
NASA's plan to save Earth from a supervolcano - transverse
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170817-nasas-ambitious-plan-to-save-earth-from-a-supervolcano
======
condiment
Seems like it might be prudent to first try extracting 35% of the heat from a
volcano smaller than the Yellowstone Caldera. We might learn some things, and
if we get it wrong the consequences don't result in widespread starvation.

That said, it's obvious that this plan is just the start of serious
investigation into how we can engineer mitigations to an eruption at
Yellowstone. I would be interested in seeing a model of the impact that
surface-level cooling would have on the pressures deeper in the system. If we
prevent an eruption now, are we making it worse in the future?

Other solutions I can envision might be to deliberately trigger smaller
eruptions over longer timescales at the boundaries of the caldera. We could
also look at large-scale mitigations for volcanic particulates in the
atmosphere, including solutions that may require several hundred or thousand
years of advanced preparation for success. If we could control the impact of a
significant yellowstone eruption to a single hemisphere, or limit the duration
to a single summer, most ecosystems would be able to recover quickly.

~~~
ScottBurson
I don't think we dare trigger any eruptions at Yellowstone, ever ever ever. My
understanding is that there's a positive feedback loop that kicks in; there's
just no way to know the whole thing won't go up.

But the plan of drilling into the bottom of the magma chamber from the sides
sounds like it might be safe enough. The pressure is much higher there, which
ironically is safer because it keeps dissolved gases from coming out of
solution, which is what starts the eruption process. That, at least, is my
non-expert understanding.

~~~
kobeya
So releasing the pressure will cause the dissolved gasses to come out of
solution, triggering the actual eruption? Sounds dangerous.

~~~
YokoZar
There should be a way to pull energy out of it without risking releasing the
current pressure. The hot solid rocks above are pretty good at transferring
heat, and you only need to drill part of the way into them. A very small hole
can move a lot of energy.

~~~
kobeya
Point is that lowering the temperature would cause an eruption if what GP says
is true.

------
farseer
The Afghanistan campaign costs about 3 billion a month, so drilling a volcano
for a similar amount shouldn't break the bank. This will contribute far more
to our security!

~~~
wallace_f
Wolf Blitzer at CNN tells us that it's actually a moral problem to stop
funding war because defense contractors will lose jobs.

Source: [https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-
worried-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-
defense-contractors-will-lose-jobs-if-u-s-stops-arming-saudi-arabia/)

~~~
castle-bravo
I find it amazing that CNN has been able to remain dominant in television news
broadcasting. They're a vicious clique of bloodthirsty warmongering
propagandists. You'd think people would have grown disgusted at some point in
the last 30 years and tuned out.

------
lumberingjack
I was just in Yellowstone so much is still unknown about it and the more I
read about it and saw the more afraid I became of it. At one point we saw a
crater the size of a city block it was a geyser then in the 80s exploded and
killed a few people. I got to thinking "WTF are we doing here this thing is
going to blow at any time!?"

~~~
Crisco
I live near Yellowstone (as in going there, seeing the sights and going home
is a day trip with time to spare) and always tell people that we're the lucky
ones. If the Yellowstone volcano ever goes in our lifetime we'll die
instantly. If it goes off, most of the populated world is going to die
anyways, might as well be the first.

~~~
steve19
Serious question: is your house insured against volcano?

~~~
Crisco
No, I'm pretty sure there would be no one to make a claim even if they were.

~~~
steve19
Eruptions are preceded by earthquakes, venting and other events. I think there
is a good chance people would evacuate from a smaller eruption (verses a life
on earth extinction event)

------
torpfactory
Is anyone else surprised by the excess heat number? 6GW?

The reactors at Chernobyl were 3.2GW thermal designs and they had four of
them. I guess I would have thought a super volcano that can cause human mass
extinction would be... more powerful?

~~~
tempestn
The other part to remember though is that it takes roughly 600,000 years to
build up enough pressure to erupt.

