That was just tried in a geothermally active area in northern Europe. The person who runs the company is on trial for the damage he caused when it triggered earthquakes... and his project was far less ambitious and on a tiny scale in comparison to what would need to be done at Yellowstone.
Triggering real earthquakes, much less the type of problems that the far more massive scale attempts needed at Yellowstone would cause, seems an exercise in mass suicide.
Even if you can't use all the energy, there must be some way to bleed it off.
Sure; just turn it into a big geothermal energy farm. Run a bunch of pipes (tubes?;-) down to carry the heat to power generators. The current estimates are that the heat from Yellowstone could pretty much supply electricity equal to the world's current usage for several centuries. Of course, distribution to areas outside North America would be problematic. Also, we don't know how fast the heat sources might be replenished from below, so we really know how many centuries (or millennia) it might last.
Well, if the plume is connected to the core mantle, as scientists are now speculating, then it will last "forever"
Of course, (1) it's supposed to take the Earth billions of years naturally to cool, so it is unlikely we could ever cool Yellowstone. (2) Though cooling it's surface may slow things down, it may also create a more massive explosion when it happens, (3) we are ill equipped to deal with that type of magnitude of heat, magma and pressure, and finally (4) cooling the "whole thing" if it does indeed include the core mantle, would be the end of life on Earth anyway.
I for one vote to leave it alone - at least till we have better technology and an idea of just how deep it is...
Humans survived the 640,000 years ago eruption, they will survive again... how and in what shape... that's another story...
Yes, every human around back then survived.
Let me do the math here... hold on, it's tough math... gotta get out the calculator...
ZERO humans alive minus zero deaths = ZERO humans still.
So, technically, you are 100% correct - and then some. EVERY human alive back then survived...
All ZERO of them.
;-)
Anyway, joking and sarcasm aside, humans started around 200,000 years ago... though some scientists think a little earlier. Regardless, the eruption 640,000 years ago happened before human beings existed.
It also happened on the opposite side of the world from where human beings and their predecessors came into existence.
Really? People from the US cant even drink the water in Mexico without getting violently ill.
That aside, people today, by and large (with a tiny percentage being the exception) do not know how to do any of the following:
- Hunt for food
- Grow crops
- Butcher a dead animal they just killed
- Start (much less maintain) a farm
- Know what plants are edible or inedible (with few plant exceptions like apples, oranges, etc)
- Know what parts of the animal can be safely eaten
- Know how to keep food edible without refrigerators
- Know how long food remains edible without refridgeration
- Know how to make clothing to protect them from the weather
- Know how to build shelter or even have given any thought to what natural shelter they can find
- Know how to start a fire without a lighter or matches (though there are a larger percent who know how to do this)
- Know how to purify drinking water
--- Of those few who know that, very very few would know how to remove the acids and other fallout from the water
- Know how to drill a well into an aquifer to ensure drinkable water
- Know how to re-propagate plants (and which plants need which method)
There's the easy list... so, once again, since people of a few hundred years ago know all of this stuff, how is it that we aren't far worse prepared than them?
A species can be hunted to extinction (or brought there through a variety of means) - including humans.
Now, you are confusing the terms "mass extinction"/"extinction level event" with the term "extinction" as it (extinction) can be applied to an individual species, race, group of species or just about any grouping for that matter.
A simple for instance is "The sperm whale was hunted to near extinction" - which applies to one species of the whale family of the mammal family.
You spent a lot of time in the last two posts debating semantics over (a) terms you dont understand the meaning of, and (b) single words you dont understand the meaning of.
No... scientists are the ones coming up with those figures and disagree with just about everything you said.
Thus, people far more knowledgeable than you on the subject seem to have come to different conclusions than you. I'm stating I agree with their conclusions and what those are.
Doesn't matter if you agree or not. Doesn't matter if I do or not. Whatever will happen, will happen. Either they will be correct, and my belief that they are a better authority on the matter than you will be correct - or they will be wrong, my belief in them will have been misplaced, and you will turn out to be correct.
