From “Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide” by Terry Gerlach in the June 14, 2011 issue of EOS:
Human activities emit ~135 times as much carbon dioxide as the world’s volcanoes? Holy cow.
From “Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide” by Terry Gerlach in the June 14, 2011 issue of EOS:
Human activities emit ~135 times as much carbon dioxide as the world’s volcanoes? Holy cow.
Impressive, eh? Yet some people still insist that volcanoes produce more, we’re just “missing” all those volcanic emissions. Go figure.
I don’t find the 135x multiplier all that surprising. There are hundreds of millions more cars on earth than volcanoes. With all the other sources of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, I’m surprised the number isn’t higher.
What I find more concerning is the drastic change in the ACM multiplier slope following WWII. Also worrisome is that the slope hasn’t changed in the past 10 years, despite increased awareness about global climate change. How much of that is to blame on developing countries? I don’t know but probably not as much as we would like to think.