81–90 of 114 posts
The Afghanistan campaign costs about 3 billion a month, so drilling a volcano for a similar amount shouldn't break the bank. This will contribute far more to our security!
Wolf Blitzer at CNN tells us that it's actually a moral problem to stop funding war because defense contractors will lose jobs. Source: https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-...
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175627/tomgram%3A_david_vine... might be an article on it.
The Afghanistan campaign costs about 3 billion a month, so drilling a volcano for a similar amount shouldn't break the bank. This will contribute far more to our security!
I think this post does a pretty good job of addressing why the thought experiment will remain in the realm of science fiction. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/rockyplanet/2017/08/31/225...
I disagree. I'll take this sentence: > When all is said and done, a massive eruption at Yellowstone, or any other caldera for that matter, isn’t a question we should answer by trying to stop it. Instead, we need to build resilience into our society to survive after such an event. Why? This doesn't make much sense to me. Seems much better to prevent a giant catastrophe from happening in the first place than trying to…
This just looks like an attempt to get geothermal energy from Yellowstone. The 6GW power getting out of the ground now is really nothing compared to the energy that's down there. Thermal conduction and fluid transport are what allows the energy to the surface. Adding geo-thermal power generation would increase energy dissipated but would do little to actually change the geologic situation. I suspect if you asked powe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The alternative is we build up a stockpile of food in a similar way to the US strategic oil stockpile. If oil is worth having in storage in case something bad happens it would seem obvious that food should be in the same category.
Food spoils so a stockpile like that isn't quite feasible. Sure we'll be able to get some foods that store well and can last for years but that's a small subset of food and even that food not all of it lasts for more than two years. It's just not realistic. Sure we can significantly enlarge our buffer but two or more years? I can't see that happening in any practical sense.
Even having a single years buffer would be very worthwhile. As I mentioned in the OP if we have a catastrophic event in the northern summer the poor are in serious trouble.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. I'll take this sentence: > When all is said and done, a massive eruption at Yellowstone, or any other caldera for that matter, isn’t a question we should answer by trying to stop it. Instead, we need to build resilience into our society to survive after such an event. Why? This doesn't make much sense to me. Seems much better to prevent a giant catastrophe from happening in the first place than trying to…
Infinitely more things than yellowstone can go wrong
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we assume that a supervolcano blocks out the sun enough to prevent crops from growing for two years and that increasing the 72 day buffer is impractical, then how could we ride it out without mass starvation? I'd guess there'd be a lot of sudden interest in energy-efficient LED grow lights and there'd be an over-supply of beef in the short term because there's no food for the cattle, so we might as well eat them.…
> Long term, it's all about being able to have enough indoor hydroponic/aeroponic space to grow enough food for ~7.5 billion people, which sounds really difficult and impractical. I can't find the research I read a few years ago but from what I understand growing indoors is crazy practical. Plants need less sun light, essentially zero pesticides, can grow much faster and if you build your structures vertically you'll…
Ideally, we need a couple of years food in storage together with detailed plans for how to grow food indoors (if needed).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Long term, it's all about being able to have enough indoor hydroponic/aeroponic space to grow enough food for ~7.5 billion people, which sounds really difficult and impractical. I can't find the research I read a few years ago but from what I understand growing indoors is crazy practical. Plants need less sun light, essentially zero pesticides, can grow much faster and if you build your structures vertically you'll…
This is the solution if we have a decade long event, but we need time to implement this - you can't just set up millions of acres of indoor growing space overnight. Ideally, we need a couple of years food in storage together with detailed plans for how to grow food indoors (if needed).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the solution if we have a decade long event, but we need time to implement this - you can't just set up millions of acres of indoor growing space overnight. Ideally, we need a couple of years food in storage together with detailed plans for how to grow food indoors (if needed).
With that kind of incentive, I bet we could do a lot in a short amount of time. It doesn't have to be that high-tech, does it?