~~~
erdle
earth holds onto shit. imagine not letting go of something for 600,000 years.

------
cstejerean
I think this post does a pretty good job of addressing why the thought
experiment will remain in the realm of science fiction.

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/rockyplanet/2017/08/31/225...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/rockyplanet/2017/08/31/2250904/)

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I disagree. I'll take this sentence:

> When all is said and done, a massive eruption at Yellowstone, or any other
> caldera for that matter, isn’t a question we should answer by trying to stop
> it. Instead, we need to build resilience into our society to survive after
> such an event.

Why? This doesn't make much sense to me. Seems much better to prevent a giant
catastrophe from happening in the first place than trying to pick up the
pieces when it's done (an ounce of prevention and all that).

Furthermore, his arguments get totally hand-wavy when it comes to whether a
power plant could remove heat fast enough to prevent an eruption. At the end
of the day, all you need is a higher wattage out than in, and I see no reason
that would be impossible.

~~~
throwaway2048
Infinitely more things than yellowstone can go wrong

~~~
Dance
I don't know what your definition of infinite is but that doesn't sound right
at all, and further your argument applies equally to all existential risks, so
it doesn't really tell you that you shouldn't work on this particular one.

~~~
throwaway2048
"Instead, we need to build resilience into our society" is the key here, many
many things can happen.

~~~
goblin89
Building resilience _instead of_ preventing a catastrophe sounds like a false
dichotomy.

A mark of a resilient society could be the ability and will to (1) predict the
development of events and sense probable future catastrophes long in advance,
and to (2) invest into preventive measures that would show effectiveness many
lifetimes later.

Concrete actions might range from cooling down volcanoes like per TFA, to
colonizing other worlds, to systematic construction and maintenance of
contingency infrastructure, to deliberate collective mindset shifts.

Perhaps what we both can agree on is that it’s this long-term consciousness
that we (as humanity) may be lacking.

------
danieltillett
How about we actually do something like increase the reserve food supply from
more than 72 days? Yellowstone is not the only potential source of disruption
to the food supply and right now if anything happens in the northern summer we
are totally screwed.

~~~
elihu
If we assume that a supervolcano blocks out the sun enough to prevent crops
from growing for two years and that increasing the 72 day buffer is
impractical, then how could we ride it out without mass starvation?

I'd guess there'd be a lot of sudden interest in energy-efficient LED grow
lights and there'd be an over-supply of beef in the short term because there's
no food for the cattle, so we might as well eat them.

Long term, it's all about being able to have enough indoor
hydroponic/aeroponic space to grow enough food for ~7.5 billion people, which
sounds really difficult and impractical.

I find it interesting that one possible benefit of Elon Musk's Mars plan is
that the same space/energy/resource efficient food production technology that
will be needed on Mars is the same technology we would need on Earth in order
to ride out certain catastrophes. By creating an interplanetary "insurance
policy" to ensure human survival, we may improve our ability to survive on
Earth.

~~~
danieltillett
The alternative is we build up a stockpile of food in a similar way to the US
strategic oil stockpile. If oil is worth having in storage in case something
bad happens it would seem obvious that food should be in the same category.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Food spoils so a stockpile like that isn't quite feasible. Sure we'll be able
to get some foods that store well and can last for years but that's a small
subset of food and even that food not all of it lasts for more than two years.

It's just not realistic. Sure we can significantly enlarge our buffer but two
or more years? I can't see that happening in any practical sense.

~~~
danieltillett
Most grains can be stored for years under the right conditions. Sure the
quality will decline over that time, but given we are feeding a large amount
of grain to livestock this decline is manageable.

Even having a single years buffer would be very worthwhile. As I mentioned in
the OP if we have a catastrophic event in the northern summer the poor are in
serious trouble.

