Fingerprint of a catastrophe

Ever heard of the Bruneau-Jarbridge event?

If not, it's unsurprising; neither had I.  Plus, it happened twelve million years ago, during the mid-Miocene Epoch.  It's a supervolcano eruption of the Yellowstone Hotspot, which was at the time under what is now southwestern Idaho.  Between then and now, the hotspot has stayed pretty much where it was, but the North American Plate has moved, resulting in its current location underneath northwestern Wyoming,

The Bruneau-Jarbridge event was enormous.  It created monstrous pyroclastic flows that traveled 150 kilometers from the caldera, incinerating everything in their path.  The winds at the time of the eruption were from the west; we know this because the ash produced by the eruption traveled at least 1,600 kilometers to the east, creating meters-thick layers including the ones at the amazing Ashfall Fossil Beds in northeastern Nebraska.

In fact, it's the Ashfall Fossil Beds -- now an official National Natural Landmark and State Historical Park -- that's why the topic comes up.  A friend and frequent contributor of topics for Skeptophilia sent me a photograph of the site, and asked me if I'd heard of it:

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Carl Malamud, Ashfall fossil beds - Baby rhino "T. L.", CC BY 2.0]

I hadn't, so naturally I had to look into it.

The whole thing is staggering, if grim.  Ashfall contains the skeletons of thousands of animals killed, more or less simultaneously, by the Bruneau-Jarbridge ash cloud.  The remains of the rhinoceros species Teloceras are so common there that one part of the fossil bed has been nicknamed "the Rhino Barn."  But there are lots of other species represented as well; five different kinds of prehistoric horses, including both three-toed and one-toed; three species of camels; two canids, the fox-sized Leptocyon and the wolf-sized Cynarctus; a saber-toothed (!) deer species, Longirostromeryx; three species of turtles; and three species of birds -- a crane, a hawk, and a vulture.

Despite the size of the eruption and resulting ash cloud, everything in the area didn't die during the ashfall.  Some of the bones show signs of scavenging, and some have breaks and tooth marks consistent with the dentition of the hyena-like canid Aelurodon.  So even a horrific catastrophe like Bruneau-Jarbridge didn't extinguish life completely; there were still scavengers around to chow down on the victims.

When looking at this sort of event, the question inevitably comes up of whether it could happen again.  The facile answer is: of course it could.  The Earth is still very much tectonically active, and more specifically, the Yellowstone Hotspot is a live volcano, as the frequent earthquakes and boiling-hot geysers and lakes should indicate.  It's likely to erupt again -- whether a monumental cataclysm like Bruneau-Jarbridge, or something smaller, isn't certain.

But despite the prevalence of clickbait-y YouTube videos about how "Yellowstone is about to erupt!" and "Scientists fear the Earth will crack wide open!" (both direct quotes from video titles), there is no imminent danger from the Yellowstone Hotspot.  What the geologists are actually saying is that a major eruption is likely some time in the next hundred thousand years, which puts it well outside the realm of what most of us should be worried about.

However, there's no doubt the the Ashfall Fossil Beds are a sobering reminder of what the Earth is capable of.  They're the fingerprint of a twelve-million-year-old catastrophe that makes any recent eruption look like a wet firecracker.  But as horrible as it was for the Miocene animals in the path of the ash cloud, it's provided us with a snapshot of what life was like back then, when Nebraska had a climate more like modern Kenya -- and the Great Plains was home to rhinos, camels, horses, and wild dogs.

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Looking forward to cataclysm

Is it just me, or do you sometimes get the feeling that people want catastrophes to happen?

I see it every time there's a near pass of an asteroid.  Hysterical notes start showing up all over social media about how "this time it's for real" and "we better get ready" and "make your peace with God" and "how 'bout a planet-sized game of Whack-a-Mole?"  Then, when the asteroid misses by a significant margin -- amazingly enough, just as NASA predicted -- people seem somehow disappointed.

Dammit, they say.  Maybe next time will be the fiery cataclysm I've been so looking forward to.

This comes up because I'm once again seeing all sorts of buzz about the Yellowstone Supervolcano, and how the state of Wyoming is about to get blasted into the stratosphere.  Now, to be fair, Yellowstone is an active volcanic area, and previous eruptions have been pretty stupendous.  One that occurred 640,000 years ago blew a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, ash, and pyroclastic debris into the air -- for reference, this is about a thousand times larger than the amount of ash from Mount Saint Helens -- and the resulting fallout blanketed most of what is now the central United States.

