Volcanoes and CO2 again. Bishop Hill notes the following:
74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano erupted in a VEI 7 explosion that pumped more than 10,000 times as much CO2 into the air as Mt. St. Helens did. At the maximum, Mt. St. Helens was giving off 22,000,000 kg of C02 daily, so Toba was putting out at least 22 billion kg per day. The ash cloud was so thick that it caused cooling that nearly wiped out the human race.
There are indications in the ice core records that show the cooling from Toba, but where is the global warming that should have resulted from all the CO2 put into the atmosphere? According to what I’ve read, the CO2 should have remained in the air long after the ash settled and that should have caused at least a warming spike, but there’s no sign of extraordinary warming in the climate records. Shouldn’t there always be a cooling/warming cycle after a volcano erupts? Cooling from the ash cloud, warming from the CO2 that lingers?
Source
Although it’s fairly standard, whenever I see CO2 quoted in kg I wonder if the number is being inflated in order to talk about millions and billions and get a “such much!” effect. For example:
Listen up. Do you know how much C02 is in a bottle of carbonated cola? 2.2g is found in the average bottle. US consumption ALONE of these products is around 15 billion gallons. Consumption per capita in the US is around 50 gallons per annum. That equates to 132 million pounds of C02 entering the atmosphere EVERY year JUST from the USA. Now multiply that up by the global consumption factor and you get an idea of the menace that fizzy drinks represent to our planet.
A TANGLED WEB – WOULD I LIKE TO BUY THE WORLD A COKE?
So let’s compare that Toba output to some others:
OK, so this is one of the most massive volcanic eruptions of the past 100,000 years and according to these numbers it’s still not putting out as much CO2 on its best day as humans are on an average day.
Another difference is that the likes of Toba doesn’t actually happen day after day, while humans can in theory keep the current level of output up for longer and have already been putting out a similarly large amount for many years. To take a very simplistic extrapolation (no account taken of population growth or changes in fossil fuel use), if you were to compare these outputs over a period of 100 years then it looks like this:
All in all it is difficult to come to the conclusion that volcanoes are outputting more CO2 than humans, whatever way you look at it.
So what about this:
There are indications in the ice core records that show the cooling from Toba, but where is the global warming that should have resulted from all the CO2 put into the atmosphere? According to what I’ve read,the CO2 should have remained in the air long after the ash settled and that should have caused at least a warming spike, but there’s no signof extraordinary warming in the climate records. Shouldn’t there always be a cooling/warming cycle after a volcano erupts? Cooling from the ashcloud, warming from the CO2 that lingers?
Well, first off, who says there should be such a warming? Toba is supposed to have produced a very large cooling which in turn we are told would lead to a reduction in CO2. If the key figure is the ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere then who says such an eruption will lead to warming as stated? If it would lead to warming, how much warming is expected? This is hardly obvious. Furthermore, who says it didn’t warm accordingly? Where is the actual data?
technorati tags:globalwarming, volcanoes, co2
There are two separate issues here. One is the volcanoes v humans question which, as I’ve said, I have no idea of the basis for the sceptics claim, or of the robustness of Gerlach’s paper. One possible line of enquiry is to check that we are comparing apples and apples. Are the sceptics comparing volcanoes to fossil fuel burning, while the AGW proponents are comparing to all human activity? It’s worth checking.
The other question is whether a large eruption would cause a blip on the climate record. I think it’s uncontroversial that the particulates from the eruption would cause a cooling, but that these come out of the atmosphere quickly. I thought though that it was the basis of the AGW case that climate is sensitive to CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Shouldn’t there be a warming then?
Hello, is your site swallowing my comments too! Perhaps we need to debate with someone else! ;-)
Oops – sorry about that, my comments seemed to disappear into the ether, but there they are now.
Having been blogging a little this afternoon, I am picking up a few commenters from the sceptic side saying the volcano CO2 emissions claim in the programme is incorrect. It would still be interesting to follow up where this claim came from and whether my theory about what is being compared is correct.
Sorry about that, over aggressive spam filter.
“I have no idea of the basis for the sceptics claim”
I need to check what the actual claim is. I was hoping somebody would put up a transcript to save me watching the rest of the thing :-)
“The other question is whether a large eruption would cause a blip on the climate record. I think it’s uncontroversial that the particulates from the eruption would cause a cooling, but that these come out of the atmosphere quickly. I thought though that it was the basis of the AGW case that climate is sensitive to CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Shouldn’t there be a warming then?”
There’s a number of problems with that:
1) If there is a cooling then CO2 concentration should go down during the cooling. So the net effect on CO2 concentration is not so clear (to me).
2) How much warming would you expect from such a (relatively) small CO2 output anyway? We will put out more than that in 2007. Are we expecting a ‘warming spike’ in 2007 as a result?
3) Maybe there was a warming back then. Who says there wasn’t?
“… Shouldn’t there always be a cooling/warming cycle after a volcano erupts? ”
“… Are we expecting a ‘warming spike’ in 2007 as a result? Maybe there was a warming back then. Who says there wasn’t?”
