Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a geothermal power plant? (opens in new tab)

In the article it's said the proposal already included 160 plants in a big ring around yellowstone, resulting in the 16,000 years figure.

So to get it down to 100 years you'd need 160^2 = 25,600 geothermal plants.

Perfectly reasonable, let's do it.

hehe, or drilling down into the magma chamber 160 times causes it to erupt prematurely.

Those numbers aren't that large. They aren't small in anyone's estimation, but the Empire State Building is a lot less than the amount of material a motivated earthmoving company can get through in a year.

There'd be some interesting technical challenges tearing down Everest, but it is conceivable. The part that requires creative thinking is why it would be worth it spending that much money.

But how many school buses is that?

That's exterminatus scale of explosion. Well, one cyclonic torpedo maybe.

I don't. The reason is that even though we are probably capable of doing so we lack the responsibility required to do this without the chance of massive negative side effects. Every time we've upped the scale in our abilities it has only resulted in more damage, not quite balanced out by more progress. This is a real problem: we can get ourselves into the kind of trouble that we don't seem to be able to get ourselves out of. We never stop and say 'this is enough', we always take the next step, create a new level of problems that then requires yet another level of innovation to control it and so on.

It's the sorcerers apprentice, but a weird variation on it. Just supposed that what the GP says is possible and doable: what guarantees do we have that we fully understand the system we are messing with? How much risk are we willing to take? Who are the stakeholders in these risks?

Without answers to all of these questions we run the real risk of biting off more than we can collectively chew and if and when we do there won't be an 'undo' button to press. Well, technically will have pressed it, but quite possible on a time-scale that we didn't quite envision.

I've seen the most stupid proposals of the kind that you are suggesting: PNE's ('Peaceful Nuclear Explosions') on a scale never dreamed of before to remake the face of the Earth, create new watersheds and so on. And to incidentally put an amount of radiation into the atmosphere that would be absolutely unparalleled. The fact that we can do these things doesn't mean that we automatically have to do these things.

I keep thinking about the discovery of nuclear power: what if we hadn't? Would that be such a huge problem or would we simply have found other, better ways of providing ourselves with power? And if we did, what would be the short term, mid term and long term consequences of doing so? Because the energy stored in the core of the Earth is the ultimate form of fossil energy: between gravity and plate tectonics life had a way of escaping the oceans and without that we'd be fish, mammals in the ocean at best. Good luck with that electronics project you were working on in that environment.

It's tricky: we have one Earth. Any decision that irrevocably removes something from that Earth carries a price tag the value of which may not be visible for a long time to come, so caution would seem to be the best way forward, even if that isn't our nature. Our nature is just to act and then to pass the buck to the next generation.

I invite you to find yourself a copy of any or all of The Control of Nature by John McPhee, A River Lost by Blaine Harden, and Marc Reisner's books Cadillac Desert and A Dangerous Place.

I like a mega challenge that is manageable because everyone can do their tiny part. Like the Justdiggit project [0], on a mission to regreening Africa and cooling down the planet. All one needs is a shovel and knowledge how to dig shallow holes with a ridge to avoid rainwaters flushing furtile topsoil away, and store water for plants to grow in the dry season.

[0] https://justdiggit.org/

Have you heard of The Line? It's going to be a 500m high, 200m wide, 170 km long linear city / megastructure housing 9 million people; real science fiction stuff, but construction is underway with phase 1 ready by 2030: https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline

> hard to permit for

The legislative of any state can basically write a law saying "this project is exempt from review". This isn't a complicated problem like interstate water rights with American Indian treaty obligations.

If you don't care for capture it's also practical to colocate any other big energy consumer like metal refining, drying battery materials, etc. Shipping energy 2000 miles to charge some Tesla in Poughkeepsie doesn't sound like the best application.

That is very much not how the atmosphere works. The jet stream as one example moves over the US at hundreds of miles per hour, and more generally speaking gases disperse through the atmosphere very quickly.

> The scale and forces are far too massive for us to do anything about it.

The scale and forces behind fossil fuels are both larger and it looks like we'll have managed to run through all the easily available stuff in about a century. "The scale is really big!" isn't an argument that something can't be done. Modern humans have done a bunch of stuff that was on an unimaginable scale 500 years ago. You'd have been arguing the moon landing was impossible a century ago because the forces involved are too large.

We're not going to overcome technical challenges by banning attempts to overcome them.

> It's like saying "why don't they stop earthquakes by removing earthquake faults".

That should be an option that gets explored. I doubt the economics will work out, but if we figure out a way to extract the energy building up in fault-lines that would be a win-win-win scenario for everyone involved.

He literally just said that's not how volcanos work

Are they "primarily driven by the ejection of gas" or more accurately preceded by gas and steam as the magma itself is gas rich and thermo and fluid dynamics dictate the gas will be at the vanguard of the breach?

I've seen several professional geologists answer this question, and no, really, volcanos don't work that way.

For one, the scale is way, way too big. It's like stabbing an elephant with a needle and expecting it to bleed out.

Also, the dangerous type of magma is extremely viscous and gas-rich. It doesn't flow like Hawaiian lava does.

It's never this simple. There are multitudes of interested parties in either direction not just at the federal level, but below it from state, to county, to city and more.

That hasn’t actually been a goal for 50 years. That was a “maybe if this is really successful we’ll do it” vision in the early days of BART planning.

Extend to downtown San Jose? Maybe a goal for 20 years from now. Add additional transbay tubes? Sure, if the tooth fairy pays for it. The electorate emphatically does not want to pay for more BART, much as I’d like it to be otherwise.