A Volcano Eruption Can Emit More CO2 Than All Humanity. Why Worry?
We should care about global warming and global cooling, no matter the cause.
But that does not mean we should make draconian changes in global economic, political and energy policies based upon the unproven hypothesis that human emissions of CO2 are leading to apocalyptic global warming. There simply is NO proof of this hypothesis.
It is complete supposition, despite what the CAGW alarmists, climate industry investors, globalists and radical environmentalists claim. Millions of individuals have already been severely harmed (or even killed) because of some of the irresponsible actions engaged in by governments “fighting” CO2 emissions. But billions could potentially be harmed if all of the more drastic measures proposed by alarmists are enacted.
Those pushing the unproven hypothesis of CAGW are demanding massive changes affecting everyone on the planet.
They want to divert tens of trillions of dollars from solving known existing existential problems (poverty, hunger, violence, war, infectious disease, cancer research, pollution and over-fishing of our oceans, lack of adequate sanitation, education and clean water, etc.) in order to “fight” an unproven hypothetical future cataclysm.
Their ‘solution’ involves costly methods which have not been proven effective, replacing capitalism and democracy with global socialism and authoritarian one world government, and redistributing global wealth.
Such actions would be irresponsible, illogical, socialistic, cruel and lead to massive morbidity and mortality!
“The trillions of dollars of scarce global resources wasted on global warming hysteria, anti-fossil fuel fanaticism and green energy schemes, properly deployed, could have improved and saved many lives.
“About two million children below the age of five die from contaminated water every year – about 70 million dead kids since the advent of global warming alarmism. Bjørn Lomborg estimates that a fraction of these squandered green energy funds could have put clean water and sanitation systems into every community in the world.
“Waste of funds and loss of opportunity due to global warming alarmism and green energy nonsense have harmed people around the world. In North America and Europe, trillions of dollars have been wasted on grid-connected green energy schemes that have increased energy costs, increased winter mortality, and reduced the stability of vital electrical grids.”
But back to your original question. It is quite timely as relatively recent, but intentionally ignored, evidence has emerged that volcanic contribution to atmospheric CO2 has been enormously under-estimated, as illustrated in the following article:
Discovery of Massive Volcanic CO2 Emissions Puts Damper on Global Warming Theory -James E. Kamis on November 6, 2018
“Recent research shows that the volume of volcanic CO2 currently being emitted into Earth’s atmosphere is far greater than previously calculated, challenging the validity of the man-made global warming theory.
Figure 1: Volcanic gas emissions breakthrough overlying fractured and partially melted glacial ice sheet. (Image credits: Christina Neal, AVO/USGS)
“The cornerstone principle of the global warming theory, anthropogenic global warming (AGW), is built on the premise that significant increases of modern era human-induced CO2 emissions have acted to unnaturally warm Earth’s atmosphere.
“There are numerous major problems with the AGW principle.
“Identification of Volcanic vs. Man-made CO2
“Natural volcanic and man-made CO2 emissions have the exact same and very distinctive carbon isotopic fingerprint. It is therefore scientifically impossible to distinguish the difference between volcanic CO2 and human-induced CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels. This major problem with the AGW principle has been rationalized away by consensus climate scientists who insist, based upon supposedly reliable research, that volcanic emissions are minuscule in comparison to human-induced CO2 emissions (Gerlach 1991).
“Terrance Gerlach’s volcanic CO2 calculation was based on just 7 actively erupting land volcanoes and three actively erupting ocean floor hydrothermal vents (seafloor hot geysers). Utilizing gas emission data from this very limited number of volcanic features, Gerlach estimated that the volume of natural volcanic CO2 emissions is 100 to 150 times less than the volume of man-made CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and therefore of no consequence.
“To put this calculation process into perspective, the Earth is home to 1,500 land volcanoes and 900,000 seafloor volcanoes/hydrothermal vents. By sampling just an extremely small percent of these volcanic features it is impossible to imagine that the calculation is correct.
Read the rest of the article here: Discovery of Massive Volcanic CO2 Emissions Rebuts human caused Global Warming Theory…geological heat flow is possibly the root cause of changes to our oceans.
(Thanks to James Matkin, JD, Harvard University, Harvard Law School Alumnus, for the above reference)
Read more at antarcticvolcanoesproject.blogspot.com
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Please DONATE TODAY To Help Our Non-Profit Mission To Defend The Scientific Method.
Trackback from your site.
Tom O
| #
The very first line – “We should care about global warming and global cooling, no matter the cause.”
I skimmed through the article, really, not trying hard to read it because basically, it is saying the same thing that has been said many times, but it is the first like that caught my attention and held it. My immediate response to that line is “WHY?” Why should we care about it? There isn’t a damn thing we can do about it except acknowledge the change and adapt. We can’t impact it in the slightest bit, so why care? That is a conciliatory statement to something that has no meaning. Earth’s climate will do what it does best – change – and we are just along for the ride.
Reply
Alan
| #
You are correct. All we can do is adapt to a changing climate. But we can do this better if we understand the changes and the nonsense of our carbon dioxide emissions being the cause is diverting research from the real work that needs to be done.
