could yellowstone reverse global warming?

[CaptainChewbacca]

...Is there any way to defuse a volcano?

Sigh. Probably not.

Well, I did have a slightly insane idea of drilling a series of massive bore holes 12 - 15km under the earth into the Caldera and then run some substance with a boiling point of close to 300 C through them which would be turned into superheated steam which, back up from the earth, would spin massive turbines to generate green electric power for much of the western half of the country AND begin the process of cooling the rock in the caldera to lessen the chances and severity of another eruption. I suspect this would cost trillions of dollars to effect on the necessary scale.

The two main problems with this are that we can't drill deep enough safely (i.e. without cracking the caldera dome) and that even with 12 boring shafts there's still more heat accumulating than we can readily dissipate. Plus, the thing is actually building up a LARGE volume of magma and gas, which will eventually have to go somewhere.

[Broomstick]

As far as weather effects go, I wish to refer people to the "Year Without a Summer", also known as 1816, which is believed to have been the result of several major volcanic eruptions with the largest being the Tambora eruption in the Dutch East Indies. The reason it was called the Year Without a Summer was because that's what it was - there was 1/3 of a meter snowfall in Quebec in June, and ice floes in rivers as far south as Pennsylvania throughout July and August. Europe experienced similar problems. In China, falling temperatures destroyed crops while disrupted monsoons caused catastrophic flooding on the Yangtze. Taiwan reported snowfall, something they normally don't get.

Some food was grown in more southern regions, but the price of basic grains increased by a factor of 5 or 6.

A Yellowstone eruption will make Tambora look like a wet match, and the Year Without a Summer like a pleasant warm spell.

Agriculture outside the tropics will crash. You'll lose everything that first growing season afterward. The next year following Europe and the least affected areas of North America might grow a minimal level of crops, especially if they are able to plant cold resistant crops, but it will not be enough to go around. As I said, it will be at least 5-10 years for agriculture to resume in the North American "bread basket", and will only be the eastern portions of the regions. Near Yellowstone itself the land might remain wasteland for a century or more, and will have to be recolonized by plants tolerant of post-volcanic conditions first in order to create suitable soil for food crops. (See places like Hawaii and Iceland, where the ecosystem has a fairly well defined succession of colonizers for volcanic landscapes.)

Famine will be worldwide. There just aren't large enough stocks of canned food and MRE's to feed everyone for the coming decade of hell.

Any place dependent on outside food aid dies. That includes not only third world African nations, but also places like the UK that are not self-supporting in food production. No one will have the extra food to ship to such places. Some places like Australia, which may suffer less from climatic effects, will be fucked due to food shortages (I don't know if they would be able to switch to self-sufficiency in food, but they would have only one chance to do it right as there will be no rescue if they get it wrong). As temperatures plunge the cost of fuel for heating skyrockets. People will freeze to death over the next few years. Ironically, some arctic regions might not do too bad IF the people retain survival skills, are willing to eat mostly meat, fat, and fish for a few years, and can manage to keep warm enough in the meanwhile.

Keep in mind, too - you will have millions of displaced people moving around North America, including into Canada and Mexico.

Between mass migrations, food shortages resulting in poor nutrition and weakened bodies, and crowding both to keep warm and because most of a continent was rendered temporarily uninhabitable you're going to get disease. Lots of disease.

It would not surprise me if cannibalism occurs. Some places there could be just rats and humans left to eat after all, and eventually the rats will run out. People are going to die anyway, and at some point the survivors will release that that source of meat may be all that stands between them and death. If folks get hungry enough they'll start eating each other, the historical examples are numerous. Once the food runs out it only takes 2-3 weeks for that to start happening at most. Well, at least it solves the problem of where and how we'll bury so many dead in frozen ground.

LOTS of people are going to die. The death toll will be at least in the hundreds of millions and possibly even into the billion range.

That said - humanity won't go extinct (at least a few other species will, though). We're too numerous, too spread out, too adaptable, and too fucking mean.

Oh, wait - we were discussing global warming, weren't we?

