Mount St. Helens is WA state's No. 1 air polluter

John Patrick Luethe writes "The Seattle Times has run an article on Mount St. Helens' recent massive pollution. The article claims that since the start of the recent volcanic activity starting in early October the volcano has pumped out between 50 and 250 tons of sulfur dioxide each day and has become the states largest polluter."

Comments

Mount St. Helens is WA state's No. 1 air polluter

[macdaddy357]

And global warming is caused by cows farting.

Re:Volcanic emissions compared to human output

[Yokaze]

CO2: Neglectable

B.4 Don't volcanoes naturally release far more CO2 into the atmosphere each year than humans?

Response: No. On a global scale, volcanoes release less than 1% of human emissions of carbon dioxide and hence are a minor contributor to changes in its atmospheric concentrations. Furthermore, emissions from volcanoes have always been part of the natural cycle, [...].

Or other concrete numbers e.g. SO2 : 79 Tg/a human-caused, 24 Tg/a due to natural processes, including volcanoes.

Re:Volcanic emissions compared to human output

[Dachannien]

I took the liberty of creating a link for a Google search for you, since you're too busy trolling to do it yourself.

Anyway, the impact of Pinatubo was to cool the earth by about 0.5 deg C, an effect which lasted a few years. The effect is theorized to be due to the reflection of solar energy by the volcanic aerosol released into the stratosphere. However, warming of the stratosphere occurs in the tropics due to absorption of ground radiation. It's certainly not a simple phenomenon, but the scope of it was in fact greater than any man-made climate change over the same period.

There doesn't seem to be any easily-available info on whether there is a longer-term effect of cooling/warming resulting from pollution released by volcanic eruptions.

Re:Volcanic emissions compared to human output

[fluffy666]

I took the liberty of creating a link for a Google search for you, since you're too busy trolling to do it yourself.

Your claim was that 'The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, for instance, launched more stuff into the atmosphere than all human activity during the 19th and 20th centuries combined.' . Even at a subset, that means you are claiming that the eruption put more CO2, SO2, Nitrogen oxides and particulates into the atmosphere than all human activities for the past 200 years. You've made an absurd claim that you can't back up in a couple of sentances, which looks a lot more like trolling than my post.

A good starting point..

Mt. Pinatubo put around 17 Million tonnes of Sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere (17Tg). Humans emit 66Tg PER YEAR. However, volcanic emissions are injected higher than human ones, making the contribution for a single year approxamately equal.

Mt Pinatubo put around 44 Million tonnes CO2 into the atmosphere. That's around half a day's worth of human emissions. 3 Million tonnes HCl, the vast majority of which rained straight out.

And the effect was a short lived pulse of cooling; the particulates come out in a few months. This is why you don't see anything about longer term effects. There are none.

So, contrary to what is endlessly repeated and recycled, volcanoes do not have anything near the impact of humans and the figures - could you be bothered to research them - support this entirely.