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Nevada Convert

7.1 Earthquake hits my hometown of Ridgecrest CA moments ago.

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3 minutes ago, mugtang said:

I read somewhere that NASA is working on a plan to pump water into the magma chamber to slowly cool it down while generating a significant amount of electricity.  The problem is it would take thousands of years to cool it enough to prevent an eruption. 

I read that they also had concerns about disturbing it with the same plan. 

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8 minutes ago, Rebels18 said:

we're chillin, but with my luck it'll go off when I'm in Yellowstone next weekend 

image.png.07083aac7758393979a299dfb517b4f3.png

The problem isn’t the kill zone.  It’s that ash would be covering the Midwest where a lot of our food is grown.  And the ice age it would generate.  Good news would be we wouldn’t have to worry about global warming anymore. So there’s that. 

thelawlorfaithful, on 31 Dec 2012 - 04:01 AM, said:One of the rules I live by: never underestimate a man in a dandy looking sweater

 

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2 minutes ago, Rebels2k3 said:

I read that they also had concerns about disturbing it with the same plan. 

That sounds right now that you mention it.  I forgot about that part.  

thelawlorfaithful, on 31 Dec 2012 - 04:01 AM, said:One of the rules I live by: never underestimate a man in a dandy looking sweater

 

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In the realm of of science-based clickbait, no topic is more reliable for delivering page views and social media shares than claims that the pool of magma sitting below Yellowstone National Park is about to erupt in a humanity-ending cataclysm. As we have repeatedly, exhaustingly, and redundantly reported, the likelihood of that mega-disaster’s occurring in the next couple of thousand years is extremely low, and the region is monitored continuously for threatening activity which would provide ample warning if that situation were to change for some currently unknown reason.

A perfect example of the pervasiveness of this claim (and, perhaps, the futility of fact-checking it), comes from the apocalypse-oriented website Breaking Israel News. Over the course of a few sentences, that website strung together multiple previously debunked Yellowstone claims into a meta-claim in need of a fresh debunking:

After initially denying that the unusual amount of seismic activity witnessed last year was an indication of imminent danger, NASA scientists are proposing a solution that could save half the world while admitting that their intervention could initiate the explosion it was intended to prevent.

Last year, increased seismic activity at Yellowstone generated a great deal of concern. More than 2,300 tremors were recorded between June and September, one of the largest earthquake swarms ever recorded at the site. Though geologists assured the public that the activity was normal for the site, another series of quakes and unusual eruptions beginning in February, increased fears that the supervolcano was waking up. An investigation revealed magma filling up in the underneath chamber of the supervolcano. In July, a massive, 100 ft.-wide fissure opened up in the Grand Teton National Park near Yellowstone, further increasing fears.

While Breaking Israel News didn’t actually mention a year in their story, the “2,300 tremors recorded between June and September” referred to a series of minor earthquakes breathlessly reported by the Daily Mail and other junk news purveyors back in 2017 as a sign of a coming cataclysm. As we noted in our debunking of those claims, thousands of detectable earthquakes occur in the Yellowstone region in any given year, and they in no way portend an imminent supereruption.

The reference to a “100 ft.-wide fissure open[ing] up” in nearby Grand Teton National park, as we reported in July 2018, refers to an unrelated crack in a cliff face which rangers feared could result in a large chunk of rock’s crushing climbers and onlookers below, not a coming eruption. This newer iteration of a Yellowstone claim introduced viral fear by asserting that a NASA study published in 2015 (which received attention in a 2017 BBC Futures article) somehow proved NASA was not being honest about geologic events that post-dated their report.

 

That BBC Future article, which Breaking Israel News and other sources cite extensively but without context, presented commentary from an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Brian Wilcox, who served on a NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense. That body did conclude in 2015 that a risk of a supervolcano was more likely than a large scale comet or asteroid impact, and they gamed out a variety of extremely theoretical and long-term solutions to mitigate such a risk:

Supervolcanic eruptions occur more frequently than large asteroid or comet impacts that would have a similarly catastrophic effect to human civilization, especially now that many asteroid orbits have been mapped. We assess whether future supervolcanic eruptions could be dampened, delayed, or prevented by engineering solutions.