Well, short term temperatures drops precipitously. As the volcanic crap clears, though, there will be a sharp uptick in greenhouse emissions from burning stuff to keep warm, and to transport people, and from the decay of dead things. Then the air clears and the world re-warms. Because it will be awhile before the biosphere recovers and starts scrubbing the extra greenhouse gas (from both prior human activity, the volcano, and any produced as after-effects) the rising temps will probably resume for several decades. However, with the interruption in relatively steady temperature rise, and the sharply reduced human population, long term the human induced greenhouse temperature rise will end earlier and be less severe than if Yellowstone hadn't erupted. So Yellowstone could slow it down and moderate it, but not reserve it. Only time (lots of it) and less human production of greenhouse gasses will do that.

Meanwhile - well, the world will be even more of a fucking mess than if it had just warmed up a few degrees more.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I wouldn't be surprised if the remnant American government simply sent around nuclear armed warships to extort food from other countries at gunpoint, truth be told. Or we outright would send our starving masses to Africa to plunder all the food from the natives at gunpoint. Things will get nasty in the sense that the hardest hit country in the world will also be the most powerful, and if people are facing cannibalism the idea of sending the army to work Africans to death for food for us will be unproblematic in the extreme.

[Broomstick]

I wouldn't be surprised if the remnant American government simply sent around nuclear armed warships to extort food from other countries at gunpoint, truth be told.

By the time that occurs to someone the government might well have collapsed to the point it's impractical to do that. You are also assuming that someone else HAS food. A pretty foolhardy assumption once world-wide agriculture collapses. Not sure the Feds, even with nuclear ships, would have the capacity to plunder and transport significant amounts of food in comparison to the numbers of refugees that will need to be fed.

Or we outright would send our starving masses to Africa to plunder all the food from the natives at gunpoint.

Um.... WHAT food? Africa has more countries dependent on outside food aid than anywhere else, and don't you think Europe and Asia will have similar ideas?

Oh, yes, the death toll will be in the billions....

Things will get nasty in the sense that the hardest hit country in the world will also be the most powerful, and if people are facing cannibalism the idea of sending the army to work Africans to death for food for us will be unproblematic in the extreme.

All the guns in the world will not grow food in snow covered fields, nor, at a certain point, will the be able to induce the starving to work. It's not going to work, Marina. There will simply not be enough food anywhere. People will die in numbers not ever seen before.

[Surlethe]

I'd like to see a semi-quantitative analysis, Broomstick. It's all too easy to get going and then slap on numbers that just feel right - I'm skeptical, for instance, that a Yellowstone eruption could kill 15-30% of the world's population, as you seem to suggest.

Also, I take issue in particular with this:

As the volcanic crap clears, though, there will be a sharp uptick in greenhouse emissions from burning stuff to keep warm, and to transport people, and from the decay of dead things.

This claim is poorly supported: there also will be a sharp downturn caused by the complete collapse of world industry. Moreover, I understand that various reserves of greenhouse gases are released by warming - their release will cease with the short cold spell. It is impossible to qualitatively determine how the two effects will offset each other.

[Darth Wong]

I don't see how any of those estimates are quantitatively supportable, given that past eruptions of that exact caldera have exhibited an order-of-magnitude variation in output. That is a huge variation, and makes such estimates impossible unless you simply decide arbitrarily that it will be at a certain point. Even if we do decide to focus on such an arbitrary estimate of its output, would think that it would take a qualified specialist to produce meaningful projections.

It's one thing to look at past ash plumes and say "OK, we might get a similar ash plume again if it's a similar eruption". It's quite another thing to start making projections of casualty estimates and environmental impact without the requisite specialty knowledge.

[Stark]

I wouldn't be surprised if the remnant American government simply sent around nuclear armed warships to extort food from other countries at gunpoint, truth be told. Or we outright would send our starving masses to Africa to plunder all the food from the natives at gunpoint. Things will get nasty in the sense that the hardest hit country in the world will also be the most powerful, and if people are facing cannibalism the idea of sending the army to work Africans to death for food for us will be unproblematic in the extreme.

Is this one of those 'obviously a joke' posts? Because it's pretty funny.

[RedImperator]

I wonder if anyone's ever written any fiction describing life after such an event. It would be such a huge catastrophe (and a somewhat realistic scenario, unlike many other such alt-scenarios), and the world power structure would be irrevocably changed afterwards.

