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Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

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Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#181

Post by JustLurking2022 »

kadoban wrote: post #176
rurp wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, we know how to build structures that can last 1,000 years because it has already been done before! Using a dubious material in place of a known good one is not the best engineering approach.

We know ways that worked a few times and failed many thousands of times more often. How many buildings of the same type didn't survive? If your goal is to use a method that has _any_ chance of success, however small, then the old ways are probably a good bet. If you want the highest chance of success you should probably at least evaluate new methods.

Your best chance would probably be to go primitive - many different pyramids of various designs have stood for over a thousand years.

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#182

Post by kadoban »

JustLurking2022 wrote: post #181
kadoban wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know ways that worked a few times and failed many thousands of times more often. How many buildings of the same type didn't survive? If your goal is to use a method that has _any_ chance of success, however small, then the old ways are probably a good bet. If you want the highest chance of success you should probably at least evaluate new methods.

Your best chance would probably be to go primitive - many different pyramids of various designs have stood for over a thousand years.

For each one that is still standing, how many are dust?

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#183

Post by breischl »

ghaff wrote: post #126
breischl wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those conditions even plain, untreated wood lasts a long time. Many of those structures still have wood beams in pretty good condition. ie, the durability of those structures is more due to where they are, than what they are made of.

Although (at least the right) stone is almost certainly a pretty good answer in general. There are plenty of historical examples and I'm skeptical that anything else exposed to the elements would do better. And if not exposed to the elements that feels like cheating.

Fair, but the sandstone and clay in that area is generally pretty awful. TBH most of the ancestral Puebloan structure are crumbling apart despite being protected by overhanging rock "roofs".

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#184

Post by ghaff »

breischl wrote: post #183
ghaff wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although (at least the right) stone is almost certainly a pretty good answer in general. There are plenty of historical examples and I'm skeptical that anything else exposed to the elements would do better. And if not exposed to the elements that feels like cheating.

Fair, but the sandstone and clay in that area is generally pretty awful. TBH most of the ancestral Puebloan structure are crumbling apart despite being protected by overhanging rock "roofs".

You're right about the pueblos specifically. They're still extant mostly because the climate is so dry there.

Something like granite would be a much more long-lived structural material in wetter climates. Indeed that's the primary stone used in, say, Machu Picchu.

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#185

Post by friend_and_foe »

lkbm wrote: post #117
thesis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytime soon is one thing, but "If at all"? It's been happening for millions of years, and it sure seems like there still "activity" there. Not sure what kind of scientist could say they don't expect it to ever erupt again?

If we can be pretty confident it'll be 100 years, that's long enough for technology to progress a lot before we fiddle with it. Not sure what "soon" means in this case, but I suspect they don't mean "within a couple years".

Technological advancement doesn't happen Inna vacuum. To get good at things you have to try them. Getting good at the sort of technology required to build such a project requires trying such a project. It's not a matter of waiting 100 years, it's a matter of trial and error for 100 years.

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#186

Post by erulabs »

pl90087 wrote: post #138
erulabs wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah not to mention the construction of the plant itself! I wouldn’t want to be operating the drill that punctures the magma chambers! I’m optimistic. If we spent less time engineering society and more time engineering the earth, I think we’d all be a lot happier.

Or exactly the other way around. Without "engineering society" we'd still live in tribes killing each other at first sight. We have reduced that substantially. Some societies are a bit behind (like allowing lethal military-grade weapons at home), some are further advanced. Overall, it seems a good idea to use our intellect to advance societies and we've come a long way from the dark ages. Our earth engineering has co…

All of the problems you listed sound to me like earth-engineering problems, except for the "problem" of private property. I strongly disagree with the premise that social engineering raised us from tribal groups. It was agriculture and domestication and fire. The data suggests global farmland is reducing [1] and becoming more and more productive [2].

It is funny that we see things exactly opposite!

1. https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/news/article/2021/0....

2. https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#187

Post by lkbm »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #185
lkbm wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can be pretty confident it'll be 100 years, that's long enough for technology to progress a lot before we fiddle with it. Not sure what "soon" means in this case, but I suspect they don't mean "within a couple years".

Technological advancement doesn't happen Inna vacuum. To get good at things you have to try them. Getting good at the sort of technology required to build such a project requires trying such a project. It's not a matter of waiting 100 years, it's a matter of trial and error for 100 years.

This is true, but large engineering projects aren't a single technology. There are a lot of ways we'll improve relevant technologies without actually working on this directly. Presumably the fracking industry is improving our ability to model the subsurface, for example.

This also means other industries (such as fracking) would learn a lot from a massive Yellowstone geoengineering project, but other projects and smaller geothermal projects should make this one more feasible and predictable.

(This is how I feel about geoengineering in general: it's expensive and risky, but may end up being necessary, so let's practice on a smaller, safer scale before massive, dangerous projects become urgently needed.)

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#188

Post by JustLurking2022 »

kadoban wrote: post #182
JustLurking2022 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your best chance would probably be to go primitive - many different pyramids of various designs have stood for over a thousand years.

For each one that is still standing, how many are dust?

Evidence would seem to point toward not many. Even the Bent Pyramid, which may have come before Egyptians perfected the math behind building pyramids, still stands. Throw in the numerous ones found in various jungles by LIDAR and they seem to hold up quite well.

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#189

Post by sliken »

Quillbert182 wrote: post #100
oceanplexian wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately it's a giant volcano that's going to eradicate anything within a few hundred miles with the force of a nuclear blast. As ridiculous as it sounds, if we can find a way to diffuse it that does a lot more for both the natural world, and for the humans that live in proximity to it.

If the chances of that happening in the next 1000 years are one in a million, I would say it is absolutely not worth it.

Sure kick the can down the road ... just like the dinosaurs did.

Mitigating risk of an extinction level event from an asteroid seems much like a supervolcano. Sure the risk in any given year is low, but losing a 1-8 billion is a big loss, even if it's every few million years.

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#190

Post by midoridensha »

enono wrote: post #70
hyperbole wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just described the show "Travelers"

holy shit don't bring this show up I'm crying. Why did it have to get cancelled

Meanwhile, the SyFy channel's "The Ark" just got renewed for a 2nd season...
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