
The Supervolcano Under Yellowstone Is Alive and Kicking - DarkContinent
http://nautil.us/blog/the-supervolcano-under-yellowstone-is-alive-and-kicking
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julienchastang
Our family just visited Yellowstone a couple of weeks ago. What surprised me
apart from the geysers and hot springs which I never grow tired of, is the
variety of the landscape from stunning water falls, to mountain peaks, and
lush valleys full of wildlife. We saw plenty of bison, and even a grizzly and
her two cubs from a safe distance in Hayden Valley. But all is not well in
Yellowstone. The park is being overrun by tourists. At the main sites, it
feels more like Yellowstone City than Park. There are literally people jams on
the boardwalks. There is a fair bit of trash at most of the hot springs sites,
not out of neglect (we saw plenty of park volunteers cleaning up after the
tourists, and we even chatted with one to talk about his techniques — he uses
a fishing pole), but simply because of the sheer number of people visiting the
park. There are tourists getting airlifted all day out of Old Faithful Village
(we must have seen five helicopters land and take off) because, with that many
people, there are bound to be medical emergencies. Morning Glory pool is not
what it once was because tourists feel the need to throw coins and whatnot in
the pool [1]. Last year someone crashed a quadcopter in Grand Prismatic which
is still at the bottom of the pool [2]. There is now a ban on quadcopters in
the park.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Glory_Pool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Glory_Pool)
[2] [http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/tourist-crashes-
dro...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/tourist-crashes-drone-
popular-yellowstone-hot-spring-possibly-damaging/)

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dboreham
I feel I need to balance this post somewhat: I live 1h north of The Park (as
the folks here refer to Yellowstone) and we visit frequently, and have been
visiting frequently for 15 years. We're first in line to be vaporized then the
eruption comes.

Honestly I don't recognize your description above. Yes in the high summer the
park will be busy, but we were there three weeks ago and I wouldn't say it was
so busy that our visit was affected. I've been to The Louvre and The Vatican
Museum and those are at least two orders of magnitude more busy!

Visitor numbers are up in recent years (supposedly a reaction to the recession
since fewer people could afford airline-based vacations outside the US, in
combination with increasing affluence in parts of Asia leading to more
visitors from that part of the world), but since the various road improvements
made after Tom Brokhaw's appeal, in my experience it feels less busy than 10
years ago.

Lastly, visit in Winter. You'll hardly see anyone!

For the HN crowd, remember there's almost no cell service in the park so bring
your sat phone to keep up with Nagios alerts...

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ghaff
>For the HN crowd, remember there's almost no cell service in the park so
bring your sat phone to keep up with Nagios alerts...

Heh. I've just spent 2 out of the past 3 weeks in Rainier and adjacent
national forests. Yep. No cell phone reception for essentially the whole time.
Probably will be going to Yellowstone this coming winter; I was there a
decade+ ago.

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agarden
“Good science is nothing more than a progress report. It’s what we know at a
certain time with the data that we have.”

That is the best definition of scientific knowledge I have read.

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protomyth
_And Farrell isn’t convinced another super-eruption will happen at all. “The
system might be dying,” he said. “The Yellowstone hot spot is moving into
thicker, colder continental crust. And it takes a lot more energy to burn
through that crust than it did the thinner crust that it’s been burning
through for the last 17 million years.”_

I wonder what imaging we will be able to see in the years ahead.

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calgoo
I always think we are going to have some hard times in the future when one of
the big volcanos (ok maybe not supervolcano, but a big one) explodes and we
get a ash cloud for a few years. Apart from the natrual issues caused, what
happens to our electrical grid if we accomplish moving most of our
infrastructure to renewable energies...

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jschwartzi
It's far more dangerous than that. If we had an ash cloud significant enough
to dim the sun then plants would receive less sunlight, which means a poorer
growing season, which means worldwide famine. If that thing erupts, renewable
electrical supply will be the least of our worries. I would say we'll spend
most of our time trying to grow enough food.

