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New Computer Model Predicts Impact of Yellowstone Volcano Eruption
An anonymous reader writes Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have used a program named Ash 3D to predict the impact of a Yellowstone volcano eruption, and found that cities within 300 miles from Yellowstone National Park may get covered by up to three feet of ash. From the article: "Ash3D helped the researchers understand how the previous eruptions created a widespread distribution of ash in places in the park's periphery. Aside from probing ash-distribution patterns, the Ash3D can also be used to identify potential hazards that volcanoes in Alaska may bring."
Wow ... there is a lot of talk about the Yellowstone volcano. Do the authorities know more than they are saying to the public? Why all of the sudden interest in Yellowstone? Is an eruption imminent and we are not being told?
That the Title does not read: 'New Model Predicts You're Doom' Or: 'Volcano Going to Rain Death on Eastern America'
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Putting that into context, a circle with the radius of 300 miles produces an area 282743 mi^2 or 732301 km^2. Which is moderately bigger than Texas and about 10% of the area of the continental USA.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I loved the neat 3D simulator the BBC fabricated for their docudrama Supervolcano. After the run one of the geologists (played by Gary Lewis) says, "[laughing] That's great... and if frogs had wings they wouldn't bump their little green asses hoppin' around, eh? [...] You're letting yourself be spooked by a video game!"
Great TEOTWAWKI drama, decent science, I recommend it: Supervolcano Ep1, Supervolcano Ep2, and the companion factual documentary Supervolcano.The Truth About Yellowstone which re-uses CGI footage made for the drama between interviews.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
This is ancient news and Ash3D doesn't really bring anything new to the table in terms of data. Although it is a neat way to visualize the ash coverage, but in no way does it predict if it's going to have a little burp or let out a massive belch.
...back in 2009?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
An article by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) briefly mentions climate change, but the article is mostly about how much ash that would fall on the continental US. The article also says, "... multiple inches of ash can damage buildings, block sewer and water lines, and disrupt livestock and crop production ...".
Those are my main concerns - Ash on the ground disrupting the production of food and clean water and getting them to people, and ash in the atmosphere causing climate change.
How many miles away you are and how much ash you get will be the least of your concerns.
Once the ash cloud encompasses the globe, we all freeze/starve to death within 10 years anyway. Unless someone comes up with a way to clean the air out before its too late, then how far away you are will matter..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article does not make clear who wants the funding that this scare story is supposed to generate.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
At 300 miles, the largest city that'll get hit will be Billings, MT. Population 110K.
I'm not saying it won't be fairly devastating to lots of small towns in lower Montana, Wyoming and parts of Idaho and Utah.
But a vast swath of that is essentially nowhere.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm?clat=44.427963&clng=-110.58845500000001&r=482.8032001844076&lc=FFFFFF&lw=1&fc=00FF00&fs=true
Since computer models and simulations are rarely 100% precise one can ignore them. See climate models. There is no climate change and probably no Yellowstone volcano either. Probably not even a place with the name 'Yellowstone'.
Looks like the first impact of legal weed on the "Science" establishment at UC.
Well, it will be funny watching the dooms day pronouncements of the USGS against those of the "Sea Level" Group.
Ah. Now that has been a funny to me for years. How is it that a University in the near-middle of a continent has a
"Sea Level" Group?
Seems madness just by logic, but perhaps that is a hallmark of University Colorado.
Tee Hee
Guy from Idaho Falls here. Probably the second largest city in the swath. This confirms what we already know: if Yellowstone goes off we are all dead
Our current economic system has created existential risks by discounting the risks of centralization and just-in-time production and just-barely-works systems without huge margins of resiliency. One tragedy-in-the-making example is the USA recently selling off its emergency strategic grain supplies.
http://ppjg.me/2010/11/12/usda...
http://articles.latimes.com/20...
The USA could as a nation be putting in place a more distributed resilient production system (including indoors food production or even space habitats) to ensure the safety of its citizenry even under huge unexpected disasters. The USA has chosen not too because it does not fit with the current economic dogma that discount such "black swan" existential risks. Hurricane Katrina is an example of failure to systemically plan for obvious serious weather-related risks, Given that example, it is unlikely we can expect the USA to plan for even rarer risks like supervolcanoes, solar flares, pandemics, rogue AI technology, asteroid strikes, economic meltdown, civil war, or whatever else. Still, if you add up all the rare risks, taken together, the probability of some sort of "black swan" event may not otherwise be as rare as one might expect -- and they can all be addressed to some extent by creating a more resilient decentralized infrastructure and promoting more cooperation among people (rather than competition).