That brainstorming did not mean, however, that Wilcox or the other researchers concluded that a supereruption was more likely to occur in our lifetimes than previously thought, or that an urgent need existed to begin geoengineering solutions for it. Via email, Wilcox told us that “Neither I nor, to my knowledge, any of the co-authors has commented on the seismic activity or possible danger of a near-term eruption.” He referred to the geoengineering plans as a thought experiment revolving around the question “is it possible for human civilization to prevent supervolcano eruptions that might threaten humanity?”

As described by BBC Future, the solution they proposed involved utilizing the heat from the magma for geothermal energy by drilling toward the hot earth and running water through the holes. This would have two benefits, the study argued: First, in the short term, it would provide a possible source of geothermal energy; and second, in the long term, it could (over thousands of years) reduce the overall risk of a caldera-level eruption:

They believe the most viable solution could be to drill up to 10km down into the supervolcano, and pump down water at high pressure. The circulating water would return at a temperature of around 662F, thus slowly day by day extracting heat from the volcano … “Yellowstone currently leaks around 6GW in heat,” Wilcox says. “Through drilling in this way, it could be used to create a geothermal plant, which generates electric power at extremely competitive prices of around $0.10/kWh.

You would have to give the geothermal companies incentives to drill somewhat deeper and use hotter water than they usually would, but you would pay back your initial investment, and get electricity which can power the surrounding area for a period of potentially tens of thousands of years. And the long-term benefit is that you prevent a future supervolcano eruption which would devastate humanity.”

When Wilcox said “long-term,” he was not talking about years or decades. In the study, the team made it clear they were speaking in terms of tens of thousands of years:

The cooling perimeter would close-in on the magma chamber at the rate of approx. 1 m/year. Even for a massive supervolcano such as Yellowstone, it would take less than 50,000 years for such a cooling system to completely drain the heat away from the magma chamber, all the while generating electricity at competitive prices.

No plans are afoot to begin such a forward-looking initiative, and the report itself stated that any work in that regard right now would be premature. “There are a number of unknowns about the nature of supervolcanic eruptions and how they are supplied that need to be addressed before attempting any engineered solutions,” the reported concluded. Therefore, no immediate plans to geoengineer a risk-reduction solution to the Yellowstone caldera are at hand, nor is new evidence suggesting an increased risk of eruption.

“The good news is that it does seem possible to achieve [such a risk reduction solution] on a timescale that is short compared to the average time between eruptions of a given supervolcano,” Wilcox told us. “The bad news is that humans would have to make a concerted effort for thousands of years to defang a volcano like Yellowstone, and it would have essentially no effect if the eruption were going to happen anyway within a few human lifetimes.”

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52 minutes ago, Nevada Convert said:

Your dumbshit goes to 11. It doesn't seem possible to me, but that came from a USGS scientist at the scene. 

Again, everyone is wrong except Convert. 

What a dumb ass. 

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Just talked to my dad, and the Naval Weapon Center geological scientists that are stationed in China Lake next door to Ridgecrest, are saying there's a possibility of an 8.5 to 9.0 or so quake in the very near future. Don't know if that's in the media yet, but my dad worked there for 52 years and has a lot of friends he's called to get the skinny. 

kat.jpg

 

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1 minute ago, TheTedfordTrain said:

Again, everyone is wrong except Convert. 

What a dumb ass. 

The Moment Magnitude Scale

Unfortunately, many scales, such as the Richter scale, do not provide accurate estimates for large magnitude earthquakes. Today the moment magnitude scale, abbreviated MW, is preferred because it works over a wider range of earthquake sizes and is applicable globally. The moment magnitude scale is based on the total moment release of the earthquake. Moment is a product of the distance a fault moved and the force required to move it. It is derived from modeling recordings of the earthquake at multiple stations. Moment magnitude estimates are about the same as Richter magnitudes for small to large earthquakes. But only the moment magnitude scale is capable of measuring M8 (read ‘magnitude 8’) and greater events accurately.

