big kahuna wrote:
I believe the eruption of a single volcano in Iceland in 2010 put out more carbon (CO) and sulfur dioxide (SO2, which may act as a kind of coolant) than the entire world had managed to save in the 5 years before that, in terms of carbon, so it's a possibility that volcanism could indeed create such a phenomenon.I don't think that's correct. The volcano ejected between 150k-300k tons of CO2 each day. Humans produce about 24 billion tons annually, so even if the volcano was going full-bore for a year it would have produced only maybe 75 million tons, which isn't even 0.004% of what humans produced.
That said, you did say it produced more than humans saved in 5 years, so depending on how you measure it, you could say we didn't cut back CO2 emissions by 0.004% over those five years, and you'd be technically correct.
The sum CO2 of all volcanoes each year is about 200 million tons, which is still less than 1% of the 24 billion tons humans contribute.
ETA: That should be 0.4%, not 0.004%
Last edited by:
swimwithstones: Feb 13, 18 10:46