I know 640,000 years seems like a long time, but it's not much geologically, and geologists consider another large caldera eruption from Yellowstone a sure thing.  Here's where the problem starts, though, because "a sure thing" doesn't mean "next Tuesday at 4:30 PM."  What it means is that there'll be an eruption some time in the next 100,000 years, give or take, and (this is the critical part) we're seeing no sign of it being any time soon in human terms.

Sapphire Pool, Grand Prismatic Spring Complex, Yellowstone National Park.  The deep blue water in the center is about 90 C and has a pH of 9.  Swimming not recommended.

The pro-cataclysm cadre got their push this time because of an announcement that the Steamboat Geyser has resumed regular eruptions after a three-year quiescent phase.  To be sure, Steamboat is pretty spectacular; its column of hot water and mud is one of the highest ever measured, jetting up to 115 meters into the air.  So having it start up again suddenly after not erupting since early 2018 is understandably going to raise some eyebrows.

What it doesn't mean, however, is that the entire caldera basin is going to go kaboom, as it did 640,000 years ago.  All it means is that underground hotspots come and go in volcanically active regions, and the plumbing system that powers geysers and hot springs shifts around sometimes.  Geologists are seeing no signs of magma movement, which would be the precursor to an actual volcanic eruption.

They're pretty curious, though, about why Steamboat has reactivated so suddenly.  One possibility is that because water in geysers and hot springs is usually laden with dissolved silica and other minerals, a slight fluctuation in temperature can cause a sudden precipitation of crystalline material (in fact, the shorelines of the Yellowstone hot springs are coated with the stuff).  This could, literally, clog the pipes and cause the pressure to release elsewhere, or to build up until it's sufficient to blast the clog to pieces.  In short, we're not sure why Steamboat is active again, but it's virtually certain it's not an imminent eruption.

Honesty compels me to use the word "virtually," and even Michael Manga of the University of California-Berkeley, who is leading the study of Steamboat Geyser, says we can't really be certain of the timing of volcanic eruptions.  After all, massive eruptions are so infrequent that we haven't had all that many opportunities to study the lead-up and see what would be the typical seismological warning signs.  "What we asked are very simple questions and it is a little bit embarrassing that we can't answer them, because it means there are fundamental processes on Earth that we don't quite understand," Manga said.  "One of the reasons we argue we need to study geysers is that if we can't understand and explain how a geyser erupts, our hope for doing the same thing for magma is much lower."

So as befits a cautious scientist, Manga is saying "we're not sure."  But from what we know of volcanoes, it doesn't look at all likely.  So the pro-cataclysm crowd will have to kick at the gravel in disappointment and look for the next opportunity for a large part of the surface area of the Earth to be covered in flaming debris.  

Better luck next time, guys.  Cheer up, maybe there's an asteroid out there heading our way.

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What are you afraid of?

It's a question that resonates with a lot of us.  I suffer from chronic anxiety, so what I am afraid of gets magnified a hundredfold in my errant brain -- such as my paralyzing fear of dentists, an unfortunate remnant of a brutal dentist in my childhood, the memories of whom can still make me feel physically ill if I dwell on them.  (Luckily, I have good teeth and rarely need serious dental care.)  We all have fears, reasonable and unreasonable, and some are bad enough to impact our lives in a major way, enough that psychologists and neuroscientists have put considerable time and effort into learning how to quell (or eradicate) the worst of them.

In her wonderful book Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear, journalist Eva Holland looks at the psychology of this most basic of emotions -- what we're afraid of, what is happening in our brains when we feel afraid, and the most recently-developed methods to blunt the edge of incapacitating fears.  It's a fascinating look at a part of our own psyches that many of us are reluctant to confront -- but a must-read for anyone who takes the words of the Greek philosopher Pausanias seriously: γνῶθι σεαυτόν (know yourself).

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

When the volcano blows

If you were wondering what the final act of the 2020 fever-dream theater might be, I have a possible contender.

Geologists have just discovered another supervolcano besides Yellowstone.

Supervolcanoes -- known in scientific circles as caldera eruptions -- are insanely powerful.  The famous 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, in Indonesia, was a caldera eruption, but even that was on the small end of things; it blasted 25 cubic kilometers of ash and rock fragments into the air, while the last major eruption of Yellowstone (650,000 years ago) released forty times that much, and covered most of what is now the central United States in a meter or two of ash.

And Toba, another Indonesian volcano, released almost three times more than that, 74,000 years ago -- and some anthropologists think the resulting climate impact nearly wiped out the up-and-coming human race, by some estimates reducing the entire population of humans to only about a thousand individuals.

By comparison, the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980 was pretty much a wet firecracker.

