[HN Gopher] Can You Drill into a Supervolcano to Relieve Pressur...
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Can You Drill into a Supervolcano to Relieve Pressure? (2016)
Author : davidrusu
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-12-06 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (askageologist.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (askageologist.blogspot.com)
| ineedasername wrote:
| TLDR: No.
|
| But RTFA anyway, it's a good read, and a little unsettling how
| many problems people think could be solved with just a bit of
| nuclear bombing.
| Subsentient wrote:
| Lol. Yeah that totally sounds like a great idea that is going to
| end super well and not backfire at all!
| ortusdux wrote:
| Re: the first paragraph's reference to nuking the Deepwater
| horizon's oil leak, Soviet engineers demonstrated that this was a
| viable technique back in the 60's. Plenty of wild non-war
| applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years,
| but this is the only one I can think of that is actually somewhat
| of a good idea. Any fallout is minor and contained under 1km+ of
| bedrock, and the harm prevented is worth the cost. I am surprised
| that the author dismisses it so rapidly.
|
| https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonate...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57Xq03njsc
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for
| nuclear bombs over the years
|
| Yup, Project Plowshare (US) and Nuclear Explosions for the
| National Economy (USSR) looked a lot of interesting/crazy ideas
| for non-military applications for nuclear weapons.
|
| Some of the ideas were just nuts for use on earth (like making
| bays) but if we ever do start setting up shop on another
| planet, like Mars, nuclear detonations could probably be used
| for construction efforts early on to get some serious work done
| quickly - Project Orion, especially if done with materials
| mined from the asteroid belt, could be an extremely viable
| option for interstellar travel even if just for probes.
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Plowshare
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Natio...
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsio...
| upwardbound wrote:
| Relatedly: apparently it would be a good idea to destroy the
| Martian moon Phobos before settling the planet. It's a
| fascinating proposal and makes sense; you can read about it
| here:
|
| https://marspedia.org/Bringing_down_Phobos
| ortusdux wrote:
| If we are going down that rabbit hole, I love the plan to
| create an artificial Martian magnetosphere by placing a
| magnetic field generating satellite between mars and the
| solar winds. Generating an atmosphere on mars is all well
| and good, but it will just blow away again without some
| protection. The generator would only require roughly 583.9
| exajoules, or roughly the world's total energy consumption
| in 2020.
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06887.pdf
| ncmncm wrote:
| A superconducting tape girdling the planet's equator
| would suffice, and require after startup only the power
| needed to keep it chilled at all times below 70K.
| upwardbound wrote:
| That sounds actually quite practical and like an amazing
| option! Are there papers about this you could please
| share the links to?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Just a youtube video.
|
| 21340 km of superconducting tape could take rather some
| time to fabricate. Then, of course you need to get it
| there, and lay it out, and construct 20k refrigeration
| plants. Then, extract enough nitrogen from the atmosphere
| (1.89% concentration) for refrigerant; you'll need about
| 4M tons of it. You also need 21340 km of cryo-safe piping
| bonded to the tape, which probably weighs another 4M
| tons. Plus heat insulation.
|
| Leakage from 21340 km of tubing, even if just migration
| of single molecules through the walls of the tube, would
| require continuous injection of fresh nitrogen.
|
| And, I guess, you had better protect it from meteorite
| strikes. A planet-sized magnetic field suddenly imploding
| would seem to release enough energy to vaporize your
| whole tape. Maybe you should have two of them, parallel,
| 100km apart so they are unlikely to both be taken out by
| the same meteorite.
| [deleted]
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >but it will just blow away again without some
| protection.
|
| Not in any appreciable amount over human timescales.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, do you know to what extent the various
| applications (from making artificial bays to sealing wells)
| depend on it being a _nuclear_ bomb versus "a big bomb"?
| jjk166 wrote:
| The author's logic is that only things comparable in scale to a
| volcano can cancel out the volcano by brute force, and nuclear
| detonations are thousands to millions of times smaller than
| volcanic eruptions. Proposals for things like this involve
| using nuclear detonations to make small but critical
| disruptions to systems, so the logic doesn't apply, but without
| actually digging into it you generally wouldn't know that's
| what the plan entails. Admittedly, it's unintuitive to think of
| nuclear detonations as a precise scalpel instead of a blunt
| cudgel. It also doesn't help that the well thought out
| proposals often get crudely parroted, so "collapse the well 1
| km down to choke off the flow of oil" becomes "blow up the
| well".