I find that situation frustrating because I find issues about resiliency to be very interesting civil defense problems to think about (e.g. my OSCOMAK idea), but the current notion of national security is focused on intrinsic unilateral military might, not intrinsic mutual resilient security. The "Lifeboat Foundation" and "The Living Universe Foundation" though are examples of some groups that have concerns in this area -- but with little funding and lots of competition for that funding compared with the effectively trillion US dollars a year the USA spends (or effectively incurs) annually for military-oriented defense.
Like George Orwell said:
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/a...
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield [or a three foot deep ash field...]"
A resilient infrastructure coincidentally is also more compatible with "democracy" since there can't be real political democracy without some level of financial and material independence for the citizenry. At least the Maker movement is a bit of hope there. As are the changing economics of indoor agriculture given LED lights and robotics, even without potentially cheaper energy supplies if either hot fusion or LENR/QuantumEnergy/ColdFusion turns out to be workable.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Ash 3D?
"See this? This... is my BOOM STICK!"
And nothing of value will be lost.
I cant find a map. I would think that a map of some sort would be useful in a story like this.
10 PRINT"BOOM!";
20 GOTO 10
Guy from Idaho Falls here. Probably the second largest city in the swath. This confirms what we already know: if Yellowstone goes off we are all dead
If it goes off BIG, yeah, lots of people are going to die and ash is a VERY distant secondary concern.
If, however, it just burps a huge ash cloud and suffers a minor eruption, yeah, life in your area is going to suck. Hooverishly.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No, if Yellowstone is not ready to blow already I doubt the biggest atomic bomb we could make would set it off, almost certainly not one on the surface.
and even worse for Pickles
Simulations are loosely similar to doing unit testing in programming.
The random chaos involved is not purely random; just way way beyond human comprehension. The statistical patterns may exist in the noise to be discovered someday - no, it won't describe the system in any reproducible way but it will increase accuracy for increasingly detailed predictions. Accuracy is inversely related to the level of prediction. We don't know the curve between these two without a great deal of work. Think of breaking encryption, brute force can be impractical but if you apply statistics (finding weakness patterns) you greatly reduce the amount of work guessing (huge understatement, you go from billions of billions to just thousands.)
I remember the models for my region, all but 1 said we'd get more rain and that 1 said it would be the same. None of them said less rain. We've had more rain as predicted by the simulation (the span was about a decade, it was climate not weather prediction I'm citing here.) Also, if they ran 25 (I think it was just 4) and most were correct - then it was a good simulation. If just 1 matched reality, it is still a good simulation! The problem is when no simulation remotely matches the outcome; then you have a LOT of work to do. Like I said, it's fluid dynamics, the longer it runs and the more detailed the greater the parallel universe of possible outcomes.
Climate change:
It's extremely general and obvious ever since they figured out Venus. Then it was figuring out how much heat... and after that the complex predictions so we know how much is too much. That is done too. What we are doing now is trying to get even more detail for some reason; which probably has to do more with money and political long term planning at this point. So we have ignorant people dismissing the solved problems while citing the extraneous work as it approaches the limits of understanding. Bringing up weather prediction is even more extreme in the ignorance.
You know this stuff wouldn't be controversial if we lived on the moon... planetary and climate science wouldn't apply to us and upset certain people.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Anyone interested in a halfway decently written adventure story built on the basis of the Whole Yella blowing might look into the Ashfall trilogy:
http://www.amazon.com/Ashfall-...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
I just hope that at least Russia has collapsed before the Yellowstone volcano destroys the USA. Then China will take us forward :)
Vote republican, because 9- 11! Glenn Beck!
Optimistically, here in Denver three feet of ash on the roof would be like 30 feet of snow.
Three hundred miles is the projected distance at which cities would be covered with three feet of ash. The ash coverage would extend much, much farther than that and the atmospheric ash would have consequences much more far-reaching. So don't get locked into the idea that if you're beyond that 300-mile radius, you have nothing to worry about.