So anyhow, why this all comes up is because we thought we knew where most of the potentially huge calderas were located, and geologists have given a great effort to calming everyone down, saying we have a handle on things and will have plenty of warning if any of them show signs of an imminent eruption.

Turns out, we didn't even know one of them was there.

A cluster of six islands in the Aleutian chain -- Carlisle, Cleveland, Herbert, Kagamil, Chagulak, and Uliaga -- have long been known to be stratovolcanoes, conical, explosive volcanoes of the same type as Mount Vesuvius.  What scientists didn't know until now is that apparently, the magma reservoirs of these six islands are not separate blobs, but one enormous blob underlying the entire island chain.

Just like the one under Yellowstone.

Mount Cleveland [Image is in the Public Domain]

The findings, which will be formally presented at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Monday, are a little alarming.  According to the press release from Science Daily:

Researchers from a variety of institutions and disciplines have been studying Mount Cleveland, the most active volcano of the group, trying to understand the nature of the Islands of the Four Mountains.  They have gathered multiple pieces of evidence showing that the islands could belong to one interconnected caldera.

Unlike stratovolcanoes, which tend to tap small- to modestly-sized reservoirs of magma, a caldera is created by tapping a huge reservoir in the Earth's crust.  When the reservoir's pressure exceeds the strength of the crust, gigantic amounts of lava and ash are released in a catastrophic episode of eruption...

If the researchers' suspicions are correct, the newfound volcanic caldera would belong to the same category of volcanoes as the Yellowstone Caldera and other volcanoes that have had super-eruptions with severe global consequences.

So yeah.  That's just marvelous.  Okay, I know, the discovery doesn't mean it's going to erupt any time soon, although it bears mention that Mount Cleveland has erupted 22 times in the past 230 years, and eight of those eruptions were in the last eleven years.  So it would totally be on-brand for 2020 if the whole thing went kablooie.

Yes, I know, I'm not supposed to be superstitious or engage in magical thinking or anything.  Given how this year's gone, I think I deserve a little slack, here.  No one will be happier than me if January 1, 2021 comes and the Aleutian Islands still exist, but at present I'm not ruling anything out. 

There we have it -- a supervolcano that we didn't even realize existed.  Just another thing to put in your Box of Anxiety.  Honestly, at the moment I'm more concerned about what Donald "Cheeto Benito" Trump and his cronies could potentially do to the United States on the way out the door.  In my experience, assholes can do more damage than ash holes.

Even the super-sized ones.

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One of the most compellingly weird objects in the universe is the black hole -- a stellar remnant so dense that it warps space into a closed surface.  Once the edge of that sphere -- the event horizon -- is passed, there's no getting out.  Even light can't escape, which is where they get their name.

Black holes have been a staple of science fiction for years, not only for their potential to destroy whatever comes near them, but because their effects on space-time result in a relativistic slowdown of time (depicted brilliantly in the movie Interstellar).  In this week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week, The Black Hole Survival Guide, astrophysicist Janna Levin describes for us what it would be like to have a close encounter with one of these things -- using the latest knowledge from science to explain in layperson's terms the experience of an unfortunate astronaut who strayed too close.

It's a fascinating, and often mind-blowing, topic, handled deftly by Levin, where the science itself is so strange that it seems as if it must be fiction.  But no, these things are real, and common; there's a huge one at the center of our own galaxy, and an unknown number of them elsewhere in the Milky Way.  Levin's book will give you a good picture of one of the scariest naturally-occurring objects -- all from the safety of your own home.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Science as gossip

One of the things that really bugs me is when people accept the vague hand-waving fears of laypeople over the hard evidence and research of actual scientists.

I suspect it's because we've been taught to respect common, down-home, folksy talk more than the esoteric vocabulary of the ivory-tower intellectuals.  We read articles online, and they seem to have been written by "ordinary folks like us," and after all, "ordinary folks like us" wouldn't lie, right?  Add that to the fact that scientific papers are often confusing and difficult to follow, many of them using abstruse mathematics to support their conclusions, and I suppose it's not really that surprising that we're more likely to trust The Daily Mail than Nature.

But for criminy's sake, at least try to understand what the scientists are saying.  Otherwise we'll be stuck forever with nitwits like Jenny McCarthy altering national vaccination rates, and mental midgets like James Inhofe driving environmental policy.

This tendency, I suspect, is also why you see articles like the one that appeared a few days ago on Intellihub called "Yellowstone Supervolcano On Verge of Eruption: USGS Suppressing Information."  The title is self-explanatory; we have more fear-mongering over the potential for a catastrophic eruption, one which (according to the article) would "destroy a 1000-mile swath of the United States."