Reply
Andy Rowlands
| #
It would have been useful if the author had included the figure for the large amount of volcanic CO2 he claims. I’m not disupting it, but we need to see numbers, otherwise we’ll have to stick with the commonly-quoted 200 million tons annually.
I’m also puzzled by the chart above the words Plate Climatology. There’s no labels on the axes, so what is it actually showing? The text on the chart has the word ‘average’ twice, but the average of what?
Reply
Vance Lunn
| #
“Their ‘solution’ involves costly methods which have not been proven effective, replacing capitalism and democracy with global socialism and authoritarian one world government, and redistributing global wealth.”
This sentence from the article is all you need to know just what the whole climate change thing is about. It’s not about climate at all.
Reply
Alan
| #
I agree with the statement, but it is really about climate because that is how it is being promoted by the media and environmentalists. The real crisis is that a majority the human race no longer has any knowledge of science at a basic level or even any common sense. How can a sixteen year old school dropout be worshiped as a new messiah?
Reply
Robert Beatty
| #
For me the attention grabbing statement is “Waste of funds and loss of opportunity due to global warming alarmism and green energy nonsense have harmed people around the world. In North America and Europe, trillions of dollars have been wasted on grid-connected green energy schemes that have increased energy costs, increased winter mortality, and reduced the stability of vital electrical grids.”
This raises the question of how does a group of sophisticated, well educated human beings get themselves so enmeshed in a bogus theory, as to put their all into it?
Ah, that’s right, it is called religion, and has happened many times in the past and continues in several destructive forms even today.
Reply
Alan
| #
Thanks to Donald Trump the USA has some of the cheapest energy, unlike Canada, Australia and Europe where the green madness has really taken hold. California is the worst area of the USA for high cost energy because of the influence of the looney celebrities.
Reply
Kenny
| #
The CAGW narrative in not a hypothesis but a mere conjecture. See:
http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/64_07_Conjecture_to_Law.pdf
Reply
Robert Beatty
| #
Correct Kenny,
But, it is having a great life, seeing that it started in 1896 when Svante Arrhenius was working on ice ages which included a calculation of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) will increase Earth’s surface temperature.
Here we are 124 years later still not prepared to define how Earth’s CO2 balance is maintained.
Reply
rick
| #
Now, if CO2 had anything to do with warming the planet, then this would be mildly interesting article. Don’t forget, going back through the planetary record, CO2 rise came AFTER planetary temperatures rose – this delayed rise was some 800 to 1000 yrs
But hey the facts do not fit the narrative to rob Peter to give to Paul et al
Reply
John Doran
| #
The mid-ocean ridges form, effectively, a 40,000 mile volcano.
A source of heat, minerals, including gold & silver & even new life. Totally fascinating.
They also are a continuous source of fresh water & CO2 into our oceans. Amazing.
http://www.junkscience.com/2016/01/the-40000-mile-volcano/
The blue area links to a rather well illustrated NY Times article.
JD.
Reply
Monty
| #
Doesn’t the particulate matter from an eruption cuses a cooling effect?
Reply
tom0mason
| #
It is not just during the eruptions that volcanoes vent CO2, often the venting continues for some considerable time after from the cooling lava. From https://www.livescience.com/40451-volcanic-co2-levels-are-staggering.html
also see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/16/another-known-unknown-volcanic-outgassing-of-co2/ for a discussion about this.
When I looked at the OCO-2 satellite images. Here is one —
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/mainco2mappia18934.jpg Lots of CO2 along all the subduction zones, even the one just east of Italy.
Also see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/16/vast-lake-of-molten-carbonate-discovered-under-the-continental-usa/ for the Vast Lake of Molten Carbonate Discovered Under the Continental USA. Molten carbonate that may be leaking CO2 back to the atmosphere at an unknown rate.
And finally there’s Earthquakes Release Massive Amounts of Methane so says http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/3204/20130729/earthquakes-release-massive-amounts-methane.htm
Atmospheric CO2 level rise is all caused by humans, eh?
Reply
Barry
| #
There really is no reason to care about global cooling or warming as there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Climate is not something that effects people in their own lifetime,this current hysteria about it is simply a cult of people promoting it for their own purposes. To think that the temp. Warming up a degree or two over a person’s lifetime is something that would be noticeable or realistically even measurable is simply a fantasy we can’t predict the weather past three days with any degree of certainty but somehow these same people tell us that they now know what a twenty or thirty year warming or cooling trend indicates a century down the road. This is simply people preserving a job that shouldn’t exist in the first place. I’m sixtieth now which means I have supposedly lived through part of a degree of warming,quite frankly can’t see the difference. I have seen many different weather patterns come and go and some even repeated years later,all totally meaningless in the bigger picture of life.
Reply
tom0mason
| #
Agreed! however a rise in atmospheric CO2 over a persons lifetime, even if it gets slightly colder, will be of benefit to the population as the planet will green up despite a little degree or two of cooling.
So forward with CO2 level, onward to 600ppm and more 🙂
Reply
Barry
| #
Totally agree the more the merrier. We know that the planet has already greened for whatever reason even though the agw cult tell us we are looking at crop failure while our crop production per acre has increased 2-3-4 fold. We seem to actually be at a low period for co2 which is the building block of life,for the life of me I can’t understand why we would want to curtail it.
Reply