The following is an article I saved a while ago. The interesting thing is the evidence of a human population bottleneck coinciding with the supervolcano eruption at Toba, Idonesia, 74,000 years ago. The human race was reduced to 5,000 to 10,000 total.
mtDNA & the Threat to the Human Race at Yellowstone?
The whole of the Yellowstone National Park could be about to erupt as a super-volcano that would destroy all life in North America. There would be a short delay before resulting massive global climate changes reduced all human life on this planet to levels threatening extinction, according to a BBC Science Documentary broadcast February 3rd, 2000.
For decades, Geologists and Vulcanologists have been studying the phenomena known as Super-Volcanoes and have discovered some alarming facts. These massive volcanic eruptions, bigger than anything in human memory, have caused global catastrophes in the distant past. The next one is overdue and it could be that Yellowstone National Park is about to erupt as an E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event).
Volcanic eruptions are graded on a Volcanic Explosivity Index. Mount St.Helens, for example, was graded at VEI ·5. The range starts at zero with each increment ten times more powerful than the previous. If we represent the violence of the Mt. St. Helens eruption as being about the size of Rubic Cube, a ·8 would be represented by a cube with approximately 1.5 meters edges.
In ordinary volcanoes, magma rises to the surface, and erupts in various ways, sometimes slowly, sometimes relatively violently, with most forming classic dome or cone shapes. In super-volcanoes, however, the magma accumulates in a large pool tens of kilometres below the surface. Gradual expansion of this pool of molten rock, and increased viscosity, causes it to trap gasses that would otherwise find their way to the surface. Over thousands of years, enormous pressures mount, causing the surface to bulge. Eventually a massive geological fracture occurs, allowing the magma to the surface at explosive rates. As the chamber rapidly empties, the surface geology collapses, forming a crater known as a caldera. The resultant explosion, however, together with the release of massive quantities of toxic gasses and ash into the atmosphere, on a scale that makes the Mt. St. Helens eruption look like a hiccup, would have devastating consequences for all life on Earth.
The caldera chamber below Yellowstone is very nearly as big as the national park itself, some 100 x 30 kilometres. More alarming is the geological record that it has been erupting at regular intervals of about 600,000 years.
The last was 600,000 years ago, and the next one is overdue.
According to the BBC Horizon TV Documentary broadcast on Feb 3rd 2000, Super Volcano sites around the world are very rare, but some certainly have yet to be discovered.
The most recent caldera-forming eruption occurred in the Greek Islands circa 3,500 years ago, but was relatively small. A much larger eruption, possibly VEI 8, occurred in the Pacific around 74,000 years ago at Toba, Indonesia.
What worried scientists however was not the fact that they knew such an eruption would have catastrophic effects, it was their inability to gauge precisely how severe those effects would be. Calculating the tonages of volcanic ash and sulphur dioxide thrown into the atmosphere from a VEI. ·8 eruption enabled them to postulate: 1) Initial continent-wide destruction of most life around the centre of the eruption 2) Suspension of the ash and gasses in the atmosphere causing a global cooling of up to 5 degrees mean average - in effect, a volcanic winter lasting for years that could bring human life on Earth to the brink of extinction.
What they were not able to do was "observe" such an eruption. Their theories would remain theories unless there was corroborating evidence. And they were looking for it around the time of the Toba eruption, 74,000 years ago.
They were given a clue from a most unexpected quarter - research into human DNA.
Geneticists have been studying and decoding human DNA for some time. Some have specialised in the study of mitochondrial DNA, from which mutations passed on only by females to their offspring can be identified. The frequency, or intervals, at which these mutations occur are known to be regular. Given the size of the human population and the amount of time we are supposed to have lived on this planet, the genetic diversity should have been great. Geneticists were therefore baffled that in fact the reverse was true. We are all genetically very similar to each other, and this should not have been the case.
This could only mean one thing. Based on the mtDNA evidence, scientists have determined that we are all descended from a very small population of between 5,000 and 10,000 individuals. In effect, a population bottleneck. Calculating the number of mutations enabled geneticists to estimate when this bottleneck occurred. And the results, when the information was passed to the Vulcanologists, sent a shiver up their spines. It was around 74,000 years ago, the same time as the super volcano eruption at Toba in Indonesia.
Studies at the Yellowstone caldera show that ground levels there have risen 750mm in the past 50 years. Vulcanologists do not know when the next eruption will occur, just how powerful it will be, and without direct observation they do not know for certain whether their theories that it could cause a near extinction level event are correct. All they know is that on all evidence, such an eruption at Yellowstone is overdue.
Ends
Additionally:
[Feb 3rd, 2000, London - Press Release] The Geological Society will warn MPs of a major, largely unacknowledged natural threat to World climate this week. As part of its evidence to the House of Commons Science & Technology Inquiry [Note 2] into the Scientific Advisory System, the Society says "volcanic winter" could dwarf man-made effects. The warning comes as the BBC's science series Horizon broadcasts a programme on the subject, focusing on geologists' concerns over the supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park (USA).
The part of the Society's response dealing with volcanic winter (par. 20 et seq) says:
"Historical records reveal that anomalous weather and climatic effects (volcanic winters) have occurred for several years following a number of large volcanic eruptions. Such effects...have a significant impact on the regional, hemispheric or global scales.
"The connection between lowered temperature and volcanic eruptions is due to the effects of sulphur dioxide gas released during explosive eruptions. In sufficiently powerful eruptions, volcanic rocks and gas are lofted into the upper atmosphere where the sulphur dioxide reacts with water to form micron-sized droplets of sulphuric acid gas. These aerosol droplets have the principal effect of reflecting incoming solar radiation. Consequently, the temperature of the lower atmosphere is reduced over the period taken for the aerosol to be chemically and physically destroyed."
: Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 15:55:58 -0700
: From: "R" [email address withheld]
: Subject: EMERGENCY POSTING
: http://www.jmccanneyscience.com/
: jmccanneyscience.com
: home page
: EMERGENCY POSTING
: early morning january 8, 2004
: LATE LAST EVENING WE RECEIVED WORD THAT THERE WERE 22 MORE
: EARTH-QUAKES
: IN IRAN AND THAT COUNTRY IS ON MAXIMUM ALERT / OUR SUN AND
: SOLAR SYSTEM
: HAVE BEEN VERY ACTIVE AND YELLOWSTONE IS MORE TENUOUS AFTER 5
: MAJOR
: QUAKES IN JACKSON WYOMING THIS PAST AFTERNOON ... FROM NOW ON
: ANYONE IN
: THE AREA WITHIN 500 MILES OF YELLOWSTONE SHOULD BE PREPARED TO
: EVACUATE
: ON A MOMENTS NOTICE ... PLAN A ROUTE!!! AND KNOW WHERE YOUR
: LOVED ONES
: ARE SO THEY CAN BE EVACUATED ON SHORT NOTICE / THIS IS NOT A
: NOTICE TO
: EVACUATE BUT SIMPLY A NOTICE TO BE PREPARED / IF IT COMES TO
: THAT ...
: DRIVE AWAY FROM THE AREA TOWARDS THE FARTHEST POINT FROM
: YELLOWSTONE ...
: NO ONE CAN PREDICT IF OR WHEN YELLOWSTONE MIGHT BLOW ... JUST
: BE
: PREPARED IS ALL I AM SAYING ... THE EARTH SEEMS TO BE VERY
: UNSTABLE ...
: jim mccanney
Serving Freedom
and Liberty