But this article is different, because it claims that the eruption is going to happen in the next two weeks.

Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park [image courtesy of photographer Clément Bardot and the Wikimedia Commons]

First, the article states that the warning came from one Hank Hessler, a park geologist.  This sounds pretty authoritative; and, in fact, Hessler is a real guy with real credentials.  But if you listen to the YouTube video where the whole nonsense started, you find that what Hessler actually said was that regarding what the volcano is doing, he "can't see past two weeks" -- in other words, the conditions in the magma chamber shift quickly and unpredictably, so making a prediction about what this or that hot spring will do is impossible more than two weeks out.  But how this was interpreted by the YouTube commentator, and every other damn blogger and news source that picked this up, was that Hessler couldn't see past two weeks because after that, we'd all be dead.

The Intellihub article goes further; there's a massive coverup by the United States Geological Survey, designed to keep us in the dark about all of this.  Why?  Who knows?  Because it's government, that's why, and obviously government exists only to kill us all.  But this is where it gets interesting, because Shepard Ambellas, author of the article, starts waving his hands around like mad to support the claim.  "Although no one knows for sure if Hessler’s prediction will come true," Ambellas writes, "it does set an eerie overtone for people located within a 1000 mile swath of the park."

Why is it eerie if no one knows if it's true?  How about we check with a scientist that Ambellas hasn't had a chance to misquote, like Ilya Bindeman of the University of Oregon:

Our research of the pattern of such volcanism in two older, 'complete' caldera clusters in the wake of Yellowstone allows a prognosis that Yellowstone is on a dying cycle, rather than on a ramping up cycle. Either the crust under Yellowstone is turning into hard-to-melt basalt, or because the movement of North American plate has changed the magma pluming system away from Yellowstone, or both of these reasons.

Based upon his studies, he believes that the next Yellowstone eruption might actually happen...

... in one or two million years.

But let's go back to Ambellas:

On March 4, 2014, Intellihub came across information, by an unnamed source, who reported that the White House had ordered the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to suppress earthquake swarm data within the region to hide what may be coming from the general public.

Oh, those unnamed sources.  So much more reliable than actual scientists.

And we're already overdue, Ambellas says, because clearly volcanoes are like trains and run on schedules:

In fact reports suggest that ancient Helium4 gas has breached the surface layers of Yellowstone’s crust and is now escaping into the earth’s atmosphere.  Coupled with the recent and abrupt ground level rise in the park we may be looking at a recipe for disaster...  In fact, the last Yellowstone eruption was thought to have happened around 630,000 years ago, meaning we are about 30,000 years overdue, literally putting us in the hot seat, front row.

Ooh, helium-4!  That sounds terrifying.  And "30,000 years overdue" definitely equates to "a catastrophic eruption in two weeks."

But the best part comes right at the end:

And it gets even worse. Although there is no way I can vouch for the information, I simply can’t. But according to a random individual who posted a video on YouTube, the USGS has likely been ordered by Washington to suppress information regarding recent seismic activity and gaseous releases in and around the Yellowstone region as a possible ELE [extinction-level event] is on the way.

Not a "random individual who posted a video on YouTube!"  Those guys know everything.  Certainly more than the evil scientists, who are in the pay of the USGS and the NSF and the NOAA and all sorts of other agencies whose names are made up of a bunch of scary letters.

But the part that jumped out at me was "there is no way I can vouch for the information, I simply can’t."  If you can't vouch for the information, then for fuck's sake, why are you writing about it?  This is science you're talking about, not the latest gossip on the Kardashians.  There are ways to verify science, and you don't do it by looking at what Mr. Random Individual posted on YouTube.  You read scientific papers (like this one and this one).  You (gasp!) learn some actual geology.

So sorry, Mr. Ambellas (because you actually sound like you're looking forward to it): the US is not about to be destroyed by a volcanic eruption.  The only scientist you even considered in your article, you misquoted and misinterpreted (and if I were Hank Hessler, I'd be pissed).  You're getting a lot of non-scientists stirred up, which I have no doubt was your goal.

But I wish you'd stop.  Because the last thing we need is to give the general public a more jaundiced view of science.  And that's what's going to happen, you know?  When two weeks passes, and we're all still here, unvaporized, your average layperson is much more likely to say, "Those dumb scientists, forecasting gloom and doom, and wrong as usual" than the correct response, which is, "Shepard Ambellas lied to us so that we'd click on his website."

