BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 08:42 AM

Except for a very few areas, California's already gone. Fell away several years ago.

If the Yellowstone caldera blows again it means I won't have to put up with all those f****n' touroids.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 08:21 AM

Have I missed something while I was on Holiday?

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Naemanson
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 03:54 AM

OMIGOD! We're doomed! Life will fail. Mankind stands on the brink!

But then, the weather in Guam will be somewhat cooler during the volcanic ice age so - what, me wory?

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 12:08 AM

were all going to die!!! im not even going to live to be 13.... god savE USS!!!!!! *cries* why? will it reach california? will we all die??

-Anonymous

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 04:29 PM

What do you call a man sitting on the edge of an erupting volcano -Ashley!

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 04:25 PM

HAHA!! That had me rolling on the floor when I heard it!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 09:24 AM

The was a line from the drama - said by the hairy scientist chap to a young lady - that I thought would make a great pick-up line.

What do you know about giant eruptions?

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,Redhorse at work
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 08:45 AM

Which might just be the first sign of the plague that is about to wipe out the entire human race................

Well it's more probable than the volcano killing us!

nick

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,GUEST,Chris B (Born Again Scouser)
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 08:27 AM

Talking about eruptions, I've just found a HUGE spot on the side of my head.....

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,Redhorse at work
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 08:22 AM

The "600 000 year cycle" is journalistic licence (or to use the technical term, bollocks). From last night's (slightly) less sensational programme: 3 occurrences, 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and 640 000 years ago. That gives two measured intervals between eruptions, one of 800 000 years and one of 660 000 years. Certainly not enough to predict a pattern.Even if you use the highly dubious method of predicting on the basis of the shortest interval, we have 20 000 years to go before the next eruption is "due". Definitely not my problem.

nick

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 15 Mar 05 - 08:01 AM

Couple this together with the report in the Press that says we will now live to be 2000 years old and..it will happen in our life-time. Life sucks, just when you thnk you are immortal, the world ends. Me I blame the Bush. It is all his fault.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,,Chris B (Born Again Scouser
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 07:26 PM

So....

There appears (from the BBC program) to be a severe threat to the survival of ugly scientists with bad 70s Grateful Dead Fan haircuts. And who says there's no God (Bless Her)?

BTW, what did the Grateful Dead fan say when he ran out of drugs?

A: This band is shit....

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,Chris B (Born Again Scouser)
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 07:22 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 06:58 PM

That we will live forever - is not the suggestion
The nature of our going - is the only question

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: s6k
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 04:11 AM

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 03:47 AM

Some nice pictures and video of the real thing, on the Big Island of Hawaii: Kilauea lava flows. The eruption continues to this day, having started in 1983. The link goes to a collection from June 03. If you go here, you'll see a current set (along with LOTS of info about the eruption), and then you can click on "archive" to see many, many more. I went to see the lava flows a few times when I lived on the Big Island. An unforgettable experience.

Aloha,
Mark

PS I read Rapaire's first post above, and wondered how an umbrella was going to protect him from rogue steroids. Then I reread it.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 12:23 AM

Forgot to provide the link:

Edgar

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Mar 05 - 12:22 AM

My brother used to sing this in the Boston Coffee Houses

EDGAR by Noel Paul Stookey

Stookey/Michael Epstein
©1972 Songbirds of Paradise


Oh, the fishermen are sailing in Nevada
And Howard Hughes had done it once again
The volcanoes in Alaska were depressing in L.A.
And what was left of San Francisco slid into the bay


I left them rolling up their sails in San Diego
And smoking all the fish that they could find
They are moving to Las Vegas
And they would come further East
Except the Great Lake waters have just been released
And it's flooding all the homes in Indiana
And the only ground for sale is down below


You can start your life all over in New Zealand or Japan
Or stay exactly where you are
And do the best you can
Edgar, did you ever, really feel the California slide

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 08:42 PM

Shambles, I wasn't arguing with you main point, about the importance of people. The reality of climate change in the geologically recent past is irrefutable. There are numerous kinds of climatic record embedded in the enviroment all round the world, showing directly changes in sea level, temprature and precipitation, going back in some cases hundreds of thousands of years. Some we have to infer indirectly though. For example, hippopotomus bones found in situ, in Southern England infer that at one point, the climate there could support them. Pollen, and diatoms are used in the same, but are somewhat less smaller

There is some uncertainty in how large these changes were, but not that much. The climate records show the last 10,000 years to be a fairly normal interglacial period.

I'm not going to speculate on when people settled down to farm, etc. There's a real shortage of evidence about what people were doing then, as there were so few people about to leave anything behind, but the last comprable interglacial( warm period ), was 140-116 ka BP, which is about when the first apperance of art and clothing has been found.

And "total rubbish" should have more politely have been " a very unusual opinion on current evidence"

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 07:49 PM

Considering that the period during which humankind has even been in existence is a bare blip in geologic time, the "sunny day" might actually be a "sunny minute" or even less.

