29 ms·

The 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull [0] was a small sample of the perturbations that a volcanic event can have on day to day lives. And it was a rel

by lgl 6y ago

The 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull [0] was a small sample of the perturbations that a volcanic event can have on day to day lives. And it was a relatively small eruption. Anything much larger than that will most likely have devastating effects on modern society on pretty much all levels and it's not really a matter of "if" but "when". Besides eruptions, many other scarier events can cause huge shifts on the planet's thermal equilibrium including our current state of global warming or many other unknown events (like whatever happened to cause the Younger Dryas [1] "only" ~13k years ago which is theorized to have been either a mega eruption, impact event or stellar supernova). It's pretty scary and definitely not something that we're at all prepared even with all our technology so we're basically in a permanent state of risk of complete reset which is guaranteed to happen eventually. Sadly it's not something most of us spend too much time thinking or preparing for. I guess this is largely because we live very short lives and that make these kind of events appear much "larger than life" so they go mostly ignored except for some underfunded science departments or the occasional billionaire. To me this is the main reason that going multiplanetary or space habitat based is basically the only way to escape this inevitable doom even though that is also a huge barrier to overcome on so many levels. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

f_allwein 6y ago
Michio Kaku wrote about how it is the challenge for each civilization to guard against such life-threatening catastrophes: https://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestrial-civilizations/ https://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestr...
yummypaint 6y ago
It's also a good reason to leave fossil fuels in the ground and not just extract them as quickly as possible wherever we find them. It seems conceivable that we could eventually find ourselves thermodynamically unable to recover after a catastrophy like a big solar flare. Unfortunately there is no way for anyone to make money by being responsible in this way. We are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund and spending it on cocaine.
- seph-reed 6y ago
  > We are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund and spending it on cocaine Not usually a fan of us vs them mentality, but your use of "we" here feels bad. Surely, it's all of us that use these resources, nobody on HN is self sufficient (please be the exception). But at the same time, most of us aren't getting much of the "cocaine" here, at least relatively. It would almost be reasonable to say "They are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund and spending it on cocaine".. whoever they are. The ones with cocaine mustaches presumably. EDIT: Someone paid a lot of money to make this not an "our" choice but instead a "their" choice. If you feel like this is something you have any real control over, I urge you to change things.
  - aksss 6y ago
    You kidding me? We're all getting the coke. Just because you're not Scarface doesn't avoid the fact that all of us are awash in plastics, silicone, rare earth metals, concrete, steel, precious metals, alloys, goods from far flung lands, industrial agriculture and many assumptions about available services that rely on the same and ravenous upstream fossil fuel consumption. We (as human consumers) never had it so good, and if that luxury is unevenly distributed, the fact remains that the tide continues to lift all boats globally. You certainly benefit from the aggregate bounty society as a whole has reaped (enjoy that Starbucks!) and directly are living a better life today than someone of your station would have lived 300 years ago. I don't even know you in the least, but am comfortable making that statement categorically because the difference is global capabilities is that profound.
    - seph-reed 6y ago
      EDIT: This post is angry. I say my words more clearly below. > living a better life today than someone of your station would have lived 300 years ago > We (as human consumers) never had it so good You couldn't possibly understand how much better community and and a sense purpose is to the life we're living. The fact that we become more and more isolated, more and more lied to, more and more defeated and yet: you think gimmicky material goods is what defines quality of life.. it's depressing. I've seen so many people of your stance see how wrong they are the moment they find community, but I've never seen a person lose community and feel like money could replace it. -------- FURTHER! WHAT THE FUCK!? WHY IS ANY OF THIS NECESSARY TO GET THESE GOODS!? Can you really not imagine a world where we make technological progress without doing horrible things?! How fucking much cool-aid have you drank!?
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
Yeah, UK kept harassing Iceland because of that mess with Icelandic banks. Then suddenly, volcano erupted, airplanes started having difficulties landing in Heathrow, and the harassment suddenly stopped.
- runarberg 6y ago
  12 Years since, and I still don’t understand why the UK went after Iceland for reparations. Landsbanki was a private bank operating in the UK, and one of the owners Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson is still doing business in the UK, and is now among the top 100 billionaires in the UK (even though he caused a 6 billion euro damage that the UK taxpayers paid).