| mLuby wrote:
| They tried that in the excellent documentary The Core (2003)
| but as I recall they didn't all survive.
| ineedasername wrote:
| However a separate documentary (Armageddon, 1998) illustrated
| the successful use of nuclear devices on objects of a
| seemingly intractable scale with extremely few casualties.
|
| The makers of the documentary also chose an excellent score
| to accompany their organic capture of a moving love story
| along with the antics of a plucky group of misfits that came
| together in a crisis. It's the sort of thing you can only
| shake your head at and say, "Only in reality!" because if you
| saw it in a movie you'd just think "Nah, that could never
| happen".
| test6554 wrote:
| You just can't make this stuff up!
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| I've often wondered if its possible to use a fault line as a
| waste compactor and recycling centre considering all our "man
| made" waste comes from this planet?
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" People who think a nuclear device is comparable to the energy
| released by a volcano just haven't seen a restless volcano up
| close. They are a whole lot bigger than they seem to be in the
| films. Mount St Helens is a relatively small volcano, yet it
| still took me nearly 6 hours to walk out of the center crater."_
|
| I can well attest to that. A year or so after the major eruption
| of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, I had business in both
| Portland and Seattle and on that occasion I drove from Portland
| to Seattle rather than fly, as I'd normally do. (I'd been to
| Tektronix to whinge about ongoing problems we'd been having with
| a PAL 625 TV sync pulse generator--an interesting story in itself
| but I'll leave that for another time).
|
| I live an ocean away--thousands of miles from Portland but I had
| an ulterior motive for renting a vehicle in Portland and driving
| to Seattle, as this time I wanted to visit and drive over the
| 'renewed' Tacoma Narrows bridge which replaced the infamous
| _Galloping Gertie_ that failed in 1940--of which I 'd learned so
| much about years earlier in structures and physics. Having a
| vehicle made that possible. Visiting Mt St Helens wasn't on my
| agenda--and I'd already seen it post the 1980 eruption from a
| commercial SFO/SEA flight although I did expect to see it in the
| distance to the east from the I5.
|
| It was somewhat latish afternoon, 3:30-4:00 pm, when I arrived at
| my nearest point on the I5 to Mt St Helens and unexpectedly
| nearby there was a small airfield. Signs on the highway indicated
| that a company was offering joy flights to Mt St Helens, so on-
| the-spur-of-the-moment I decided to take the flight.
| Unfortunately, I was the only one wanting a flight at that time
| and the pilot told me that it was uneconomic to take only one
| person (two being the minimum) so I'd have to wait until
| additional sightseers turned up--and if that didn't happen soon
| (within 15 or so minutes) then it'd be too late in the day to
| fly! Anyway, I struck a deal at somewhat less than the amount for
| two people and we were on our way.
|
| I don't need to describe this remarkable scene except to say it
| was spectacular--much more so than the somewhat limited view from
| the commercial jet; and anyone who's interested will already be
| familiar with the wonderful photos in _National Geographic_ and
| elsewhere. However, one point I must comment on is that for mile
| after mile in this desolate lunar-mud-like landscape the
| remaining trunks of the flattened pine trees were all facing
| radially away from the exit point of the explosion like the
| spokes of a bicycle wheel, it was one of the strangest sights I
| 've ever seen. There was no doubt that this was an extremely huge
| explosion.
|
| After doing the standard joy flight, the pilot suggested that
| seeing I'd paid much more than the normal fare would I like him
| to take me closer to the crater. Gleefully, I agreed and we not
| only got closer to the crater _but we actually flew around inside
| it_ -- right, the crater is truly huge when one 's actually
| inside it! When the author says it took him nearly _' six hours
| to walk out of the center of the crater'_ he not exaggerating one
| iota.
|
| 'Tis a damn shame photos aren't allowed on HN, otherwise I'd post
| some of my old slides taken from inside the crater (they're truly
| spectacular).
| aspenmayer wrote:
| External links to your photos are definitely on topic. Please
| post them for us!
