‘Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans’—Not even close ... 31

(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.

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
(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.

Former musician, turned tree planter, turned software engineer. Same old story…

I have been blogging about climate change since 2006 at A Few Things Ill Considered.

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  1. Schoneveld Posted 4:11 pm
    20 Dec 2006

    Putting up a straw manI 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?

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  2. Coby Beck's avatar

    Coby Beck Posted 4:30 pm
    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?

    Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!



    -- Anonymous

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  3. Coby Beck's avatar

    Coby Beck Posted 4:33 pm
    20 Dec 2006

    Antarctica is not coolingActually 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!

    Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!



    -- Anonymous

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  4. Schoneveld Posted 7:33 pm
    20 Dec 2006

    A skeptic scientistOf 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.

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  5. Coby Beck's avatar

    Coby Beck Posted 3:53 am
    21 Dec 2006

    don' over estimate these folksDo 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.

    Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!



    -- Anonymous

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  6. caniscandida Posted 4:40 am
    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 are our cousins!

    So are other sensitive animals!

    Enough is enough!

    No more factory farms!

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  7. Schoneveld Posted 11:54 am
    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.

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  8. Coby Beck's avatar

    Coby Beck Posted 10:11 am
    22 Dec 2006

    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.

    Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!



    -- Anonymous

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  9. Coby Beck's avatar

    Coby Beck Posted 10:13 am
    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...

    Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!



    -- Anonymous

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  10. mpu2 Posted 12:12 am
    17 Apr 2007

    Opv1 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

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  11. stevendaryl3016 Posted 5:27 am
    25 Apr 2007

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

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  12. blutack Posted 7:32 am
    28 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.

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  13. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 7:37 am
    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.

    You Read It Here First

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  14. blutack Posted 8:10 am
    28 Apr 2007

    HmmLike 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??

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  15. GreyFlcn Posted 9:45 am
    28 Apr 2007

    YeapThe 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

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  16. cce Posted 12:32 pm
    28 Apr 2007

    MeasurementsWe 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.

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  17. GreyFlcn Posted 3:37 pm
    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

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  18. Zarkov Posted 4:18 pm
    28 Apr 2007

    FIRELOL
    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

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  19. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 8:14 am
    29 Apr 2007

    Oh, PleeeezeAnd 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?!



    You Read It Here First

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  20. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 8:20 am
    29 Apr 2007

    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!



    You Read It Here First

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  21. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 4:03 pm
    29 Apr 2007

    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.

    You Read It Here First

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  22. GreyFlcn Posted 4:52 pm
    29 Apr 2007

    AgainCO2 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

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  23. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 5:08 pm
    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.

    You Read It Here First

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  24. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 5:20 pm
    29 Apr 2007

    Chart JunkBtw...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!!!

    You Read It Here First

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  25. jult Posted 7:48 am
    30 Apr 2007

    disaster predictionThe 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.

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  26. Higmo Posted 1:46 am
    11 Jul 2007

    conflicting dataLoved 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?

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  27. clarinetmeister Posted 11:02 am
    28 Apr 2008

    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.

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  28. cogswellcogs Posted 2:00 am
    17 May 2008

    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.

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  29. GreyFlcn Posted 2:25 am
    17 May 2008

    Handy toolhttp://greyfalcon.net/carbon2

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  30. inuspike Posted 1:48 pm
    06 Oct 2008

    Sorry if this was postedThis should really be in the main article but the "not only is that wrong" part should be elaborated to point out that
    volcanoes emit 145-233 million tons of co2 in one year.
    human emissions come to 24 BILLION tons a year
    this was released by the secretary of the interior.

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  31. megal Posted 6:51 pm
    12 Oct 2008

    RE: The SOA with reach: Web-Oriented Architectureswf to avi converter can convert SWF files to various audio videos like SWF to MP3 Converter, SWF to AAC Converter, SWF to WMA Converter, etc.