But humanity has survived since well before that.... Granted, back then they didn't have computers, rifles, domesticated sheep, or much else, but they DID have fire, the knowledge of flint knapping, perhaps the bow, the atl-atl, and something we seem to have lost: a kinship with nature.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 07:31 PM

As none of us were there at the time - we must be guided by all the evidence. I would suggest that folk far more qualified than either of us - do still have different views on the details and history of climate variation but are probably too polite to describe each others opinions as rubbish.

Within the past 32,000 years, human cultural evolution has sped up dramatically. About 10,000 years ago, the evidence shows that people first began to farm and it follows that the climate in this period must have been settled enough to allow this practice to spread.

It most probably follows that if the world's climate had been settled enough to allow this previously - this cultural change may have started earlier? It may not have been the case and there may have been many other factors. But a suitable climatic period - free of the effects of comet collisions and super volcanos etc - is an important factor that does rather tend to be taken for granted?

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 06:25 PM

Funny, the 'this is the real science stuff, don't worry' programme was less reassuring than the 'Yellowstone's gonna fart and it won't be pleasant' docudrama on the BBC tonight in the UK.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 06:18 PM

nope, Sorcha...that spot is reserved, but there is a hill in Namibia that is still free.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Sorcha
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 05:49 PM

I'm about 1,100 miles as the crow flies from Yellowstone, and I can't be bothered to worry about it. What could I do anyway? Move to the top of Mt Everest?

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 05:42 PM

The first half of the BBC drama was actually quite restrained. And they are showing the real science, with genuine experts such as the chief geologist of Yellowstone on it directly after it. Of course, there were a few clear dramatic additions, but those were to people, rather than science. Far better than expected.

BTW, The Shambles,

Climatically - the earth has been experiencing what passes as a 'sunny-day' in geological time. This unusually calm 'blip' has enabled (in the last 32,000 years or so)

is, to be honest, total rubbish.

Full glacial conditions were reached at 21-17 thousand years before present (ka BP)... The latest period of extensive land ice ended about 10 ka BP and marked the onset of the Holocene interglacial conditions, which we are currently in. At the glacial maximum, sea levels were about 150m lower than present.

The planet has been going through these climatic vatiation for the last 2 million years, so it could be said to be normal, but calm? And I can't imagine where 32,000 years came from.

In case you were wondering, I had a course on climatic change in the Quaternary period. That's the last 2 million years.

Bunnhabhain

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,*Laura*
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 09:33 AM

That 'When in danger or in doubt' rhyme was my primary school's motto! Seriously - the headteacher used to say it to us ALL the time!

xLx

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: The Shambles
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 09:12 AM

Climatically - the earth has been experiencing what passes as a 'sunny-day' in geological time. This unusually calm 'blip' has enabled (in the last 32,000 years or so) the human parasite - that scurries self-importantly across the surface of the planet - to develop ideas 'above their station'. We get a few 'wake-up' calls from time to time - but we still don't really get the full message.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 09:42 PM

Ain't NO place perfect. If the ground's gonna blow, I sure as hell can't stop it. Just grab my asbestos surfboard and run the pipe.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Troll
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 09:41 PM

Maybe we should go to Europe this summer after all. The Alps sound nice.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 09:34 PM

Where the original Garden of Eden was - before the countries upstream started damming the rivers.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 10:20 AM

Before or after it falls into the ocean?

Where you want to be is somewhere geologicly stable, with a year round growing season, so regardless of what the climate does, you can still grow some food. Iraq is a good place for that.....

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 10:06 PM

Get even with 'em -- move to California.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Sorcha
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 09:48 PM

But, hey, Rap, even if we have warning, where are we gonna go??? Mt Everest?

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 08:58 PM

When in DANGER or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 04:40 PM

When in trouble or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 03:11 PM

"End of the world nigh!...Film at 11"

It's funny how documentaries about this sort of thing sell, while explanations of stuff we can control are considered boring and largely ignored.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 01:10 PM

Will it be posted in the Times?

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 01:08 PM

Which, HuwG, is why I'm not overly concerned. We'll have notice.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 12:59 PM

Here's a quotation from the BBC web-site about their own program

"State-of-the-art computer graphics integrated with mock-factual sources make for a horrifyingly realistic build-up to the eruption and the climax itself."

Mock-factual sources, eh? Now you know why a I have a bumper-sticker that says "Smoke-free, drug-free, media-free."

I've been the United States Geological Survey's sites about Yellowstone. There is no doubt that there is a hot-spot (or something) under there. That's no surprise. However, the BBC isn't asking itself why, if there's a permanent feature under there, it seems to cause an eruption every 600,000 years. So maybe the 600,000 year "cycle" is baloney. Maybe the hot spot is cooling off or spreading out. Maybe it has gone under thicker, sounder crust and can't do so much damage.

Also, there is no guarantee that a future eruption will happen overnight - that it will be an explosion like Mount St Helens'. It could be more gradual, with many small eruptions occurring over a long period of time. But that idea wouldn't fit in well with TV-people's love for fear, worry and drama, would it?

