Bobby. wrote on May 15^th, 2011 at 3:06pm:



^^ That link is complete nonsense. Humans emit far more CO2 than volcanoes.

Which produces more CO2, volcanic or human activity?

People who are fortunate enough to live in or visit Hawai`i, or even those who have seen the right television documentaries know that the majestic presence of erupting volcanoes attests to their raw power.

Don't try this trick at home, but if we took Kilauea (our own backyard volcano) and collected the lava that it erupted, just during the time it took you to read this sentence, there would be enough material to fill the gas tanks of about 1,000 Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs.) And though Kilauea is a medium-to-small-sized volcano, it has been discharging lava nearly continuously at this rate for the past 24 years.

Demonstrations like this one, or catastrophic eruptions like those of Mount St. Helens or Mount Pinatubo, understandably cause people to sometimes think that human-caused effects on the biosphere are small compared to volcanic ones. But, as the saying goes, "it ain't necessarily so."

At HVO, for instance, we are often asked about the influence of volcanic gas emissions on the atmosphere and whether these emissions dwarf those from human activity. Anyone who has stood downwind of Kilauea's vents, and sometimes even people who live in Honolulu, 250 miles away, know first-hand how these emissions can affect air quality and life on the regional scale. It's a fact that Kilauea has been releasing more than twice the amount of noxious sulfur dioxide gas (SO2) as the single dirtiest power plant on the U.S. mainland.

So it's also understandable that, with the emerging report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IGCC), some people want to understand how volcanoes might factor into the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations-specifically carbon dioxide (CO2)-that is being reported worldwide. The changes in global CO2 concentration during the past 600,000 years have mimicked the changes in global temperature. And, after all, volcanoes are awesome natural forces that release lots of carbon dioxide (CO2) right? Could volcanoes be a significant global-warming villain?

For numerous reasons, volcanologists have been interested in CO2 release from volcanoes for years and have been working to improve estimates on the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere and oceans by volcanic processes.

Carbon dioxide is released when magma rises from the depths of the Earth on its way to the surface. Our studies here at Kilauea show that the eruption discharges between 8,000 and 30,000 metric tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each day. Actively erupting volcanoes release much more CO2 than sleeping ones do.

Gas studies at volcanoes worldwide have helped volcanologists tally up a global volcanic CO2 budget in the same way that nations around the globe have cooperated to determine how much CO2 is released by human activity through the burning of fossil fuels. Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually.

This seems like a huge amount of CO2, but a visit to the U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) website (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/) helps anyone armed with a handheld calculator and a high school chemistry text put the volcanic CO2 tally into perspective. Because while 200 million tonnes of CO2 is large, the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, not only does volcanic CO2 not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value.

A short time ago (geologically speaking) the question "Which produces more CO2, volcanic or human activity?" would have been answered differently. Volcanoes would have tipped the scale. Now, human presence, activity, and the resultant production of CO2, through the burning of fossil fuels, have all climbed at an ever-increasing rate. On the other hand, looking back through the comparatively short duration of human history, volcanic activity has, with a few notable disturbances, remained relatively steady.

Volcanoes are still awesome, even though they don't produce CO2 at a rate that swamps the human signature, contributing to global warming. In fact, spectacular eruptions like that of Mount Pinatubo are demonstrated to contribute to global cooling through the injection of solar energy reflecting ash and other small particles.

There is now agreement at the top government level of the Earth's most prolific fossil fuel CO2 producer-the United States-that we need to reduce our dependence on oil in order to confront the challenge of global warming. As we work toward that goal, let's look forward to the day when volcanologists will give a different answer to the question "Which produces more CO2, volcanic or human activity?"

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average carbon dioxide emission rate from coal-fired power generation in the United States is 1.02 metric tons per megawatt-hour. So, 1.02 metric tons of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, times 1,000 megawatts, times 24 hours per day, times 365 days per year, equals 8,935,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Thus, one of these submarine hot springs allegedly generates “far more” than 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year — or far more than three times the annual baseline output of Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii! Just 12 of these hot springs would exceed carbon dioxide emission rate estimates for the entire 65,000-kilometer-long mid-ocean ridge system.

