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)
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.
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.