Experts say that climate change is the worst threat we face, except for the worse ones.
Scientists warn over super-volcano threat
Experts at the European Science Foundation said volcanoes – especially super-volcanoes like the one at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, which has a caldera measuring 34 by 45 miles (55 by 72 km) – pose more threat to Earth and the survival of humans than asteroids, earthquakes, nuclear war and global warming.
What could be worse than 1.5 degrees of warming?
[After] … a major eruption, the team said, millions of people would die and earth’s atmosphere would be poisoned with ash and other toxins “beyond the imagination of anything man’s activity and global warming could do over 1,000 years.
We are talking about an “extinction-level event”:
Experts at the European Science Foundation said volcanoes – especially super-volcanoes like the one at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, which has a caldera measuring 34 by 45 miles (55 by 72 km) – pose more threat to Earth and the survival of humans than asteroids, earthquakes, nuclear war and global warming.
But the UN and Obama will save us right?
There are few real contingency plans in place to deal with the ticking time bomb, which they conclude is likely to go off within the next 80 years.
40,000 people met in Paris last month to solve the greatest threat to Life On Earth.
The chance of such as eruption happening at one of the major volcanoes within 80 years is put at five to ten per cent by the experts.
Looks like there’s a 90% consensus that we don’t have to do anything?
The report makes for interesting reading (perfect for disaster-nerds, and catastrophe-spotters). This is not just about supervolcanoes, but asteroids, Spanish flu, and Ebola too.
X-events differ in terms of the disasters they
cause. Hempsell (2004a) introduced three categories:
- Extinction Level Events are so devastating that
more than a quarter of all life on Earth is killed
and major species extinction takes place.- Global Catastrophes are events in which more
than a quarter of the world’s human population
dies and that place civilisation at serious risk.- • Global Disasters are global scale events in which
a few percent of the population dies.
European Science Foundation’s report “Extreme Geo-hazards: Reducing the Disaster Risk and Increasing Resilience.”
h/t Climate Depot