According to the prosecutor their fault was reassuring people that nothing bad was going to happen, that is negligence in performing the risk analysis.
I still think they were guilty: they accepted to publicly declare that everything was OK and that people could safely return to their homes. Had they refused to do so, some of those people could be alive today.
"There will be another supervolcano explosion," scientist James Quick, a geologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas, said in a statement when that volcano was found.
When this happens it is going to immediately change world climate to something very much colder than it is now. It suggests to me that some sort of preparation for surviving in very different climatic conditions than the one we currently experience would be a good investment in time and resources. That said, I'm not entirely sure how we might plan something like that.
You cant really plan for such an event because it could occur a year from now or five thousand years from now which on a geological time scale might as well be tomorrow.
I'm not sure that is the case. Looking at something like the BioSphere[1] but without the hard core (we have to seal it) mentality) there is some evidence that reasonably environmentally immune living situations could be created.
and passive solar input through the glass space frame panels covering most of the facility, and electrical power was supplied into Biosphere 2 from an onsite natural gas energy center.
Furthermore, it probably won't be able to heat itself enough when the surroundings cool down below a certain treshold, something that could very likely happen when a new ice age hits.
As Michio Kaku said, "Any advanced civilization must grow in energy consumption faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes (e.g. meteor impacts, ice ages, supernovas, etc.). If they grow any slower, they are doomed to extinction." ( http://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestri... ).
Any guesses how far we are from being able to control volcanoes so that they would not pose a threat? Too far, I would guess.
Add the Big One in SF, the 180ft tsunami of Vancouver, the global warming acceleration, the halt the Gulf Stream and the Yosemite explosion, and 2017 can be awesome. Or 5017, which is geological times is the same.
I don't think we have actually tried anything like that, but people have thought about the problem. Possible engineering avenues include drilling relief holes to reduce pressure, siphoning heat with geothermal energy plants and inducing eruptions using explosives. It seems like making volcanoes safer is doable with concentrated research effort, but currently nobody wants to pay for it. I guess that'll change after Naples is destroyed.
It should be possible to make siphoning the heat away lucrative, instead of an expense.
I really don't know how much heat we are talking about (still, I don't think migrating all aluminum plants into above the supervolcanos would be enough), but it is not the kind of thing we should count as expense.
I think civilization's best hope would be that technology manages to keep a small group of people thriving without direct sunlight(for growing food) until the negative affects of the catastrophe are reduced by natural processes or geo-engineering. If we can setup systems that can provide energy without need of a large network of resources and manufacturing to maintain(nuclear with a stockpile, geothermal, robust wind turbines), then people could live on artificially lit agriculture for generations.
Campi Flegrei doesn't mean "burning fields" in Italian, as the author suggests.
Campi is literally "fields". We have that a lot for city/town/village names (e.g. Campi Bisenzio, close to Florence). When used for the name of a place, I would just suggest maybe 'meadows' as a better translation.
Flegreo (pl. -i), on the other hand, exists as an adjective solely to describe someone or something "from the area West of Neaples known as Campi Flegrei".
The etymology is of course related to the volcanic activity and has to do with burning. φλέγω (phlego) in Ancient Greek meant "to burn". In Latin the verb was Flagro.
In Italian we still have these words in use:
- "deflagrazione" (it's similar to the English deflagration, but with a broader meaning of "explosion"; it's normally used as a synonym)
- "flagrante". Literally "burning", but the common meaning is "evident" or "in the act", as in "colto in flagrante", "caught in the act", "caught red-handed".
The greek root, turned to "flog-", is still to be found in some specific terms, especially in medical literature.
Flogistico, for example. You have that in English, and it's even more recognizable, thanks to the "ph": phlogistic. It means inflammatory, causing a burning sensation.
It erupted 200,000 years ago, 40,000 years ago, 35,000 years ago, 12,000 years ago, and 500 years ago. We're talking about Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples (Italy), one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world. This is a very serious matter.
I visited the vulcano few weeks ago, it doesn't look that dangerous when you are on the crater, but then if you visit Pompei and Ercolano, well it's scary. The eruption of 79 AD pretty much destroyed the city, fossilized corpses are still visible in the archeological site.
Naples is the urban area with the highest density in Europe. An eruption of Vesuvio would likely kill at least 1-2 million of people and bring Italy and Europe to total economic collapse.