| ethbr0 wrote:
| My favorite National Park Service quip of all time. At the bottom
| of the page on Yellowstone's volcano [0] are a few questions and
| answers, and among them this gem:
|
| >> _What is Yellowstone National Park doing to stop or prevent an
| erruption?_
|
| > _Nothing can be done to prevent an eruption. The temperatures,
| pressures, physical characteristics of partially molten rock, and
| immensity of the magma chamber are beyond human ability to impact
| --much less control._
|
| In my head, some staff geologist, tired of answering dumb
| questions, was asked and finally snapped a little.
|
| [0] https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/volcano.htm
| intpx wrote:
| This is a very clear distillation of the absolute lack of
| imagination that is endemic across the National Parks Service.
| It is this mindset that stagnating progress in the National
| Parks. 105 years and there have been no major developments in
| Parks technologies. No waterfalls running in reverse, no water-
| skiing bison, no Grander Canyon. /s
| txdv wrote:
| Water skiing bisons, now thats a good idea
| jjk166 wrote:
| Kind of a water buffalo rip off
| adolph wrote:
| Some old-army jokes aren't potable to civilian life
| RobRivera wrote:
| I Get It!
| beerandt wrote:
| With volcanos, the more viscous the magma, the more energy gets
| stored before an eruption. Supervolcanos are the most viscous
| type, hence the massive explosion.
|
| Think boiling water vs thick oatmeal vs boiling a pressure cooker
| until it explodes, but obviously worse.
|
| So "relieve pressure" in this case isn't like a pressure release
| valve on a water heater.
|
| You'd need to either cool the mass, remove the overburden, or
| create some sort of massive voids for expansion.
|
| The US nuclear test done in Mississippi resulted in vaporizing
| the rock and soil and creating a large underground void, for
| whatever that's worth as a sort of proof of concept.
| coenhyde wrote:
| Yeah I don't see why we can't use nukes. We just need bigger
| nukes and more of them. How about we drill the largest borehole
| we can, then drop a chain of nukes down it. ie detonate a nuke
| every 100m. First few can be Tsar Bomba's.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Can I interest you in a pamphlet about careers in Strategic
| Air Command?
| MisterTea wrote:
| > The US nuclear test done in Mississippi resulted in
| vaporizing the rock and soil and creating a large underground
| void, for whatever that's worth as a sort of proof of concept.
|
| Where did the vaporized rock and soil go?
| jdsully wrote:
| I imagine it escaped as a gas.
| echelon wrote:
| Do rocks and minerals even have a boiling point, or do they
| thermally decompose?
| iSnow wrote:
| Considering they are mostly anorganic substance, I'd
| guess you can make them boil - you'd get lava.
| caeril wrote:
| It escapes . . . as a gas . . . in an already highly
| pressurized environment . . . that is already containing a
| large amount of high-pressure hydrogen sulfide that cannot
| escape as it is?
|
| I'm pressing X to doubt.
| ineedasername wrote:
| That just means you need a second nuke to blow a hole
| that allows the gas to escape & lave to flow in, and a
| 3rd nuke to collapse the hole before the lava gets too
| far. It's all there in my book, "How to nuke your way out
| of any problem"
| daveac wrote:
| You could just create another bigger void and let the
| stuff vent into that
| anm89 wrote:
| Follow up question: if you were able to meaningfully release that
| heat, would it be enough to affect the global climate?
| margalabargala wrote:
| Generally no. Heat on earth is radiated out to space quite
| quickly.
|
| When Mount St Helens exploded, it released about 1.0e11 MJ of
| energy. The earth receives 21MJ of energy from the sun, per
| day, per square meter. So MSH in total released as much energy
| in total as a square of land 70km on a side receives in a
| single day from the sun. Which isn't tiny, but is a relative
| drop in the bucket compared to the whole planet.
|
| Considering that this hypothetical heat source would be very
| concentrated and so would radiate to space efficiently and not
| spread out as much, I wouldn't expect it to have much of any
| effect on the climate.
| zardo wrote:
| The heat will be getting out one way or another.
| anm89 wrote:
| As far as I know, nothing has been releaseed from one of
| these major calderas at scale in recorded history
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's like saying humans don't have to eat because you
| haven't been hungry in the last minute.
| anm89 wrote:
| No it's like asking the question: "how would it affect
| it" because I don't have any data. I'm not arguing that
| it's never happened.
|
| I'm quite aware of the fact that the earth is older than
| written records of the earth.