Actually, I am talking about the explosive force of the last big eruption in comparison to the explosive force of nukes. I am not talking about the energy contained in the system.
The energy contained in the system is far more vast... and if current speculation and theories are correct (that the system is actually connected to and thus fed by the core mantle itself) then the energy in the system is too vast for me to even speculate about.
Smith says "it wouldn't surprise me" if the plume extends even deeper, perhaps originating from the core-mantle boundary some 1,800 miles deep. "
And here is a question... considering the caldera alone is somewhere around 2000 square miles, and the TOP of the hotspot stretches over 7,500 to 10,000 square miles (with hundreds of thousands of cubic miles worth of it stretching downwards - ASSUMING it does not connect to the core mantle - in which case it's enormous.
So... the question... how do you cool the top of such a hotspot when it is thousands of square miles big?
Second question... what purpose do you think that will serve with it being fed by at least a few hundred thousand cubic MILES of hotspot below it (and possibly by the core mantle itself)?
Sorry, I really did spend a lot of time researching it. Scientists in this field think trying to cool it, trying to relieve pressure or anything similar is either useless, senseless and/or very dangerous.
While you may not agree... I personally choose to believe that the experts in the field... those people who have devoted most of their life to studying this particular volcano, are probably more accurate on the matter than you - hence I side with them.
(1) saying 70% extinction means 70% extinction... not 100%. It is an approved modifier of the word "extinction" whether you agree or not.
The definition for "extinction event" or "mass extinction event" is as follows:
An extinction event (also known as: mass extinction; extinction-level event, ELE) is a sharp decrease in the number of species in a relatively short period of time.
So, sorry to burst your bubble... but you misunderstand the use and/or definition of the terms. Or the dictionaries, scientists and research papers on the subject are wrong.
I'm more leaning towards you are wrong and they are correct. Sorry.
(2) We do have a very tight food supply in many countries - some have far less supply than demand and rely on bartering with other nations. As for this country, though we produce enough to feed the whole world, all of those areas will become infertile. The majority of food (plant or animal) producing areas in this country sit quite nicely in the area that will be devastated by a major Yellowstone eruption.
(3) The fallout and drops in temperature will hamper the entire rest of the world's food production capabilities - after reducing ours to 1/10th of what it is from direct effect.
(4) Unlike in past similar eruptions (Toba, being the only one), the population of the Earth has increased by a factor of around 7 thousand. For instance, in 70,000BC (around the time of Toba) the world had an estimated less than one million people. The county I live in has 3 times that - Nassau county has 3 times that and could fit in the volcano's caldera (ie: this tiny land area has 3 times the world population during the time Toba went off). Manhattan Island, a mere 15 or so square miles, has over EIGHT times the world's population of that time.
That means a 20% mass extinction event would lead to around 1.3 BILLION deaths. Today, even a small percentage is a massive amount of people.
Now, in the US...
When Yellowstone went off 640,000 years ago, there were ZERO humans affected...
Why you might ask? Because there were NO humans.
Mitochondrial DNA and fossil evidence indicates that modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
Today, such an eruption would mean the US (what's left of it) would have to import all (or to be more accurate, somewhere near 99%) of it's food, and that would be from countries that were also severely effected by the aftereffects.
Regardless of his inaccuracies, perceived or real... fact is, every nuclear weapon on the planet barely manage one tenth the destructive force of Yellowstone's 2.2 million or 640,000 year ago eruption.
Force a capped doubled pipe into the ground. The pipe is smaller pipe inside a larger one. You pump liquid sodium, or some other coolant into the inner pipe. The hot liquid,pressurized steam, or other coolant returns through the outer.
The system is never "unplugged" and the cap is constantly getting thicker as more and more is cooled. One massive headhouse would use lateral drilling to tap the system from outside the park. Just like is done with oil drilling.
(1) how many materials do we have that could survive that heat for any length of time?