If we could for once think logically and stop all the culture/tradition crap, we would migrate people out of this area. The Balkans are huge and deserted, with lots of areas with similar climate. Spain comes to mind too. Or even Italy itself.
Obviously, the problem here is always the same. You have lots of people living in the worst possible places, but then if something happens is the State (hence tax payers) that have to re-build houses, pay for the emergency and so on. This is a huge moral hazard.
Did you read the paper? The real news is the modeling and and the exponential curves they are measuring. Something is happening and there are analogs to compare it to.
"A smaller but still sizable eruption was observed at the supervolcano in 1538. That event lasted eight days and created the mountain Monte Nuovo. But since then, the volcano has been quiet, slumbering for more than 500 years."
I'm going to assume it's 1538 AD and that this volcano has slumbered almost 500 years. And if create a "new mountain" was enough to relieve the pressure then, how do they distinguish a major eruption from a minor one when performing these forecasts?
A seven-mile caldera would surely be a 'major eruption'. Lots of distance between a small mountain (439 ft tall, isn't that a hill?) and a large volcano (Vesuvius is for instance the size of Naples).
I think what he's asking is how one would know whether the entire caldera was at risk or whether there was just a risk of a small eruption, such as in the 16th century. I'm guessing the answer is that "they don't".
Yet another example of a scientific paper bent to satisfy sensationalism by the press.
First paragraph:
"A long-quiet yet huge supervolcano that lies under 500,000 people in Italy may be waking up and approaching a "critical state," scientists report this week in the journal Nature Communications."
In the actual article:
"The scientists caution that it's possible nothing will happen in our lifetimes. They say it's impossible to say with any certainty when an eruption might actually take place. More monitoring and study are needed, they say."
And of course this:
"There will be another supervolcano explosion," scientist James Quick, a geologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas, said in a statement when that volcano was found.
"We don't know where, [but] Sesia Valley could help us to predict the next event."
is more like a Nostradamus prophecy, something will soon (before or later) happen somewhere ...
It's cool here to deride pop science articles as sensationalist hooey, but this is actual news. The volcano appears more active and scientists are legitimately worried.
you will see how there is nothing "urgent" or "immediate" or even "soon to be expected", the scientist created a model that seemingly shows that eventually an eruption may happen, but without any clue if it will happen and more than that when it will happen:
"Caution is therefore prudent when forecasting the future mid- to short-term evolution of any period of unrest. Even if the magma underneath CFc is likely to be approaching the CDP, the possible future scenarios can be complicated by additional processes that have not been considered here. For example, increases in the melt liquidus due to H2O release and consequent magma crystallization could increase the melt viscosity, and therefore act against further magma migration. Additional careful scrutiny of monitoring data in the coming months and years is key to interpreting whether hydrothermal heating or magma quenching will prevail."
And as well in one of the two articles you posted:
"This is apparently better news, at least for now; activity in which magma moves upward and accumulates tends to be associated with an increased chance of an eruption. However the change from hydrothermal to magmatic activity can take place at any time, so we're not in a position to say that everything is well under the Campi Flegrei. The Campi Flegrei is still a very volatile place. What it does show is the difficulty in interpreting the data, even from one of the most-studied volcanic areas in the world. Reconciling all of the data is a major issue, despite our efforts."
The whole area is "at risk" of course, and it is very likely that something may happen, but whether it will be an earthquake (a major one, as minor ones are daily) or an eruption and when it may happen is something noone can say.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 43.3 ms ] threadhttp://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/11/updated-appeals-court...
According to the prosecutor their fault was reassuring people that nothing bad was going to happen, that is negligence in performing the risk analysis.
When this happens it is going to immediately change world climate to something very much colder than it is now. It suggests to me that some sort of preparation for surviving in very different climatic conditions than the one we currently experience would be a good investment in time and resources. That said, I'm not entirely sure how we might plan something like that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
A more serious situation would be more than one eruption, or a sequence of eruptions to sustain the effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%...
Any guesses how far we are from being able to control volcanoes so that they would not pose a threat? Too far, I would guess.
I really don't know how much heat we are talking about (still, I don't think migrating all aluminum plants into above the supervolcanos would be enough), but it is not the kind of thing we should count as expense.
If we haven't found out everything by then we never will.
Campi is literally "fields". We have that a lot for city/town/village names (e.g. Campi Bisenzio, close to Florence). When used for the name of a place, I would just suggest maybe 'meadows' as a better translation.