Bill, Frank,
Actually, I believe there ARE data that show temperature spikes following volcanic eruptions. I remember reading an article about that very correlation about 2 years ago, probably in Newsweek citing a recent scientific study.
I’ll attempt to track that study down.
-Steve
Ah, here’s one: Bay et al., 2004 “Bipolar correlation of volcanism with millenial climate change”.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0400323101v1.pdf
I just randomly came upon this thread. I’ll now go check out the original one by Bill. Cheers.
Steve – thanks for the info…always good to see some actual data.
And everyone seems to foret that the Earth is a Biosphere, that in reality is only capable of sustaining aboth half of the current population.
When we exceeded the limit we started cutting down more forests to build places to live, this is the double-edged sword that is causing the problem.
There is 2.2 kg in a bottle of coke??? Last time I held a bottle of coke in my hand the mass was about 12 oz, or 0.35 kg. And 99% of that was water.
US consumption is 15 billion gallons. Let’s see, that’s 150 billion kg of coke per year, or 500 kg of coke per american.
That’s a lot of coke and a lot of sugar. No wonder America’s economy is so vibrant. We’er all souped up on sugar.
Marc, no it is 2.2g – I was just using it as an example of how small numbers can be made to seem large by switching units.
Do you know of any data on the production of O2 and N2 per year compared to CO2? My textbook data indicates that the percentage of gases in the atmosphere up to 20 miles is the same now as it was in 1960. Everyone seems to be tracking CO2 ppm as a function of years, but I do not see the ppm for the other gases plotted over the same years. If all gases are changing at the same rate, all the hype over CO2 may be for nothing.
“If all gases are changing at the same rate, all the hype over CO2 may be for nothing.”
That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Besides, what CO2 concentration is doing (increasing) and the source (us) is known, and what the other gas concentrations are doing won’t change that.
FUZZY HEADED THINKING
Re the example of the carbonated drink above: Just how much if this fuzzy headed “thinking”/data gathering goes into estimates of human co2 generation?
Obvuious: co2 in coke comes from all various sources as a compressed gas and therefor is only slightly better than netural (some energy required to compress).
FUZZY HEADED THINKING
In a cursory look at the issue of CO2 in the atmosphere, I found a number of websites stating that volcanic activity accounted for only about 3% of annual emissions into the atmosphere, and that human activity, therefor, accounted for the remainder, or 97%. Of course, the unstated assertion is that the only natural source is volcanic activity.
[Regarding volcanic activity, I would consider large specific events, such as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, as a statistical blip requiring an adjustment to data in a specific year, but contributing to a computable annual average, say adjusted to a longer period, such as 10 or 100 years. Better yet, an average composed only of on-going volcanic activity based on a 100 year time scale, with discrete events providing exciting blips added to the data for specific limited time periods with their impact studied separately, would be a more appropriately professional approach to the study of this particular "natural" source (the "naturalness" of any source could to some degree provide a stimulating debate, given the apparent assumption that human activity is somehow not "natural", with the Pandora style considerations that may arise from such an assumption).]
Of course, while the study of the effect of volcanic activity within the “natural” realm is a worthy, and sometimes titillating, subject in itself, it is not the only “natural” source of CO2 emissions.
The truth is that human activity, which adds some 15GT of CO2 (net) to the “natural” environment annually, certainly a mind boggling number, is a very small contribution in the overall “natural” scheme of things.
For more honest information, see: http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm.
Cheers!
His Grace says “The other question is whether a large eruption would cause a blip on the climate record. I think it’s uncontroversial that the particulates from the eruption would cause a cooling, but that these come out of the atmosphere quickly. I thought though that it was the basis of the AGW case that climate is sensitive to CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Shouldn’t there be a warming then?”
Big volcanoes cause an appreciable cooling on the temperature record, but their CO2 injection does not produce a blip on the CO2 record, because it is so small (1/150th) compared to our efforts.
I find it interesting that mt st Helen’s amount of co2 out put went down when Al Gore wanted to release his movie . It was reported that the sensors around the mountain recorded that in one eruption in 2006 or 7 it produced more co2 than all of north and south America combined for one year.That is all sources man and nature. When Al Gore came then like magic the numbers were reduced. Why should I read about people who are supposed to study and report what they find only to be lied to by fraud producing environmentalists who produce more co2 than The mountain did?
The soda reference is dumb when using inflated numbers. Also egg heads tend to discount items deemed not reliant because of personal prejudice . Thus with the egos banging away at each other to be number one with the best information. The real information is lost in non relevant data.
The tax payers fork over money to universities and government entities for these studies and We would like a real report. Yet we get a partial report that is useless.The public is not stupid. Just frustrated that the information is hidden, twisted, or just not complete. The worst is that even with good intentions to do great work, too much discounting of seemingly unlikely evidence has lead the best to unnatural conclusions. Humans are part of nature, and to separate people from nature is wrong.Some parts of the world need people in order to live. Nature has ways to counter co2. Yet the methods it uses are not fully monitored . So we have a lot of Chicken littles yelling doom. Study a bigger slice of the pie to report on. The threads of evidence will connect them selves.