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    As i understand it: In EU/EEA there are are bank regulations specifying that banks may operate on a common market under supervision of regulating body where the bank is registered. As Landsbanki UK was branch office and not subsidiary company, it falled under Iceland regulation. These regulations also require that there is a deposit guarantee scheme for protection of depositors up to 100k EUR, based on country where bank is registered. So when Landsbanki crashed, all its depositors were entitled to deposit guarantee from Iceland deposit guarantee scheme. But this system cannot handle crash of such size. After that, Iceland government decided to reimburse icelandic depositors, but not offshore depositors (although both have the same claims after icelanding deposit guarantee system, the local ones have political power). To avoid political windfall, UK (and AFAIK also Dutch) government decides to reimburse their local depositors and get reparation from Iceland based on Iceland government's failure of setup proper deposit guarantee scheme / sufficient regulation, which was condition for allowing its banks access to UK/EU banking market.
    - iso1631 6y ago
      In the runup to the crash, there were a lot of new adverts on the tube about amazing high interest rates with unknown Icelandic banks - far higher than the rates given by normal banks. I was always told if something is too good to be true, it usually is. Not only did lots of regular people put their money in this bank, a lot of public authorities did too, and the desposit protection doesn't really help Kent council (which lost £50m), or TFL (£40m), or whatever. UK governments gambled, with big promises, and lost.
ativzzz 6y ago
> To me this is the main reason that going multiplanetary or space habitat based is basically the only way to escape this inevitable doom I disagree with this. Leaving the Earth doesn't remove random acts of doom from happening, and in fact, they are more lethal in unfamiliar and hostile environments. If we do not figure out how to handle such black swan events on our home planet, we have no chance of handling them in space or on other planets.
- bilegeek 6y ago
  That's the issue. If we can't handle the black swan events in time, we'll at least have a backup. Granted, this doesn't cover bigger black swan events like gamma ray bursts, where the entire solar system is screwed, but it'll at least help with Earthside apocalypse. The fact that we couldn't handle it is indeed incriminating against our abilities as a species, but as they say, perfect is the enemy of good.
  - cgriswald 6y ago
    It's not possible for a gamma ray burst to 'screw' the entire solar system. It's already an incredibly unlikely event to occur near enough to do damage. Then the beam would have to be directed in our direction. And the beam would have to essentially hit the solar system edge on or face on, but not at any other angle. Even if all that happened, underground bases would be protected, as would above-ground or in-space habitats that happened to be protected either by the mass of the body they're on by virtue of 'facing away' from the GRB; or by virtue of being behind another body (e.g. Jupiter, the sun, some body they are orbitting) relative to the GRB. With space habitats, they may also be protected by virtue of already needing some level of protection against cosmic radiation; but that's highly speculative. A GRB also wouldn't destroy the Earth. It would do a lot of damage to its ecosystems, but the Earth would be relatively safe again not terribly long after the event, even without human intervention. If we had the technology to colonize space, we could definitely recolonize the Earth, even in a worst case scenario where the entire ecosystem collapses.
    - MauranKilom 6y ago
jcranmer 6y ago
> (like whatever happened to cause the Younger Dryas [1] "only" ~13k years ago which is theorized to have been either a mega eruption, impact event or stellar supernova) My understanding is that the current leading theory is a drastic shift in outflow of Lake Agassiz (an expanded version of Lake Manitoba in Canada).
arcade79 6y ago
It's less than 30 years since we had a much, much larger eruption than Eyjafjallajökull. Mount Pinatubo erupted one June 12th 1991. That was a VEI-6 eruption. Eyjafjallajökull was only VEI-4. Now, one can argue about how Eyjafjallajökull caused ashfall in most of Europe, while Pinatubo is in the Philippines, but given the extent of ashfall from Pinatubo .. EDIT (forgot link): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_eruption_of_Mount_Pinatubo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_eruption_of_Mount_Pinatub...
nemosaltat 6y ago
If you haven’t read “Magicians of the Gods” you might enjoy it. There’s some stuff that’s a little “out there” but the general idea of a cyclic cataclysmic event with a ~12K year periodicity seems to have some merit.
eloff 6y ago
I'm with you on the dangers of all these things, but I'm going to disagree that they're civilization reset events - although they could spark one. A massive global famine could kill a billion humans or more. But if the 1 in 10 of us (likely the poorest, most vulnerable people) died, would civilization end? I don't think so. However, if that leads to all out nuclear war, then we have two enormous correlated shocks to the system. Maybe even that wouldn't be enough, but some number of such shocks could push us over the brink. Just like an economic meltdown or a plane crash, it's never one thing that goes wrong, it's a sequence of failures.
dboreham 6y ago
Supposedly there's an associated "black mat" visible in the soil at ~12ky depth. Since I live in the middle of North America and I own an excavator, I'm tempted to see if I can find it..
- lgl 6y ago
  Yes, it's an actual thing and you can see lots of photographic evidence [0] [1] if you look it up on google or read some of the many papers written on the subject. They're visible on many places on Earth, some even without any excavation needed. It sits pretty much as a clear separation between the previous geological epoch (Pleistocene aka Ice Age) and our current epoch (Holocene). [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/1/40/F1.large.jpg https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/1/40/F1.large.jpg [1] https://capeia-usercontent.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/07/1563271763_3_d9ff7.jpg https://capeia-usercontent.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/07/...

