A couple of thousand years ago they thought Mt. Vesuvius was extinct...oops! The Yellowstone super-volcano has not erupted for 600,000-700,000 years; is it extinct or dormant? I also like how they chose their words 'and has been extinct since then'...but will it remain extinct in the future? And how many more of these things, extinct or dormant or active, are yet to be discovered?
H20 is largest emission from volcanos, CO2 is the 2nd largest it becomes a problem with long term eruptions like the siberian or deccan traps...the immediate short term effect of volcanic eruptions is cooling temps from sulfate aerosols, and those will come to the surface regardless how much ocean water is above the volcano....
I don't believe they even knew what it was... resting/paused may be a better definition...it's a hot spot that the continental plate is passing over, it's slowly moving eastward... last super volcano Toba that exploded occurred 70K years ago and coincidentally coincides with a genetic bottleneck in humans, it's possible we were very nearly exterminated by the climatic change caused by that eruption...
Well you have to admit the knowledge of volcanism was pretty poor back then Neither, with the amount of ground movement and thermal stuck going on, it would still be considered an active geological region Well there has been no activity for something like 110 million years, and the whole thing formed in 5 million years. In geologic terms thats almost like busting a zit for the Earth Well now they have the geology of this thing nutted out, they suspect there might be two bigger volcanoes a bit to the East
Not only possible, but quite likely, and possible that such a thing could happen once again, maybe even before we manage to cause a man made disaster of equal proportions. Oh, well, even if 99.9% of the human race should perish, there would still be some seven million of us left. Moreover, humans, coyotes, and ravens are among the most adaptable creatures on Earth. Our species will survive.
I agree it probably happened but the evidence is quite circumstantial and not definitive as yet.. if the Toba hypothesis is correct and it repeats there likely won't be 7 million survivors, one Toba hypothesis suggest a few thousand which could easily have tipped into total extinction with no viable population groups surviving...one of the drawbacks of highly technical civilizations is that we've specialized so much in our technical abilities that we've lost the ability to survive with nothing...back in the day of the Toba eruption we were all hunter gatherers who could live of the land...
True enough, but then there were a lot fewer of us back then, so a 0.1% survival rate would have most likely ended the human race once and for all. Now, the same rate of survival wouldn't even make us an endangered species. Even 0.01% would still leave 700,000, a lot more than there were during the last near extinction of homo sapiens.
For a couple of hundred years before 'the' eruption the volcano was assumed dormant, with lush growth, etc. So yes they did not have great scientific knowledge, only some historical reference going back a couple of centuries. Interesting that the eruption which buried Pompeii was obviously considered catastrophic, and over the past ~1900 years there have been 70-80 more eruptions, yet today that area within the reach of Mt. Vesuvius is highly populated with millions of people! I think extinct, dormant or active are our only choices to define a volcano? Modern man has such short time on Earth so when we're talking about a volcano in geologic time we're only guessing if a volcano is dormant or extinct. We have no idea what will happen in the next 100, 1000 or 500,000 years. It's kind of like guessing when the wife might become a little testy...might happen in a month, few days or the next ten seconds...
Knowledge is relative and all they knew was the volcano had not erupted in a couple hundred years and it was covered in lush green growth...back then 200 years was an eternity. I'd say Yellowstone is active but I was referencing that just because it has not erupted in thousands of years this cannot mean it is dormant or extinct. I live in northern CA about 10 miles from the San Andreas fault and everyone always talks about when the 'big one' will hit when in fact we don't know if it will be before I finish this sentence or another 100-500 or more years. Using your words above people are basically a zit on Earth, having zero control, only along for the ride. And with all we know today millions of us continue to place our homes and businesses in harms way of some geological disaster yet to happen...
I don't think you can base it purely on numbers and a percentage of that...imo the more technically developed the population the higher the death toll...I would base any surviving percentage on the number of hunter gather societies still in existence not the total human population...I know I or anyone else I know has any clue as to how to survive should our food industry collapse tomorrow, I'd estimate our survival time at a few months at most... I found this in a wiki article...According to the genetic bottleneck theory, between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, human populations sharply decreased to 3,000-10,000 surviving individuals.[31][32] It is supported by genetic evidence suggesting that today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.[33] "...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory...it's interesting that we're not the only specie that went through the same genetic bottleneck at the same time, that would certainly suggest a major cataclysm of some sort...
very good point, there must be a level of denial going on there...there was documentary made not so long on just that topic, they know the danger they're in but they keep building with-in the kill zone... true enough mine is very reliable... daily
I've read that same thing. A major volcanic eruption is at least one of the possible causes. I think you underestimate the adaptability of the human species. There's no way to be sure, of course, but I find an extinction event pretty unlikely.