Wild West travelogue

Well, I'm back, and many thanks to my patient readers for sticking around during my two-week hiatus.  I'd like to launch this week with some observations from my travels, along with a few photographs taken by my wife (who is the amazing artist Carol Bloomgarden) and me.

Our travels this year took us out into the American West, where we spent some time in the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Park.  First of all, the natural beauty is stunning; while I like to think that we live in a part of the world that has awesome scenery (upstate New York), the grandeur of scale out there is something few places in the world can match.

The Grand Teton Mountains, from near Jackson Hole, Wyoming

There are a few additional things that have always impressed me about the American West, though.  One of them is that the Yee-Haw Attitude is alive and well, both in its positive and negative senses.  There's a feeling that personal freedom is paramount, as long as what you're doing doesn't impinge upon anyone else's personal freedom.  We did a lot of geocaching out there (and if you don't know about this amazingly weird and fun hobby, check it out here) -- and one of the caches we were seeking took us across a construction site up in Glacier National Park.  We started to cross, and were approached by two construction workers.  I expected that they were going to tell us to bugger off, that we weren't allowed there -- but they said, and I quote, "Do what you like as long as you don't mess with the equipment."

As another example of this, consider speed limits.  Near urban centers, even in the west, it's the usual 55 mph.  But as you get further out into the middle of nowhere, it goes up to 60, then 65, then 75 mph, until (in central Montana) they give up entirely.  "All right, go however the hell fast you want to," they seem to say.  "We know you're going to anyhow."

All of which is kind of funny, because our rental car was a Chevy Spark.  If you are unfamiliar with this car, all I can say is that the Chevy Spark is to cars as a pug is to dogs -- small, stubby, cute in a squashed sort of way, and not really particularly well adapted for any useful purpose.  I think that the Spark got its name from the fact that "spark" represents the energy level of which the engine is capable.  I noted that the speedometer went up to 120 mph, which was grimly amusing, because I don't think the Spark could go 120 mph if you dropped it off a cliff.  It went downhill like a boss, but going up (for example) Logan Pass involved lots of encouraging words from us and lots of nasty looks from the drivers of the cars who were in line behind us going 14 mph and who wanted for some reason to get to their destination that day.

Our Chevy Spark, recovering from a long climb

Of course, I spent a lot of time indulging in my favorite hobby, which is birdwatching.  Much of my behavior illustrated Dave Barry's contention that there is a fine line between a hobby and a mental illness.  For example, we were at the LeHardy Rapids on the Yellowstone River, a site of amazing beauty, and there was also a rainbow trout run going on, which is pretty spectacular to see.  But my wife had spotted a Harlequin Duck, a bird I'd never seen, sitting on a rock in the middle of the stream.   The following conversation ensued:

Other tourist:  Wow!  This place is gorgeous! 

Me:  Look.  There's the duck. 

Other tourist:  That water is so blue!  And the trees!  And look at all of the trout in the river! 

Me:  But there's the duck. 

Other tourist:  Yellowstone is one of the natural wonders of the world! 

Me:  I know.  That's one incredible duck.

The duck in question

Which is not to say that I didn't appreciate other stuff.  In particular, Yellowstone is an astonishing place, to the point of parts of it being kind of surreal.  The hot springs, especially, which look like some amateur artist decided to use up all of their supply of brightly-colored acrylics in painting a nature scene.  If you ever get a chance to go to Yellowstone, the must-see (in my opinion) isn't Old Faithful, but Grand Prismatic Spring, which is colored by minerals and brilliantly pigmented bacteria:

Speaking of Yellowstone, it was in the forefront of my mind to consider the possibility of eruption of the hotspot/supervolcano that lies underneath Yellowstone Caldera, largely because over the last couple of years the woo-woos have been running around making little squeaking noises about how an eruption is imminent and you can tell because the bison and elk are fleeing from the park in terror, and also because the evil US government is evacuating the place and herding everyone into FEMA camps.  Well, we saw lots of people who weren't being held prisoner in FEMA camps, not to mention hundreds of bison, and I can say first-hand that the bison showed no evidence of fleeing in terror.  Most of them were simply moseying about in terror, or even snoozing in terror.

A bison, standing around munching on grass in terror

It did occur to me, though, that these might be suicidal bison, who realized that the volcano was going to blow and decided to stick around because they were depressed and wanted to end it all.  And in fact, "Meh, fuck it" seemed to be a common attitude amongst the wildlife we saw.