by lgl 6y ago

f_allwein 6y ago

Michio Kaku wrote about how it is the challenge for each civilization to guard against such life-threatening catastrophes: https://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestrial-civilizations/ https://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestr...

yummypaint 6y ago

It's also a good reason to leave fossil fuels in the ground and not just extract them as quickly as possible wherever we find them. It seems conceivable that we could eventually find ourselves thermodynamically unable to recover after a catastrophy like a big solar flare. Unfortunately there is no way for anyone to make money by being responsible in this way. We are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund and spending it on cocaine.

seph-reed 6y ago
> We are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund and spending it on cocaine Not usually a fan of us vs them mentality, but your use of "we" here feels bad. Surely, it's all of us that use these resources, nobody on HN is self sufficient (please be the exception). But at the same time, most of us aren't getting much of the "cocaine" here, at least relatively. It would almost be reasonable to say "They are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund and spending it on cocaine".. whoever they are. The ones with cocaine mustaches presumably. EDIT: Someone paid a lot of money to make this not an "our" choice but instead a "their" choice. If you feel like this is something you have any real control over, I urge you to change things.
- aksss 6y ago
  You kidding me? We're all getting the coke. Just because you're not Scarface doesn't avoid the fact that all of us are awash in plastics, silicone, rare earth metals, concrete, steel, precious metals, alloys, goods from far flung lands, industrial agriculture and many assumptions about available services that rely on the same and ravenous upstream fossil fuel consumption. We (as human consumers) never had it so good, and if that luxury is unevenly distributed, the fact remains that the tide continues to lift all boats globally. You certainly benefit from the aggregate bounty society as a whole has reaped (enjoy that Starbucks!) and directly are living a better life today than someone of your station would have lived 300 years ago. I don't even know you in the least, but am comfortable making that statement categorically because the difference is global capabilities is that profound.
  - seph-reed 6y ago
    EDIT: This post is angry. I say my words more clearly below. > living a better life today than someone of your station would have lived 300 years ago > We (as human consumers) never had it so good You couldn't possibly understand how much better community and and a sense purpose is to the life we're living. The fact that we become more and more isolated, more and more lied to, more and more defeated and yet: you think gimmicky material goods is what defines quality of life.. it's depressing. I've seen so many people of your stance see how wrong they are the moment they find community, but I've never seen a person lose community and feel like money could replace it. -------- FURTHER! WHAT THE FUCK!? WHY IS ANY OF THIS NECESSARY TO GET THESE GOODS!? Can you really not imagine a world where we make technological progress without doing horrible things?! How fucking much cool-aid have you drank!?

SomeoneFromCA 6y ago

Yeah, UK kept harassing Iceland because of that mess with Icelandic banks. Then suddenly, volcano erupted, airplanes started having difficulties landing in Heathrow, and the harassment suddenly stopped.

runarberg 6y ago
12 Years since, and I still don’t understand why the UK went after Iceland for reparations. Landsbanki was a private bank operating in the UK, and one of the owners Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson is still doing business in the UK, and is now among the top 100 billionaires in the UK (even though he caused a 6 billion euro damage that the UK taxpayers paid).
- zajio1am 6y ago
  As i understand it: In EU/EEA there are are bank regulations specifying that banks may operate on a common market under supervision of regulating body where the bank is registered. As Landsbanki UK was branch office and not subsidiary company, it falled under Iceland regulation. These regulations also require that there is a deposit guarantee scheme for protection of depositors up to 100k EUR, based on country where bank is registered. So when Landsbanki crashed, all its depositors were entitled to deposit guarantee from Iceland deposit guarantee scheme. But this system cannot handle crash of such size. After that, Iceland government decided to reimburse icelandic depositors, but not offshore depositors (although both have the same claims after icelanding deposit guarantee system, the local ones have political power). To avoid political windfall, UK (and AFAIK also Dutch) government decides to reimburse their local depositors and get reparation from Iceland based on Iceland government's failure of setup proper deposit guarantee scheme / sufficient regulation, which was condition for allowing its banks access to UK/EU banking market.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    In the runup to the crash, there were a lot of new adverts on the tube about amazing high interest rates with unknown Icelandic banks - far higher than the rates given by normal banks. I was always told if something is too good to be true, it usually is. Not only did lots of regular people put their money in this bank, a lot of public authorities did too, and the desposit protection doesn't really help Kent council (which lost £50m), or TFL (£40m), or whatever. UK governments gambled, with big promises, and lost.