| q1w2 wrote:
| I think the answer is good, but misses one important point - it
| is not like there is a thin barrier where there's a sharp
| pressure gradient, such that you can "pop" the volcano, or allow
| it to fizz like a shaken coke can with a tiny hole.
|
| When you drill down into the volcano, the hole just collapses on
| itself and plugs itself back up. The closer you get to the
| caldera, the rock become viscous and hot. Not only does your
| drill bit melt, but it's like trying to a hole into warming ice-
| cream - you don't accomplish anything.
|
| Geothermal energy plants function by drilling holes _near_ magma
| chambers, and allowing some heat to radiate into the bore hole,
| and then up the shaft. ...and while this process extracts some
| heat, the energy withdrawn is orders of magnitude smaller than
| what is present.
| hinkley wrote:
| When you core a tree to look at growth rings you have to be
| fast because the wood will begin to swell almost immediately.
| If you get distracted then you lose the corer. The tree is
| stronger than the handle.
|
| I would think rocks under high pressure would do the same
| thing. You'd either have to dig a conical hole to get a
| cylindrical bore, or the boring machine would have to have
| cutters on both the face and the sides to keep grinding away
| rock that expands into the void you are creating.
| deepsun wrote:
| > the hole just collapses on itself and plugs itself back up
|
| Same with modern day oil holes. They just reinforce the walls
| of the hole with concrete. Much harder problem is to prevent
| oil and gas from rushing up through the well, and breaking the
| rig (it always ignites afterwards). Imagine that with lava.
| tombh wrote:
| Thanks, I think yours is actually a much more relevant answer
| than the one in the article. Personally, I took the original
| question as a _geophysical_ one, not a logistical one. I mean
| sure it's geophysically interesting that our current drills are
| just orders of magnitude too inconsequential, but your answer
| actually corrects the implied intuition that both I and the
| question asker wrongly had, namely that magma is like coke in a
| can.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Also if you apply hydraulic equations to the lave through such a
| small diameter borehole, you quickly find that you would NOT be
| in control of anything and you'd probably do more to trigger a
| large eruption - the velocity of lava out of such a borehole
| would be hypersonic at least and quickly open the borehole to
| form a new vent equal to an actual eruption.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Hypersonic lava sounds AWESOME!
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Not a Dwarf Fortress player, are we?
| trenning wrote:
| This could be used as an assist to space maybe :) sustainable
| Earth based lava launches
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'm not sure if that would be better or worse than Project
| Orion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_pr
| opuls...
| pstuart wrote:
| On a related note: why not seriously tap these geothermal hot
| spots for energy? Doesn't stop at night or when the wind dies
| down.
| jbuzbee wrote:
| Iceland generates 25% of their energy geothermically
| https://nea.is/geothermal/
| 1123581321 wrote:
| There is plenty of geothermal. Where there's not, it's usually
| because another local form of generation is more attractive
| (e.g., hydro for volcanos near the sea) or the volcanic system
| is environmentally or culturally protected.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| Here's a good "state of the art of geothermal drilling" article
| - https://austinvernon.site/blog/drillingplan.html
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| We do, where it makes sense, like Iceland:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/iceland#energy-mix
|
| But, as it being listed as 'other renewable' hints, it doesn't
| make as much sense elsewhere, where generally you can just
| install more solar and wind and save more carbon/money that
| way, and leave worrying about windless nights till you've
| picked the low hanging fruit.
|
| For example, the current US plan is that after getting to 95%
| carbon free energy, to switch the focus to electrifying more
| things that currently burn fuel directly, rather than worry
| about that awkward last 5% before they need to.
| q1w2 wrote:
| It's not a very efficient process. Firstly, you need to drill
| very very far down, unless you are near an active volcano. If
| it isn't very near the surface, most heat is lost traveling up
| the bore hole. Remember that you never drill INTO the magma
| chamber, because that would collapse/plug the hole, so
| companies drill adjacent to the magma chamber and allow radiant
| heat to rise.
|
| It's also unstable and inconsistent. Ground water changes,
| magma movement, hole collapses, all make it an unreliable
| source of power.
| pope_meat wrote:
| It's hard to drill in to hot things, bits melt.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Maintenance costs overrun any efficiency gains by using
| geothermal even under optimal conditions, so unless there's
| other reasons to use it, ideological or economic, most
| companies will stick to the local grid.
