Did you read the article? These are not the off the deep end TEOTWAEKI types, rather centered establishment geologists of good name.
(in part)
PROF. ROBERT CHRISTIANSEN (US Geological Survey)
PROF. ROBERT SMITH (University of Utah)
PROF. BILL BONNICHSEN (Idaho Geological Survey)
PROF. MICHAEL RAMPINO (New York University)
bbc.co.uk
of the
"where it is possible to have further volcanic activity",
It may well be impossible, but, I like this part of the exchange:
"ROBERT SMITH: The idea was to survey their elevations and to compare the elevations in the mid-70s to what they were in 1923 and the type of thing that we did is to make recordings at a precision level of, of a few millimetres.
NARRATOR: The two sets of figures should have been similar, but as the survey team moved across the Park, they noticed something unexpected: the ground seemed to be heaving upwards.
ROBERT SMITH: The surveyor said to me there's something wrong and he said it's not me, it's got to be something else, so we went through all the measurements again trying to be very careful and the conclusion kind of hit me in the face and said this caldera has uplifted at that time 740 millimetres in the middle of the caldera.
NARRATOR: As the measuring continued, an explanation for the submerged trees began to emerge. The ground beneath the north of Yellowstone was bulging up, tilting the rest of the Park downwards. This was tipping out the sound end of the lake inundating the shoreside trees with water. The vulcanologist realised only one thing could make the Earth heave in this way: a vast living magma chamber. The Yellowstone supervolcano was alive and if the calculations of the cycle were correct, the next eruption was already overdue.
ROBERT CHRISTIANSEN: Well this gave us a real shiver of nervousness if you will about the fact that we have been through this 600,000 year cycle and that the last eruption was about 600,000 years ago.
ROBERT SMITH: I felt like telling people, that is we basically have on our hands a giant.
NARRATOR: The scientists had found the largest single active volcanic system yet discovered. There were many things they needed to find out. How big was the magma chamber deep underground, how widespread would the effects of an eruption be and crucially, when would it happen? To answer any of these questions vulcanologists knew they first had to understand Yellowstone's mysterious magma chamber.
ROBERT SMITH: It's incredibly important to understand what's happening inside of the magma chamber because that pressure and that heat, the fluid is what's triggering the final eruption. It's like understanding the primer in a bullet."
I'm with you, I'm not going to worry, even though my closer proximity than yours. I sure value having the information, don't you?
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