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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.
Yeah, I don't see us beating this one. Engage roman orgy mode.
"Since we are starting ab-initio in a new planet", he said, "the entire planetary infrastructure will be built on sustainable resources from the ground up from the start from get go". Complete with Boring Machines taking all the roads underground, with some tunnels reserved for hyperloop, cars will drive themselves to charging stations, a Dyson Sphere of 2 Astronomical units in diameter will refocus sunlight on the Mars surface to maintain Earth like lighting and temperature.
He said "If Secretary General of UN would sign the contract, all this will be completed in 100 days or it would be free. "
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The difference is that the scientists are correct about Yellowstone. The problem is that fools like you want to take the rest of humanity down with you when it does go off.
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.
Based on the debris from the last two Yellowstone eruptions, over 80% of the continental US, most of unpopulated western Canada, and some of northern Mexico would experience significant ashfall. Weather patterns around the world would be disrupted for years. It would be a larger release of energy into the atmosphere than the most generous estimates of total animal activity since any records of human existence.
Much like most of the other doomsday scenarios, some areas would become uninhabitable, and everywhere else would need to adapt.
Shouldn't we wait until most people are no longer worried about a global warming catastrophe before we create a new armageddon story?
The Yellowstone hot spot has been a cause for concern for a long, long time. It's also one of those things we can't do much about.
We also have case history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... as the hotspot travels and does it's thing. No need for humans to "create" anything.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The scientist said that within the human lifte time we might be able to see the effects of what leads to a supervolcano. Basically within decades we could start seeing signs of a supervolcano that might erupt in 100+ years. That's what the article says.
What, exactly, are you going to do to prevent its eruption? Send it a strongly-worded letter?
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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Indeed. All federal funding for the National Science Foundation, which is the vast majority of all government investment in science research (outside of NASA which was 11.3B) is just 5.67 billion dollars for everything. That includes everything from researching Yellowstone to robotics to stem. The majority isn't even spent on hard sciences but rather integrating groups. We are talking grant money of maybe 100k here. Put that into perspective with 824 billion for the military. I'd say 0.000012% of our defense spending is very well spent on something that really could level most of America to smoking ruin, unlike some rag tag terrorists we helped create ourselves to have an excuse to wage wars that financially reward key players. Hell, I'd even up that to 0.001% and still call it financially sound.
They are not saying it's a matter of decades from now when it will blow. It about how long it took for magma to move into the system until an eruption. The current study says decades, versus a previous study of another volcano that said millenniums.
There's still debate about about pinning down "the precise trigger of the last Yellowstone event."
None of these super volcanos are going to erupt anytime soon. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...
So clam down. You're much more likely to get hit by car crossing a street then by a super volcano.
NO. That is the British strategy. The American way involves sheriffs and posses.
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I remember Mt St. Helens very well, because I was working as a technician in the lab which sent seismometers there. It's an irrelevant example, because the Mt. St. Helens event is something that could be prepared for with a few weeks warning.
The larger scale the event, the longer you need to plan for it. A supervolcano can eject several thousand cubic kilometers of material. Mt St. Helens ejected 0.21 km^3. The last Yellowstone super-eruption was roughly twelve thousand time larger. If it happened today it would bury everything from California to Chicago in 10 feet of ash. It would effectively halt agriculture worldwide for several years. Given that the world's global food reserve is only adequate (if perfectly distributed) for 73 days, how many decades of planning do you think we'd need to be ready? How much of that time would be spent debating whether this was real, then debating on who was going to pay?
Also, I'm not sure you understand what "geologic timescale" means. The usual unit of time used is the Ma or Mega annum. Decades don't enter into it.
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If half the population dies the first day that food reserve can go for 146 days.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We are talking about Yellowstone, so consideration is needed as to how such preventative actions may affect the features which attract visitors.
I certainly hope you forgot your </sarcasm> tag there, since given the choice between "Yellowstone is an uninhabitable crater" and "Yellowstone is the caldera of the supervolcano that destroyed humanity", I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the former option—the one where humans still exist—would be better for tourism.
Last I had heard, they were estimating that an eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano could result in 10 feet (i.e. 3 m) of ash being deposited in Houston. Even without considering the life-ending clouds that would cover the earth for decades, that much ash on the ground would be more than enough to end a civilization for the simple reasons that you wouldn't be able to breathe, move about, or work the land.
Now, for folks who aren't intimately familiar with US geography, this may sound like yet another tragedy for the people of Houston after the recent hurricane that ravaged the city, but that's missing the point entirely. The point here is that Houston is nowhere close to Yellowstone. Nowhere close.
To put it in perspective for any Europeans, the distance from Yellowstone to Houston (i.e. ~1300 miles or ~2100 km as the crow flies) is roughly the same as the distance from Amsterdam to Moscow (or London to Bucharest or Paris to Istanbul). Another way of putting it is that if an eruption of this magnitude happened in Munich, you'd have to travel to the Arctic Circle, the middle of the Sahara, or somewhere beyond Moscow before you'd see less ash than what I described. For any Aussies, it'd mean that if an eruption happened in Alice Springs, the entire country would be under that much ash or more. You'd have to get pretty far into Papua New Guinea or Indonesia before you'd see any less than I described.
All of which is to say, we're talking about life-ending amounts of ash being deposited across entire continents, so preventative measures may be necessary if we want there to be tourism, not just in Yellowstone, but anywhere on the planet.