AP: The volcano de jour: If a threat only looms, is it a threat already?
I know, I know – too much Eyjafjallajökull volcano news lately. And some of that already has mentioned that when that one erupts, say geologic sleuthing and historical records, a larger nearby shield volcano named Katla has typically followed along in short order and with larger capacity for mayhem.
The AP now has gotten another reporter on the case in Iceland – Carlo Piovano yesterday filed a longer examination of a possible one-two punch now underway. He has fresh input from the nation’s volcanologists. It provides more detail than I’d seen all in one place so far. Yesterday we had a post contrasting two stories that offered different, primary reasons that the eruption, which started more than a month ago, went last week from a local affair to a towering ash cloud and costly international pain in the neck. Is it the chemistry of the magma, or the meltwater pouring into its cauldron that powered the ash five miles or more into the sky? Piovano’s piece leans toward the latter.
For further entertainment, ponder the hed that the service put on it: “Threat of new, larger Icelandic eruption looms.” That’s true. And it’s concise. Whether it is also misleading is harder to tell. If something looms at the door, or looms on the horizon like a thunderstorm, it means it might reach us or might not. If one dissects that hed, it’s redundant. Or not. That is, if something bad looms, is that in itself a clear threat? I think so. And if there is a threat, does that have built into it that it looms, making it wasteful of ink to say so explicitly? But the head spins: if it’s the threat that looms, and therefore is not yet manifestly right here, does that mean it’s not really a threat yet? Maybe so. Is a potential thing the same as the thing? Hmmmm. One could fuss over this all day.
In any case this story says Katla “showed no sign of activity Tuesday, according to scientists who monitor it with seismic sensors, but they were still wary.” Ah, wary. Let’s hope those tiltmeters, gravitometers, seismometers and what-all stay on message.
Meanwhile, as Reuters’s Patrick Lannon reports and many others do too, the eruption for the moment has settled down considerably, planes are in the other, and this is fading rapidly as a science and geology story.
- Charlie Petit
