More than one million underwater volcanoes – Oregon State University
And we wonder what is heating our seas.According to Oregon State University (OSU), there may be more than one million underwater volcanoes. Here’s how their website puts it:
“If an estimate of 4,000 volcanoes per million square kilometers on the floor of the Pacific Ocean is extrapolated for all the oceans than there are more than a million submarine (underwater) volcanoes. Perhaps as many as 75,000 of these volcanoes rise over half a mile (1 kilometer) above the ocean floor.”
So far so good.
I give OSU credit for admitting that such a huge number of underwater volcanoes may lie hidden below the surface of the world’s oceans.
I also give them credit for saying that those submarine volcanoes “supply heat and chemicals to some of the Earth’s most unusual and rare ecosystems.” (I think there are more than three million underwater volcanoes pumping heat into the oceans, but at least OSU is on the right track.)
However, the OSU website goes on to say that mid-ocean ridges (underwater volcanoes) produce an estimated 75% of the annual output of magma. This number is so incredibly far off that it is laughable.
Think about it.
According to the USGS there are about 1,500 potentially active above-water volcanoes worldwide, with about 500 of them having erupted in historical time. OSU puts the number at 1,511.
How can more than one million underwater volcanoes be emitting only 75% of the amount of lava produced by 1,500 above-water volcanoes? It makes no sense whatsoever.
One million? Or three million? Whatever it turns out to be, such a huge number of underwater volcanoes must be pumping massive amounts of heat – and CO2 – into the world’s oceans.
That’s why ocean temperatures have been rising. That’s why CO2 levels have been rising.
As I say in Not by Fire but by Ice, it’s not global warming, it’s ocean warming, and it will soon lead us into the next ice age.
http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/submarine
Thanks to Tom0Mason for this link
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