Two Science Links – Yellowstone Caldera and Ants
What do they have to do with one another? Actually, nothing, other than that both are about science and I thought they were interesting. I haven’t written anything on science for awhile and these stories were there!
The first addresses concerns about the Yellowstone Caldera and whether it’s likely to erupt. The conclusion? It’s unlikely to impact you or me personally. In the course of the post there’s a video of Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana making a rather silly remark about volcano monitoring. I just find the science here fascinating.
The second illustrates a problem with science writing online. It’s easy for someone to make remarks that turn out to be way off the mark. Alex Wild at Myrmecos (that’s from myrmecology, the study of ants, something I learned this very day) takes on William Dembski, who thinks that evolution cannot explain the way in which ants find the shortest path between two points. But it turns out that Dembski needed to do a bit more research, or find a specialist in the right field. It turns out there’s no neurological programming involved. Sometimes the simple solution is best! (HT: Why Evolution is True).
As I was reading the volcano article, it occurred to me that someone could play the same game with earthquakes in California. One can say that earthquakes too small to feel occur many times a day, medium earthquakes occur several times a year, yet earthquakes that are as big as the San Andreas fault can deliver are over a hundred years apart for any given section of the fault. Yes, that means a maximal earthquake is a very rare earthquake, yet it’s still inevitable.
I see from the link late in the article that the author got this approach from the Yellowstone Volcano Laboratory, that steam eruptions are common, eruptions like Mt. St. Helens are next most likely, and the three massive eruptions that hit Yellowstone in the last 2 million years with other caldera from the same hot spot stretching across Idaho and Utah for the past 15 million years occur only rarely. Yet everything I’ve read suggests that the next massive eruption is just as inevitable as the next big earthquake in California, for the same reason. Physical stress builds up. Then it periodically overcomes the inertia of surface rocks, often in small ways that relieve little stress, but regularly in a maximal event where all the stress on the rocks that this geologic feature can muster pushes through.
What difference does it make if the hot spot moves to the east of Yellowstone before the next massive eruption? It will still be devastating for several hundred miles around it. To hope that the hot spot belched its last 640,000 years ago seems silly. The chain of islands made by the Hawaiian hot spot doesn’t stop with the islands still above the water. Maps of the sea floor show sea mounts from old islands stretching across the entire Pacific. These things seem to last a very long time. If the evidence of their eruptions weren’t routinely scrubbed away by new geology, maybe we’d know how long.
So the rational thing is to say that yes, another massive eruption is coming from Yellowstone. It might be 100, 000 years from now. It won’t be tomorrow since there will be plenty of seismic warning before such an eruption, but who knows how much? Could it be a year away? Will the buildup take longer? I’d rather see some informed speculation about that than misdirection about how most eruptions are small, as most earthquakes are small. Big deal. I’m pretty sure size matters more than frequency in planning for such disasters.
As impressed as I’ve been in my education and career about the importance of good data and good analysis of the scientific application of that data, it’s just as important to be able to judge the practical significance of whatever knowledge science gives us. When it comes to the calculation that the sun will run out of fuel in another 4-5 billion years, destroying the earth in the process, I’m grateful to know that little piece of the future, but otherwise I don’t care. When it comes to the next big earthquake, I’m confident about the rock my house is on, unlike the unfortunate people living on landfill. My greatest uncertainty is about how much services will be disrupted. Will love break out in response or violence? It’s not guaranteed that I will live long enough to find out, but there’s some chance. It’s worth preparing for.
The Yellowstone caldera is in between. I’m not going to think about it except in an academic way until there are some warnings that the magma is building up. Then I’ll prepare for the ash, even a thousand miles away. I hope others are taking it more seriously right now in terms of disaster planning. Then again, human beings can get a lot done at the last minute if they know it’s the last minute.
Meanwhile I see the attacks on evolution I’ve heard for the past 40 years are just as flawed as ever. It’s such a poor witness for God that true believers are willing to believe any attack on evolution that comes to them. I’m convinced it was a major factor in keeping me from taking God seriously until I was 34. Then I gave conservatives 15 years to show me they’re right. They aren’t. I’ve never figured out how to be effective in telling them that.