To scale up volcanic carbon dioxide output to the current anthropogenic level would require adding thousands of volcanoes to the 50 to 60 normally active volcanoes of the subaerial landscape and more than a hundred additional mid-ocean ridge systems to the seafloor.

You just don't get it.....the link does NOT claim that volcanoes emit more Co2 than humans....

It says that one big eruption can produce more Co2 than people have managed to cut from their 'Footprint'...

Iceland volcano gives warming world chance to debunk climate sceptic myths

Along with the ash and lava, there have been many interesting asides tossed into the air for our consideration by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. We have noticed just how reliant our globalised systems are on air travel. We have been reminded of nature's brute force and primordial beauty. And we have been intrigued by what a wonderfully complex language Icelandic appears to be – to Anglo-Saxon ears, at least.

But one opportunity the volcano has gifted us in particular is the chance to put to bed once and for all that barrel-aged climate sceptic canard which maintains that volcanoes emit far more carbon dioxide than anthropogenic sources. It's always been a favourite, but has been pushed even further up the charts of popularity in recent months by the repeated claims of Ian Plimer, the Australian mining geologist who wrote the climate sceptic bible Heaven and Earth last year.

Here, for example, is what Plimer wrote on Australia's ABC Network website last August:

   The atmosphere contains only 0.001 per cent of all carbon at the surface of the Earth and far greater quantities are present in the lower crust and mantle of the Earth. Human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere must be taken into perspective. Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day.

John Cook of the increasingly popular Skeptical Science website currently lists the "volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans" viewpoint as number 54 on his ever-growing list - 107, to date - of debunked sceptic arguments.

It was also a point picked up by my colleague James Randerson when he interviewed Plimer last December. In Heaven and Earth, Plimer says: "Volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world's cars and industries combined." Randerson challenged Plimer on this point, stating that the US Geological Survey (USGS) states: "Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes."

Plimer responded by saying that this does not account for undersea eruptions. However, when Randerson checked this point with USGS volcanologist Dr Terrence Gerlach, he received this reply:

   I can confirm to you that the "130 times" figure on the USGS website is an estimate that includes all volcanoes – submarine as well as subaerial ... Geoscientists have two methods for estimating the CO2 output of the mid-oceanic ridges. There were estimates for the CO2 output of the mid-oceanic ridges before there were estimates for the global output of subaerial volcanoes.

Despite having seemingly lanced this festering boil for good, the focus on Eyjafjallajokull over the past week has allowed this question to bubble back up to the forefront of people's minds. It was enough to trigger the Paris-based AFP news agency to seek some answers:

   Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano is emitting between 150,000 and 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per day, a figure placing it in the same emissions league as a small-to-medium European economy, experts said on Monday.

   Assuming the composition of gas to be the same as in an earlier eruption on an adjacent volcano, "the CO2 flux of Eyjafjoell would be 150,000 tonnes per day," Colin Macpherson, an Earth scientist at Britain's University of Durham, said in an email.

   Patrick Allard of the Paris Institute for Global Physics (IPGP) gave what he described as a "top-range" estimate of 300,000 tonnes per day.

   Both insisted that these were only approximate estimates.

   Extrapolated over a year, the emissions would place the volcano 47th to 75th in the world table of emitters on a country-by-country basis, according to a database at the World Resources Institute (WRI), which tracks environment and sustainable development.

   A 47th ranking would place it above Austria, Belarus, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, Bulgaria, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland, according to this list, which relates to 2005.

   Experts stressed that the volcano contributed just a tiny amount – less than a third of one percentage point – of global emissions of greenhouse gases.

So, please, can we now put this hoary old chestnut to bed?

One extra volcano-related aside: with European carbon market prices fluctuating around the €14 per tonne mark at present, this would mean that Eyjafjallajokull would theoretically be liable to a maximum daily bill of €4.2m if it were a fully fledged, carbon-trading nation or corporation. But who would dare get close enough to present it with an invoice?

muso wrote on May 19^th, 2011 at 3:14pm:


I don't know what the sp@m  website is.
What they are saying seems to be backed up on many other sites.