Which is a good thing, because otherwise the main cause of death in Yellowstone wouldn't be people getting vaporized by a volcanic eruption, but tourists being killed in messy ways because of sheer stupidity.  I have never seen so many people who evidently do not understand that "hot spring" means "so hot that it will boil your skin off," and "wild animal" means "animal that could easily kill you if it wanted to."  A former student of mine, who has worked in the national parks, told me that just a few weeks ago, a guy tried to put his son on the back of an elk so that his wife could take a photograph, and elk bucked and kicked the father in the head.

And killed him.

We didn't see anyone get killed in Yellowstone, but it wasn't for want of trying.  We saw one woman who was jumping up and down in front of a bison, waving her arms and shouting, "Hello, bison!  Hello, pretty bison!" so that it would turn its head for a picture with her.  When it refused to cooperate, she laughed and said, "Bye-bye, pretty bison!" and scampered off.  But the worst was when we saw a bear by the side of the road...

... a grizzly bear.

Okay, I took a picture of it, but using my zoom, and from the safety of my car.  But there were dozens of people who got out of their cars.  Despite the fact that this is clearly the most dangerous animal in the park, and is unpredictable.  And huge.  Which is why you're supposed to carry a whistle and pepper spray with you whenever you hike in the area.

You do know how to tell the different kinds of bear scat apart, right?  Black bears eat a lot of fruit, so black bear poop contains seeds and stems.  Brown bear poop often contains fish bones.  Grizzly bear poop, on the other hand, contains whistles and smells like pepper.

But that didn't stop people from acting like complete raving morons, running up to the wild animals and stepping on unstable ground over boiling hot lakes, despite the multitude of signs and warnings that were everywhere.  And I'm sure that if something bad had happened, the last thing that would have gone through these tourists' minds before being mauled and/or cooked to death would have been, "Why didn't someone warn me of the danger?"

But despite all that, the trip was amazing, and I highly recommend it to any of you who like to travel.  Traveling is, I think, the most eye-opening experience out there, and the natural world is full of beautiful, stunning, awe-inspiring places to visit.

And lots of really incredible ducks.

Accretion, eruption, and paranoia

Astrophysicists talk about the process of accretion, where microscopic particles of dust and ice stick together (largely through electrostatic attraction), leading to the formation of disks of matter around the parent star than can eventually form planets.  As the clumps of dust get larger, so does their gravitational attraction to nearby clumps -- so they grow, and grow, and grow.

Conspiracy theories also grow by accretion.

One person notices one thing -- very likely something natural, accidental, minor, insignificant -- and points it out.  Others begin to notice other, similar phenomena, and stick those to the original observation, whether or not there is any real connection.  And as the number of accreted ideas grows, so does the likelihood of attracting other ideas, and soon you have a full-blown gas giant of craziness.

It seems to be, for example, how the whole nonsense about "chemtrails" started.  A reporter for KSLA News (Shreveport, Louisiana) in 2007 was investigating a report of "an unusually persistent jet contrail," and found that a man in the area had "collected dew in bowls" after he saw the contrail.  The station had the water in the bowls analyzed, and reported that it contained 6.8 parts per million of the heavy metal barium -- dangerously high concentrations.  The problem is, the reporter got the concentration wrong by a factor of a hundred -- it was 68 parts per billion, which is right in the normal range for water from natural sources (especially water collected in a glazed ceramic bowl, because ceramic glazes often contain barium as a flux).  But the error was overlooked, or (worse) explained away post hoc as a government coverup.  The barium was at dangerous concentrations, people said.  And it came from the contrail.  Which might contain all sorts of other things that they're not telling you about.

And thus were "chemtrails" born.

It seems like in the last couple of months, we're seeing the birth of a new conspiracy theory, as if we needed another one.  Back in 2011, I started seeing stories about the Yellowstone Supervolcano, and how we were "overdue for an eruption" (implying that volcanoes operate on some kind of timetable).  At first, it was just in dubiously reliable places like LiveScience, but eventually other, better sources got involved, probably as a reaction to people demanding information on what seemed like a dire threat.  No, the geologists said, there's no cause for worry.  There's no indication that the caldera is going to erupt any time soon.  Yes, the place is geologically active, venting steam and gases, but there is no particular reason to be alarmed, because volcanoes do that.

Then, last month, we had people who panicked when they saw a video clip of bison running about, and became convinced that the bison had sensed an eruption coming and were "fleeing the park in terror."  And once again, we had to speak soothingly to the panicked individuals, reassuring them that bison are prone to roaming about even when not prompted to do so by a volcano (cf. the lyrics to "Home on the Range," wherein the singer wishes for "a home where the buffalo roam," despite the fact that such a home would probably face animal dander issues on a scale even we dog owners can't begin to imagine).

