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

Posted by timothy on from the it's-number-one-it's-number-one dept.

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."

2 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Pollution? by glapalom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How can anyone say that Mt. St. Helens actually pollutes? I mean, isn't this just a natural volcanic reaction, and if so, how can a planet pollute itself with it's own elements? Isn't this just part of being on this planet?

    --
    Joshua 24:15
  2. Not representative by hak+hak · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The tone of most reactions to this article (and to all other recent topics on climate change) seems to be, "Well, apparently natural effects are much more important than human effects, so why bother about the human impact on climate change?"

    We should realize that this particular case of natural greenhouse gas emission is not at all representative for the relative importance of human and natural effects. If you restrict to a small enough area and timespan, any effect becomes important. Why say that Mt. St. Helens is WA state's biggest pollutor, and not that volcanic effects dwarf human contributions in the whole US (or the whole world)? Because if you look on a bigger scale than just the area around the volcano, volcanic effects are just not that important. I'm not saying they are unimportant, only that industrial effects are at least as important.

    And then I'm not even talking about the extremely short timescale this volcano is active (only for a couple of months, while industrial activity continues 24/7).

    By the way, I absolutely do not regard myself as overly green or left-wing. I would like to believe that everything's going to be alright, but the facts are unfortunately too obvious to ignore.