Flegreo (pl. -i), on the other hand, exists as an adjective solely to describe someone or something "from the area West of Neaples known as Campi Flegrei".
The etymology is of course related to the volcanic activity and has to do with burning. φλέγω (phlego) in Ancient Greek meant "to burn". In Latin the verb was Flagro.
In Italian we still have these words in use:
- "deflagrazione" (it's similar to the English deflagration, but with a broader meaning of "explosion"; it's normally used as a synonym)
- "flagrante". Literally "burning", but the common meaning is "evident" or "in the act", as in "colto in flagrante", "caught in the act", "caught red-handed".
The greek root, turned to "flog-", is still to be found in some specific terms, especially in medical literature. Flogistico, for example. You have that in English, and it's even more recognizable, thanks to the "ph": phlogistic. It means inflammatory, causing a burning sensation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruption_of_Mount_Vesuvius_in_...
Naples is the urban area with the highest density in Europe. An eruption of Vesuvio would likely kill at least 1-2 million of people and bring Italy and Europe to total economic collapse.
If we could for once think logically and stop all the culture/tradition crap, we would migrate people out of this area. The Balkans are huge and deserted, with lots of areas with similar climate. Spain comes to mind too. Or even Italy itself.
Obviously, the problem here is always the same. You have lots of people living in the worst possible places, but then if something happens is the State (hence tax payers) that have to re-build houses, pay for the emergency and so on. This is a huge moral hazard.
I'm going to assume it's 1538 AD and that this volcano has slumbered almost 500 years. And if create a "new mountain" was enough to relieve the pressure then, how do they distinguish a major eruption from a minor one when performing these forecasts?
First paragraph: "A long-quiet yet huge supervolcano that lies under 500,000 people in Italy may be waking up and approaching a "critical state," scientists report this week in the journal Nature Communications."
In the actual article:
"The scientists caution that it's possible nothing will happen in our lifetimes. They say it's impossible to say with any certainty when an eruption might actually take place. More monitoring and study are needed, they say."
And of course this:
"There will be another supervolcano explosion," scientist James Quick, a geologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas, said in a statement when that volcano was found.
"We don't know where, [but] Sesia Valley could help us to predict the next event."
is more like a Nostradamus prophecy, something will soon (before or later) happen somewhere ...
http://phys.org/news/2016-07-gas-ground-bay-naples-volcano.h...
http://phys.org/news/2016-12-naples-astride-rumbling-mega-vo...
If you read the actual paper:
http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13712
you will see how there is nothing "urgent" or "immediate" or even "soon to be expected", the scientist created a model that seemingly shows that eventually an eruption may happen, but without any clue if it will happen and more than that when it will happen:
"Caution is therefore prudent when forecasting the future mid- to short-term evolution of any period of unrest. Even if the magma underneath CFc is likely to be approaching the CDP, the possible future scenarios can be complicated by additional processes that have not been considered here. For example, increases in the melt liquidus due to H2O release and consequent magma crystallization could increase the melt viscosity, and therefore act against further magma migration. Additional careful scrutiny of monitoring data in the coming months and years is key to interpreting whether hydrothermal heating or magma quenching will prevail."
And as well in one of the two articles you posted:
"This is apparently better news, at least for now; activity in which magma moves upward and accumulates tends to be associated with an increased chance of an eruption. However the change from hydrothermal to magmatic activity can take place at any time, so we're not in a position to say that everything is well under the Campi Flegrei. The Campi Flegrei is still a very volatile place. What it does show is the difficulty in interpreting the data, even from one of the most-studied volcanic areas in the world. Reconciling all of the data is a major issue, despite our efforts."
The Vesuvio and the Campi Flegrei are anyway monitored: http://www.ov.ingv.it/ov/it/vesuvio/statoattualevesuvio.html
The institute publishes weekly and monthly reports:
http://www.ov.ingv.it/ov/it/campi-flegrei/monitoraggio/272-c...
http://www.ov.ingv.it/ov/it/campi-flegrei/attivita-recente/2...
The whole area is "at risk" of course, and it is very likely that something may happen, but whether it will be an earthquake (a major one, as minor ones are daily) or an eruption and when it may happen is something noone can say.
Turns out we got a peek at the rightmost digit previously covered by that frame, and it's another zero.
Still, there are overwhelming odds that everything is just fine.