[image courtesy of photographer Daniel Mayer and the Wikimedia Commons]

But the accretion wasn't done yet.  The bison were too running from the volcano, people said.  So were the elk.  And then the real crazies got involved, and said that the government was already beginning to evacuate people from a wide region around Yellowstone, and relocating them to FEMA camps where they are cut off from communicating with anyone.  And when there was an explosion and fire at a gas processing plant in Opal, Wyoming two weeks ago, 150 miles from Yellowstone, and the whole town was evacuated, the conspiracy theorists went nuts.  This is it, they said.  It's starting.  The government is getting people out, because they know the whole freakin' place is going to explode.

Never mind the fact that the residents of Opal were all allowed back two days later, once the fire was under control.  Facts never seem to matter much, with this crowd.

So once again, the scientists are trying to pour oil on the waters.  An article in Wired yesterday describes recent research by an actual geologist (i.e. not just some crank with a videocamera) that has shown that the magma beneath the Yellowstone Caldera is mostly a semisolid, and is far below the threshold of 40% liquefaction that most volcanologists think is necessary for an eruption.  And we're not talking about some hand-waving layperson's "the volcano is overdue for an eruption" foolishness; this is a peer-reviewed technical study that merited publication in the prestigious journal Geophysical Research Letters.  And about the conspiracy theorists, the article in Wired minces no words at all:

As usual, people are trying to rabble rouse when it comes to the Yellowstone Caldera. All these rumors that the government is trying to hide evidence of an impending eruption are pure fantasy, but that doesn’t stop some people from acting out their delusions to the detriment of others who fall prey to this misinformation. Yes, the Yellowstone Caldera is a massive volcano that has the potential to produce huge eruptions, but no, there are no indications right now that any sort of eruption will happen any time soon — and I’d be surprised if we see an eruption in our lifetime (just like any volcano that hasn’t had a confirmed eruption in the last ~70,000 years).

Of course, this will probably turn out to be shouting into a vacuum, as arguing with conspiracy theorists usually turns out to be.  Witness the fact that despite all of the research and debunking of chemtrails, the whole thing still has a considerable cadre of true believers, who claim that anyone who argues to the contrary is a blind fool at best and an evil shill at worst.

So look for more Yellowstone paranoia to be zinging about the interwebz over the next few weeks.  As for me, I'm grabbing the fleeing bison by the horns and going to Yellowstone in July.  We'll see if there's anything to all the hype.  I'm hoping to do some sightseeing and birdwatching and hiking, and simultaneously hoping not to be killed in a massive volcanic eruption or shot by a FEMA operative or hustled away into some godforsaken refugee camp.

Always the optimist, that's me.

Fear tactics and fleeing bison

Is there some facet of human personality that craves disaster?

I ask this question because of a story sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia called, "Reports of Bison 'Fleeing' Yellowstone Amid Fears Quake Could Trigger Eruption of Park's Supervolcano."  In it, we read a lot of fairly terrifying stuff about the supervolcano that lies beneath the park, and what havoc it could cause if it erupted:

Yellowstone National Park sits atop the Yellowstone Caldera, the crater of a massive supervolcano. The park attracts millions of visitors each year to its famous geysers and hot springs, powered by the hot lava below. 

In recent years, scientists discovered the caldera is 48 kilometres wide — far larger than previously thought... 

The Yellowstone super volcano has had three cataclysmic eruptions — 2 million, 1.3 million and 640,000 years ago, creating a series of ‘nesting’ calderas, say scientists.
The eruption 2 million years ago was the most catastrophic, covering half of North America with ash and wiping out prehistoric animals, reports the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory... 

The inevitable next ‘big one’ will wipe out the surroundings for hundreds of kilometres, covering the US and Canada in ash, [University of Oregon geologist Ilya Bindeman] told EarthSky. It would devastate agriculture and cause global cooling for a decade, he says. 

A volcanic eruption of that size “hasn’t happened in modern civilisation,” he said.

All of which is true, of course.  And we're even told at the end, seemingly as an afterthought, that scientists are pretty sure that an eruption isn't imminent and that we'll have plenty of warning before one occurs (not that we'll be able to do much to stop it).

But before getting that reassurance, we're shown a video clip of some bison "fleeing for their lives" and told that the "animals may be leaving the park because they sense an impending catastrophic volcanic eruption triggered by recent earthquakes."

