by StarmanSkye » Sun Dec 25, 2005 7:55 am
Rothbardian:<br><br>The cited stats for CO2 viz. Mt. St. Helen's eruption MIGHT have been slightly confusing, but it was easy to find clarification reiterating the point that volcansim accounts for a tiny percentage of the carbon being pumped into the earth's atmosphere every year. Long, detailed histories of the concentrations of gasses in the earth's atmospheric have been assembled through ice-core sampling -- a basic research fact which awareness and acknowledgement of is notably absent in your comments. How else to account for your silly Q:, "Since those guys weren't there over the course of millennia...what if in fact, hundreds of volcanoes have spewed air pollution far BEYOND the bounds of politically correct levels, the way Mount St. Helens so impudently did?"<br><br>Methinks you're so invested in propagating your 'Global Warming is a scam' thesis that you ignore data that contradicts it. I found the Canadian climate website to present a very clear understanding, with causes shown, for the net carbon increase noted in the earth's atmosphere -- with no slippery-slope or deceptive arguments being used.<br><br>To clarify:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/grp6/question1375.html">volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/fr...n1375.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>How much CO2 did Mount St Helens' eruption in 1980 release into our atmosphere? Can you give me some idea of how much CO2 volcanoes add to the atmosphere generally? <br> Kathy <br>------------------------------------------------------------<br>Dear Kathy, <br><br>I don't have an exact number. At Mount St Helens the maximum measured emission rate was 2.2X10^7 kg per day. The total amount of gas released during non-eruptive periods from the beginning of July to the end of October was 9.1X10^8 kg . I do not have an estimate for the volume of CO2 released during the Plinian eruptions. As a long-term average, volcanism produces about 5X10^11 kg of CO2 per year; that production, along with oceanic and terrestrial biomass cycling maintained a carbon dioxide reservoir in the atmosphere of about 2.2X10^15 kg. Current fossil fuel and land use practices now introduce about a (net) 17.6X10^12 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere and has resulted in a progressively increasing atmospheric reservoir of 2.69X10^15 kg of CO2. Hence, volcanism produces about 3% of the total CO2 with the other 97% coming from man-made sources. For more detail, see Morse and Mackenzie, 1990, Geochemistry of Sedimentary Carbonates. <br>Scott Rowland, University of Hawaii Steve Mattox, University of North Dakota <br><br>Source of Information:<br>Harris, D.M., Sato, M., Casadevall, T.J., Rose, Jr., W.I., and Bornhorst, T.J., 1981, Emission rates of CO2 from plume measurements, in Lipman, P.W., and Mullineaux, D.R., (eds.), The 1980 eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1250, p. 3-15. <br><br>****<br>Further: You cite Mt. St. Helens as if it were an atypical eruption with a major impact on global climate and for release of greenhouse gases, even acussing the sources in the first website cited as being evasive and vague, referring to 'the routine sputtering and spluttering of volcanoes around the world annually,' and not taking into account the 'once or twice a century mega volcano' event of Mt. St. Helens 1980 eruption. But Mt. St. Helens was NOT a once or twice a century volcano -- as spectacular as it was, there are eruptions of equal or greater global impact, especially with greater CO2 releases, once or twice a decade -- specifically note that El Chichon in Mexico erupted in April of 1982, and Mount Pinatubo went off in the Philippines during June, 1991.<br><br>"Of these two volcanic events, Mount Pinatubo had a greater effect on the Earth's climate and ejected about 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere (Figure 7y-6). Researchers believe that the Pinatubo eruption was primarily responsible for the 0.8 degree Celsius drop in global average air temperature in 1992. The global climatic effects of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo are believed to have peaked in late 1993. Satellite data confirmed the connection between the Mount Pinatubo eruption and the global temperature decrease in 1992 and 1993. The satellite data indicated that the sulfur dioxide plume from the eruption caused a several percent increase in the amount of sunlight reflected by the Earth's atmosphere back to space causing the surface of the planet to cool."<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7y.html">www.physicalgeography.net...ls/7y.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>By comparison, "Explosive volcanic eruptions have been shown to have a short-term cooling effect on the atmosphere if they eject large quantities of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. This image shows the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980 which had a local effect on climate because of ash reducing the reception of solar radiation on the Earth's surface. Mount St. Helens had very minimal global effect on the climate because the eruption occurred at an oblique angle putting little sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. (Source: U.S. Geological Survey. Photo by Austin Post. Same url as above.)<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/images/mtsthelensblast.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>****<br>All the data I've seen so far suggests and confirms that from the early 1700s, carbon dioxide has increased from 280 parts per million to 360 parts per million in 1990. This increase can't be accounted for by 'natural' means and normal geological processes, including volcanism, but strongly correlates with man-made activities related to farming, deforestation, and burning of fossil fuels. There MAY be a serious double-edge sword mechanism here in that a global rise in temperature will liberate additional amounts of CO2 now in-solution in the earth's oceans -- thereby greatly increasing the rate of warming beyond current forecasts.<br><br>Your misstatements, ie. re: that Mt. St. Helens eruption 'duplicated' the pollution of the entire modern era -- which is simply not true and NOWHERE even close -- show you haven't rigorously investigated this topic to know the most basic facts, necessary at the very least to prevent your loss of credibility before your thesis even gets off the ground.<br><br>Perhaps your point is valid -- but you're going to have to put more research and effort into it to make a compelling case for it. <br><br>Personally, I think the energy would be better spent informing the slumbering American public about the duplicious, exploitive (and in many cases, criminal) policies of the PTB that deliberately created vast poverty and economic indenture and civil strife and political instability in the third world in order to exploit labour and resources, and which has had immense consequences for the issues of social justice, human rights, public health and environmental degradation. It's hardly an accident that the leading holdouts refusing to accept the evidence for global warming are apologists for American Empire. The same could be said for peak oil -- whether real or artificially created.<br><br>Starman <p></p><i></i>