'Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans'

How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic

Posted by Coby Beck (Guest Contributor) at 10:41 AM on 20 Dec 2006

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: One decent-sized volcanic eruption puts more CO2 in the atmosphere than a decade of human emissions. It's ridiculous to think reducing human CO2 emissions will have any effect.

Answer: Not only is this false, it couldn't possibly be true given the CO2 record from any of the dozens of sampling stations around the globe. If it were true that individual volcanic eruptions dominated human emissions and were causing the rise in CO2 concentrations, then these CO2 records would be full of spikes -- one for each eruption. Instead, such records show a smooth and regular trend.

(image from Global Warming Art)

The fact of the matter is, the sum total of all CO2 out-gassed by active volcanoes amounts to about 1/150th of anthropogenic emissions.

For story: 'Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans'
29 Comments | Post a Comment

Putting up a straw man

I have never heard a skeptic making that ridiculous claim. It seems you are putting up a straw man in order to be able to kick it. The skeptics are not that dumb. They do come up with some reasonable objections to the AGW hypothesis. It is not all rubbish what they say, nor always with bad intentions or hidden agenda's. If someone can be expected to have an agenda then it is an American politician who thinks that this will lead him into the White House. The simplistic reasoning and applied demagogy of Al Gore (in fact, he makes himself a straw man) give the skeptics an easy target to attack. Al Gore's movie can hardly be qualified as being properly peer reviewed. I am flabbergasted by the gullibility of the otherwise critical environmental groups for embracing this politician so uncritically. I wouldn't want him to pull my bandwagon.

Talking about CO2. How come that the Southern Polar Monthly Mean Temperature Anomalies show a cooling trend for the last 27 years, yet the Antarctic is believed to be melting. There is certainly no relationship with the gradually increasing CO2 concentrations. See this graph.

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUSPol-m.htm

Is there anybody who can help me interpreting these conflicting data?

If you cannot place me in any box read my Bio.

by Schoneveld at 11:11 PM on 20 Dec 2006

you need to talk to more "skeptics"

This volcano argument is used all the time, try google if you don't believe me.
http://www.google.com/search?&q=volcanoes+%22more+CO2...

I'm top of the list, but I am there or near it for many common arguments, like Global Warming is a hoax. Sadly, that is no strawman either.

There are indeed better attacks than this, but I have one article per attack, what do you want?

"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?" -- unknown

by Coby Beck at 11:30 PM on 20 Dec 2006

Antarctica is not cooling

Actually the latest results show a very modest warming, but regardless the trend there is very small. You can read this related article for some explanation:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/19/213716/27

It has to do with the much greater ocean to land ratio in the southern hemisphere and the circumpolar current insulating antarctica.

Personally, given how many times the MSU records have been revised I would be very cautious in drawing conclusions based on them. Call me sceptical!

"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?" -- unknown

by Coby Beck at 11:33 PM on 20 Dec 2006

A skeptic scientist

Of course, by googling you can find any crazy blog or right wing nut who makes unscientific claims. When we try to debunk arguments put forward by skeptics then I mean "scientists" from the skeptics camp. Like Bob Carter, Lindzen, Gray, McIntyre and name another 100 Profs and Dr's in geology, climatology etc.

If you cannot place me in any box read my Bio.

by Schoneveld at 2:33 AM on 21 Dec 2006

don' over estimate these folks

Do you consider "global warming is a hoax" to be unscientific? How about "global warming stopped in 1998", is that a ludicrous argument for a scientist? Both of those come from people in your list, so don't be so quick to say stupid arguments should not be answered, these are high profile people and they do need to be answered.

You'll have to take my word for it, I hear this volcano argument all the time and naive but well meaning people are susceptible to it.

"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?" -- unknown

by Coby Beck at 10:53 AM on 21 Dec 2006

vulcanism and the K/T die-off?

As everybody knows, around 64 million years ago, the Cretaceous Period and the Mesozoic Era came to a close with a remarkable mass extinction. Many taxa, including most famously the last of the non-avian dinosaurs, disappeared, in a rather sudden way, according to the fossil record. In the last 30 years, a consensus has emerged that the collision of a large meteoritic object, probably a small asteroid, with the Earth, apparently at the northern end of the Yucatan peninsula, sent up so much particulate matter into the atmosphere, that it caused a severe global cooling for many years, killing off both plants and then animals.

Those scientists who initially rejected that hypothesis, preferring to look for a cause of the extinction based firmly on Earth, pointed out the apparently uncontroversial huge volcanic event that took place around that time in the Deccan region of India. But the idea there too was that a great amount of particulate matter ejected into the atmosphere would have caused a severe global cooling.

I ask, therefore, if the effect of volcanic eruptions on climate is at all a simple thing to measure. Is not the effect of any GHGs emitted offset by the ejection of darkening and cooling particulate matter?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:40 AM on 21 Dec 2006

References?

Could you give me the reference so that I can check whether they indeed used silly arguments like that? I have never heard any scientist denying that the gradual rise in CO2 is not man -made. The argument has always been that there is a logarithmic relationship rather than a linear one so that further CO2 increase has progressively less effect on warming the atmosphere.