Oh definitely. I would say if the eruption of 79AD happened today we would have plenty of warning. You would get lots of micro earthquakes and ground swelling Agreed, every now and then mother nature calls in the rent, and man gets hurt. I was ready recently after the giant earthquake of Japan a couple of years ago - Japan actually moved sideways some 5 feet. That is like an entire island chain just went woosh.
true but it's the only smoking gun at the moment, I think they need to nail down the dates more accurately... I'm judging it on historical precedent, even in colonial times when settlers were much closer to the earth and self sufficient than we are today many died in the new world of starvation while all around them indigenous hunter gather populations thrived...an extinction event will obviously depend on the scale of the cataclysm...people of the industrialized world are hopelessly under equipped to survive a major cataclysm...
like Mt ST Helen's... I was in a minor tremor a month ago when on vacation, the locals didn't even pause but I was quite impressed...check "experienced an earthquake" off my bucket list ....
Earthquakes get to be old hat in California, as they happen pretty regularly. I think the most memorable one I've experienced was years ago in Oroville, CA. Oroville is a gold dredging town from the mining days, so the old part of it is built on a huge pile of round rocks from baseball sized to bowling ball sized. This rock pile stretches all the way across the Feather River, and downstream for miles. Imagine a pile of rocks that stretches for several miles all rattling at once from an earthquake. I've never heard anything else like it before or since.
but for a prairie boy like me a little tremor was exciting...while prairie monster dust storms, thunderstorms and tornados are more familiar...tornadoes never cease to impress however ... that would be very cool to hear...my unique experiences was a thunderstorm in the midst of a blizzard, a one time experience...oh and there was that time flying 30k ft over the atlantic my plane was flying between two cloud layers and he got nailed by lightning, I didn't like that...
yeah and there was one geologist who predicted the eruption would be as bad as it was, and he was the poor bugger who got killed because was were all the other geologist said was safe Yeah I went through a 5.6 back in Sydney when I was a kid, and seriously, you are just along for the ride lol. When nature decides to rock and roll, we are all just spectators
Yeah thunder snow. Experienced that for the first time in Kansas winter just gone. Very weird lol - me no likey
If there is going to be a full eruption of the Yellowstone super-volcano, the ONLY way to avoid immediate death and destruction is to relocate to Bora Bora...however it's just a matter of more time before the entire Earth is effected from fallout. I assume the full eruption of any super-volcano on Earth will be a deal-breaker for most forms of life...
Where we are it is rare to actually feel an earthquake, however, the pictures on our walls go from aligned to misaligned within a few days...so we just leave them misaligned. We are ten miles from the San Andreas and about the same from a geysers area where they create geothermal power...
I am not sure - The US and most of North America would be screwed. But we dont seem to be seeing global extinctions directly related to these types of events. There is absolutely no doubt our world would be changed forever. For example international air travel would be of the map for at least a generation
The definitions vary but generally: An active volcano is a volcano that has had at least one eruption during the past 10,000 years. An active volcano might be erupting or dormant. An erupting volcano is an active volcano that is having an eruption... A dormant volcano is an active volcano that is not erupting, but supposed to erupt again. An extinct volcano has not had an eruption for at least 10,000 years and is not expected to erupt again in a comparable time scale of the future. On land I'd think we know of most of them, though Antarctica may hold secrets even from satellites. There is also the fact that they sometimes just get born. You're familiar with Paracutin, no doubt. Under the oceans, who knows? We have a general idea where they should be but I don't think even that is....graven in stone All this business about the Meteor that killed the dinosaurs has led to a certain revival of the theory of catastrophism in geology. There is even a group of fairly respectable scientists that think Catastrophes (mainly meteors and volcanoes) have had more effect even on recorded history than we generally think. Most scientists dismiss them, barring more evidence on their part, but hey, one hour on the NatGeo channel can support a whole postgrad project for ten years. Yes, one could erupt and kill us all (volcanos, not postgrad projects, though....). It's happened before and will happen again. You could also get hit by the frozen crap from Obama's flush 8 miles high, but I'm not going to worry about it.
that's difficult to ascertain, Toba was 60-70K ago how do we know there were no extinctions as a result...
Undoubtedly there were extinctions, I am thinking global, 70% species that sort of thing......the real hard core stuff
