How Renewable Energy Is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course

[senona]

This isn't the exact article I was looking for, but it talks of the same thing...putting down people who claim volcanoes put out more CO2 than humans.

This one has to do with the volcano in southern Iceland-- the Eyjafjallajokull, back when it erupted.



April 21, 2010

.......But one opportunity the volcano has gifted us in particular is the chance to put to bed once and for all that barrel-aged climate sceptic canard which maintains that volcanoes emit far more carbon dioxide than anthropogenic sources. It's always been a favourite, but has been pushed even further up the charts of popularity in recent months by the repeated claims of Ian Plimer, the Australian mining geologist who wrote the climate sceptic bible Heaven and Earth last year.
Here, for example, is what Plimer wrote on Australia's ABC Network website last August:

The atmosphere contains only 0.001 per cent of all carbon at the surface of the Earth and far greater quantities are present in the lower crust and mantle of the Earth. Human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere must be taken into perspective. Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day.

John Cook of the increasingly popular Skeptical Science website currently lists the "volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans" viewpoint as number 54 on his ever-growing list - 107, to date - of debunked sceptic arguments.
It was also a point picked up by my colleague James Randerson when he interviewed Plimer last December. In Heaven and Earth, Plimer says: "Volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world's cars and industries combined." Randerson challenged Plimer on this point, stating that the US Geological Survey (USGS) states: "Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes."
Plimer responded by saying that this does not account for undersea eruptions. However, when Randerson checked this point with USGS volcanologist Dr Terrence Gerlach, he received this reply:

I can confirm to you that the "130 times" figure on the USGS website is an estimate that includes all volcanoes – submarine as well as subaerial ... Geoscientists have two methods for estimating the CO2 output of the mid-oceanic ridges. There were estimates for the CO2 output of the mid-oceanic ridges before there were estimates for the global output of subaerial volcanoes.

Despite having seemingly lanced this festering boil for good, the focus on Eyjafjallajokull over the past week has allowed this question to bubble back up to the forefront of people's minds. It was enough to trigger the Paris-based AFP news agency to seek some answers:

Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano is emitting between 150,000 and 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per day, a figure placing it in the same emissions league as a small-to-medium European economy, experts said on Monday.

Assuming the composition of gas to be the same as in an earlier eruption on an adjacent volcano, "the CO2 flux of Eyjafjoell would be 150,000 tonnes per day," Colin Macpherson, an Earth scientist at Britain's University of Durham, said in an email.

Patrick Allard of the Paris Institute for Global Physics (IPGP) gave what he described as a "top-range" estimate of 300,000 tonnes per day.

Both insisted that these were only approximate estimates.

Extrapolated over a year, the emissions would place the volcano 47th to 75th in the world table of emitters on a country-by-country basis, according to a database at the World Resources Institute (WRI), which tracks environment and sustainable development.

A 47th ranking would place it above Austria, Belarus, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, Bulgaria, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland, according to this list, which relates to 2005.

Experts stressed that the volcano contributed just a tiny amount – less than a third of one percentage point – of global emissions of greenhouse gases.

So, please, can we now put this hoary old chestnut to bed?

Source



I personally do not like how climate change activists act like bullies towards those people that question it.
 

Let me correct that....they do not question climate change itself, but rather the 'man-made global warming agenda' is what they question.

And in science, one is supposed to question and research and study.

Yet with GW climate change, oh no you are NOT allowed to question it at all. Period.
Which is what makes it so suspicious, because despite what 'statistics' they throw at you (in favor for GW mind you), there are well known scientists who do question it.