Fellowship night at Marriott Resort & Spa on April 03, 2007 

Recently Dr. Claus Rink, an acknowledged doctor in Geography, who occupies himself, among other things, with volcanoes in Iceland, gave a lecture. This resulted in a very interesting evening, organised by the Rotary Club Eastern Seaboard in the Mariott Hotel & Spa in Pattaya.

Using slides and movies he showed amply and in detail the activities of volcanoes in Iceland.
Besides the beautyful sides of Iceland you could see the other, more dangerous aspects of this isle. During the past 20 to 30 years, an increased activity of its volcanoes is diagnosed. Because of the strong involvement of the Icelanders with nature, and also with the spirits of nature living on earth, like fairies and elfs, many of them are believing that the increasing activity of the volcanoes is reduceble to the resistence of mother Earth to the exploitation and misuse of her by mankind. Dr. Rink told us that as a scientist he doesn't share this belief, but on the other hand the human being inside him strongly does so.
According to the digressions of Dr. Rink, volcanoes are showing various activities. Earth is giving birth to volcanoes when the magma, with a temperature of thousand degrees Celsius or more, pushes trough the earth's crust. This process results in a variety of volcano-structures. For example, in Hawaii the lava is flowing down, hot but slowly over the mountain-slopes. Opposite to this, in Iceland the volcanic forces mainly are powered by gas and because of the sudden eruptions the ashes, including aerosoles, are swept away often unto 50 kilometres in the atmosphere. It takes about 30 years before this ashes are faded away.
As a result of this, the aerosoles can affect the climate hugely by hindering the incoming of the sunradiation. This means that in the present period of climate-change, earth would be heated even more when this ashes would not whirl around in the atmosphere. But don't believe that mother Earth strengthens this volcano-activity because of this. For there is a substantial disadvantage. The ozone layer, as the words says, is a layer. When this layer becomes too thin, one names this an ozone gap. Following theory aerosol affects not only the incoming of sunradiation on earth, but also affects the ozone layer. This is a not-ending circular course.
Dr. Rinks told us that in South-America, more specific in Chile, 70% of the sheeps is blind already; probably because of the thin ozone layer there. He expressed his fears that in the further future, at daytime one can not go safely outside without protecting clothes. In Australia and New Zealand there are already six houres every day, the “Burn Houres”, during which people have to wear shirts with long sleeves, long trousers and hats with special neck-protection. What a beautiful perspective for mankind!
But, there is good news too.The Icelanders are intelligent people and are using the heat of their soil and their many hot springs for heating and electricity-generating. Especially the president of the country, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, “wants to change Iceland into a model, where everything has been done to save the environment.” Dr. Rink told us a lot about this, and also about his efforts to convince Germany to buy its electricity from Iceland. Unfortunately this suggestion was rejected for economic reasons. The business of the biggest electricity-generating compagny in Germany would be affected too hard by the cheaper electricity from Iceland. As you can see by this example: shorttime business-interests can be contrary to the protection of environment.
Not only in general, but also directly you can link the Icelandsaga to Thailand. Also in Thailand there are hot springs, especially in the north. Dr. Rink has already build contacts and makes plans to undertake something in this field.

Dr. Claus Rink received a lot of appreciation for his interesting and stimulating lecture. Plans are already made that he, when returning from Iceland where he is staying most of his time, will give another lecture about a comparable theme.