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Evidence Suggests Updated Timeline Towards Yellowstone's Supervolcano Eruption (nytimes.com)
Camel Pilot writes: Geologist have been aware of fresh magma moving in the Yellowstone's super volcano system. Previously this was thought to precede an eruption by thousands of years. Recent evidence by Hannah Shamloo, a graduate student at Arizona State University, demonstrates that perhaps the timeline from the underground basin filling to eruption is more on the scale of decades. A super volcano eruption has the power to alter life's story on this earth and even destroy all life on a continent. In light of this, it seems like a good time to invest some effort and resources into finding ways to prepare, delay or deflect the potential threat. The research was presented at the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) 2017 conference in Portland, Oregon.
Asteroids, and a super volcano, do not seem to be due to human interaction, it is just a natural disaster that we will need to make sure we have a plan for dealing with. If we can't stop it, at least have an emergency infrastructure out there to move large scale of people.
Global Warming and Mass Extinction, are slow disasters which is why there are so many more deniers, first they are cause by us and our life styles (which people take exception too) and second there isn't a single simple cause and fix, it requires a long fix having a change in our culture and how we do things.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Two approaches come to mind, both of which are probably too massive to actually be undertaken. One is to cool the magma, by drilling a grid of holes and pumping water into them. (Use the heated water or steam for electric power plants.) The other is to break up the surface to a depth of several miles (underground nuclear bombs), so that any eruption will be just magma flows rather than an explosion.
Could either work? I don't even pretend to know. Would either attempt cause more problems than it solved? I wouldn't be surprised. At least some examination of possibilities should be done.
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There really is no difference. The problem here is the belief that Nature owes our civilization something. Nature is neither benevolent nor malevolent toward us; it is indifferent to our fate.
Supervolcano eruptions are a fact. The study of the geologic record post-dates the emergence of our civilization, so it isn't surprising that the way our civilization operates doesn't take the possibility supervolcanoes into account.
GP's reaction is fairly typical of the "reasoning" of the benevolent nature school: a supervolcano eruption in the near future would be a threat to civilization, therefore we can discount that possibility. That reasoning applies across the board to anything like climate change or sea level rise. We're not prepared for it, therefore it can't happen..
It took 4.5 billion years for an intelligent species to emerge on the planet. In our species 300,000 year history, civilization is a novelty, barely 5,000 years old, the most recent 1.6% of our species' lifespan. Yet because 1000 years is a long time to us as individuals, we see civilization as something enduring and stable. There's no evidence to support that notion on a geologic timescale.
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What would happen if "some nutjob" like in North Korea had one good missile and one good nuclear bomb attached to it and lobbed it right into the middle of the Yellowstone caldera? Would that possibly set it off or just make a mess? Or they could just throw a bomb in the back of a cube van and drive right in there. Precarious times we live in.