ativzzz 6y ago

> To me this is the main reason that going multiplanetary or space habitat based is basically the only way to escape this inevitable doom I disagree with this. Leaving the Earth doesn't remove random acts of doom from happening, and in fact, they are more lethal in unfamiliar and hostile environments. If we do not figure out how to handle such black swan events on our home planet, we have no chance of handling them in space or on other planets.

bilegeek 6y ago
That's the issue. If we can't handle the black swan events in time, we'll at least have a backup. Granted, this doesn't cover bigger black swan events like gamma ray bursts, where the entire solar system is screwed, but it'll at least help with Earthside apocalypse. The fact that we couldn't handle it is indeed incriminating against our abilities as a species, but as they say, perfect is the enemy of good.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  It's not possible for a gamma ray burst to 'screw' the entire solar system. It's already an incredibly unlikely event to occur near enough to do damage. Then the beam would have to be directed in our direction. And the beam would have to essentially hit the solar system edge on or face on, but not at any other angle. Even if all that happened, underground bases would be protected, as would above-ground or in-space habitats that happened to be protected either by the mass of the body they're on by virtue of 'facing away' from the GRB; or by virtue of being behind another body (e.g. Jupiter, the sun, some body they are orbitting) relative to the GRB. With space habitats, they may also be protected by virtue of already needing some level of protection against cosmic radiation; but that's highly speculative. A GRB also wouldn't destroy the Earth. It would do a lot of damage to its ecosystems, but the Earth would be relatively safe again not terribly long after the event, even without human intervention. If we had the technology to colonize space, we could definitely recolonize the Earth, even in a worst case scenario where the entire ecosystem collapses.
  - MauranKilom 6y ago

jcranmer 6y ago

> (like whatever happened to cause the Younger Dryas [1] "only" ~13k years ago which is theorized to have been either a mega eruption, impact event or stellar supernova) My understanding is that the current leading theory is a drastic shift in outflow of Lake Agassiz (an expanded version of Lake Manitoba in Canada).

arcade79 6y ago

It's less than 30 years since we had a much, much larger eruption than Eyjafjallajökull. Mount Pinatubo erupted one June 12th 1991. That was a VEI-6 eruption. Eyjafjallajökull was only VEI-4. Now, one can argue about how Eyjafjallajökull caused ashfall in most of Europe, while Pinatubo is in the Philippines, but given the extent of ashfall from Pinatubo .. EDIT (forgot link): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_eruption_of_Mount_Pinatubo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_eruption_of_Mount_Pinatub...

nemosaltat 6y ago

If you haven’t read “Magicians of the Gods” you might enjoy it. There’s some stuff that’s a little “out there” but the general idea of a cyclic cataclysmic event with a ~12K year periodicity seems to have some merit.

eloff 6y ago

I'm with you on the dangers of all these things, but I'm going to disagree that they're civilization reset events - although they could spark one. A massive global famine could kill a billion humans or more. But if the 1 in 10 of us (likely the poorest, most vulnerable people) died, would civilization end? I don't think so. However, if that leads to all out nuclear war, then we have two enormous correlated shocks to the system. Maybe even that wouldn't be enough, but some number of such shocks could push us over the brink. Just like an economic meltdown or a plane crash, it's never one thing that goes wrong, it's a sequence of failures.

dboreham 6y ago

Supposedly there's an associated "black mat" visible in the soil at ~12ky depth. Since I live in the middle of North America and I own an excavator, I'm tempted to see if I can find it..

lgl 6y ago
Yes, it's an actual thing and you can see lots of photographic evidence [0] [1] if you look it up on google or read some of the many papers written on the subject. They're visible on many places on Earth, some even without any excavation needed. It sits pretty much as a clear separation between the previous geological epoch (Pleistocene aka Ice Age) and our current epoch (Holocene). [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/1/40/F1.large.jpg https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/1/40/F1.large.jpg [1] https://capeia-usercontent.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/07/1563271763_3_d9ff7.jpg https://capeia-usercontent.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/07/...