~~~
phyller
The problem is the food you are storing is constantly going bad. So you need
to recreate the entire massive food stockpile every year or so, in order to
have it ready when the time comes. We'd have to find a way to efficiently
cycle food through the stockpile and back to consumers before it became
useless. But I doubt consumers are going to be lining up to buy old food. The
food would be expensive to buy fresh, then wouldn't sell for much when it is
old. It would be a crazy expensive program, and it would increase the price of
fresh food for everyone.

~~~
danieltillett
Not if the stored grain was fed to livestock. We already do this in practice
as we keep the high quality grain for direct human consumption, while the
lower quality grain is fed to livestock.

Once the stockpile was established and the process of cycling it set up, then
the cost should be relatively minor.

More importantly what is the alternative? Let everyone starve?

------
ChuckMcM
Sounds like we just need to convince some high tech billionaire that they need
a supervillain lair powered by geothermal energy. Maybe power a data center or
something. Put that excess heat to good use :-)

~~~
90s-socal-kid
Too bad Kim Dotocm isn't wealthy enough (anymore?) to do this. I'm picturing
him as the supervillain who builds out an encrypted data storage facility,
like out of Cryptonomicon.

------
Axsuul
The advantages may be obvious but it all comes down to unit economics. How do
costs per MW compare to something like coal, hydro, wind, or solar? And let's
not forget the risk assessment that needs to be done in case the supervolcano
does in fact explode, or even hiccup. Will it destroy or incapacitate the
energy generating facilities?

~~~
stevenwoo
Isn't the Yellowstone eruption essentially the same as the dinosaur ending
meteorite event? Wouldn't most humans die except for those that could live off
of stored foods/what could be raised off of stored food for a couple of years
until the sun is visible again ala The Road (besides immediately killing a
large percentage of Americans)?

~~~
m_mueller
I don't think it's on that magnitude. Humanity lived through an even larger
eruption (Toba). I don't think anything but small animals living underground
could have survived that asteroid.

~~~
weberc2
Didn't toba reduce humanity to something like 2000 people?

~~~
stevenwoo
It's a pretty good hypothesis with some backing in the genetic record and the
timing of the event, the wikipedia says somewhere between 2000-20000 breeding
individuals.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory)
Not sure where humanity was on the evolution timeline for the last Yellowstone
eruption, but our ancestors somehow got through that, too.

~~~
m_mueller
Wasn't it discredited with the finding of human remains above and below the
ash layer in India?

~~~
stevenwoo
The wikipedia article mentions that there are similar stone tools above and
below the ash layer in India so that it may be that the Toba eruption did not
kill everyone in India even though it was local to India.

So it could be could be coincidence on the timing of the Toba eruption and the
genetic narrowing down of the human race at almost the same time. But
something happened 70,000 years ago, if not Toba, what was it? Maybe the onset
of the ice age + Toba + other things occurring close together in time.

------
javajosh
What about radiating the heat into space?

~~~
ams6110
Why do that when it could be usefully used on the ground to generate
electricity?

------
imafish
Did anyone else hear joint venture between the boring company and tesla?
Volcano powered cars!

------
Freestyler_3
So they need to re-drill constantly? (after each m3.)

~~~
khazhoux
I have no idea what you mean by "m3", and I did some google searches ("m3
volcano" "m3 drilling") and it's still not clear.

If "m3" is jargon related to volcanos, geology, drilling, or geothermic power
generation, I submit to you that most HN readers will be unfamiliar with the
term.

Or maybe it's just me.

~~~
quicklyfrozen
Probably refers to earthquakes
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale)).

------
honestoHeminway
Is there any research not on pre-emptive cooling, but about how to fast clean
the atmosphere, to prevent a lasting nuclear winter, once the disaster
happend?

------
honestoHeminway
If global warming decreases heat transportation to the surface, wouldnt the
atmosphere and the volcanos form a self-regulating plant?

------
necessity
BBC.com as of late has been turning into Clickbait.com

------
transverse
Unfortunately, any project to drain the supervolcano's energy will meet with
immense resistance from various groups of humans with limited intelligence who
don't realize its power and the extinction-level destruction its explosion
will cause. The article lists at least two ways of safely extracting the
supervolcano's power without risking the triggering of an explosion, but this
won't be enough to convince the idiotic naysayers. By harnessing its energy,
we can have clean energy for millennia.

