Have caught some recent news posts about the recent upswing in seismic activity in the park.... A fantastic and astonishingly beautiful place that has, underneath it, the potential to do a massive and permanent alteration of the world as we know it should the caldera pop its cork on anything like the scale that it did some 65-70 thousand years ago.
Saw a graphic of volcanic ejecta from various historic events and the potential effects are astounding in scope. In my lifetime I remember Mt Saint Helen unloading..... the estimate was approximately one cubic kilometer of volcanic ejecta from that event and I remember all of the news footage from various locales in the path of that as it fell to earth. The estimate from the geologic record from the last Yellowstone event is 1000 cubic kilometers of ejecta! You want to talk ruination of the planetary ecosystem along with the subsequent destruction of human civilization as we know it today.....All of our vaunted technological progress would vanish within the amount of time the ash/vapor cloud took to circle the planet. Jet travel would cease (jet turbines being unfriendly to particulates), cropland would be buried under feet of volcanic ash bringing on global starvation and, even if there would still be arable land, there would be seriously reduced sunlight to grow any crops. Ashfall would pollute watersheds reducing available water for human consumption and other industrial uses..... The list of effects cascades on down through pretty much everything we humans do.
Maybe Mama Nature will finally get pissed enough at this planetary rash called homo sapiens and thin things out, like it or not.
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