[image courtesy of photographer Jack Dykinga and the Wikimedia Commons]

Well, I looked at the video, and the first thing I noticed was that the bison didn't seem particularly alarmed.  I didn't get the "fleeing for their lives" vibe from them.  They were more moseying for their lives, or possibly even ambling for their lives.

But second, what the hell is the writer of the article trying to do by telling us in one breath that the bison were running away because the volcano is going to erupt, and in the next saying that scientists don't think it's going to erupt?  I've seen bison, and I know a good many scientists, and I think I can say without fear of contradiction that most scientists are smarter than your average bison.

But we don't have a very good track record of listening to scientists, do we?  I'm honestly not surprised that the American citizenry would discount what a scientist is saying in favor of prognostications by a large ungulate, given our general approach on evolution, climate change, and vaccination.

Now, of course I know why the media loves stories like this; it gets people to click the links and read the articles.  But I'm more mystified why the general public likes disaster stories.  Since I was sent the link, I've seen the story posted three times on Facebook and twice on Twitter.  Why are people so eager to spread around a bogus story (and I'm convinced that anyone that has more brains than a bowl of chowder could tell that it was bogus just by reading all the way to the end and seeing the disclaimer about scientists doubting that we were going to see an eruption soon)?

So something must be appealing to people about "We're All Gonna Die" stories, but I'm damned if I see what it is.  At least the other idiotic stories that you see floating around -- stories of the "Miley Cyrus Pregnant With Bigfoot's Love Chid" type -- don't leave you with the impression that civilization is about to end.

Although now that I think of it, I can understand how you might pray for the apocalypse after seeing the Miley Cyrus "twerking" video.  I know I did.  So maybe there's some justification after all.

When the volcano blows

The latest from the "News That Isn't Actually News" department is:  We are all going to be killed in a massive eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano!  It could happen tomorrow!  Giant ash clouds!  Searing bursts of gas vaporizing the entire state of Wyoming!  We should prepare for the worst!  Or at least run about, making flailing arm gestures, writing overhyped articles and webpages, and overusing exclamation points!

For some reason, recently this non-story seems to be all over the news.  I've seen more than one reference to this geologic hotspot just in the last couple of days, usually accompanied by photos of the geysers and hot springs, or (in one case) by a photo of Yellowstone Lake, captioned, "It SEEMS peaceful... but hidden beneath its pristine beauty is a RED HOT MAGMA CHAMBER JUST WAITING TO BLOW."

Well, yeah, okay, technically I have to admit that they're correct.  The Yellowstone Supervolcano is a pretty scary place.  The last time it erupted, about 640,000 years ago, it produced about two thousand times the volume of ash that Mt. St. Helens did.  It is reasonable to find the prospect of this happening again terrifying.  The direct damage from the blast, the secondary damage from the ash cloud, and the climate changes which would ensue, would be devastation on a level humanity has never seen before.  (The eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, which killed 71,000 people directly and led to the "Year Without a Summer," in which there were hard freezes in July across Europe and North America, would be a mere firecracker by comparison.)

However, the hysterical tone of some of these articles, which imply that we're "overdue for an eruption" of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, is completely unwarranted.  For example, one source I read stated that the ground was rising over the magma chamber at "a rate of three inches a year," and "new geysers were forming," and that this was indicative that an eruption was imminent.  This is ridiculous, as this source conveniently omitted mention of the fact that some areas over the magma chamber are actually subsiding; and in any volcanically active area, new geysers form frequently, and others cease to flow, and this isn't indicative of anything other than the area is experiencing movement of magma -- which we already knew, because that's what "volcanically active" means.

The whole idea of "overdue for an eruption" implies that volcanoes erupt on some kind of schedule, which is nonsense.  The three known eruptions of the Yellowstone Supervolcano occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago -- gaps of 800,000 and 660,000 years, respectively.  Even presuming that there was some kind of pattern, we're still 20,000 years shy of the previous gap, and 160,000 years shy of the longer one.  But, of course, a headline that says, "Massive Volcano Could Erupt Now or 160,000 Years From Now!" doesn't make people read any further.

And I'm not even going to go into the websites that claim that the Yellowstone Supervolcano is connected to (1) the 2012 lunacy, (2) the prophecies from Revelations, (3) conspiracy theories, or (4) all of the above.  If you Google "Yellowstone Supervolcano" you can find plenty of those sites for yourselves, but if you read them you have to promise me you'll try your best not to find them plausible.

In any case, if you have a vacation planned to Yellowstone, it's probably a bit premature to cancel it.  With apologies to Jimmy Buffett, I don't know where I'm-a-gonna go when the volcano blows, because chances are I'll be dead and gone before anyone has to worry about it.