If you cannot place me in any box read my Bio.

by Schoneveld at 6:54 PM on 21 Dec 2006
[ Parent ]

here you go

"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."
http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_3899807

"The...

Lindzen on the temperature record: "remaining essentially flat since 1998."
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597

I don't know specifically about scientist sceptics claiming the CO2 rise is not anthropogenic.

"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?" -- unknown

by Coby Beck at 5:11 PM on 22 Dec 2006

glitch..?

Don't know what happened to the second quote, will try again:

"There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinio...

"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?" -- unknown

by Coby Beck at 5:13 PM on 22 Dec 2006

Op

v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 v6 v7 v8 v9 v10 v11 v12 v13 v14 v15 v16 v17 v18 v19 v20 v21 v22 v23 v24 v25 v26 v27 v28 v29 v30 v31 v32 v33 v34 v35 v36 v37 v38 v39 v40 v41 v42 v43 v44 v45 v46 v47 v48 v49 v50 v51 v52 v53 v54 v55 v56 v57 v58 v59 v60 v61 v62 v63 v64 v65 v66 v67 v68 v69 v70 v71 v72 v73 v74 v75 v76 v77 v78 v79 v80 v81

by mpu2 at 7:12 AM on 17 Apr 2007

Just an example: Walter E. Williams

The misinformation about volcanoes and CO2 has been spread in a recent opinion piece by Walter E. Williams. You can read the article here.

by stevendaryl3016 at 12:27 PM on 25 Apr 2007

I've heard it

"I have never heard a skeptic making that ridiculous claim. It seems you are putting up a straw man in order to be able to kick it. The skeptics are not that dumb."

I have a friend who presented me with this argument recently - he claimed one volcano will emit more CO2 than humans ever have.

Unfortunately neither of us are scientists, and I could not contest his point as I had no idea what the CO2 output of volcanoes versus that of fossil fuel burning was. Isn't the point of this website for people discussing the issue with ANY skeptic, not just scientists (it would be rather pointless if it was just for scientists, as the vast majority don't need convincing)?

My point is my friend must have heard it from somewhere...people do come out with it.

by blutack at 2:32 PM on 28 Apr 2007

12 samples?

That's all the sampling stations there are?

Well, you just proved the skeptics point, possibly.

Volcanoes cannot be "averaged". They are catastropic emitters of CO2. A single wild volcano can put tonnes of CO2 into the air.

Having monitoring stations that average it is not adequate.

And that does not at all measure any of the greenhouse gases, including CO2, that are constantly emitted from the Earth's crust.

We're no where near measuring CO2 from naturogenic sources.

What's more -- now that I think about it -- perhaps we have no idea what the real anthrogenic amount is.

I mean, you show CO2 going up and up -- God only knows where it comes from! Obviously you don't know how much is coming from nature.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 2:37 PM on 28 Apr 2007

Hmm

Like I said, I'm no scientist, but I'm not stupid either.

If CO2 is coming from nature (which no one is disputing, it has always done - only in the carbon cycle as much gets re-absorbed too) and the earth's crust and is causing this sudden and rapid rise, why is it that it has only suddenly shot up at the very same time we began to burn fossil fuels??

by blutack at 3:10 PM on 28 Apr 2007

Yeap

The real answer, without getting terribly scientific about it.

CO2 levels have never gone above 281 parts per million in 650,000 years of ice core data.

We're now at 380 parts per million

And the growth in CO2 emmisions correlates perfectly with our fossil fuel emmisions.

But hell, how about this one.
Even the guy who produced "The Great Global Warming Swindle" agrees that the rise in CO2 has been caused by industry.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rtNdVDom0GU

by GreyFlcn at 4:45 PM on 28 Apr 2007

Measurements

We can measure how much CO2 is caused by burning fossil fuels by measuring the ratio of carbon isotopes which are different for naturally occuring CO2.

We know the expected range of CO2 in the atmosphere by studying the ice cores. On short time scales, the level is kept more or less constant through the carbon cycle. Burning fossil fuels short circuits this process.

The "volcanoes emit more CO2 than mankind" is such a preposterous statement and is demonstrably false. Mount Pinatubo, certainly the most powerful eruption of the modern era doesn't even register a blip in the Manua Loa measurements. In reality, all the volcanic activity in the world amounts to about 1% of human activity.

With regards to the cooling effect of volcanoes, that is true and large eruptions can cause significant disruptions in the climate (as we saw with Pinatubo). However, these particles quickly rain out of the atmosphere. CO2 takes many centuries to completely leave the atmosphere.

by cce at 7:32 PM on 28 Apr 2007

Lemme say that again:

The real answer, without getting terribly scientific about it.
CO2 levels have never gone above 281 parts per million in 650,000 years of ice core data.
And there have been countless volcanic erruptions during that time period.
We're now at 380 parts per million
And that relatively sudden growth in CO2 levels fits perfectly with our growth in fossil fuel use.