(2) how big of a drill bit would we need to release that much pressure in a way that would be safe? One maybe... oh, I dunno... a hundred miles wide? (look up the research scientists have already done - which speculate smaller holes could trigger an eruption as lotsa pressure tries to release itself through a small hole causing the rock above it to fracture and explode).
So, I doubt a 100 mile wide or even 50 mile wide... by few hundred mile long drill bit and a drill to power it, are in our future plans for Yellowstone.
Think about a water hose with your finger over it so you have a violent, far flying stream of water... compared to the open hose. Then think about that scenario where the "water hose" has released explosions of "water" that exceed the entire world's nuclear arsenal by a factor of ten.
Ummm, you do realize, that with Yellowstone, that's called "just below the surface" - as in "gee, look at the pretty surface geysers, where superheated steam flies out all the time..."
So... that solution seems to be solving nothing, as Yellowstone is already the most geologically active hydrothermal/geothermal area in the country, and one of the largest in the world.
Super Volcanoes are measured (besides their previous explosive VEI ratings) by the magma pool, surface structures, and the valley they leave.
Yellowstone's hotspot and explosions have left a valley (a massive missing piece of the Rockies) that would fit most of the Appalachian Mountain Range in. It has literally eradicated a section of the Rockies that large.
It's hotspot stretches across large areas of multiple states, and it's caldera (the opening from the last eruption) could fit most medium sized and many large sized cities in it.
Thusly, height of a Super Volcano is never an indication of it's power.
We have the ability to impact the workings of the volcano. May not have the political will, as a nation, but we have the ability to impact it at a net profit.
Wrong... at least according to any scientist studying this.
The amount of energy contained in Yellowstone is absurd. A for instance would be it's previous explosion DWARF what we can accomplish. You would need TEN TIMES the entire world's nuclear arsenal to create an equivalent explosion - and then be able to bury those miles deep so the surface and the crust of the Earth is affected.
If Yellowstone erupts - and we do not know what the warning signs truly are (but think we are seeing them), and don't know how long after those signs till it erupts (but it could be next year, 10,000 years from now, or... later today), we would not have the time to build an outhouse, much less bunkers, start underground crops, and have underground nuclear power plants to power it all - much less on the scale needed to prevent mass extinction... (gee, we'd change a 70-90% extinction to a 69-89% extinction).
So, to summarize, we dont know what timetable we have after we see the warning signs (which many scientists are speculating we are already seeing). So, when do we start this massive construction project that will only save a tiny fraction of life on Earth?
Not just that, but the pressures involved are ridiculous. We'd run a risk of actually starting such an eruption. The hotspot is larger than many states. Dealing with that much pressure, that covers that much distance, would definitely take science on a level greater than what we have.
A balloon is great at holding air in it until you pop it with a pin and it explodes. Creating a controlled hole, in the Earth's crust, like the opening on the end of a balloon, is beyond our capabilities.
I'd rather set off every nuke in the world - the explosion would only be a fraction (1/10th) of what Yellowstone has been known to produce.
Now, maybe if the hot spot wasn't hundreds of miles and covered vast chunks of multiple states... or maybe if Yellowstone's previous eruptions hadn't carved a valley into the Rockies big enough to fit most of the Appalachian Mountains in... then maybe it might be feasible.
It amazes me that we think as a people that our lives on this planet are somehow more significant than other life forms.
Then it would amaze you that my life is more important than yours, at least to me? I think most people operate under the belief that humans are more important than animals because, well, we evolved.
Here's my list of most importance:
Me, my (future)progeny, and my spouse
My family and friends
People closely sharing my culture, ideals and/or geographic area
Human beings in general
Animals (especially domesticated animals)
Plants
The problem with that list (when talking about extinction) is as follows. The last two things on the list are more important than you (or me) - even though most humans wont admit it. Without them, you (and I and everyone else) would die due to hunger.
Losing either of those two would probably end in the same results. Without plantlife, animal life will soon follow into extinction. Without animal life, a lot of plant will as well (kinda like our current concern about bees dying - and that's just one example).
