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How susceptible are we to another catastrophic volcano eruption? After COVID-19 shut down supply chains, there were some problematic delays, but seems like we
by pureliquidhw 6y ago
How susceptible are we to another catastrophic volcano eruption?
After COVID-19 shut down supply chains, there were some problematic delays, but seems like we quickly recovered. If the entire planet's crops were wiped out, we're all just SOL if we don't get canned goods in time? If we had 12 months notice, could we as a planet get it together? 6 months? 3 months?
Is there forecasting for volcanoes? (looks like yes: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/forecast.html https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/forecast.html) How often do geologists cry wolf?
- chrisco255 6y agoForecasting volcanoes is a lot like forecasting earthquakes, it's really difficult to do and often there's very little warning, maybe a couple of days at most, but sometimes comes with no warning at all. The White Island volcano killed several people last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Whakaari_/_White_Island_eruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Whakaari_/_White_Island_e... This place was a famous tourist destination. One of my favorite sites for tracking Volcanic eruptions is: https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/volcano_news.html https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/volcano_news.html . It provides real-time updates on volcano advisories. I would say we're still very susceptible to a supervolcano eruption. There is no stopping that level of force. It can dramatically shift the climate for years, if not decades. And it would be catastrophic for crop production. I suspect we would need to move a large portion of our crop production into greenhouses and growhouses in order to survive that level of event.
- dekervin 6y agoI am genuinely curious, what hobby of yours makes you track volcanic eruptions regularly ?
- chrisco255 6y agoI just study climate developments and geological history sometimes and volcanoes are a big part of that. They've shaped life on earth.
- CameronNemo 6y agoHow would green/grow houses help in such a situation?
- chrisco255 6y agoThe cold weather would kill crops in all but probably tropical latitudes. The lack of sunlight will slow plant growth. Placing plants in greenhouses / growhouses would keep them warm and you could supplement sunlight with LED lighting to feed the plants.
- Exmoor 6y agoBut creating enough greenhouse capacity to feed 8 billion people would be incredibly difficult. Bottom line would be, if something causes sunlight to be largely blocked around the world for a sustained period of time, the number of people who would starve to death would likely number in the billions.
- fulafel 6y agoGreenhouses cool down rapidly after sunset though, they still freeze if it's many deg below freezing outside. (Also mass crops like wheat and soy would have to solve harvesting machinery and resource cost vs area size)
- s1artibartfast 6y ago>Greenhouses cool down rapidly after sunset though This simply isn't true and depends on a number of factors. greenhouses can fairly easily maintain 2-30 degrees above the outside temperature. furthermore, the temperature drop described in the article was 1-2 degrees below average.
- CameronNemo 6y agoLED lighting could also be used for outdoor crops. From my perspective green houses are most beneficial for pest management and water conservation. They might actually prevent light from reaching plants to the same degree as an outdoor grow due to reflection and opacity.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoThe White Island eruption was forecasted though. It's just that tourists kept going there regardless.
- alliao 6y agowhoa any forecast reports? I think the tourists are suing the tourism companies right now
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoThey were at an elevated alert level weeks before the event and the tourism company made explicit notice that they go no matter what the alert level but there's always a risk. Good luck w/ the lawsuit is all I can say. The linked Wikipedia page has details.
- pmiller2 6y agoIn what sense have we “recovered” from supply chain disruptions? I go to the store and still routinely see empty shelves where TP should be; have experienced meat shortages in recent days; and stores are still rationing things like hand sanitizer (when you can find it), canned goods, meat, and rice.
- _jal 6y ago> In what sense have we “recovered” from supply chain disruptions? The initial shock has past, and consumer product makers have had plenty of time to do whatever they were going to do. "Recovery" is a word that sets up certain expectations. It seems to me that what happened during the first half of this year is more usefully considered "change".
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoRecovery is patchy. Some locations are fine, others are still having problems. The bigger problem is the lack of any economic or physical contingency planning. There was some medical planning of a sort for a pandemic, but there seems to be no economic planning of any kind for catastrophes. National governments seem to have improvised economic solutions to COVID with varying degrees of competence and success. This is negligent and inept. Catastrophes are more or less guaranteed, and there should at least be some thought given to making sure that the first thing that falls apart isn't the national economy.
- ghaff 6y agoFrom what I can see in the Boston area--not that I've gone to stores much--you still see bare shelves and you can't really go to the store and expect to get everything on your shopping list. On the other hand... Getting food to eat was never a problem at any point. And today, reliably getting meat, chicken, dairy, paper products even if not exactly what you want, most baking supplies, etc. is pretty much a non-problem.
- pmiller2 6y agoTrue, I never had a problem getting enough food. But, I am definitely still seeing issues getting most of the things you listed out explicitly, at least intermittently.
- quotha 6y agoYou might be interested in the film "Into the Inferno" by Werner Herzog. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Inferno_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Inferno_(film)
- divbzero 6y agoIn our recent past, we experienced some disruption from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption. On a less likely and more extreme level, Yellowstone has erupted 3 times over the past 2.1 million years [2] and there are other known supervolcanos [3] on Earth. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyjafjallajökull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyjafjallajökull [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano
- fsckboy 6y agoHow susceptible are we to another catastrophic volcano eruption? We're apparently not very susceptible to a few degrees of global cooling, so at least we have that going for us.
- Symmetry 6y agoI'm going to plug a charity here, Allfed, working to develop technologies to let us survive the loss of conventional agriculture for a period of years by working out efficient and economical ways to convert things like, e.g., dead trees into digestible calories and the plans to deploy them in the event of a large volcanic interruption or asteroid strike or nuclear exchange. https://allfed.info/ https://allfed.info/
- mleonhard 6y agoThanks for sharing this. Allfed is doing important work.
- dcolkitt 6y agoThat's very interesting. But if we're talking about O(10 years), isn't a more foolproof and probably cheaper plan just to stockpile dried and canned food?
- ddenkenberger 6y agoThanks! I'm the director of ALLFED. dcolkitt, if we knew we had 10 years, it would be possible to store up 10 years worth of food. However, the catastrophe could come sooner, it would cost tens of trillions of dollars, and it would inflate the price of food significantly, exacerbating current malnutrition. Whereas getting prepared to scale up alternative foods quickly would only cost around $100 million: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs13753-016-0097-2.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs13753-016-0...