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Yellowstone Supervolcano Making Strange Rumblings
Frosty Piss writes "Supervolcanoes can sleep for centuries or millennia before producing incredibly massive eruptions that can drop ash across an entire continent. One of the largest supervolcanoes in the world lies beneath Yellowstone National Park. Significant activity continues beneath the surface. And the activity has been increasing lately, scientists have discovered. In addition, the nearby Teton Range of mountains is somehow getting shorter. The findings, reported this month in the Journal of Journal of Geophysical Research, suggest that a slow and gradual movement of a volcano over time can shape a landscape more than a violent eruption."
Sure, if it goes off it will ruin a lot of people's days. But if it goes off every million years or so, well, what are the chances of being alive to witness it? Not terribly good. Our species may not even be around the next time this thing blows. Same goes with other super-catastrophes like large asteroid impacts. I'm all for long-term thinking, but there's a danger in thinking too long-term as well, that is, let's worry about next year's hurricane season, or that hundred-year flood, rather than what happens when the sun goes into red giant phase a billion years from now.
Historically, it's the "normal" catastrophes that happen on the order of every few decades or centuries -like earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, plagues, famines, and non-super volcanoes- which have tended to kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Not to mention our incredible genius when it comes to killing each other. In terms of minimizing human casualties, odds are the most cost-effective solutions will be things like better building codes to withstand earthquakes, not letting people build in flood-prone areas, and perhaps most importantly, developing the ability to rapidly respond to disasters when they do happen.
Per the article, geoscientists only have detailed large-scale measurements for the last 17 years (which would roughtly correspond to the increasing availability of reasonably-priced GPS and comm units I should think). So how do they know that activity is increasing (or decreasing) on any kind of historical scale?
sPh
What can you do about it.
Odds are very good that it will not happen in your life or you children's, or their children's. It may never happen.
This is a great example of an unreasonable fear.
You are far more likely to die in a car accident than from Yellowstone erupting as a super-volcano.
If you want make an effort to live a long happy life the best things you can do are.
Exercise at least 30 minutes a day.
Eat a good diet.
Don't smoke.
Don't drink and drive.
Don't drive late at night.
Oh and put aside money for your retirment and stay out of debt. That is for the happy part a long and happy life.
You should fear a sedentary life style and tobacco a lot more than volcanoes.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Not half as weird as the things people think it is.
There will likely be warning signs years it advance, but we won't recognize them as such until afterwards.
When Mt. St. Helens blew we had about 3 feet of ash over all our fields in Eastern WA. The problem was you couldn't really scrape it. It was too light and fluffy -- at least till the first rain fall then it was like concrete. In the end it was a combination of like he said scraping and plowing it under.
The big problem was what it did to engines -- that stuff is super corrosive well ok more correct would be super abrasive -- you have to have special filters on all your air intakes and they have to be cleaned frequently.
While not as easy as the GP makes it out to be -- farmers for the most part have the equipment to clear the fields and it can be done fairly quickly.
There will likely be warning signs years it advance, but we won't recognize them as such until afterwards.
Why would you think that? We only had two months warning with Mt. St. Helens, and that was plenty of time to assess risk and clear out the "red zone." There were 57 fatalities, but it's not like we didn't know it was coming.
The problem with warning signs years in advance isn't that they won't be seen -- the problem is people becoming complacent as they wait years for a geological event to play out. If scientists go on and on for years about an imminent disaster, people start to think the scientists are full of crap. Then, of course, the worst happens.
Fertilizer. Some of the most fertile land in the world is precariously located in the shadow of a frightening volcano. Why do you think that is?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I don't understand.
In the GP, rujholla explained the widely known experience of thousands of farmers in dealing with volcanic ash.
You appear to be trying to use your imagined idea of what farmers are capable of to disprove the results of this empirical evidence.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.