It's got my wheels turning, for what it's worth.

[Broomstick]

Well, of course we won't know what it's like until it actually happens. It would be an unprecedented event in human history.

But, based on the past ashfalls from Yellowstone, of which we have actual proof thanks to geologists, we know a major eruption at Yellowstone will devastate most of North America.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I wouldn't be surprised if the remnant American government simply sent around nuclear armed warships to extort food from other countries at gunpoint, truth be told. Or we outright would send our starving masses to Africa to plunder all the food from the natives at gunpoint. Things will get nasty in the sense that the hardest hit country in the world will also be the most powerful, and if people are facing cannibalism the idea of sending the army to work Africans to death for food for us will be unproblematic in the extreme.

Is this one of those 'obviously a joke' posts? Because it's pretty funny.

Well, Africa actually is one of the most productive areas in the world in terms of food, the people there can't exploit it properly due to a lack of transportation. So in some sense, yeah, you could in fact, in theory, plunder food from Africa. But it was not intended very seriously, simply because I don't seriously plan for events this climatic, other than my stock answer of "Live on a boat", so I can just sail to New Zealand if it happens.

[Stark]

'in fact, in theory'? Come on. Use the 'obviously joking' emoticon.

It'd actually be funny if this was tried (at least in competent fiction -pokes Red-) because it would simply depopulate coastal areas within easy reach and force the roving squads to go elsewhere. The weakening of everyone else's central control might increase the likelihood of locals or warlords simply saying 'get fucked idiots' because OBVIOUSLY the Americans can't actually do anythign besides regular atroicities. It'd make for interesting drama for such post-apocalypse gunboat diplomacy to collapse food-producing nations, and have Americans think 'wait it was all so simple, let's nuke the food producing areas... OH WAIT THAT'S RETARDED'.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

'in fact, in theory'? Come on. Use the 'obviously joking' emoticon.

It'd actually be funny if this was tried (at least in competent fiction -pokes Red-) because it would simply depopulate coastal areas within easy reach and force the roving squads to go elsewhere. The weakening of everyone else's central control might increase the likelihood of locals or warlords simply saying 'get fucked idiots' because OBVIOUSLY the Americans can't actually do anythign besides regular atroicities. It'd make for interesting drama for such post-apocalypse gunboat diplomacy to collapse food-producing nations, and have Americans think 'wait it was all so simple, let's nuke the food producing areas... OH WAIT THAT'S RETARDED'.

I really just hate emoticons, I disable them in basically everything I post at when it's allowed. Anyway, that was terribly poor phrasing, but yes, it's more a subject for fiction than not. I meant "in fact" as sort of a contradiction, and then laid out, "well, theoretically" you could, with enough brutality and effort, turn Africa into a giant slave plantation, and people might be desperate to try. Is this going to succeed? No. But I think it's possible to imagine someone desperate and nutty enough to try. Certainly worthwhile for fiction!

[Junghalli]

Trying to feed everyone off massive algae farms and greenhouses sounds like it just might actually be more feasible than this "let's start a simultaneous gigantic infrastructure program and massive war on the world's poorest continent so we may then pillage it for food!" plan.

Interestingly it is also possible to make purely synthetic food. It apparently tasted like crap but people were able to live on it for 19 weeks with no disastrous health effects in the 1965 experiment and it'd beat starvation. It didn't say how feasible it would be to manufacture it on a massive scale though. It also doesn't say if it required plant-based precursors.

[Lord of the Abyss]

I wouldn't be surprised if the remnant American government simply sent around nuclear armed warships to extort food from other countries at gunpoint, truth be told. Or we outright would send our starving masses to Africa to plunder all the food from the natives at gunpoint. Things will get nasty in the sense that the hardest hit country in the world will also be the most powerful, and if people are facing cannibalism the idea of sending the army to work Africans to death for food for us will be unproblematic in the extreme.

