You know as well as I (AGAIN) that the whole debate of whether man is causing climate change has nothing to do with intentional efforts to control weather patterns/events.

 

I just don't understand why you always filibuster with often unrelated "facts" and information (other than it being taught to you, and you being the good pupil).

 

We're not talking guilt or innocence here and unlike a criminal violation, guilt doesn't turn on motive. In fact we're dealing with factual capacity to do something; not the guilt that is attached to a intentional act.

 

Logically, if you were trying to 'heat up a space' you would put a blanket around the space and then burn stuff under that blanket. The plain fact is greenhouse gasses (including methane which is getting out of control with fracking) are being unbanked from underground deposits of coal, oil and gas and dispersed into the atmosphere. It is not the presence of carbon dioxide, it is the concentration. We've added dramatically to the thickness of the blanket. By burning more and more (and adding not only released heat but more carbon that had been stored in the ground as an inert coal and oil) heat is trapped. This is a matter of physical properties of coal, oil and gas when burned.

 

The point of bringing up alternate methods of manipulating weather is simply to dispute the point that man is so insignificant that he can't modify the environment when, throughout the course of human history, that is largely what mankind did. Indeed, when we put our minds to it, we can do outrageous things. Certainly, though, what a hand ful of people can do with specific technology, even, pales in comparison what billions can do in the course of their normal day driving to and from work, working in energy-intensive industries, heating their food, cooling their homes and growing their food. Heck, when I was a child, the population of the earth was but 2 billion people; today it approaches 7 billion and just that many more people represents a burden on the planet given our wasteful ways.

The only thing the exhaust test would prove is the stupidity of the person who agreed to it - other than that, it has no true correlation to man made climate change.

 

Well, virtually all climate scientists not on the payroll of the energy extractive industries agree that mankind is responsible for a massive climate change, the degree of which may be greater or less than the current projections ... indeed, the damage assessments to the environment continue to be increased with time. This is not a good thing suggesting that those who deny it might do us all a favor if they thought of the exhaust test as an analogy because ignoring it may have the same dire consequence.

You love to look stuff up, look up the comparison to all the pollutants expelled into the atmosphere by man since the industrial revolution vs. a single volcanic eruption.

 

The unequivocal answer to this question is "NO" .

 

First the pollutants emitted by volcanos are typically ash and sulfur dioxide ... not CO2. Sulfur dioxide btw, converts chemically in the upper atmosphere in such a way as to reflect sunlight at a very levels in the atmosphere actually 'cooling' the planet. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, lets sunlight enter deep into the atmosphere and traps the heat - you know like a blanket. Here, in fact is how the USGS explains the impact of volcanos.

Volcanic Gases and Climate Change Overview

Volcanoes can impact climate change. During major explosive eruptions huge amounts of volcanic gas, aerosol droplets, and ash are injected into the stratosphere. Injected ash falls rapidly from the stratosphere -- most of it is removed within several days to weeks -- and has little impact on climate change. But volcanic gases like sulfur dioxide can cause global cooling, while volcanic carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, has the potential to promote global warming.

 

Eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 15, 1991.

The most significant climate impacts from volcanic injections into the stratosphere come from the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid, which condenses rapidly in the stratosphere to form fine sulfate aerosols. The aerosols increase the reflection of radiation from the Sun back into space, cooling the Earth's lower atmosphere or troposphere. Several eruptions during the past century have caused a decline in the average temperature at the Earth's surface of up to half a degree (Fahrenheit scale) for periods of one to three years. The climactic eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 15, 1991, was one of the largest eruptions of the twentieth century and injected a 20-million ton (metric scale) sulfur dioxide cloud into the stratosphere at an altitude of more than 20 miles. The Pinatubo cloud was the largest sulfur dioxide cloud ever observed in the stratosphere since the beginning of such observations by satellites in 1978. It caused what is believed to be the largest aerosol disturbance of the stratosphere in the twentieth century, though probably smaller than the disturbances from eruptions of Krakatau in 1883 and Tambora in 1815. Consequently, it was a standout in its climate impact and cooled the Earth's surface for three years following the eruption, by as much as 1.3 degrees at the height of the impact. Sulfur dioxide from the large 1783-1784 Laki fissure eruption in Iceland caused regional cooling of Europe and North America by similar amounts for similar periods of time.

For more information about sulfur in the atmosphere, please see Volcanic Sulfur Aerosols Affect Climate and the Earth's Ozone Layer.

While sulfur dioxide released in contemporary volcanic eruptions has occasionally caused detectable global cooling of the lower atmosphere, the carbon dioxide released in contemporary volcanic eruptions has never caused detectable global warming of the atmosphere. This is probably because the amounts of carbon dioxide released in contemporary volcanism have not been of sufficient magnitude to produce detectable global warming. For example, all studies to date of global volcanic carbon dioxide emissions indicate that present-day subaerial and submarine volcanoes release less than a percent of the carbon dioxide released currently by human activities. While it has been proposed that intense volcanic release of carbon dioxide in the deep geologic past did cause global warming, and possibly some mass extinctions, this is a topic of scientific debate at present.Volcanic versus anthropogenic CO₂ emissions

Do the Earth’s volcanoes emit more CO₂ than human activities? Research findings indicate that the answer to this frequently asked question is a clear and unequivocal, “No.” Human activities, responsible for a projected 35 billion metric tons (gigatons) of CO₂ emissions in 2010 (Friedlingstein et al., 2010), release an amount of CO₂ that dwarfs the annual CO₂ emissions of all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2011).

The published estimates of the global CO₂ emission rate for all degassing subaerial (on land) and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 0.13 gigaton to 0.44 gigaton per year (Gerlach, 1991; Varekamp et al., 1992; Allard, 1992; Sano and Williams, 1996; Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998). The preferred global estimates of the authors of these studies range from about 0.15 to 0.26 gigaton per year. The 35-gigaton projected anthropogenic CO₂ emission for 2010 is about 80 to 270 times larger than the respective maximum and minimum annual global volcanic CO₂ emission estimates. It is 135 times larger than the highest preferred global volcanic CO₂ estimate of 0.26 gigaton per year (Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998).

 

Note the annual C02 emmissions from man-made sources is something like 35 gigatons compared to estimates of all the volcanoes and eruptions, including undersea vents, etc. that amount to .13 to .44 gigatons. or 80 to 270 times greater in a typical year.

 

And of course, the cooling effects of sulfer dioxide more than counters the impact of the co2 from volcanic sources. Of course that is just another lie from the right so thank you for the opportunity to correct the misconception.

 

pubby

Source: GOP vote to threaten National Defence