Slashdot Mirror

Now that should be a big concern for people who worry about Global Warming. For those who don't know Yellowstone is a Supervolcano which when it erupts will emit more greenhouse gases than man can think of.

Like Yellowstone.

Isn't Yellowstone park just one great big fuck off source of hot water?

Yellowstone is a supervolcano. Forget about human emissions of greenhouse gases, GHGs, if Yellowstone were ever to erupt in a short tyme it would emit more GHGs than all the GHGs man has emitted since coming out of the trees.

I'll bet you these guys are from Iapetus.

Its "regular" eruption?

Using wikipedia as the ultimate source of information, Yellowstone has seen eruptions 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and 640,000 years ago.

This gives you a total of 3 data points, spaced 800,000 and 660,000 years apart. Thus, the average times is 730,000 years. We are 640,000 years into it so we should still have 90,000 years.

Of course, the with only 3 data points even that spacing is very speculative at best.

To make matters more interesting, the size of the 3 eruption's has varied in size, with the largest being 10x larger than the smallest.

http://www.solcomhouse.com/yellowstone.htm has some great details.

Overall, I think i'll spend my time worrying about other things in life. If this thing does go, I probably wont care that much as I'll be totally covered in several feet of ash.

130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year.

Active volcanoes (each) release more like 10 to 20 million tons a day of Sulfur Dioxide.
Humans don't put out that much and that's the stuff that will cool a planet.
Kilauea spews out tons of H2S (Hydrogen Sulfide) every day.
True about measureable CO2 Volcanos vs. Humans but what isn't measured are ocean vents (ocean flatulence)

"accept much of the earth becoming uninhabitable and keep going about our merry ways" is not acceptable.

I agree that it's not acceptable. No matter if a volcano makes the northwest uninhabitable or crates new land near Hawaii and Iceland, what the Earth does (i.e. plate tectonics, ocean flatulence, magnetic shift) is all part of the ecosystem. As inhabitants of this planet, we're part of the ecosystem and spewing out CO2 is part of what we do. Earth doesn't give a shit what we do. It's core will do what it will do without our intervention.
If we make our air unbreatheable, we die and it's our own damn fault and the ecosystem will adjust. Volcanos will still spew, plates will still shift.
Our current lifestyle won't change because humans are lazy. AIDS is 100% preventable yet it still runs rampant because of the lack of willing to change. Education has little to play with it other than basic comprehension.

My angle is that there is alot of America hating going on we're led to belive that it is American drivers that are the cause of Global Warming because of their love for the road.
Australia is given carte blanche to pollute their air and ocean and their air is much more toxic than the US due to the fact that they have no restrictions on pollutants as the US does.
Same for India and China and China has like 1/3 of the population of the planet.
Someone explain to me how it's Americas fault that ice is melting in Antarctica.

We're not going to change. We'll have to adapt when we're forced to. Look at the US fiasco over 'airport security'. Americans and foreign travelers put up with it.
When some super volcano happens http://www.solcomhouse.com/yellowstone.htm
people will be forced to change.

The polar bears seem incredibly adapated to living on ice -- the article says they live their whole lives on ice. Their natural range is circumpolar (http://www.solcomhouse.com/polarbears.htm [solcomhouse.com] ). I know their feet, fur and sense of smell are all optimized for living in ice. I'm sure there are more things.

There have been things like that happening before - between a few last big Ice Ages, a few species have evolved to take advantage of the shallow marsh areas, like "big beaver". The climate changed - I don't think it was due to SUVs or possibly not even due to greenhouse effect, or not by itself - and the species died out.

The entire premise and begging the question in such articles is always the same, the same theme of neurosis running there: us bad, bad humans, repent, go back to nature, don't make all those evil industries. It's always trying to create this imaginary hobgoblin to alarm us. It's naive to expect politics and media to try to enlighten. The purpose is to scare and control, not help. So EVEN if those polar bears are dying, it may have nothing to do with us really - the plausible impression merely serves a useful goal in political games. It's all bullshit, I say.

The polar bears seem incredibly adapated to living on ice -- the article says they live their whole lives on ice. Their natural range is circumpolar (http://www.solcomhouse.com/polarbears.htm ). I know their feet, fur and sense of smell are all optimized for living in ice. I'm sure there are more things.

It seems that the next time the earth gets warm, for whatever reason, the polar bears are going to die off in droves.

The same is true for camels: they've got special eyes, feet, a way to store water and energy for long periods, etc. If there is ever a mass greening of the earth, wild camels will have a hard time.

