Volcanoes

Of the 1,500 potentially active volcanoes in the world not counting the volcanoes on the ocean floor like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge or those submerged along the Ring of Fire, only about 500 have erupted in historical time. There are 169 potentially active volcanoes in the United States.

There are also subglacial volcanoes, known as a glaciovolcano. While there appear to be only two active volcanoes of the 138 volcanoes in Antarctica [Mount Erebus, due south of New Zealand, and Deception Island, 850km southeast of Cape Horn] There are maybe more since they only recently discovered 91 of the 138 with possibly 178 total. There are also volcanoes in the Arctic including mud volcanoes. There are at least 13 active volcanoes of 30 known volcanoes in Greenland.

Besides the subglacial volcanoes, there are likely more than a million submarine or underwater volcanoes with possibly as many as 75,000 of these volcanoes rising over half a mile above the ocean floor.

These undersea volcanoes include possibly 30,000 seamounts which rise from the seafloor at a depth of 1,000 - 4,000 meters with the peaks found hundreds or even thousands of meters below the surface within the "deep sea". Only a few of these undersea volcanoes have been studied.

Because most of the oceans remain unexplored we do not know how many volcanoes are even erupting, if those eruptions are increasing or what effect they might be having on the ocean temperature or global warming.

Some geomorphologists believe that earthquakes and volcanoes may become very active for short periods of time with long periods of moderate to little activity.

No Summer

The numbers given for the last eruptions of Yellowstone caldera in the article [1] about Yellowstone possible eruption are "2 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago". This would make us due about now if this is the result of a cycle.

Even a minor eruption would devastate wheat and other crops for thousands of miles but the long winters that would follow not counting the possibility of other eruptions would continue devastation around the world.

In the early 1800's we had some of the worst earthquakes in the history of America but there was also some volcanic activity that caused cooling by 1816 with little or no summer.

This caused over 200,000 in Europe to die and as many as 100,000 Irish deaths. 1300 years earlier there was a similar cooling event blamed on volcanoes.

A more extreme event took place in the early 500 A D period and some estimates say millions died with cannibalism in areas of China.

Today with about 30 days of grain worldwide in the pipeline 5 to 10 years of no summers would cause the death of billions even without economic, social and political collapse which would be inevitable.

Wheat storage in America is at an all-time low. As a civilization, we have never been more vulnerable.

Signs in the Sun | CME | Volcanoes | Climate |