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: HuwG
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 12:41 PM

Some definitions:

"Active" ; whether erupting, rumbling or merely producing steam and gas, a volcano is active.

"Dormant" ; not currently active, but known to have been active within a measurable period of time, and in a tectonic setting which means it is liable to become active again.

By this definition, the Yellowstone region is active. St. Helens and Pinatubo are two examples of dormant volcanoes which suddenly came back to life.


Here are two US Geological Service links on The Snake River Plain and Yellowstone

Yellowstone sits on top of a "hot spot", a source of rising hot material in the mantle. The rising material is a basic (i.e. low in silica) magma which forms basalt when it erupts. Oceanic crust is largely basaltic, so a hot spot under oceanic crust (such as Hawaii or Iceland) generally builds itself islands in a comparatively undramatic fashion (though there is the possiblity of very large tsunami triggered by undersea collapse of unstable slopes).

Under continental crust, which is acid (i.e. high in silica), the hot spot will melt some of the crust to form an acidic magma which is known as rhyolite when it erupts. These can be much more violent than basaltic eruptions because as a magma, rhyolite is much more viscous than basalt. If there are lots of volatiles (e.g. steam, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and other gases present, they all come out of solution in the magma when the eruption begins and the pressure on the magma is released, and cause an explosive or "paroxysmal" eruption.

(To reproduce the effect, purchase a 2-litre plastic bottle of lemonade. Kick it around the floor for a bit. Then remove the top. And go and get a cloth.)

"Supervolcanoes" are distinguished by their magnitude i.e. the sheer volume of rock involved, and their paroxysmal nature. Note that Krakatoa was a mini-supervolcano in this respect; its violent eruption was paroxsymal in nature, but the volume of rock involved as ash, pumice and so on was little more than that produced by, say, Pinatubo. The final cataclysmic explosions were produced by Krakatoa collapsing into its partially voided magma chambers.

I suspect that in the case of Yellowstone exploding, we will have lots of warning signs, which will precede the bang by years or even decades years. The area will bulge several tens of metres or even hundreds of metres; there will be lots of earthquakes and gas will be evolved. ("Old Faithful" and other geysers involve superheated ground water. Water evolved from the hot spot or a rhyolite intrusion will be loaded with sulphides and other minerals). Long-period harmonic seismic waves will indicate that magma is being evolved or is rising within the existing chamber. There may also be small preliminary basaltic eruptions.

Unfortunately, geology isn't an exact science. Most predictions are hedged with uncertainty and qualifications. The periodicity of the preceding blasts isn't necessarily a guide as to when the next will occur.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Metchosin
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 12:07 PM

Relax people, not only do "scientists" have great difficulty modeling and predicting future events, sometimes they can't even get their facts straight.

I was at this Cascadia Subduction Zone site yeaterday and was suprised to note the statement, "hence the lack of volcanic activity in Canada", despite the fact that they have Mt. Meager and Mt Garabaldi, in the Garabaldi Volcanic Belt just north of Vancouver, marked on their map near the top of the page.

If vocanic activity doesn't occur in Canada, that is news to me, especially since I was involved with the radio carbon dating of some material from the Tseax Cone in the Stikine Volcanic Belt, when I worked as a Parks Technician in BC Interpretation Assessment back in the 70's.

The material we had dated, determined that the last eruption at the cinder cone was only 220 years ago, less than a blink of an eye in the geological timescale. While it has been awhile, just over 2000 years since Mt Meager spewed, again that is a very young volcano in a geologicial sense and the geothermal events there are still ongoing.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 11:43 AM

When I was at YNP last July Old Faithful was predictable and predicted -- and generally went up about the time predicted. As for the bubble under the lake, my own opinion is that it's Spaw's fault, just like the bubbles in the swimming pool.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 11:36 AM

"Old Faithful" may go through occasional periods of faithlessness. Or its regularity may be a relatively recent and temporary phenomenon (within the past few hundred years).

Or its current unpredictability may be essentially unrelated to the big blast to come.

The apparent fact that the "bubble" under Yellowstone is forcing the surface upwards at a current rate of about an inch a year may be much more important.

Or it could begin to sink again, which could be the real danger signal.

Or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,bbc at work
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 11:26 AM

I hopes it waits until after my summer trip to the Southwest. There are things I'd like to see before they or I go.

bbc

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 10:55 AM

but I thought that had been corrected with metamusil! It was on all the TV channels.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Metchosin
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 10:53 AM

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 10:16 AM

if it blows..."Old Facefull"

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Mar 05 - 06:04 AM

I wonder what they will name the geyser formerly known as Old Faithful.
Its now way off schedule and more erratic.

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 10:58 PM

a fine line between 'complacent' and 'resigned'.

I'm not at all complacent about people buliding in 20 years flood plains- that can be controlled!, but super-volcanos?..nope...

Subject: RE: BS: Yellowstone to blow-up!!
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Mar 05 - 05:12 PM

Even if the science is dodgy... we're all far too complacent about Mother Nature and her restlessness.

LTS