Having wrote that, then how to predict?

Well, you caught me with my pants down.

I “was” toying with the idea the that as the Solar Sunspot Activity was at a minimum, the galactic electric currents were reduced, and that this would cause cooler states.

Maybe.

Depends on the scale factor – for what what is observed in a plasma fusion device in microseconds, can be shown in space. Herein is the problem.

Brave indeed anyone who thinks a volcano could be mitigated – :-) Geology lost a couple of souls when St Helens erupted – and the weird thing is that those ash deposits are now lithified and properly called rocks.

I can explain kimberlite eruptions electrodynamically but haven’t put pen to paper to write an article for a journal – but that mechanism cannot be extended to other volcanic eruptions such as the explosive types like Mt St Helens, Vesuvius etc. No one has seen a kimberlite erupt, but from the mining of and exploration for these unique volcanos we do know that the craters are machined downwards into the earth by some vortex mechanism. A Russian scientist has proposed a plausible mechanism for this in a generalised way by an electrical interaction between the Earth and a passing alien body – meteorite/planet/comet etc. The crucial factor is that the intruder/alien object had to be electrically active as well.. He has shown (published in New Concepts of Global Tectonics Newsletter) that this intruder when passing close by the Earth could set up significant electrical stresses in the upper mantle region causing kimberlite and associated volcanic clusters to erupt to the Earth’s surface. These events seem also associated with global biospheric mass extinction events, though using the existing geochronological model, such connections are implausible due to the long periods of time between the events. A meteorite passing close by causing a specific kimberlite eruption, after which a species extinction occurs 1 millions years later, is a bit of a stretch for the imagination. I mentioned this to Megan Clarke (then the research scientist for WMC Limited (now absorbed into BHP-Billiton) during the early 1990’s and suggested that maybe there a problem exists with our understanding of the geological time scale. Her reply, which remains vivid, was to the effect that mainstream science could not contemplate such scenarios for fairly mundane reasons, ie the uniformitarian timescale of an Earth 4,500MA old.

Fair enough.

But the kimberlite model above cannot explain present observations of the more numerous “garden variety” volcanos dotted over the Earth. Those erupt in the absence of an external interloping cosmic body, although I have a sneaking suspicion that our AGW posters have a secret weapon in the form of a super carbon based alien who will arrive in our skies to acidify the oceans, melt the ice caps, and generally cause us grief; this conclusion is based on some evidence because recently someone in the UK was reported to have stated that melting of the polar ice caps (there’s only one) will cause increased volcanism etc.

One of the puzzles is the Pacific Ring of Fire, a quasi-circular structure along which most volcanoes are located. This is presently explained by plate tectonic theory but that theory is holeyer than most religions.

What we do know empirically is that the Earth’s polar regions are the locii of immense Birkeland currents connecting the Earth with the solar system (the Sun is simply a bit player here), Peratt etc and also Kristian Birkeland’s experiments with the terellas. When those electric currents increase in power density (amps increase), the dark mode currents then jump to glow mode which we see as the auroras. But electric currents need to be connected, or the circuit has to be completed, and my guess is that there are shallow electrical conduits between the north and south poles of the earth, and that these might be the “subduction” zones.

Subduction zones are simply two disparate crustal rocks abutting against each other and would normally be described at the local scale as a fault zone. Electric currents seem to prefer such linear paths, or structures since these are of lower resistance than the adjoining massive blocks of rock, and which from simple observation would need to be deep in order to melt the lower crust that, infrequently, erupts to the surface as volcanoes.

One recent observation this year (or last year) by US researchers pointed to rotational motion being observed in the ejecta of an active volcano which together with the electrical effects (lightning etc) points to Birkeland currents connecting the surface of the earth to, I am told, the Van Allen Belts.

I’m not dogmatic about this since I am, after all, an exploration geologist who from experience knows that data trump everything.

Since scientific ideas are always provisional, my present model for volcanoes is that they seem to be the locis of electrical leakages from the Earth, as a leaky capacitor, to the plasma of space along linears between grossly disparate rocktypes (AKA subduction zones).

That’s what I think now but that is quite likely to change after a night’s rest when I might recall some other observation that I forgot about, but which I now realised was relevant. Such is the nature of the scientific mind that has to be contrasted with the religious mind that isn’t allowed to change.

Predicting volcanic eruptions is indeed difficult, especially when the physics is wrong.

Think of a volcano as an electric discharge from an Earth that behaves as a leaky capacitor. Volcanic eruptions are generally preceded by significant changes in the local geomagnetic field, and one suspects electric field as well.

As magnetic fields can only be modulated by electric currents, and indeed only produced by electric currents, then this should be enough for those with inquisitive minds to work on.

Given the centuries of volcanic studies, one would have thought by now that if a particular theory hasn’t any predictive value, then it would be ditched.

It’s probably the intellectual analog of drug addiction.

The evidence is in the John Grover book (which you should be able to borrow from your local library), and in the ongoing newsletter ‘New Concepts in Global Tectonics’ (which may be found using Google).

Good hunting
John McRobert

I have yet to read the paper myself – if it is online that is – and no electrons travel opposite to the positive particles in an electric or magnetic field. They might be moved en-masse by the ocean currents but until I read it and get to understand it, I am as clueless about it as you are, but if earthquakes are in fact electric discharges down below – then I can start to see some sort of connection with the oceans and the atmospheric lows that, unlike the highs, develop into powerful rotating vortices that can be best explained by the action of electric currents connecting the earth’s surface to the Van Allen Belts. (I’m not saying the currents enter the earth, since electrons move in direction, anions the opposite and both are electric currents).

But no one has really bothered to study this in detail – I doubt you would get any funding from government since the implications are profound. A colleague (plasma physicist) is looking at explaining the geomagnetic field as due to some moving electric charge on the earth’s surface but I ‘ll see what his opinion on this research is first. It’s all rather novel and cutting edge.