More general animals, like brown bears ("grizzly" bears) have it differently: their problem is that they are adapted to living in Eurasia and North America, so they come into conflict with humans in nearly all the areas they'd like to be. Here's their range (it would all of North America and Europe, but for humans):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ursus_arctos_di stribution.jpg

If you look, you'll see brown bears live all over Alaska. That's where that bear-maniac Treadwell got mauled by them. There's now a movie about it, and it uses his amazing bear footage:

http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/10725/

• Despite uncertainites about locations and timing, overall a stunning result emerged. Averaged over 29 widely scattered locations, ice thinned more than 40% in barely three decades. Amounts of thinning differed in different regions, but an overall thinning pattern was clear.

Close to the bottom of the page, a conservative figure...

Also here in the first paragraph...from this estimate, 27 years x 365 days = 9,855 times as much energy as we currently use.

Also here, here, and here.

Bottom line is that solar is possible today if we can ever wean ourselves off of oil (and keep the oil dependent businesses from buying off congress). (a lot of tree hugging rhetoric here but they have a point none-the-less...search for "oil lobby" to find relevant comments)

This might be another super volcano? I don't know enough about the subject, but I've read about it in the past here

I found this link with some of his data... http://www.solcomhouse.com/Scripps.htm

On the other hand, you live within the area likely to be affected the next time the supervolcano at Yellowstone goes off.

this erupts:
Yellowstone

The end of the US as we know it.
Enjoy,

The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 belched enough ash into the atmosphere to block out some sunlight and temporarily alter the global climate, which negatively affected the harvest that year. It was effectively a relatively mild, non-nuclear 'nuclear winter.'

I don't know if Krakatoa qualifies as a super volcano because of that, but there is a currently-dormant volcano that apparently is considered "super" in Yellowstone National Park.

~Philly

We need a way to ensure that if a meteor the size of Texas slams into this blue marble tomorrow that we as a species will survive.

Don't forget about the Super Volcanos, a big erruption could bring the human population worldwide back down into the 10's of millions range pretty easily, and it doesn't require rocks from space, which many people just dismiss because it hasn't happened in recorded history, and its currenly very difficult to measure.

What if the sun goes super nova? What if a giant asteroid crashes into the earth?

It doesn't even have to be a stellar event, one good super volcano like the one currently 'overdue' at Yellowstone would be quite enough. Evidence shows that humanity may have been nearly wiped out by such a volcano 80k years or so ago (down to no more than a few thousand people worldwide).

The primary good thing to come from an increased abundance of junk in the atmosphere: plants get lusher. I've lost the good-looking legitimate article in Reason Magazine or The Economist or whatever it was, but this picture will give you an idea... taken from this random website which I don't claim is legit in the least...

The primary good thing to come from an increased abundance of junk in the atmosphere: plants get lusher. I've lost the good-looking legitimate article in Reason Magazine or The Economist or whatever it was, but this picture will give you an idea... taken from this random website which I don't claim is legit in the least...

This was pretty remarkable considering that the earthquake was something like the third or forth largest in the world that year. Alaska routinely gets earthquakes that would level cities in other parts of the world. I've set though a couple 5 plus ones that people there hardly mentioned the next day. Now if they could only stop the drunks from shooting holes in the pipeline...

You bring up a good point, but everything I've read so far is missing, IMHO, a big point. We as humans are very proud, our technology allows us to live a very lavish life compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, some may argue the other way but I digress. The fact that our lavish lives produce waste is a natural byproduct of living in such a way. The only thing we can do is reduce the amount of waste we produce. So the question is, are we so proud as to think that our waste is hurting the environment? Is our puny race so big as to change the "health" of our planet?

Our planet can throw up a volcanic erruption that produces more pollution than humans have in known history, except for nuclear detonations, which again I digress. Below you will find some links supporting my claim. Now over the past 200 years how many volcanoes have errupted? I cannot find any links for cronology but just from memory, which mine is very bad for names and dates, we got Mt. St. Hellens, Mt. Penetubio, constant volcanic activity in Hawaii, and quite a few others. What impact have they been having on our environment. Each one of the "major" eruptions produces more than humans have ever produced. Yes humans produce differnt types, but in such small quantities comparitivly speaking, how can we measure their impact when the overwealming amount volcanic polution would most definatly interfere with our research.

So I agree that we should err on the side of caution. I agree we should produce less waiste. But are we bringing about the end of the world? I don't think so, not while volcanos have been doing much more "damage" than we every possibly could concieve of doing.

So my final point is, the ppl that are screaming that we are destroying the planet are just overly proud.

volcanoes.usgs.gov
geopubs.wr.usgs.gov
hvo.wr.usgs.gov
solcomhouse.com