    Permalink

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Series Intro
'There is no evidence' -- Yes, there is 59
'Mauna Loa is a volcano' -- CO2 rise is measured on top of a volcano! 8
'Warming is due to the Urban Heat Island effect' -- No, it isn't 25
'One hundred years is not enough'--Yes it is 18
'The scientists aren't even sure' -- No scientist ever is 33
'One record year is not global warming'--Luckily, there are plenty more years to consider 19
'Glaciers have always grown and receded'--A few glaciers melting does not mean global warming 14
'The temperature record is unreliable'--But temperature trends are clear and widely corroborated 8
'It's cold today in Wagga Wagga'--Weather and climate are different 2
'The satellites show cooling'--No, they don't 15
'What about mid-century cooling?'--No one said CO2 is the only climate influence 11
'Antarctic ice is growing'--Well, probably not, but even if it were, we are not off the hook 8
'Global warming stopped in 1998'--Only if you flagrantly cherry pick 170
'But the glaciers are not melting'--Except ... they are! 3
'Antarctic sea ice is increasing'--Yes, but ... 14
'Sea level in the Arctic is falling'--Sea level is a surprisingly complicated thing 11
'Climate sensitivity is not very high'--Thermal inertia of the oceans means the jury is still out 2
'Some sites show cooling'--But you can't draw global conclusions from individual sites 0
'Global warming is a hoax'--I wish James Inhofe were just a hoax ... 12
'There is no consensus'--If this is not consensus, what would consensus look like? 109
'Position statements hide debate'--True enough, but that is not the whole picture 5
'Consensus is collusion'--Is climate science maturing, or should we reach for our tinfoil hats? 8
'Peiser refuted Oreskes'--In a poor piece of work that has been retracted by its author 4
'Models don't account for clouds'--Clouds are complex and uncertain, but unlikely to stop warming 6
'Climate models are unproven'--Actually, GCM's have many confirmed successes under their belts 13
'Aerosols should mean more warming in the south'--More North. Hemisphere warming is well-understood 1
'We can't even predict the weather next week'--But weather is not climate 11
'Chaotic systems are not predictable'--Sure, but who says climate is chaotic? 13
Understanding what is happening right under our noses does not require paleoclimate perfection 1
'They predicted global cooling in the 70s'--But that didn't even remotely resemble today's consensus 29
'Hansen has been wrong before'--Maybe, but not about the climate! 13
'It was warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum'--This period was not global and not like today 4
'The Medieval Warm Period was just as warm as today'--Repeating this point does not make it true 216
'Greenland used to be green'--Don't judge a book by its cover, much less a land by its name 23
Yes, the last ice age started thawing over 20,000 years ago, but that stopped a long time ago 5
'The hockey stick is broken'--Well, no ... but who's playing hockey anyway? 6
'Vineland was full of grapes'--Or was it an early advertising campaign? 4
'Global warming is part of a natural cycle'--This idea is one short step above appealing to magic 39
'Mars and Pluto are warming too'--No they aren't -- and what if they were? 24
'Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans'--Not even close ... 31
'The null hypothesis says warming is natural'--An inappropriate test, and one that would fail anyway 4
'Climate is always changing'--That doesn't mean it isn't different today 5
'Natural emissions dwarf human emissions'--But emissions are only one side of the equation 5
'The CO2 rise is natural'--No skeptical argument has been more definitively disproven 12
'We are just recovering from the LIA'--Why should we expect this to happen? 4
'Climate scientists dodge the subject of water vapor'--No, they really don't 4
Water vapor is indeed a powerful greenhouse gas, but there is plenty of room for CO2 to play a role 29
There is no proof in science, but there are mountains of evidence 78
'CO2 doesn't lead, it lags'--Turns out CO2 rise is both a cause and an effect of warming 43
'Geological history does not support CO2's importance'--Just not true 0
'Historically, CO2 never caused temperature change'--Not so 19
'It's the sun, stupid'--Very bright, yes, but not getting brighter 18
The problem is not how high the temperature may go, but how fast it is changing 14
'Kyoto is a big effort for almost nothing'--Kyoto is only in its first phase 16
China and India have joined Kyoto, they just have different obligations, as is morally appropriate 3
'Climate change mitigation would lead to disaster'--Not really, but this may be lesser of two evils 6
Only if you ignore fossil fuel emissions 10
In 2008, did temperatures drop as much as they rose over the whole 20th century? 71
Is the IPCC so wrong their theories contradict a basic laws of physics? 23
Is the American Physical Society a crack in the climate change consensus? 3
Summer ice in the Arctic has recovered--Was the Arctic ice retreat a climate anomaly? 7
'Global warming comes from within'--Is heat at the Earth's core the real cause of global warming? 10
Was there another breathless announcement of another phony record, and another quiet retraction? 1
Hansen wants the skeptics thrown in jail--Did James Hansen really want to try the climate skeptics? 6
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