Magnitudes are based on a logarithmic scale (base 10). What this means is that for each whole number you go up on the magnitude scale, the amplitude of the ground motion recorded by a seismograph goes up ten times. Using this scale, a magnitude 5 earthquake would result in ten times the level of ground shaking as a magnitude 4 earthquake (and 32 times as much energy would be released). To give you an idea how these numbers can add up, think of it in terms of the energy released by explosives: a magnitude 1 seismic wave releases as much energy as blowing up 6 ounces of TNT. A magnitude 8 earthquake releases as much energy as detonating 6 million tons of TNT. Pretty impressive, huh? Fortunately, most of the earthquakes that occur each year are magnitude 2.5 or less, too small to be felt by most people.

Magnitude scales can be used to desribe earthquakes so small that they are expressed in negative numbers. The scale also has no upper limit, so it can describe earthquakes of unimaginable and (so far) unexperienced intensity, such as magnitude 10.0 and beyond.

Here's a table describing the magnitudes of earthquakes, their effects, and the estimated number of those earthquakes that occur each year.

Earthquake Magnitude Scale

Magnitude Earthquake Effects Estimated Number
Each Year
2.5 or less Usually not felt, but can be recorded by seismograph. 900,000
2.5 to 5.4 Often felt, but only causes minor damage. 30,000
5.5 to 6.0 Slight damage to buildings and other structures. 500
6.1 to 6.9 May cause a lot of damage in very populated areas. 100
7.0 to 7.9 Major earthquake. Serious damage. 20
8.0 or greater Great earthquake. Can totally destroy communities near the epicenter. One every 5 to 10 years

Earthquake Magnitude Classes

Earthquakes are also classified in categories ranging from minor to great, depending on their magnitude.

Class Magnitude
Great 8 or more
Major 7 - 7.9
Strong 6 - 6.9
Moderate 5 - 5.9
Light 4 - 4.9
Minor 3 -3.9
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1 minute ago, Nevada Convert said:

Man, I've got you wrapped up even more than DickNation.

Says the guy who gives me 10+ notifications every time I log in. It’s just comedy watching you fall flat on your face over, and over, and over. Moron. 

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21 minutes ago, Nevada Convert said:

Just talked to my dad, and the Naval Weapon Center geological scientists that are stationed in China Lake next door to Ridgecrest, are saying there's a possibility of an 8.5 to 9.0 or so quake in the very near future. Don't know if that's in the media yet, but my dad worked there for 52 years and has a lot of friends he's called to get the skinny. 

LOL, give it a rest 

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1 hour ago, mugtang said:

Ok so the good news is there won’t be a 9.0.  But there could still be more devastating earthquakes in the area.  Hopefully the worst has already happened and the area will recover quickly.  

No, there could be an 8 to 9 per the geologists permanently stationed at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake.

kat.jpg

 

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15 minutes ago, Nevada Convert said:

FYI, back in the 1800's, there was an 8.5 quake 50 miles north of Ridgecrest along hwy 395. It may have actually been closer to a 9. It was so strong that it threw people into the air and were killed hitting the earth.  

Sounds like a good joke 

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2 minutes ago, Rebels2k3 said:

LOL, give it a rest 

I'm still trying to figure out how cocky you could possibly be about anything since you're still the all-time beat down world champion. You still can't troll, so I won't read any more of your garbage. Too cliche and boring. 

kat.jpg

 

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8 minutes ago, Nevada Convert said:

I'm still trying to figure out how cocky you could possibly be about anything since you're still the all-time beat down world champion. You still can't troll, so I won't read any more of your garbage. Too cliche and boring. 

Find some new material 

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