I understand your point, but it just doesnt apply to extinction level events - for you to be the most important, plants and animals have to be equally important or of more importance.
Duradin is correct. A Yellowstone eruption like 640,000 years ago, or 2.2 million years ago, would be like us exploding ten times every nuclear weapon on the planet.
I'm no scientist, though to me, that's a mass extinction event on a worldwide scale. And though I am no scientist, they all seem to agree...
Another note on this... 640,000 years ago, humans were confined to a very small area on the other side of the world (Africa) and more likely to survive than now (or than 70,000 years ago, when we had spread out across Europe and Asia). Africa was probably one of the most inhabitable places on Earth when Yellowstone went off 640,000 years ago. Maybe a nice balmy 20-60 degrees... during the "mini" ice age it's eruption created, which scientists theorize lowered the surface temperature 20-30 degrees.
Yeah, scary as all hell, isn't it? A whole chunk of the rockies that simply no longer exists...
To make it even scarier, you should see "3D" or perspective maps of the area where you can see the height of the surrounding mountain ranges - and the lack thereof where Yellowstone and it's hotspot sits.
Those two maps make it even scarier, since it shows the missing mountains stretching across states like someone took a massive bulldozer and ripped out a big valley right through the mountain range.
On a related note, just like Yellowstone's big eruptions, The Toba eruption left nothing, geologically speaking. That is why you cannot find a "Mt Toba" - it is now called "Lake Toba" as the land mass there is no more. It is now a lake 62 miles long and 18 miles wide, and 1,666 ft at its deepest point.
If memory serves, it was a mass extinction event. As was the Lake Toba eruption - estimated 65%-80% (or far more) mass extinction. It left only a few thousand humans alive worldwide. That was about 60-70,000 years ago.
...it had global consequences, killing most humans then alive and creating a population bottleneck in Central Eastern Africa and India that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today.
To give you an idea of comparitive eruptive forces/volumes, etc... Toba's eruption was either a VEI7 or VEI8 (some references disagree).
Both the 2.2 million year ago and 640,000 year ago Yellowstone eruptions were most definitely VEI8, and near the absolute top of the list.
As a matter of fact, those two Yellowstone eruptions are two of the largest eruptions believed to have ever taken place on Earth.
The 2.2 million year ago one was the third largest explosive volcanic eruption in Earth's history.
The one 640,000 years ago created a tuff 590–660 ft thick, that covered half the country. And of course, that doesnt even include later global fallout over the ensuing years.
It is expected that a similar eruption now would kill virtually all life within a 600+ mile range by just the falling ash, lava flows and the sheer explosive force of the eruption.
At least, that is what scientists are theorizing.
The problems are, the last such explosion (Toba) left virtually no one alive to record and analyze the event - assuming they even had enough of a developed written language (if any) and an understanding of geophysics, to make such observations.
That too (since Yellowstone's last gigantic eruption was 640,000 years ago) is the problem with gathering evidence of that and earlier eruptions.
Except, Yellowstone's eruption was 8,000 times more massive (in terms of ash fall) than Mt St Helens. With a subsequent increase in the amount of acid rain, and thusly also a massive increase in years without a sun. Something Mt St Helens didnt accomplish at all.
Those are the key differences... near a decade of global winter and day as night, years of acid rain, and global ash fall 8,000 times larger than Mt St Helens.
And that is the reason why though Mt St Helens may not have made much difference, Yellowstone will. Heck, the expelled content from the initial explosion (not the ash fall from the winds, etc) will cover most of the country.
Slashdot Mirror
That was just tried in a geothermally active area in northern Europe. The person who runs the company is on trial for the damage he caused when it triggered earthquakes... and his project was far less ambitious and on a tiny scale in comparison to what would need to be done at Yellowstone.
Triggering real earthquakes, much less the type of problems that the far more massive scale attempts needed at Yellowstone would cause, seems an exercise in mass suicide.
Even if you can't use all the energy, there must be some way to bleed it off.