Among the other reasons it won't work is because in those circumstances they won't surrender. "Surrender OR die" gets a rather different response that "surrender AND die", which is what that would amount to. I don't think that a US military sent against people who will be pretty much fighting to the last man and burning or poisoning whatever food they can as they retreat to keep it from the Americans will return with much loot. And good luck forcing people to grow crops who expect to die anyway; they or the local resistance would burn the fields since they have nothing to lose.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I wouldn't be surprised if the remnant American government simply sent around nuclear armed warships to extort food from other countries at gunpoint, truth be told. Or we outright would send our starving masses to Africa to plunder all the food from the natives at gunpoint. Things will get nasty in the sense that the hardest hit country in the world will also be the most powerful, and if people are facing cannibalism the idea of sending the army to work Africans to death for food for us will be unproblematic in the extreme.

Among the other reasons it won't work is because in those circumstances they won't surrender. "Surrender OR die" gets a rather different response that "surrender AND die", which is what that would amount to. I don't think that a US military sent against people who will be pretty much fighting to the last man and burning or poisoning whatever food they can as they retreat to keep it from the Americans will return with much loot. And good luck forcing people to grow crops who expect to die anyway; they or the local resistance would burn the fields since they have nothing to lose.

Well, no. Desperate people, however, do desperately stupid things.

Obviously trying to manufacture entirely synthetic food makes a good deal more sense. And certainly we could produce sugars sufficient to keep people alive, if not exactly healthy. It would be easier to make them if we could just inject them, of course.

[Stark]

Among the other reasons it won't work is because in those circumstances they won't surrender. "Surrender OR die" gets a rather different response that "surrender AND die", which is what that would amount to. I don't think that a US military sent against people who will be pretty much fighting to the last man and burning or poisoning whatever food they can as they retreat to keep it from the Americans will return with much loot. And good luck forcing people to grow crops who expect to die anyway; they or the local resistance would burn the fields since they have nothing to lose.

The big NUKULAR THREATZ won't work either, because a starving America nuking food-producing areas is utterly hilarious. This is why it'd make funny fiction, with the American leadership stunned that their simplistic, tough-guy feelgood sabre-rattling dickless stupidity didn't work.

What do you MEAN, the world isn't that simple? JUST SEND A NUKE SHIP LOL GET FOR FREE LOL

[Akkleptos]

The big NUKULAR THREATZ won't work either, because a starving America nuking food-producing areas is utterly hilarious. This is why it'd make funny fiction, with the American leadership stunned that their simplistic, tough-guy feelgood sabre-rattling dickless stupidity didn't work.

What do you MEAN, the world isn't that simple? JUST SEND A NUKE SHIP LOL GET FOR FREE LOL

What do you MEAN? Goverments don't do stupid things when in dire need of a quick solution to a problem that has none, especially when they are on the verge of their very disintegration?

No, but seriously,


BTW, thanks for upholding yer reputation as an opportunity-seeking shoot-downer

[Lusankya]

Some places like Australia, which may suffer less from climatic effects, will be fucked due to food shortages (I don't know if they would be able to switch to self-sufficiency in food, but they would have only one chance to do it right as there will be no rescue if they get it wrong).

By switch to self-sufficiency in food, do you mean 'be self sufficient in food, given reduced crop production'? Because Australia is already a net food exporter, and could probably sustain its population on a quarter of its current crop production, or less, if it decided to get rid of lots of its livestock. (Like sheep, which outnumber people 4.5:1, or cattle, of which there are about as many as there are people.)

[El Moose Monstero]

As people asked about duration of effects - there've been a couple of papers in the past few years on the subject, see Jones et al, 2005 and 2007, too early in the morning for complete references.

Ash may be lost from the atmosphere largely within months to years, although fine volcanic dust particles in the submicron range can remain aloft for a bit longer. The main issues with ash will be the impact of a huge ash blanket over a relatively large region of the surface of the planet. Enhanced cooling above that induced by aerosols may be seen on CONUS due to increased surface reflectivity (ash from these size eruptions is usually rhyolite, white), and may see extreme weather events on the rise due to the more pronounced temperature gradient.

The maximum duration of the Yellowstone 2Ma climate effects was recently estimated by atmospheric-ocean global climate model at about 50 years, IIRC. Volcanic aerosols triggering extreme global temperature drops of up to 10 degrees in the first couple of years, up to 2 degrees within 10, and with lingering -0.3 degree deviations from global average temperatures for up to 50 years after the event.