Without erruptions Volcanoes emit less than 2% of human emmisions of CO2.

With erruptions volcanoes do emit a lot of CO2

But they also emit a lots of airborne dust (scientifically known as "aerosols")

And Aerosols are the primary cooling factor, particularly Sulfur aerosols.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/forcing3.png

And while it cools the surface, and troposphere (greenhouse layer), it's very noticable about how it warms the stratosphere (ozone layer) as the sulfur turns into sufuric acid.

http://www.greyfalcon.net/forcing.png
http://www.greyfalcon.net/forcing2.png

by GreyFlcn at 10:37 PM on 28 Apr 2007

FIRE

LOL

What a joke

Y'all worried about CO2

Better put out all those mega forest fires..

No, better still, cut down all the forests NOW, we can afford for them to burn.

LOL

This world has burnt several times in the past

CO2 is NOT THE PROBLEM

omegafour.com

by Zarkov at 11:18 PM on 28 Apr 2007

Oh, Pleeeeze

And the growth in CO2 emmisions correlates perfectly with our fossil fuel emmisions.

Really? Do you have a CO2 meter on each and every human "activity"?

What is the state of actual anthropogenic CO2 monitoring?

It sounds like all guestimates to me -- that is, the IPCC says oh, Co2 went up so it must be due to people, so people cause global warming...there is no effort to show where the Co2 came from?!

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 3:14 PM on 29 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

If I Don't Turn the Ignition Key...

Without erruptions Volcanoes emit less than 2% of human emmisions of CO2.
_
With erruptions volcanoes do emit a lot of CO2

Yes, and if I leave my car in the parking space and don't turn the ignition, it produces significantly less CO2.

That was my point about monitoring...a single active volcano is not the same as 12 meters at 12 not so active volcanoes.

In other words, you have no idea how much CO2 is being pumped into the atmosphere by nature...no idea whatsoever!

This is an absolute travesty. Why didn't I think of this before!

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 3:20 PM on 29 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Volcanoes not only source of CO2

Obviously vocanoes emit enormous amounts of CO2 but are not the only sources.

Outgassing from the earth's crust is among many.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 11:03 PM on 29 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Again

CO2 levels have never gone above 281 parts per million in 650,000 years of ice core data.

And there have been countless volcanic erruptions during that time period.

We're now at 380 parts per million

Volcanoes aren't all the sudden causing this.

Even Martin Durkin, the producer of the "Global Warming Swindle" admits the rise in CO2 has been caused by industry.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/carbon

by GreyFlcn at 11:52 PM on 29 Apr 2007

Again...again

Yes, but you can't prove that it's man causing it all either.

You don't have the data.

And even if you did, you still haven't proven that CO2 is a cause and not a result of warming.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 12:08 AM on 30 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Chart Junk

Btw...a lot of these charts are definitely chart junk. Case in point...lopping off axes to over emphasis change.

For example, the source of your chart seems to be wikipedia....I'm looking at

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Carbon_History ...

Note that the Y-axis only shows 260 to 380.

Here's an experiment I did -- I replotted the data using OpenOffice Calc into a spreadsheet chart that has as it's y-axis baseline, 0.

Then you get an idea how undramatic the change in number is!!!

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 12:20 AM on 30 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

disaster prediction

The reason this is mentioned has been somewhat twisted from its original source, which is:

If a supervulcano might erupt in the near future (which is actually not such a remote possibility), its CO2 output will vastly overrule any other source.

This was how this came about. Because it was used in combination with the other optional disasters awaiting humanity, where CO2 emissions still play a very minor role in causing any of them to happen.

by jult at 2:48 PM on 30 Apr 2007

conflicting data

Loved your comment..it appears the sun is undergoing some unusual activity that is effecting not only the earth..but at virtually the same rate..the mars polar caps are shrinking and is suffering some extreme dust storms...hmmm..think there may just be some correlation? Plus I seriously doubt our emissions have contributed to Mars global warming and why doesn't science pay more attention to historical references to cyclical warming and cooling as so eleoquently noted by Plato, Aristotle; and the Vikings inhabiting then abandoning Greenland as it went from a fairly temperate climate to an almost uninhabitable one?

by Higmo at 8:46 AM on 11 Jul 2007
[ Parent ]

Putting up a "straw man"?

The volcano argument, believe it or not, is used in many Internet forum arguments by many heavily misinformed people. It stuns me that they would indeed fall for this particular argument, however.

by clarinetmeister at 6:02 PM on 28 Apr 2008
[ Parent ]

low-brow stuff on the internet? I'm shocked.

From personal experience I know that the creationists, for example, have a wide spectrum of arguments running from very low brow to more nuanced attacks on evolution. The average net warrior will tend to gravitate to the lower brow attacks as these are easier to grasp and require little investment of their time.

In fact on the average internet forum you'd be hard pressed to hear anything but the low brow efforts.

by cogswellcogs at 9:00 AM on 17 May 2008

Handy tool

http://greyfalcon.net/carbon2

by GreyFlcn at 9:25 AM on 17 May 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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