Sure; just turn it into a big geothermal energy farm. Run a bunch of pipes (tubes?;-) down to carry the heat to power generators. The current estimates are that the heat from Yellowstone could pretty much supply electricity equal to the world's current usage for several centuries. Of course, distribution to areas outside North America would be problematic. Also, we don't know how fast the heat sources might be replenished from below, so we really know how many centuries (or millennia) it might last.
Well, if the plume is connected to the core mantle, as scientists are now speculating, then it will last "forever"
Of course, (1) it's supposed to take the Earth billions of years naturally to cool, so it is unlikely we could ever cool Yellowstone. (2) Though cooling it's surface may slow things down, it may also create a more massive explosion when it happens, (3) we are ill equipped to deal with that type of magnitude of heat, magma and pressure, and finally (4) cooling the "whole thing" if it does indeed include the core mantle, would be the end of life on Earth anyway.
I for one vote to leave it alone - at least till we have better technology and an idea of just how deep it is...
Humans survived the 640,000 years ago eruption, they will survive again... how and in what shape... that's another story...
Yes, every human around back then survived.
Let me do the math here... hold on, it's tough math... gotta get out the calculator...
ZERO humans alive minus zero deaths = ZERO humans still.
So, technically, you are 100% correct - and then some. EVERY human alive back then survived...
All ZERO of them.
Anyway, joking and sarcasm aside, humans started around 200,000 years ago... though some scientists think a little earlier. Regardless, the eruption 640,000 years ago happened before human beings existed.
It also happened on the opposite side of the world from where human beings and their predecessors came into existence.
Really? People from the US cant even drink the water in Mexico without getting violently ill.
That aside, people today, by and large (with a tiny percentage being the exception) do not know how to do any of the following:
- Hunt for food
- Grow crops
- Butcher a dead animal they just killed
- Start (much less maintain) a farm
- Know what plants are edible or inedible (with few plant exceptions like apples, oranges, etc)
- Know what parts of the animal can be safely eaten
- Know how to keep food edible without refrigerators
- Know how long food remains edible without refridgeration
- Know how to make clothing to protect them from the weather
- Know how to build shelter or even have given any thought to what natural shelter they can find
- Know how to start a fire without a lighter or matches (though there are a larger percent who know how to do this)
- Know how to purify drinking water
--- Of those few who know that, very very few would know how to remove the acids and other fallout from the water
- Know how to drill a well into an aquifer to ensure drinkable water
- Know how to re-propagate plants (and which plants need which method)
There's the easy list... so, once again, since people of a few hundred years ago know all of this stuff, how is it that we aren't far worse prepared than them?
On all counts, BobMcD is correct and then some.
Oh, and a PS...
A species can be hunted to extinction (or brought there through a variety of means) - including humans.
Now, you are confusing the terms "mass extinction"/"extinction level event" with the term "extinction" as it (extinction) can be applied to an individual species, race, group of species or just about any grouping for that matter.
A simple for instance is "The sperm whale was hunted to near extinction" - which applies to one species of the whale family of the mammal family.
You spent a lot of time in the last two posts debating semantics over (a) terms you dont understand the meaning of, and (b) single words you dont understand the meaning of.
No... scientists are the ones coming up with those figures and disagree with just about everything you said.
Thus, people far more knowledgeable than you on the subject seem to have come to different conclusions than you. I'm stating I agree with their conclusions and what those are.
Doesn't matter if you agree or not. Doesn't matter if I do or not. Whatever will happen, will happen. Either they will be correct, and my belief that they are a better authority on the matter than you will be correct - or they will be wrong, my belief in them will have been misplaced, and you will turn out to be correct.
Actually, I am talking about the explosive force of the last big eruption in comparison to the explosive force of nukes. I am not talking about the energy contained in the system.
The energy contained in the system is far more vast... and if current speculation and theories are correct (that the system is actually connected to and thus fed by the core mantle itself) then the energy in the system is too vast for me to even speculate about.