~~~
flareback
So it's limited intelligence to read an article that states "But drilling into
a supervolcano does not come without certain risks. Namely triggering the
eruption you’re intending to prevent."? They state that it could cause an
eruption, yes they have an idea for how to minimize the risk but that doesn't
mean no risk. As much as we may not like it, some people don't like taking
risks at all. They'd rather do nothing and take their chances than take a
risk.

~~~
tempestn
Of course, there is a risk to doing nothing as well. (Literally, 'take their
chances'...)

------
phkahler
This just looks like an attempt to get geothermal energy from Yellowstone. The
6GW power getting out of the ground now is really nothing compared to the
energy that's down there. Thermal conduction and fluid transport are what
allows the energy to the surface. Adding geo-thermal power generation would
increase energy dissipated but would do little to actually change the geologic
situation.

I suspect if you asked power companies if they'd go for it they would jump at
the opportunity, but TFA jumps the gun and suggests that the government may
need to offer incentives to get started.

In short: Let's use peoples fear of global calamity to get them to allow
drilling and building in a national park and get free money from the
government too.

~~~
mrschwabe
Indeed, as it seems NASA's best capability is to 'get free money from the
government' (not volcano nor space exploration as many would expect).

~~~
90s-socal-kid
Any agency primarily funded by government that survives past 10-15 years will
have that as their primary competency.

It's more fair to judge NASA's space capabilities against all the other groups
that take gov't money. They are much better at space than, say, the Department
of Labor.

Just because there are recent, private entrants, who built much of their
technology on the foundation work done by NASA, does not mean NASA should be
mocked in this manner.

------
exabrial
The other problem not mentioned: Yellowstone is the middle of fricken nowhere.

Electricity is hard to send long distances and central planning projects have
shown to be their own disasters time-and-time again through history. "This
time around though" we have more established population centers so maybe we
can pull it off? Not sure! If the power could be produced cheap enough, it
might pay off to maintain the massive power grid to send electricity to
population centers...

What would truly be revolutionary is phase change electricity storage
mechanism! Imagine being able to "ship" electricity on conventional roads, or
even in existing pipelines, much the way we do with hydrocarbons.

Batteries charge roughly at the same rate they discharge, making electric cars
a PITA. A conventional automobile can be "charged up" with enough potential
energy in 8 mins in what takes the fastest chargers 75mins.

~~~
Reason077
_" Imagine being able to "ship" electricity on conventional roads, or even in
existing pipelines, much the way we do with hydrocarbons."_

That's why people get excited about Hydrogen. Surplus energy can be used to
produce H2 via electrolysis. The process is pretty inefficient, but that
perhaps doesn't matter if the energy source is abundant enough.

However, the infrastructure required for H2 distribution would be expensive.
You can't use existing gas pipelines. It's probably more practical and
affordable to just build long-distance HVDC connectors to export 6GW of
energy.

~~~
petre
H2 can be converted to DME (dimethylether) and then transported like LPG. DME
is a much cleaner diesel replacement.

------
milesf
The idea of any group of humans "saving the Earth" is neighbouring on hubris.
It's fine for the plot line of a Hollywood movie, but pragmatically we can't
even engage in civil discourse anymore. Tampering with systems like plate
tectonic without the ability to even predict the effects of oil shale fracking
means we still have a lot to learn.

If the concern of the Earth being wiped out is legitimate, then focus instead
on colonizing Space. The end result is the same: preserving human
civilization.

~~~
hyperdunc
Achieving the technology required to colonize space would also allow us to
maintain our existence on Earth.

~~~
milesf
Exactly my point.

