End of the world of the day

[mmcirvin]

Every so often someone brings up the story about the Yellowstone supervolcano, a gigantic magma explosion that has happened in Yellowstone National Park three times over the past few million years, possibly causing a global climactic disaster every time. This seems to have become a popular end-of-the-world scenario because of a British TV documentary. (The BBC seems to revel in this sort of thing.)

Here's a typical mention (tip of the hat to Reid Stott). Anomalous recent activity in Yellowstone is cited; some geologist mentions the possibility of a hydrothermal explosion in the park; and then the writer sorta-kinda insinuates that this means the dreaded super-eruption is about to obliterate a huge chunk of North America and darken the sky for a year and wipe out civilization. There's the added mention that the super-eruption is "overdue" since it happens about every 600,000 years or so, and the last eruption was 640,000 years ago. There are citations of authorities. It all sounds very scary, and moderately sober and believable.

Looking at the bottom of the page makes it clearer what's going on here. The author also wrote a book called The Cassandra Prophecy: Armageddon Approaches, which purports to reveal the date of Judgment Day through numerological analysis of the Bible. The Yellowstone supervolcano seems to have become a favorite of Biblical End Times enthusiasts.

Let's keep an open mind; maybe he's got an ulterior reason to believe in imminent Armageddon, but that's no evidence that he's wrong. What about all those quotes from scientists? Well, there's a conflation of two possibilities between the first and second halves of the article. A hydrothermal explosion and a giant caldera-forming eruption are not the same thing. The scary article is performing an intellectual bait-and-switch: using speculation about the slim possibility of an imminent hydrothermal explosion, something that would be pretty spectacular and locally dangerous but far from globally cataclysmic, as apparent evidence for an imminent mega-eruption that happens much, much less often.

And, as that same USGS FAQ says, the statements about the next eruption being "overdue" are just an inference of a predictable cycle from three data points (note also that the intervals are not both 600,000 years: the first one was somewhat longer). Not enough is known about the mechanisms of these eruptions to say more.

Yellowstone is probably going to mega-erupt someday, and cause a hell of a problem for anyone who is around on Earth when it does. But as far as anyone knows, it's as likely to happen a hundred thousand years from now as it is in the near future, and rumblings in the park, while they might conceivably be evidence of an impending hydrothermal explosion, are not evidence that the supervolcano is about to blow away civilization.

Update: And now that I read this stuff more closely, it's even more overblown than that: the alarmist article even overplays the chance of an imminent hydrothermal explosion. The "inflated plain" that's causing the latest worries was discovered recently, but it could well be an old feature, and it's not necessarily connected to any recent earthquakes occurring around the area.