Smith says "it wouldn't surprise me" if the plume extends even deeper, perhaps originating from the core-mantle boundary some 1,800 miles deep. "
And here is a question... considering the caldera alone is somewhere around 2000 square miles, and the TOP of the hotspot stretches over 7,500 to 10,000 square miles (with hundreds of thousands of cubic miles worth of it stretching downwards - ASSUMING it does not connect to the core mantle - in which case it's enormous.
So... the question... how do you cool the top of such a hotspot when it is thousands of square miles big?
Second question... what purpose do you think that will serve with it being fed by at least a few hundred thousand cubic MILES of hotspot below it (and possibly by the core mantle itself)?
Sorry, I really did spend a lot of time researching it. Scientists in this field think trying to cool it, trying to relieve pressure or anything similar is either useless, senseless and/or very dangerous.
While you may not agree... I personally choose to believe that the experts in the field... those people who have devoted most of their life to studying this particular volcano, are probably more accurate on the matter than you - hence I side with them.
(1) saying 70% extinction means 70% extinction... not 100%. It is an approved modifier of the word "extinction" whether you agree or not.
The definition for "extinction event" or "mass extinction event" is as follows:
An extinction event (also known as: mass extinction; extinction-level event, ELE) is a sharp decrease in the number of species in a relatively short period of time.
So, sorry to burst your bubble... but you misunderstand the use and/or definition of the terms. Or the dictionaries, scientists and research papers on the subject are wrong.
I'm more leaning towards you are wrong and they are correct. Sorry.
(2) We do have a very tight food supply in many countries - some have far less supply than demand and rely on bartering with other nations. As for this country, though we produce enough to feed the whole world, all of those areas will become infertile. The majority of food (plant or animal) producing areas in this country sit quite nicely in the area that will be devastated by a major Yellowstone eruption.
(3) The fallout and drops in temperature will hamper the entire rest of the world's food production capabilities - after reducing ours to 1/10th of what it is from direct effect.
(4) Unlike in past similar eruptions (Toba, being the only one), the population of the Earth has increased by a factor of around 7 thousand. For instance, in 70,000BC (around the time of Toba) the world had an estimated less than one million people. The county I live in has 3 times that - Nassau county has 3 times that and could fit in the volcano's caldera (ie: this tiny land area has 3 times the world population during the time Toba went off). Manhattan Island, a mere 15 or so square miles, has over EIGHT times the world's population of that time.
That means a 20% mass extinction event would lead to around 1.3 BILLION deaths. Today, even a small percentage is a massive amount of people.
Now, in the US...
When Yellowstone went off 640,000 years ago, there were ZERO humans affected...
Why you might ask? Because there were NO humans.
Mitochondrial DNA and fossil evidence indicates that modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
Today, such an eruption would mean the US (what's left of it) would have to import all (or to be more accurate, somewhere near 99%) of it's food, and that would be from countries that were also severely effected by the aftereffects.
While you may not think so, scientist with far more knowledge than us do think so.
The only difference with Yellowstone is that at it's big eruptions happened when humankind was pretty much confined to one area of Africa.
Here's what happened when a Swiss scientist tried it:
BBC News
Now... to try it with something as many times more massive as Yellowstone... well, I hope we've moved to a different planet first...
Regardless of his inaccuracies, perceived or real... fact is, every nuclear weapon on the planet barely manage one tenth the destructive force of Yellowstone's 2.2 million or 640,000 year ago eruption.
Megaton Comparisons
You will note that the 640,000 year ago eruption was ten times more powerful than all of the world's nukes COMBINED.
So, don't drill a hole, drill a plug.
Force a capped doubled pipe into the ground. The pipe is smaller pipe inside a larger one. You pump liquid sodium, or some other coolant into the inner pipe. The hot liquid,pressurized steam, or other coolant returns through the outer.
The system is never "unplugged" and the cap is constantly getting thicker as more and more is cooled. One massive headhouse would use lateral drilling to tap the system from outside the park. Just like is done with oil drilling.
