Recent Volcano Greenhouse Gases 12

[zdas04]

I've been looking for a week for an estimate of how much greenhouse gas has been put into the ecosystem by the Iceland Volcano. Anyone seen an estimate? I'm betting it is a number in excess of all the CO2 that people have put into the air since we slithered from the primordial ooze. So you wreck economies to reduce our contribution and a single fairly small volcano puts more stuff in the air the man ever has. I think Iceland should pay the world a Cap and Trade fee.

David

 

[NomLaser]

Haven't seen anything solid, nor will we, but they are saying that we cut CO2 by grounding the planes. They say that it wasn't releasing much CO2 but it was dumping tons of other gasses. I wouldn't believe any of them, tbh.

 

[rb1957]

i didn't think volcanos pushed out much CO2, but SO2 and lots of particulate ...

i predict "it's worst than previously thought ..."

but i agree with the OP ... volcano farts are more significant than anything we do ...

 

[vc66]

David-

I read it's between 150,000 and 300,000 tons of CO2 per day.

Trying to find the article.

V

 

[KENAT]

Although some of the stuff volcanoes pump out actually cause cooling so I don't' think you're onto a winner zdas.

After some previous large eruptions there was notable global cooling if I recall my history.

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[btrueblood]

Yup to Kenat. Google Mt. Pinatubo, Mt St Helens.

 

[GregLocock]

Well, according to New Scientist, who have definitely swallowed the Kool Aid and are handing it out to passer's by, volcanoes aren't a very significant source of CO2

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638

"Fossil fuels also contain less carbon-13 than carbon-12, compared with the atmosphere, because the fuels derive from plants, which preferentially take up the more common carbon-12. The ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere and ocean surface waters is steadily falling, showing that more carbon-12 is entering the atmosphere.

Finally, claims that volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities are simply not true. In the very distant past, there have been volcanic eruptions so massive that they covered vast areas in lava more than a kilometre thick and appear to have released enough CO2 to warm the planet after the initial cooling caused by the dust (see Wipeout). But even with such gigantic eruptions, most of subsequent warming may have been due to methane released when lava heated coal deposits, rather than from CO2 from the volcanoes (see also Did the North Atlantic's 'birth' warm the world?).

Measurements of CO2 levels over the past 50 years do not show any significant rises after eruptions. Total emissions from volcanoes on land are estimated to average just 0.3 Gt of CO2 each year - about a hundredth of human emissions (pdf document).

While volcanic emissions are negligible in the short term, over tens of millions of years they do release massive quantities of CO2. But they are balanced by the loss of carbon in ocean sediments subducted under continents through tectonic plate movements. Ultimately, this carbon will be returned to the atmosphere by volcanoes."

Note assorted irrelevancies, weasel words and straw men.

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html

actually includes some numbers. Looks like volcanoes aren't huge emitters.





Cheers

Greg Locock


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[cranky108]

So I understand from this that the carbon cycle is self regulating, and what we do as humans dosen't matter.

 

[SomptingGuy]

Earth big. Humans small. In geological time, humans are a rash on the skin of the Earth.

- Steve

 

[zdas04]

Some of the quotes seem a bit disingenous. One quote above is that most of the gas given off is methane from heating coal. When I've done emissions calcs, one tonne of methane counted the same as 36 tonnes (I beleive, I'm not somewhere that I have my files) of CO2. So if the volcano dummped 300,000 tonnes of CO2, and that is a "tiny part", the the methane must be at least an order of magnitude more, and a 36:1 3,000,000 tonnes of methane is charged out in Cap and Tax as 108,000,000 tonnes of CO2 equivilant. Not a small number.

David

 

[cranky108]

So much for natural gas being greener than coal.

 

[jmw]

Nomlaser,most of the comment I have seen simply pointed to the reduction in anthropogenic CO2. These comments did not mention any CO2 from the volcano at all.
In fact most volcanoes usually put out lots of steam. It is how we are supposed to have gotten our oceans in the first place. Water vapour does far more for warming that CO2 but we also get particulates which act as global chilling agents. The most significant question is how much Sulphur?


JMW

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[moltenmetal]

cranky, the carbon cycle is self-regulating on the geological timescale, but we don't live on the geological timescale. The transient response may do us in, and we cannot be sure that the "regulated" level will continue to favour humans and the way we live currently.