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freehunter
But given enough electricity, we could easily grow enough food to feed the
entire planet in a relatively small amount of space. Plants don't care if
they're growing under the sun or under a UV bulb, if they're growing in earth
or hydroponic, if they're growing on land or vertical. At that point it's
merely a distribution issue. Existing distribution channels wouldn't
necessarily be interrupted, with the possible exception of air travel (and of
course, all of the area that is now a crater from the super volcano). The
problem really starts if all of our electricity is generated by the sun, and
then the sun goes away for a bit.

It's not actually an "alternative power" problem, it's just a solar problem.
Wind, nuclear, and hydro power wouldn't be affected.

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merpnderp
Just to replace the wheat crop would require 11x our current total electrical
production. We would need All Teh Powerz!

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freehunter
I'm sure in such an emergency we could find a way to switch to a crop that is
more calorie dense for the amount of energy it takes to grow it. Wheat is in a
lot of products we eat, but not as the main ingredient with just a few
exceptions. Just like corn, it's not a terribly efficient crop to grow so we
probably wouldn't grow it anymore.

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falcolas
And it's moving, eastward. Old Faithful is getting a bit less faithful, and
shorter, as the years pass, while new hotpots and geysers appear east of it's
location.

On the plus side, it appears that we will have a fair bit of warning before
Yellowstone goes off, for all the good it will do humanity.

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sizzzzlerz
Actually, the Yellowstone hot spot is stationary. It's the North American
continental plate that is moving westward over the hot spot. If you look at a
geological map, you can trace the path. It's similar to the Hawaiian island
chain in the pacific and it's hot spot. Older islands trend to the northwest
as the pacific plate has moved eastward.

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kissickas
The Pacific plate is moving northwest, which is why the older islands are
there... the hotspot stays in the same place, which is why the newer Big
Island Hawai'i emerged southeast of the older islands. I think you had it
right but just miswrote.

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sizzzzlerz
D'oh! Absolutely correct, kissickas. My fingers engaged before my brain.

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glennon
If you are ever looking for geyser data, I helped build an ODbL database of
observations -- [http://geysertimes.org](http://geysertimes.org) ; API:
[http://www.geysertimes.org/api/v3/docs/index.html](http://www.geysertimes.org/api/v3/docs/index.html).
We use the data to predict geyser eruptions when enough data are available.
For instance, here's the next prediction for Old Faithful (JSON / unix epoch):
[http://www.geysertimes.org/api/v3//predictions_latest/2](http://www.geysertimes.org/api/v3//predictions_latest/2)
-or- (cleaned up):
[http://geysertimes.org/predictions.php](http://geysertimes.org/predictions.php)

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ph0rque
I wonder if eventually in the future it would be possible to tap into the hot
spots, and use the heat as a source of geothermal energy. This would also have
the advantage of gradually cooling down the volcano and preventing another
eruption.

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ZanyProgrammer
Ironically the plot of a season 2 episode of Stargate Atlantis.

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foobarbecue
That's coincidental, but how is it ironic?

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akiselev
The small civilization living on top of the caldera drew energy from the
supervolcano to power a defensive shield around the clock.

The irony is that this caused pressure to build under the caldera and an
eruption to wipe out life on the surface.

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2sk21
There is a great section about the Yellowstone super volcano in Bill Bryson's
book "A brief history of everything". Pretty much no spot on Earth would be
safe if this one erupted - probably an extinction event.

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thomasfoster96
Lots of places would be safe during the eruption - just probably not the
United States or southern Canada. Humans have survived many super volcanic
eruptions before.

The real problem if you survive the eruption would be the decade or so of
crazy weather and food shortages, not to mention general unrest.

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JulianMorrison
I do wonder if it's possible to cool Yellowstone artificially and reduce the
risk? Could be possible to get geothermal energy out of it too.

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dmritard96
So they imaged it - I would love to 1) see some images and 2) understand their
technique/instruments/etc.

