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

Gaia Watch Out!

[Anonymous Coward]

The eco-terrorists are gonna be coming after you!

Re:Gaia Watch Out!

[StalinJoe]

Now, I'm no tree-hugger. I am not an eco-terrorist. I drive an SUV.

But isn't it a little disconcerting that it took an active spewing volcano over two months to get pingged for excessive emissions?

Day after day of spewing tons of pollutants, and it takes OVER TWO MONTHS to pass up the status-quo industrial polluters?

Hmmmmmm...

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

Obviously the solution is to cut taxes for companies that engage in volcanic activity.

And throw in some more tax cuts for plate tectonic activity too.

Re:zerg

[BLAG-blast]

Yeah, I was wondering how the lefties were going to blame this on President Bush. How about this: Halliburton drilled a well in Wyoming that fouled up the plate tectonics and caused the mountain to start spewing again.

Er, Scott, I don't think you are correct about tectonics and Halliburton. The real reason is little more straight forward than that. The Fire Mountain God is angry because Bush has been elected president.

And no air permit, too!

[mschaffer]

This is way over the 250 ton/year limit for SO2 for it to be considered a major source, and I cannot find any record of the EPA region 10 approving an air permit for the National Park Service at that site.

Shame, shame on the NPS to operate an attraction that is so polluting. It should be shut down.

Re:And no air permit, too!

[MemoryAid]

The National Park Service is now stuck with a $50,000 per day fine until they comply with the regulation.

Re:Wow, that's interesting

[jazman_777]

I've heard of web sites where they actually include links to the articles and you can go read them for yourself.

The act of looking at the link then not reading the article was left as a mental exercise this time. This is /.

Everyone always talks about volcanic CO2 pollution

[WolfWithoutAClause]

But nobody ever does anything about it.

I think the federal government should step in with a grant or something.

Kyoto Accord?

[TFGeditor]

I wonder if the Kyoto Accord takes into account things like this.

Re:Everyone always talks about volcanic CO2 pollut

[NonSequor]

I think we should follow Iceland's model. We need to find a way to control the weather with the power of the fiery magma beneath the earth's crust.

This also has a secondary effect. Our use of geothermal power will bring all of the world's greatest mad scientists to the US. Mad scientists are naturally drawn to geothermal power like moths to flame. Sure, mad scientists may be unpredictable, but at least some of them will do spectacular things to benefit humanity and I think it's worth the risk of a cataclysm or two.

Volcanic emissions compared to human output

[FleaPlus]

Does anybody know overall how global volcanic emissions compare to human output?

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.

Carbon Dioxide emissions

[caseih]

While the SO2 emissions are considered pollution, I was shocked at how high the daily man-made CO2 emissions were. The CO2 emissions wouldn't be such a big deal if they were coming from some organic source, but since they are being added to the carbon cycle, that's a lot of CO2 to absorb. And there's no end in sight. It is high time we started replacing our fossil fuels with organic fuels. At that point CO2 emissions become non-issues since there would be no net increase in the carbon levels of the enviroment. It's not the burning that is the problem (outside of NO2 and SO2 creation); it's the buring of fossil fuels that add CO2 that is the problem.

Re:Carbon Dioxide emissions

[fm6]

By "organic" I assume you mean "crop-based". Except that it takes energy to grow crops. By some calculations, it takes more than you produce.

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

[macdaddy357]

And global warming is caused by cows farting.

The Conservatives Position

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no hard evidence that 250 tons of sulphur dioxide per day contribute to pollution. Rather than burden volcanoes with unnecessary restrictions, we should lower taxes on them to stimulate growth and create new jobs.

Who cares?

[JhAgA]

Dealing with it would surely cut out jobs, wouldn't it? Leave it be.

This is giving bush's admin fits

[WindBourne]

Thye are still trying to figure out how to give MSH a tax break.

Pollution?

[glapalom]

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?

Re:Pollution?

[TheNarrator]

You forget that humans did not land here from outer space. We are a product of the earth too. So how can naked apes like us burning fossil fuels, given that we are part of the earth just like the volcano, be any worse than what the volcano does? In the 19th century there were theories called "vitalism" that said that there was something about human life that was so fantastic that it was not understandable to science. The modern environmentalist movement has this same idea, that somehow humans are different from the rest of nature.

Perspective

[TheLink]

Sure. The way I see it is: we have brains, the power to change things AND are already changing things whether voluntarily or not. There are 6 billion of us. The animals and plants directly under our control and responsibility number even more.

So, we should be careful to pick the changes we want so that we have a decent time on this world (and possibly other worlds).

Trying to minimize the number of species from going extinct just for the sake of that is silly. Trying to prevent any change to the environment is silly too. But changing or allowing change to the environment without long-term consideration is irresponsible.

If whales etc have to go extinct then it better be a well thought out choice, rather than "oops".

But I sure think we'd be better off if all the bloodsucking mosquitoes go extinct and stay extinct. Sure some animals will suffer and might even go extinct if they (or their prey) don't have enough mosquitoes to eat, but NOT all will. Some will adapt and many wouldn't even notice the difference - after all there ARE other mosquitoes and insects that don't suck blood. Adapt to a human-friendly lifestyle or die (same goes for humans ;) ).

Just like we'd be better off without HIV and Polio, and various _nasty_ parasites. We can live with some of the other parasites or pests (I don't like roaches, but they don't seem as harmful as the bloodsucking types of mosquitoes).

What we need is clear thinking and not irrational screaming of "Murder" etc. Sure, I'm cold and heartless, but if a species has to go extinct or suffer for the greater good of humankind, so be it.

But it better be for the greater good!

Hopefully most people don't believe "As long as things don't get totally messed up in my lifetime it's OK".

Re:Everyone always talks about volcanic CO2 pollut

[jonabbey]

The article actually focuses on Sulfur Dioxide production, not Carbon Dioxide. Volcanos do produce CO2, but the article states that one coal plant in Washington State produces 28 times more CO2 than does Mt. St. Helens.

Not representative

[hak hak]

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.