3 ms·

Human activity is responsible for less than 5% of greenhouse gasses. One eruption can spew decades worth of gases into the air

Comevius 4y ago
This is misinformation. Volcanoes are responsible for less than 0.5 Gt of the global CO2 emissions a year. That's a bit less than the 50 Gt we are responsible for. Volcanoes and solar flares would have caused a slight cooling in the last 100 years, not a sharp warming we are experiencing. There is a natural carbon cycle, which is quite balanced in that there is barely any radiative forcing, which is the difference between how much energy enters the atmosphere and how much of it leaves. Human activity amounts to all, I repeat all of the radiative forcing in the last century, and more actually, because naturally there would have been negative forcing.
- kurupt213 4y ago
  It’s not misinformation. We don’t have major eruptions every year. And only 5% of annual carbon emissions are anthropomorphic. I agree humans are responsible for increasing CO2, but not because of emissions. The earth should act as a buffered system, with utility of atmospheric carbon rising with carbon levels. There’s another paper in nature describing how the mass slaughter of baleen whales broke the iron cycle at the poles. Mass whale poop fed the krill who are critical to fixing iron…the high iron krill poop is what feeds the plankton blooms. Polar plankton was critical to sinking excess atmospheric carbon.
  - Comevius 4y ago
    It's misinformation because the natural carbon cycle adds and removes CO2 that keeps a balance. Around 750 Gt of carbon moves through the carbon cycle each year, and the keyword here is that it moves through. The natural emissions are always counterbalanced. The biological pump is one of the most important part of this system, which evolved to work like this. Unfortunately as it turns out this system can't cope with the extra emissions. Most of it is still absorbed, but a lot of it lingers in the atmosphere, causing trouble. Even the oceans have trouble absorbing the extra emissions. They now threaten the biological pump itself. This is why people are so depressed when it comes to climate change, because never mind the greenhouse effect, which is in itself substantial, but once you screw with things like the biological pump there is no telling what will happen. This is a big, fine-tuned system, not unlike a spaceship. It is very risky to poke it. Granted it is likely that the system will snap back into working conditions in a few million years, but that's not exactly reassuring for us.
    - kurupt213 4y ago
      The krill - whale poop cycle was the fertilizer that fed the mass algae blooms in the Arctic that sink increasing emissions. That’s the point. It isnt burning fossil fuels that is the problem… it’s the fact that polar algae is way below normal levels because of a lack of nutrients due to the lack of baleen whales https://www.academia.edu/314989/Southern_Ocean_iron_fertilization_by_baleen_whales_and_Antarctic_krill https://www.academia.edu/314989/Southern_Ocean_iron_fertiliz... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4254789/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4254789/

Comevius 4y ago

This is misinformation. Volcanoes are responsible for less than 0.5 Gt of the global CO2 emissions a year. That's a bit less than the 50 Gt we are responsible for. Volcanoes and solar flares would have caused a slight cooling in the last 100 years, not a sharp warming we are experiencing. There is a natural carbon cycle, which is quite balanced in that there is barely any radiative forcing, which is the difference between how much energy enters the atmosphere and how much of it leaves. Human activity amounts to all, I repeat all of the radiative forcing in the last century, and more actually, because naturally there would have been negative forcing.

kurupt213 4y ago
It’s not misinformation. We don’t have major eruptions every year. And only 5% of annual carbon emissions are anthropomorphic. I agree humans are responsible for increasing CO2, but not because of emissions. The earth should act as a buffered system, with utility of atmospheric carbon rising with carbon levels. There’s another paper in nature describing how the mass slaughter of baleen whales broke the iron cycle at the poles. Mass whale poop fed the krill who are critical to fixing iron…the high iron krill poop is what feeds the plankton blooms. Polar plankton was critical to sinking excess atmospheric carbon.
- Comevius 4y ago
  It's misinformation because the natural carbon cycle adds and removes CO2 that keeps a balance. Around 750 Gt of carbon moves through the carbon cycle each year, and the keyword here is that it moves through. The natural emissions are always counterbalanced. The biological pump is one of the most important part of this system, which evolved to work like this. Unfortunately as it turns out this system can't cope with the extra emissions. Most of it is still absorbed, but a lot of it lingers in the atmosphere, causing trouble. Even the oceans have trouble absorbing the extra emissions. They now threaten the biological pump itself. This is why people are so depressed when it comes to climate change, because never mind the greenhouse effect, which is in itself substantial, but once you screw with things like the biological pump there is no telling what will happen. This is a big, fine-tuned system, not unlike a spaceship. It is very risky to poke it. Granted it is likely that the system will snap back into working conditions in a few million years, but that's not exactly reassuring for us.
  - kurupt213 4y ago
    The krill - whale poop cycle was the fertilizer that fed the mass algae blooms in the Arctic that sink increasing emissions. That’s the point. It isnt burning fossil fuels that is the problem… it’s the fact that polar algae is way below normal levels because of a lack of nutrients due to the lack of baleen whales https://www.academia.edu/314989/Southern_Ocean_iron_fertilization_by_baleen_whales_and_Antarctic_krill https://www.academia.edu/314989/Southern_Ocean_iron_fertiliz... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4254789/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4254789/