As to the initial basic question, we've been directly measuring atmospheric CO2 concentrations for the past hundred years or so, and VERY accurately for the past sixty or seventy. We also have plenty of inferential evidence of past CO2 concentrations, though these are clearly less reliable they cannot be discounted completely.

Even giant eruptions such as Pinatubo or Mt. St. Hellens in the past sixty years didn't amount to more than a blip on the overwhelming atmospheric concentration rise trend.

The assertion that a single rather minor eruption such as the one in Iceland resulted in more CO2 emission than humans have generated since they started burning fossil fuels is patently and demonstrably false. We may be puny humans but we manage to pull ENORMOUS amounts of fossil carbon out of the earth and dump it into the atmosphere every single day, and have been doing so with gusto since the 1850s. That we are dependent on nature for our continued existence is incontrovertible fact, but to assume that therefore we are too puny to impact the Earth in any measurable way is hubris to the extreme.

We can debate whether or not that CO2 will have a profound effect on the earth's climate, whether its correlation with planetary mean surface temperature is strong or weak etc., but the fact of the atmospheric CO2 concentration rise and its human origin is not debatable- it's proven fact.

 

[zdas04]

Yeah, they proved it in East Anglica University, NASA, and a dozen other places that have admited to making up a substantial portion of their data.

David

 

[jmw]

Molten metal, I think you miss the point.
The question was whether grounding all those planes actually saved more CO2 than the volcano emitted.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[TPL]

Quote but the fact of the atmospheric CO2 concentration rise and its human origin is not debatable- it's proven fact.


No it isn't - just repeating the same old line over and over again and producing a raft of dodgy data doesn't make it a fact.

I respect your right to have a view but please, don't take the religious angle and force your beliefs on me as fact

 

[moltenmetal]

I'm sorry if the fact doesn't match your perceptions or wishes, but the atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been MEASURED, not inferred, for the past 60+ years. The data from these direct atmospheric composition measurements is not in dispute, unlike the many inferential or indirect measurements used to come up with numbers for the very distant past.

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c1/page_6.shtml

That's just a convenient link- you can go look up the source data if you don't believe it, or want to see the 1958+ direct measurements in isolation from the ice core gas data going back in time (for which they have overlapping data dating to 1977 which seems to correlate extremely well I might add).

"Molten metal, I think you miss the point.The question was whether grounding all those planes actually saved more CO2 than the volcano emitted."

No, sorry, I don't think I missed the point at all, and I don't believe that was it. zdas04 was the OP and stated, in relation to the Icelandic volcano's recent eruption's GHG emissions: "I'm betting it is a number in excess of all the CO2 that people have put into the air since we slithered from the primordial ooze." This assertion is patently and demonstrably false and I called him on it. The falseness of the statement is evident from the complete ABSENSE of any significant deviation from the unmistakeable rise trend in the DIRECTLY MEASURED CO2 concentrations taken since 1958, even from huge eruptions like Pinatubo or Mt. St. Hellens.

You can be skeptical of whether or not CO2 leads to global warming, whether or not global warming is happening now or will ever happen, and I can have a modicum of respect for that position though I do not share it. But denying the CO2 rise or mis-attributing it to "natural" causes like vulcanism is not a position I can respect whatsoever.

 

[marks1080]

TPL: I am sorry but moltenmetal is correct. He is not trying to debate global warming here, he is only stating that CO2 emissions have gone up. NASA has a lot of information on this. It is a fact.

Why you would mention religion is beyond me. This forum is for technically minded people who respect FACT and DATA. What does religion have to do with anything? You can accept the facts or reject them as you please, but it does not make them simply go away.

Mark

 

[ornerynorsk]

I believe what should be clarified is that there are legions of people who do not accept the hypothesis of CO2 being the culprit of so-called global warming, or that global warming is anything but a natural cyclical event, unrelated to whether or not humans even factor into the equation. I would dare say that those in the Al Gore camp and others of his ilk are, indeed, religious in their belief of the aforementioned, signified by the vigor with which which they promote it. Belief, after all, is religion, and there are no facts to prove or disprove that man has anything to do with this much ado (about nothing :>). Believe what you want to believe, the jury is still out, and is likely to be out for quite some time.

 

[TPL]

Quotehe is only stating that CO2 emissions have gone up

Not true

What MM stated was "the fact of the atmospheric CO2 concentration rise and its human origin is not debatable- it's proven fact"

The cause and the effect are not proven - CO2 concentrations have varied dramatically over the last 400,000years

http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/tem...in-the-atmosphere-over-the-past-400-000-years