The climate on Mars used to be warmer when there was an atmosphere.
It was lack of volcanic activity that caused it to cool because
the CO2 dissipated into space & wasn't replaced.
Muso - I am surprised you didn't know this as you claim
to be a member of the Mars society.

dust is what causes most warming on Mars

The scale of the effect we have on the planet is yet to sink in
Mike Sandiford
May 23, 2011
Comments 142
Surely it is inconceivable that human activity could rival the forces of nature. We are such insignificant creatures that it seems breathtakingly arrogant to believe our impact on the immense grandeur of our planet could be anything but minuscule.

That's what some prominent climate sceptics indignantly assert. Their incredulity may be understandable, but they are just plain wrong. Our species is now a geophysical agent of unprecedented power, albeit with unsustainable growth expectations.

Indeed, our impact is already so profound that my colleagues are seriously debating whether to christen this period ''the Anthropocene'' - a geological epoch dominated by the global effects of our own species.

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This is a timely reminder that humanity is not only altering the composition and dynamics of the atmosphere and the oceans but leaving its mark on the planet in many other ways.

Rivers and glaciers, for example, have moved about 10 billion tonnes of sediment from mountain to sea each year on average, over geological time. Each year humans mine about 7 billion tonnes of coal and 2.3 billion tonnes of iron ore. We shift about the same amount again of overburden to access these resources, along with construction aggregate and other excavations. In short, we are now one of the main agents shaping the earth's surface.

In Australia, natural erosion removes between 50 and 100 million tonnes each year. Yet one proposed mining development alone plans to extract about 14 billion tonnes of rock over a 40-year period, with peak extraction rates of about 400 million tonnes per year.

Our cities, transport routes, farms, forests and grazing activities have also altered the surface of more than half of all habitable ice-free lands. So rapidly are we extinguishing other species that future geologists will be able to discern this sudden mass disappearance from the fossil record - a mass extinction event seen only five times previously.

But it is in our energy use that the scale of our activity becomes truly mind-boggling.

Anyone who has seen film of a volcano erupt or those scenes of devastation from the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami can intuitively appreciate the immense energy involved in the natural processes that shape our planet as it vents heat stored deep within its interior.

The rate at which heat is released from the earth - a measure of its natural ''metabolic'' rate - is about 44,000 billion watts, and reflects the average rate of energy used in moving all the continents, making all the mountains, the earthquakes and the volcanoes, in a process we call plate tectonics.

During the 20th century, it is estimated that a touch under 1000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide was emitted from the burning of fossil fuels and cement production. Now we are adding about 30 billion tonnes a year and the rate of increase in carbon dioxide concentrations is doubling about every 30 years.

To generate all that CO2 we annually consume more than 13 billion tonnes of coal, oil and natural gas as part of a global energy system that operates at a rate of some 16,000 billion watts. The human consumption rate is already more than one-third of the earth's natural heat-loss rate.

And with our energy use doubling every 34 years, we are on course to surpass the energy released by plate tectonics by about 2060.

To put those figures in a more sober context, we now consume energy at a rate equivalent to detonating one Hiroshima bomb (60,000 billion joules) about every four seconds and are on a trajectory towards one Hiroshima bomb every second before the end of the century.

The ocean has already soaked up so much carbon dioxide that its acidity has increased by 25 per cent since pre-industrial times and, according to recent measurements, is now absorbing heat at a rate of about 300,000 billion watts. When my students measure the temperature in boreholes across Australia, they invariably see that as much heat is now going into the upper 30 to 50 metres of the earth's crust as is trying to get out - a result entirely consistent with the surface temperature rises measured by climate scientists.

The world's human population has grown so much and so fast - trebling in one century and still soaring by more than 70 million a year - that it is perhaps not surprising that the vast scale of our combined environmental impacts is yet to sink in.

Geologists don't readily tinker with their precious timescale - adding a new epoch is akin to adding a new verse to the Lord's Prayer. So proposing one named after us indicates that the international geological community fully understands the reality of the unprecedented impact we are having on our planet.

Mike Sandiford is professor of geology and director of the Melbourne Energy Institute, University of Melbourne



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