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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."

4 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. zerg by Lord+Omlette · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    [o]_O
  2. The Conservatives Position by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  3. 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
  4. Re:Volcanic emissions compared to human output by fluffy666 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.