(1) how many materials do we have that could survive that heat for any length of time?
(2) how big of a drill bit would we need to release that much pressure in a way that would be safe? One maybe... oh, I dunno... a hundred miles wide? (look up the research scientists have already done - which speculate smaller holes could trigger an eruption as lotsa pressure tries to release itself through a small hole causing the rock above it to fracture and explode).
So, I doubt a 100 mile wide or even 50 mile wide... by few hundred mile long drill bit and a drill to power it, are in our future plans for Yellowstone.
Think about a water hose with your finger over it so you have a violent, far flying stream of water... compared to the open hose. Then think about that scenario where the "water hose" has released explosions of "water" that exceed the entire world's nuclear arsenal by a factor of ten.
You don't have to drill till its hot enough for your drillbit to melt.
You just have to drill till it's hot enough to turn pressurized water into superheated steam. Then you have a source of energy.
The other option of course is to drill without a drillbit:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090912144809.htm
Ummm, you do realize, that with Yellowstone, that's called "just below the surface" - as in "gee, look at the pretty surface geysers, where superheated steam flies out all the time..."
So... that solution seems to be solving nothing, as Yellowstone is already the most geologically active hydrothermal/geothermal area in the country, and one of the largest in the world.
Super Volcanoes are measured (besides their previous explosive VEI ratings) by the magma pool, surface structures, and the valley they leave.
Yellowstone's hotspot and explosions have left a valley (a massive missing piece of the Rockies) that would fit most of the Appalachian Mountain Range in. It has literally eradicated a section of the Rockies that large.
It's hotspot stretches across large areas of multiple states, and it's caldera (the opening from the last eruption) could fit most medium sized and many large sized cities in it.
Thusly, height of a Super Volcano is never an indication of it's power.
We have the ability to impact the workings of the volcano. May not have the political will, as a nation, but we have the ability to impact it at a net profit.
Wrong... at least according to any scientist studying this.
The amount of energy contained in Yellowstone is absurd. A for instance would be it's previous explosion DWARF what we can accomplish. You would need TEN TIMES the entire world's nuclear arsenal to create an equivalent explosion - and then be able to bury those miles deep so the surface and the crust of the Earth is affected.
No sane scientist wants to touch that thing...
If Yellowstone erupts - and we do not know what the warning signs truly are (but think we are seeing them), and don't know how long after those signs till it erupts (but it could be next year, 10,000 years from now, or... later today), we would not have the time to build an outhouse, much less bunkers, start underground crops, and have underground nuclear power plants to power it all - much less on the scale needed to prevent mass extinction... (gee, we'd change a 70-90% extinction to a 69-89% extinction).
So, to summarize, we dont know what timetable we have after we see the warning signs (which many scientists are speculating we are already seeing). So, when do we start this massive construction project that will only save a tiny fraction of life on Earth?
Just wondering....
Not just that, but the pressures involved are ridiculous. We'd run a risk of actually starting such an eruption. The hotspot is larger than many states. Dealing with that much pressure, that covers that much distance, would definitely take science on a level greater than what we have.
A balloon is great at holding air in it until you pop it with a pin and it explodes. Creating a controlled hole, in the Earth's crust, like the opening on the end of a balloon, is beyond our capabilities.
I'd rather set off every nuke in the world - the explosion would only be a fraction (1/10th) of what Yellowstone has been known to produce.
Now, maybe if the hot spot wasn't hundreds of miles and covered vast chunks of multiple states... or maybe if Yellowstone's previous eruptions hadn't carved a valley into the Rockies big enough to fit most of the Appalachian Mountains in... then maybe it might be feasible.
It amazes me that we think as a people that our lives on this planet are somehow more significant than other life forms.
Then it would amaze you that my life is more important than yours, at least to me? I think most people operate under the belief that humans are more important than animals because, well, we evolved.