|
| There are some really cool innovations with graphene coatings
| generating power as hot saltwater flows over it, simplifying
| power generation by basically creating giant linear
| convection flows(, as well as graphene coatings on bits to
| increase durability.) The technology has a ways to go to
| compete with solar or coal or gas if grid proximity isn't a
| problem.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You don't have to go all the way in to be able to obtain
| energy. Hawaii and Iceland both have geothermal power
| generation facilities; it's very doable.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| At least in the US, environmental activism has contributed to
| lack of geothermal development. While the US has large regions
| with high geothermal potential, such as the Great Basin area of
| the mountain West, much of this land is undeveloped and under
| Federal control. This allows activists anywhere in the country
| to make getting permission difficult and expensive, the effect
| of which has been to limit the practical size of the power
| plants to ~25 MW.
|
| Large-scale geothermal installations are not pretty and they
| cover large areas of land. The individual bore holes must be
| widely separated from each other, so if you are aggregating the
| energy of many bores, you are building giant pipe networks. It
| looks a bit like a large oil field. This gets attacked by
| environmental activists as despoiling the natural
| habitat/beauty etc of the formerly undeveloped land. In places
| like Nevada, which has a lot of geothermal power, there is
| nothing attractive or unique about this land, it is essentially
| volcanic badlands of the boring variety, but the campaigns
| against them use deceptive pictures from other parts of the
| country suggesting that they are paving over national parks and
| similar.
|
| This propaganda against geothermal power generation makes it
| impractical at scale. Instead, the geothermal power plants that
| are practical to build in this regulatory environment are all
| solutions with small land footprints. The largest geothermal
| power plant in Nevada is <100 MW and most don't even do 20 MW.
|
| Of course, there are similar challenges when trying to install
| solar power at scale in the same kinds of places. Too much of
| our "green energy" policy is dictated by activists that don't
| want to build any kind of power generation anywhere.
| ncmncm wrote:
| There is plenty of geothermal power generation going on in
| the US, but it is not increasing.
|
| That is not a triumph of ecoterror, but of economics: solar
| and wind are already substantically cheaper, and continue
| getting much cheaper, where geothermal, like nukes, stays
| just as expensive to build and operate as ever. So, _pace_
| baseload, a dollar spent today is overwhelmingly better spent
| on a solar panel or wind turbine, or, soon, storage for solar
| and wind, or production of H2 as feedstock for industrial
| processes and hydrocarbon synthesis from captured CO2.
|
| There is never any need to install new solar or wind in
| wilderness. Both coexist productively and synergistically
| with current agricultural land use. A farm or pasture with
| solar is more agriculturally productive than the same
| without, and _also_ generates clean power. In effect, the
| power output subsidizes construction of the shading
| infrastructure that reduces heat stress and evaporation.
|
| A wind turbine displaces minimal ground area, and thus may be
| in the middle of a solar farm, both situated in current,
| productive cropland. Output may be used locally to produce
| ammonia when spot prices bottom out, useful on-site for both
| fertilizer and fuel.
| toss1 wrote:
| It's a great idea and they do it, particularly in Iceland and
| Hawaii, iirc.
|
| My recollection is that the big issue with geothermal is the
| minerals leaching out of the drilled rocks and fairly rapidly
| fouling the near/above-round equipment or depositing on the
| tubes/pipes closing them down. I understand that progress had
| been made; if anyone has more details handy, could you post
| links?
| jjk166 wrote:
| [0]
| https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/file...
|
| You wouldn't want to drill into the magma chamber to relieve
| pressure, instead you would drill next to the magma chamber to
| cool the rocks on the edge, shrinking the chamber. Every few
| decades after the chamber had shrunk, you'd drill a new set of
| boreholes closer. The expense would be substantial, but well
| within the range of major government projects, and if you use the
| heat for power generation you can recover some of that cost -
| indeed if you subsidize the initial logistical setup, the long
| term operation can likely be fiscally self sustaining.
| phkahler wrote:
| One thing not considered in TFA is the idea of drilling a hole
| and then using nuclear explosions to pulverize the surrounding
| rock to effectively increase the size of the hole. This might
| also punch through the last (how many?) meters of rock that are
| too hot to drill through. I still doubt it would work, and if it
| did that might be really bad too.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Both Cold War superpowers considered some variant of using
| nuclear weaponry for subterranean engineering in their
| "peaceful atom" projects. For example soviets actually used a
| nuke to put out a gas well fire:
| https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonate...