[Broomstick]

Some places like Australia, which may suffer less from climatic effects, will be fucked due to food shortages (I don't know if they would be able to switch to self-sufficiency in food, but they would have only one chance to do it right as there will be no rescue if they get it wrong).

By switch to self-sufficiency in food, do you mean 'be self sufficient in food, given reduced crop production'? Because Australia is already a net food exporter, and could probably sustain its population on a quarter of its current crop production, or less, if it decided to get rid of lots of its livestock. (Like sheep, which outnumber people 4.5:1, or cattle, of which there are about as many as there are people.)

Yes, your agricultural output will be sharply reduced, just like everyone else's, even if you are on the other side of the planet (see 1816, when most of the volcanos popping off were in your region yet NA and Europe suffered severe crop loss). Your weather patterns, like everyone else's, will go to hell. You'll have problems getting fuel, which will cause other problems because of how most everything circles the coasts. You do, after all, need to move food from the fields to the cities. And you'll need to get rid of lots of livestock, as you pointed out. And you'll need to move quick. Your geographical isolation will both work for (fewer people coming from elsewhere are refugees) and against you (you're really on your own). Southern Australia's climate will get much colder for a year or two, just as New England and Europe's did in 1816, and you'll probably lose all your crops in those areas.

[CJvR]

Um.... WHAT food? Africa has more countries dependent on outside food aid than anywhere else, and don't you think Europe and Asia will have similar ideas?

More likely they are sent to conquer lands for industrial farming, turning Africa into a giant, pre-Mugabe land grab, Zimbabwe. While it might seem futile by todays standards I suspect a starving home population wont mind RoE straight out of the SS game book to ensure minimal rations.

Also the growth of Ethanol consumption for fuel revealed nicely how misery have become globalized in the last few years causing hunger simply by raising the prices of food worldwide.

[Themightytom]

Mostly because a cubic unit of ash (being comprised of pulverized rock and some trapped air) is far more dense (between 700 kg/m3 to 2450 kg/m3) than a cubic unit of snow (being comprised of water ice crystals and a lot of trapped air. Density ranges from 80 kg/m3 to 300 kg/m3) And that's before it rains and all that volcanic ash becomes cement.

A meter worth of lightweight pumice ashfall is worth ten meters of freshly fallen snow, and a bit more than three meters of snow that has been given time to settle. A meter worth of heavyweight ashfall is the equivalent of thirty meters of new-fallen snow.

So even if the roof doesn't cave, its instant bunker. is the ash likely to still be heated?

What kind of structure would best survive that? Sloped roofs probably have an advantage over flat as less of the material is retained, but I imagine like a kwanset hut would be the best overall. I live in a mill building with a sloped roof, with a ground floor on one side at the third floor, and the first floor at water level beside a river. if we are furiously cleaning the roof it might not collapse beccause this building is pretty overngineered, on the other hand one side of the building should definitely be tall enough to avoid burial. of course if the ash is hot we will probably just bake.

Not that it matters, because if your roof doesn't collapse AND you aren't buried/cooked alive you'll just live to see the aftermath of no transportation, food scarcity, competition for resources and general Debacle.

I know Canada is in the blast radius, but you guys are generally rugged, self sufficient and you help each other out. Down here its gonna be roving bands of right wing survivalists feeding off of disoriented entitled cattle probably led by a deformed midget riding a giant.

[KroLazuxy_87]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in any posts is the effect it would have on oceans and marine life. Would they be greatly threatened as well?

I'd imagine less sunlight would mean less sunlight for algae and if plankton populations crash, bad news.

Wouldn't their be a rush to the oceans for food? I know there's already a lot of regulation on how much fish can be taken out of the ocean each year, but I'd imagine when faced with such a massive disaster, those regulations would be either removed or ignored. Japan hardly regulates their fishing and have been feeding themselves with primarily seafood for generations.

If the rest of the world ravaged the sea for food, wouldn't that solve some of the hunger problems in the short term?

[Jeremy]

Australia is mostly Shield Craton, are there any active volcanic regions there?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Australia is mostly Shield Craton, are there any active volcanic regions there?

Australia is the only continent on earth without active volcanism.