A super-volcano won't end life on Earth, but unless some other life-form evolves which can carry life to another planet, we are the only guarantee that life can continue beyond whatever timeline the solar/galactic system has in store for us... which we know definitely means our star exterminates all life on this planet at some point in the future.

Honestly, I don't see we can see ourselves as anything but Life's only hope of continuing.

Sure, we're doing a shitty job right now, we should do better, but honestly, if we fuck up, life will find a way too... that super-volcano is going to erupt and destroy way more species and ecosystem than a couple holes and geothermal plants will. If we can help delay/prevent that, I think it'll be a step toward making up for at least some of the damage we've done.

It is very much like an asteroid in that there are lots of things we can do.

Excerpt from the article:

“When people first considered the idea of defending the Earth from an asteroid impact, they reacted in a similar way to the supervolcano threat,” Wilcox says. “People thought, ‘As puny as we are, how can humans possibly prevent an asteroid from hitting the Earth.’ Well, it turns out if you engineer something which pushes very slightly for a very long time, you can make the asteroid miss the Earth. So the problem turns out to be easier than people think. In both cases it requires the scientific community to invest brain power and you have to start early. But Yellowstone explodes roughly every 600,000 years, and it is about 600,000 years since it last exploded, which should cause us to sit up and take notice.”

I have recently started to evangelize panbioticism and project which seek to seed the solar system/galaxy with terrestrial life.

Even if humans can't become self-sustaining outside of Earth before we get wiped out by something, I believe that we can give our genetic family a chance by sending out clusters of small probes of primitive AI and primitive organisms which can maybe evolve elsewhere. Also by storing a vault of our knowledge and storage for embryos for ourselves and as many diverse species as possible. We could build that and land it on a moon outside of the radius of an expanded sun with a beacon to help it be found.

Any of these things is absolutely feasible and would give life a better shot in the future. Here is Dr. Michael Mautners website for the Society for Life in Space (SOLIS)

http://www.panspermia-society.com/

We may not be able to save humanity, but we will give life a fighting chance.

Well, we could run a geothermal plant to cool it down and prevent eruption...

> Yellowstone currently leaks about 60-70% of the heat coming up from below into the atmosphere, via water which seeps into the magma chamber through cracks. The remainder builds up inside the magma, enabling it to dissolve more and more volatile gases and surrounding rocks. Once this heat reaches a certain threshold, then an explosive eruption is inevitable.

> But if more of the heat could be extracted, then the supervolcano would never erupt. Nasa estimates that if a 35% increase in heat transfer could be achieved from its magma chamber, Yellowstone would no longer pose a threat. The only question is how?

So, two or three GW of heat loss should be sufficient to keep the magma chamber from heating any further if NASA's estimates are accurate.

> Why we as humans seem to think that life can't possibly continue without us has always boggled my mind.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with this comment. Care to clarify? If you're suggesting that any attempts to prevent an eruption would be too disruptive to the ecosystem, imagine how disruptive 8 ft. of volcanic ash would be if it were to blanket most of the western United States. That's not even mentioning the millions of tons that would end up in the atmosphere for years, blocking out the sun, and killing off a substantial amount of plant and animal life world wide.

First, you need to consider that, in the long run, that thing is going to explode and will certainly destroy a lot of ecosystems around the world.

Second, the only ecosystem that depends on the heat are the archea on the geysers and hot vents. But the heat loss along years would be so small that their ecosystem can endure for a lot more centuries.

Third, it is very hard to find a way to generate so much energy without increasing carbon footprint and generating even more ecosystems destruction.

So sure in the short term (years) no eruption is good. But in the long term there will be poorer soil, or a huge amount of energy/chemicals consumed to keep the soil usable.

It's far from clear that it's better for the ecosystem to stop a volcano (or supervolcano). What's next stopping earthquakes? Keep plates from moving? Stopping erosion? Preventing rivers from migrating?

Mucking with nature to prevent the natural cycle of life has gone pretty poorly so far. Floods are getting worse, rivers are moving faster, coastal cities are losing their marshes, cities on rivers are at a higher risk than ever of flooding.

Check out the updates on Mt Saint Helens area in the post eruption documentary. It's quite vibrant and recovered much faster than scientist expected.

1) Tell humans their suffering doesn't matter.

2) A super-volcano eruption is several orders of magnitude worse than St. Helens, a scale that human history has not seen yet. It would affect the whole planet and wreck ecosystems in the whole planet, far beyond North America. We're talking about likely end of civilization. You don't have logic against that.

As for the comparison to climate change, it's flawed on its face. Climate change wasn't exactly planned. There's a difference between that sort of change and a focused, targeted effort to change a particular element of nature (in this case, cooling a supervolcano) and an unintentional consequence of industrialization.

In any case, any effort to roll back the effects of climate change is going to involve some form of climate engineering. That could include anything from artificial carbon sequestration to a massive solar dust shade at L1 blocking a small fraction of solar radiation to give us the time needed to implement those sequestration systems. Or any number of other proposals. Should we just accept higher temperatures instead, even if we manage to slow or even halt the progression? We muck with nature all the time, and we're going to have to continue to do so in order to protect it.

After all there are many potential causes of food shortages and the risks are getting worse with each year because of additional pollution, global warming, and increased population.

I don't want anyone to die, but does seem short sighted to depend on soil enriched by previous eruptions, then to prevent future ones.

Or, maybe, we could prevent it all from happening in the first place.

I don't understand why you're so stuck on not preventing mass death. Did you not think this through before commenting and now your ego won't let you back down? Or are you just trolling?

It would make for a good story premise for a movie/TV show/video game, but not so much fun to actually live through.

Seems far from sure that a world wide cloud of ash might well do more benefit (better soil, cooler temperatures, helping dead zones in the ocean) than harm.... assuming we plan for it.

It's obviously not about protecting nature from herself, it would be about protecting us from nature.

Never thought of it that way.

Shedding all survival instinct nao /s

Not arguing in favor of OC; but it's not that they hate humanity so much they wouldn’t want to do everything in our power to preserve it; but instead, they don't love humanity enough to do everything in our power to preserve it. There is a difference.