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yep, the US had a program called "Project Plowshares"
| dedicated to their use in, primarily, construction:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The quiet-part-out-loudness of naming a project designed as
| a propaganda measure to leverage peaceful applications of
| nuclear technology (including explosions) to build
| acceptance of (/ mitigate opposition to) nuclear weaponry
| _qua_ weaponry so as to invoke Joel 3:9-10 ("Proclaim ye
| this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty
| men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: /
| Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruninghooks into
| spears: let the weak say, I am strong") is, well, pretty
| amazing.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The cynicism is dizzying.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I mean, tbf, they probably intended people to read it as
| a reference to Isaiah 2:4 ("And He shall judge among the
| nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall
| beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
| pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against
| nation, neither shall they learn war anymore") which is a
| somewhat more popular passage.
| ncmncm wrote:
| "PSA: Before drilling into a supervolcano magma chamber, please
| arrange to accept and dispose of at least 1000 cubic miles of
| superheated lava to be emitted at a flow rate of up to 1 cubic
| mile per hour. Thank you for your attention to this detail."
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yep- a rapid pressure release where the outlet is the surface
| of the earth is pretty much indistinguishable from a normal
| unplanned eruption. With, as a comment in the post suggested, a
| nice dose of nuclear fallout in the mix.
| zoe4883 wrote:
| Would not that have massive CO2 footprint? It would be very
| expensive to pay for it. Vulcanic eruption is natural and does
| not count, but man-made emmisions require permit.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Vulcanic eruption is natural and does not count,
|
| I'm pretty sure the Earth's atmoshphere is physically incapable
| of differentiating between man-released CO2 and naturally
| released CO2.
|
| >> man-made emmisions require permit
|
| Whose permit? On what authority? Even if such permit would be
| required, who would deny it if the alternative was literally
| the destruction of a large portion of the United States(if we
| are talking about Yellowstone exploding)?
| Supermancho wrote:
| This would be an issue of national security. I would not want
| to be the person who spends money to set up drilling toward
| the Yellowstone Supervolcano without alerting the US
| Department of the Interior of the plans.
| gambiting wrote:
| I can only imagine that such a massive enterprise would be
| entirely conducted by the US Government, probably any of
| the military branches(is Engineers Corps still a thing?)
| [deleted]
| kingaillas wrote:
| The Army Corps of Engineers is a thing... their civil
| works authority makes them the final authority on water
| management (changing river flow, dams, anything related
| to water management.) Not sure about supervolcanos
| though, couldn't find that on their website.
|
| I am sure that a minimum of the US Geological Survey and
| ACE will be involved in any supervolcano remediation
| plan. And probably FEMA but hopefully they won't need to
| act. ;)
| zoe4883 wrote:
| There is Paris Agreement, most countries signed including
| Italy and US. Detonating nukes and releasing several gigatons
| of CO2 is more dangerous than supervulcano.
|
| Naturally released CO2 is harmless. There is a difference!
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Is this like where people are tricked into believing "sea
| salt" in the diet is somehow healthier than "table salt"?
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Detonating nukes and releasing several gigatons of CO2 is
| more dangerous than supervulcano.
|
| Eh? You are aware that if Yellowstone were to erupt it
| would literally mean the destruction of the United States.
| How is "defusing" the vulcano by detonating nukes "more
| dangerous" exactly?
|
| >>Naturally released CO2 is harmless.
|
| Again, atmosphere doesn't care - CO2 is CO2. Yes it doesn't
| count towards calculations that we currently do to model
| climate predictions, but it's not harmless, and a
| supervulcano event will fuck everything up, it doesn't
| magically stop having an effect just because it's natural.
| zoe4883 wrote:
| How is that not positive? Drilling means gigatons of new
| CO2 emmisions.
|
| Natural eruption would considerably reduce man made CO2
| emmisions in near future. And nuclear winter from dust
| could stop global warming!
| gambiting wrote:
| Ah, so you were being facetious then. Should have said at
| the beginning, would have saved us some time and you the
| downvotes.
| bashinator wrote:
| > Natural eruption would considerably reduce man made CO2
| emmisions in near future.
|
| I imagine this is technically accurate, as an eruption of
| for example Yellowstone would utterly destroy most human
| civilization in North America.
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