Posted on 10/28/2013 8:58:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
An eruption by Europe's most active volcano has sent a tower of sparks and fire into the sky around it.
The plume of ash rising from Mount Etna can be seen across much of eastern Sicily. Its eruptions are not infrequent, but the last major one occurred in 1992.
The nearest airport and airspace were forced to close temporarily but none of the villages on the slopes of the mountain have been forced to evacuate so far.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
You’re not alone in thinking this....I’ve heard others talk about it as well.....I’ve even thought about where would I go if things got really bad here. Guess we all should get passports just in case uh? Knowing Obam, he’d put a stop to any leaving without one and that in a heart beat!
One day that volcano will really explode, along with the “Campi Flegrei caldera” of southern Italy.
You should be thankful to Lord Obama. He is protecting you from those nasty, profit seeking, coal burning capitalist electric companies.
On the other hand an electric company can’t earn a profit if they don’t sell electricity to customers and they can’t sell electricity to customers if the grid is poor repair.
So maybe it is not such a bad thing this thing called profit.
Yea I know. It’s hard to believe we went past all these socialist countries so fast. I always thought we were at the least 10 or more years behind them. This Obama care beats anything the North Korea could have thought up. What is really surprising to me is that I personally know several Americans who have retired from their jobs here in the USA and moved to the Philippines and places like Costa Rica. I’m talking about 100% pure Caucasian Americans. It’s getting scary.
I have a client who has adult children living in S. America ...they have to “warn” their sons to be careful what they say when visiting here.
Their sons said they have more social freedom in the country they live in then the US, though they have far less political freedom.
Seems to me what we have here is a fast growing socialist/Communist takeover.....it sure looks like it....”looks like a duck” and all.
I’ll take coal any day! It’s all political now as the coal industry has come a far cry from the dust etc. once known...if they’d put as much investment into coal as they have in this green junk we’d be set. But of course their support of Green Energy is all about contracts to the good ol boys and skimming all they can off the top!
I so hate our governance now...it’s no longer the USA but ‘something else’ altogether!...and we’re just the conveyor belt of revenue for them to haul it into their own personal coffers.
It was pretty spectacular. Watched it from my front porch. The mountain does this two three times a year.
Wow, that picture really shows it in human perspective.
:’) Seems like that would be a little hard on the porch. ;’)
That would be disappointing to a lot of people in the area. :’)
:’D
Like Etna, Al Gore’s a blowhard. :’)
Did that happen a lot?
> No pic? I feel cheated
> Spewing lava into the air always made me cringe
Heh... luckily (or unluckily) for you, this unexpectedly became a good-sized topic with lots of pics. :’)
I’m gonna miss Etna. Going back to merica
next month.
And global warming, but they’re to blame for that too, sez Zero.
“Etna, not so glad I met ya” — Latin scrawl.
Of course, this would work better if this were anywhere near Pompeii...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Etna
...It is the tallest active volcano on the European continent, currently 3,329 m (10,922 ft) high, though this varies with summit eruptions. It is the highest mountain in Italy south of the Alps. Etna covers an area of 1,190 km2 (459 sq mi) with a basal circumference of 140 km. This makes it by far the largest of the three active volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. Only Mount Teide in Tenerife surpasses it in the whole of the European–North-African region.[2] In Greek Mythology, the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under this mountain by Zeus, the god of the sky and thunder and king of gods, and the forges of Hephaestus were said to also be located underneath it.[3] ... Volcanic activity first took place at Etna about half a million years ago, with eruptions occurring beneath the sea off the ancient coastline of Sicily.[10] About 300,000 years ago, volcanism began occurring to the southwest of the summit (centre top of volcano) then, before activity moved towards the present centre 170,000 years ago. Eruptions at this time built up the first major volcanic edifice, forming a stratovolcano in alternating explosive and effusive eruptions. The growth of the mountain was occasionally interrupted by major eruptions, leading to the collapse of the summit to form calderas.
From about 35,000 to 15,000 years ago, Etna experienced some highly explosive eruptions, generating large pyroclastic flows, which left extensive ignimbrite deposits. Ash from these eruptions has been found as far away as south of Rome’s border, 800 km (497 mi) to the north.
Thousands of years ago, the eastern flank of the mountain experienced a catastrophic collapse, generating an enormous landslide in an event similar to that seen in the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The landslide left a large depression in the side of the volcano, known as ‘Valle del Bove’ (Valley of the Ox). Research published in 2006 suggested this occurred around 8000 years ago, and caused a huge tsunami, which left its mark in several places in the eastern Mediterranean. It may have been the reason the settlement of Atlit Yam (Israel), now below sea level, was suddenly abandoned around that time.[11]
The steep walls of the valley have suffered subsequent collapses on numerous occasions. The strata exposed in the valley walls provide an important and easily accessible record of Etna’s eruptive history.
The most recent collapse event at the summit of Etna is thought to have occurred about 2,000 years ago, forming what is known as the Piano Caldera. This caldera has been almost entirely filled by subsequent lava eruptions, but is still visible as a distinct break in the slope of the mountain near the base of the present-day summit cone.
Speaking of tiny little Vesuvius...
Move Over, Pompeii
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1188762/posts
Pompeii’s Burial Not Its First Disaster
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1293135/posts
and from up north:
Prehistoric Disaster: An Alpine Pompeii from the Stone Age
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2103309/posts
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