejecta all the way there, but if so, you might have a different, more pressing problem.)
Just don't ask for meteorite protection, though ...

[thorny]

I think this counts as Nordic news:

https://wapo.st/47H0KQw

Should be a gift link, so it shouldn't be paywalled.

MUDDUSJÄRVI, Finland — Pauliina Feodoroff walks through one of the world’s last ancient forests, with lingonberries, wild mushrooms and reindeer droppings crunching gently beneath her dirt-caked boots. But her stride falters as she enters a clearing littered with tree stumps, limbs and branches. Chainsaws mowed down this section last winter, and now it’s off-limits for the hundreds of reindeer who once helped it blossom. Feodoroff — a member of the Sámi Indigenous group, a community that revolves around the reindeer and their habitats — wants to buy this land back, and summon the reindeer to return.


It’s part of a grand experiment to rewild the Arctic by regenerating the biodiverse latticework of reindeer habitats, which help regulate the planet’s temperatures.

[Jitter]

Thorny, it works, and thanks! The relationship between the reindeer and the ecology is complicated in Finland, as we have reindeer herders who are not Sami (unlike in Sweden and Norway where only the Sami can get reindeer rights) and the total number of reindeer in Finnish Lapland s over carrying capacity. So, it’s not a straightforward reindeer = good, but then nothing is. The Sami ways of herding have traditionally been in harmony with the land, but not all herding is sustainable. I can’t go very deep into this and as an outsider I shouldn’t, but the struggle is ongoing.

And the point that the Finnish state is overlogging is definitely true! In the north, where the forest grows back so so slowly, and also in the south where there is much less old-growth forest left. Various NGOs and volunteers do surveys to identify the most valuable areas, but it’s always a fight to get even the best ones i to conservation.

@dmeck7755 read Thorny’s article, you’ll love it!

[dmeck7755]

Thank you @Jitter  and @thorny .  I need to look at this!!

[thorny]

@Jitter, thanks for further info!

[Jitter]

It’s back, the volcano. In Iceland of course.

Eruption no 2 of 2024 started on Thursday morning and may actually be sputtering out already. This time the problem is that it ran over the hot water pipeline that supples the entire peninsula with heating. And it’s winter, so the civil defense department has issued several requests for people to not use hot water for showers and bathing, turn heat low in the houses and also NOT turn out many electric heaters because the electricity grid would not be able to bear such a load. So far they seem to be coping. This energy problem affects several towns and around 30 000 people, which again is a huge number considering how small the population is. Interesting times.

[JoB]

This time the problem is that it ran over the hot water pipeline that supples the entire peninsula with heating.

"We froze to death because of the lava around us" would be a heck of an obit ... 

[Jitter]

JoB, wouldn’t it just! They have ampn emergency pipeline under construction, has been for a while already so they are hoping to get it connected by noon tomorrow. Problem is that if the heating pipes (with water that used to be hot inside) freeze solid, the pipes will burst. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

[JoB]

They have an emergency pipeline under construction, has been for a while already so they are hoping to get it connected by noon tomorrow. Problem is that if the heating pipes (with water that used to be hot inside) freeze solid, the pipes will burst. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

I say, wouldn't it be about time to deal with that flaming liver in a more immediate way? 

[JoB]

It's baaaa-aaack ...

[Róisín]

That looks downright scary, though I would like to see it.