Planchón-Peteroa: Image via Wikipedia
Alarmism is alive and well at ENTRIX and at the New Scientist.
When in doubt it seems you can always get a paper published if you put it down to global warming. The key finding in this new paper seems to be that “large-scale glacial melting, including at the end of the Pleistocene, caused a significant increase in the incidence of large volcanic sector collapse and debris flows on then-active volcanoes”.
The Pleistocene is the period from 2.588 million to 12000 years ago. But since there is no explanation for the above finding there is no hesitation in jumping to the conclusion about the present “With current accelerated rates of glacial melting, glaciated active volcanoes are at an increasing risk of sector collapse, debris flow and landslide. These catastrophic events are Earth’s most damaging erosion phenomenon, causing extensive property damage and loss of life”.
The New Scientist then chips in with the headline “EARTH is starting to crumble under the strain of climate change”.
Daniel Tormey of ENTRIX, an environmental consultancy based in Los Angeles, studied a huge landslide that occurred 11,000 years ago on Planchón-Peteroa. He focused on this glaciated volcano in Chile because its altitude and latitude make it likely to feel the effects of climate change before others.
“Around one-third of the volcanic cone collapsed,” Tormey says. Ten billion cubic metres of rock crashed down the mountain and smothered 370 square kilometres of land, travelling 95 kilometres in total (Global and Planetary Change, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2010.08.003). Studies have suggested that intense rain cannot provide the lubrication needed for this to happen, so Tormey concludes that glacier melt must have been to blame. With global temperatures on a steady rise, Tormey is concerned that history will repeat itself on volcanoes all over the world.
He thinks that many volcanoes in temperate zones could be at risk, including in the Ring of Fire – the horseshoe of volcanoes that surrounds the Pacific Ocean . “There are far more human settlements and activities near the slopes of glaciated active volcanoes today than there were 10,000 years ago, so the effects could be catastrophic,” he says.
Maybe I am just a little cynical but I suspect that the author’s environmental consultancy business would be advantaged by getting a few more studies funded and that would be more likely if catastrophes were imminent. A clear case of a conflict of interest I would think.
The k2p blog 