Green.view: Could be worse

Mark J. Perry submits: Here's some new support for economist Julian Simon's optimistic view that resource scarcity wouldn't ever be a problem, even with a growing world population, because of the power of innovation, discovery, human ingenuity, entrepreneurship, substitutes, and technological progress to overcome any resource shortages: the ocean floor might contain reserves of minerals vastly greater than those on land.

Massive volcanic eruptions may have led to the extermination of half of Earth's species some 200 million years ago, a new study suggests.

A moon of Jupiter is the only place other than Earth in our solar system where volcanoes occur, and scientists have found an ocean of magma beneath its surface that feed its potent eruptions.Io is the most volcanic object known in the solar system, producing 100 times more lava than Earth, and data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft has shed new light on how that happens, said the study out Thursday in the journal Science.A vast ocean of molten rock, known as magma, lies about 20-30 miles (30-50 kilometers) under the Jupiter moon's crust.

ETF Database submits: The airline industry encountered some unexpected turbulence this past week when an eruption beneath Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano began spewing ash and dust into the atmosphere. The eruption has continued since then, grounding air travel across much of Western and Northern Europe.

Airline executives in Europe are anxiously crossing their fingers in hopes that another Icelandic volcano eruption will not cause the harmful effects similar to the one that happened only a year ago.

A group of Icelandic chefs this week offered customers a unique gastronomical experience: a gourmet meal cooked over hot lava and served near an ongoing volcanic eruption, one of the chefs said Wednesday."My philosophy is that if someone says that something is impossible, I feel the urge to try it," Fridgeir Eiriksson told AFP.When Eiriksson heard about the eruption at the Fimmvorduhals volcano in the middle of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland on March 21, he began planning to "cook a delicious dinner at the volcano."