That is a typical underwater volcano. I love to watch them. Something eerie looking, kinda alien. So, I finally found a story that gives me the opportunity to show a video of one. Here’s today’s story:
Hidden 2.5 miles (4,000 meters) beneath the Arctic surface, the volcanoes are up to a mile (2,000 meters) in diameter and a few hundred yards tall. They formed along the Gakkel Ridge, a lengthy crack in the ocean crust where two rocky plates are spreading apart, pulling new melted rock to the surface……
Which, I read with special interest since CNN ran a poll about the story of the polar ice caps melting entirely this summer. There has been quite a bit of media interest and speculation as to why the polar ice caps are melting. Now, we had been through this scenario before. Everything was melting in Greenland, and it was all man’s fault. Until, that is, they figured out there was a large volcano underneath Greenland heating everything up. Once they figured that out, Greenland hasn’t been mentioned since in the global warming debate and the polar ice caps immediately started melting. Not one person thought to see if the same thing was happening at the North Pole as it was in Greenland. Well, now that they have found that the same thing IS happening at the North Pole, this is what they figured out:
“We don’t believe the volcanoes had much effect on the overlying ice,” Reeves-Sohn told LiveScience, “but they seem to have had a major impact on the overlying water column.”
Now, I’m inclined to believe they don’t want to believe it has any effect on the overlying ice. My limited science background does tell me that heat rises. And, it also tells me volcanoes are very hot. Now, granted these volcanoes are under a lot of water, that heat still has to go somewhere. It just bugs me that although “scientists” are more than willing to research the connection of gases moving from continental US and photosynthesizing over the Arctic, thereby trapping the sun’s rays closer to earth and slightly warming the atmosphere by less than five degrees and thereby causing all of the ice at the North Pole to melt, they are unwilling apparently to explore the concept that a volcano releasing lava at 1,250 degrees directly below the ice would melt it.
Maybe it’s just me, but I would hope anyone reading these articles will scratch their heads as well.
My bet, in the not too distant future, someone is going to hypothesize that the extreme heat of those underwater volcanoes is contributing to the melting ice directly above them.