Here's my list of most importance: Me, my (future)progeny, and my spouse My family and friends People closely sharing my culture, ideals and/or geographic area Human beings in general Animals (especially domesticated animals) Plants
The problem with that list (when talking about extinction) is as follows. The last two things on the list are more important than you (or me) - even though most humans wont admit it. Without them, you (and I and everyone else) would die due to hunger.
Losing either of those two would probably end in the same results. Without plantlife, animal life will soon follow into extinction. Without animal life, a lot of plant will as well (kinda like our current concern about bees dying - and that's just one example).
I understand your point, but it just doesnt apply to extinction level events - for you to be the most important, plants and animals have to be equally important or of more importance.
Duradin is correct. A Yellowstone eruption like 640,000 years ago, or 2.2 million years ago, would be like us exploding ten times every nuclear weapon on the planet.
I'm no scientist, though to me, that's a mass extinction event on a worldwide scale. And though I am no scientist, they all seem to agree...
Another note on this... 640,000 years ago, humans were confined to a very small area on the other side of the world (Africa) and more likely to survive than now (or than 70,000 years ago, when we had spread out across Europe and Asia). Africa was probably one of the most inhabitable places on Earth when Yellowstone went off 640,000 years ago. Maybe a nice balmy 20-60 degrees... during the "mini" ice age it's eruption created, which scientists theorize lowered the surface temperature 20-30 degrees.
Wow, you could fit a very large portion of the Appalachian Mountain Range in that valley...
Yeah, scary as all hell, isn't it? A whole chunk of the rockies that simply no longer exists...
To make it even scarier, you should see "3D" or perspective maps of the area where you can see the height of the surrounding mountain ranges - and the lack thereof where Yellowstone and it's hotspot sits.
Those two maps make it even scarier, since it shows the missing mountains stretching across states like someone took a massive bulldozer and ripped out a big valley right through the mountain range.
On a related note, just like Yellowstone's big eruptions, The Toba eruption left nothing, geologically speaking. That is why you cannot find a "Mt Toba" - it is now called "Lake Toba" as the land mass there is no more. It is now a lake 62 miles long and 18 miles wide, and 1,666 ft at its deepest point.
If memory serves, it was a mass extinction event. As was the Lake Toba eruption - estimated 65%-80% (or far more) mass extinction. It left only a few thousand humans alive worldwide. That was about 60-70,000 years ago.
...it had global consequences, killing most humans then alive and creating a population bottleneck in Central Eastern Africa and India that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today.
To give you an idea of comparitive eruptive forces/volumes, etc... Toba's eruption was either a VEI7 or VEI8 (some references disagree).
Both the 2.2 million year ago and 640,000 year ago Yellowstone eruptions were most definitely VEI8, and near the absolute top of the list.
As a matter of fact, those two Yellowstone eruptions are two of the largest eruptions believed to have ever taken place on Earth.
The 2.2 million year ago one was the third largest explosive volcanic eruption in Earth's history.
The one 640,000 years ago created a tuff 590–660 ft thick, that covered half the country. And of course, that doesnt even include later global fallout over the ensuing years.
It is expected that a similar eruption now would kill virtually all life within a 600+ mile range by just the falling ash, lava flows and the sheer explosive force of the eruption.
At least, that is what scientists are theorizing.
The problems are, the last such explosion (Toba) left virtually no one alive to record and analyze the event - assuming they even had enough of a developed written language (if any) and an understanding of geophysics, to make such observations.
That too (since Yellowstone's last gigantic eruption was 640,000 years ago) is the problem with gathering evidence of that and earlier eruptions.
Except, Yellowstone's eruption was 8,000 times more massive (in terms of ash fall) than Mt St Helens. With a subsequent increase in the amount of acid rain, and thusly also a massive increase in years without a sun. Something Mt St Helens didnt accomplish at all.
Those are the key differences... near a decade of global winter and day as night, years of acid rain, and global ash fall 8,000 times larger than Mt St Helens.
And that is the reason why though Mt St Helens may not have made much difference, Yellowstone will. Heck, the expelled content from the initial explosion (not the ash fall from the winds, etc) will cover most of the country.