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Comment by bluehawk | Hacker News Reader

The majority of science studies, papers and reports disagree with you. Humans can and do have a huge impact on the world.

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Since when number of publications became the measure of truth? There were numerous publications before Leonardo since Aristotle that flies have 8 legs. They all still have 6 though. Humans are nothing in impact comparing to a single volcano.

Well your evidence sure is overwhelming! Hundreds of man-years of research based on multiple, independent lines of evidence pointing towards a singular conclusion and you, the voice of reason, here to refute it all without the aid of satellite data, ice cores, spectrometers or computers models.

I think this is exactly Bret's point that he makes in the essay. Citizens aren't empowered to find out for themselves and are instead asks to trust smart people:

"And why trust them? Their rhetoric is catchy, but so is the horrific “denialist” rhetoric from the Cato Institute and similar. When the discussion is at the level of “trust me, I’m a scientist” and “look at the poor polar bears”, it becomes a matter of emotional appeal and faith, a form of religion.

Climate change is too important for us to operate on faith. Citizens need and deserve reading material which shows context — how significant suggested actions are in the big picture — and which embeds models — formulas and algorithms which calculate that significance, for different scenarios, from primary-source data and explicit assumptions."

Do you check psychology journals every time you want to consult with a psychologist? Check the materials of the replacement parts in your car and run them against a material model to make sure that they're within the specified bounds of safety? Put food fragments on petri dishes to check bacterial content?

For 99.9% of people, scientifically validating the opinions of the scientific consensus in all fields of life is a non-issue, except here. We trust other human beings because society and ecology are systems far too complex for anyone to make falsifiable assertions about them without serious research beyond the scope of single individuals.

If anything, on the thing we can actually check up on, which is the integrity of climate scientists as an institution, they've been a hell of a lot more trusworthy than dozens of other institutions for which we rely on all the time. Maybe you've heard of them: the FDA, SEC, WHO, AMA, and dozens upon dozens of bodies of researchers, advisors, and experts.

They all fuck up significantly from time to time, but by and large, their assesments are useful and have helped to bring some of the benefits of modern society.

Now, I'm all in favor of people wanting to verify and corroborate data and evidence, but let's keep in mind that realistically, very few of us are capable of even asking the right questions. The best we can do is read up a little and check for consistency and reasonable explanations coming from the very scientists. So far, anyone who has listened to dudes like Michael Mann, Jason Box, and a plethora of other climatologists cannot seriously question their legitimacy any more than their own peers.

Ironically all that system is not designed to find the truth. It is designed to find more funding to support itself. I know that, because I did that myself. A single set of glacial cores from Greenland tells you more that all that satellite BS. If you remotely closely familiar with principles of climatic modelling, you 'd be rotfl, looking at someone trying to validate or backtrace that models. Because you'd be familiar with valid and comparable data scarcity. We lack actual climate data. Ice cores are really the only thing we really have.

Yeah, your assertion doesn't seem to be validated at all. Not only do Jason Box's reconstructions refute that, but the reality is that with the current temperatures we have in Greenland the level of glacial melt is unprecedented. If not, mind explaining to us how exactly, if average temperatures have been higher in Greenland, then it hasn't experienced the melt it's going through right now?

https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=337

Well, climate change this than: http://yer.io/img/globalwarm-this.png

And global warm that: http://yer.io/img/gisp-last-10000-new.png

It is evident from the observations of Sohn et al. (2008) & Reves-Sohn et al. (2008) that the Northwest Passage was opened up by powerful volcanic activity under the Arctic Ice along the Gakkel Ridge, while West Antarctic melting (as opposed to thickening of ice throughout the rest of Antarctica) can be explained by recent volcanic activity beneath the ice (Corr & Vaughan, 2008). Moreover, there are simply too many volcanoes to deny that the atmospheric concentration of the most erupted gas next to water is predominantly controlled by the balance or lack thereof between volcanic activity and photosynthesis. Furthermore, there is simply no established volcanic CO2 fingerprint by which we may distinguish atmospheric proportions of anthropogenic and volcanogenic contributions. This leaves us with no empirical method by which we may attribute the 20th century rise in CO2 to human energy consumption.

> Humans are nothing in impact comparing to a single volcano.

This is a myth which you can easily disprove yourself with a little research.

If a single volcano vastly dwarfs human eCO2 output, then surely measurements of atmosphere eCO2 levels in years volcanos erupted will show significant spikes in atmosphere eCO2 concentration?

Sources: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/Gerlach-2011-EOS_AGU....

Globally, cars and trucks alone are responsible for about 15 times the CO2 emissions of all volcanos and that number is still growing.

Consider the CO2 record of the past few years: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_full

From that, you would not pick that the largest volanic emissions of CO2 over that range occurred in 1980 and 1991 or shortly around those times.

I actually did some research, and delivered a course in Environmental Legislation for three semesters at Moscow Industrial University. There are huge margins in estimations of both consumption and production of CO2. We lack actual data from one side and we have too many stakeholders with vested interest in "raising awareness about climate change", and selling more "cleaner" cars to take this subject seriously. Ever asked yourself how much of the CO2 footprint the "green" car have? Its way larger than Ford T.

But you'll note, again, that the data I referred to isn't about what cars do or do not emit specifically. It is about whether volcanic eruptions track with significant increases in CO2 in the atmosphere.

Which they do not.

Where as your sources are still absent.

Look, data for individual eruptions:

Year Volcano Mean Sulphurous Output Source Est. Carbon output during year(s) of eruption 1883AD Krakatoa 38 MtSO2pa Shinohara (2008) 26.14 MtCpa 1815AD Tambora 70 MtSO2pa Shinohara (2008) 48.16 MtCpa 1783AD Laki 130 MtSO2pa Shinohara (2008) 89.44 MtCpa 1600AD Huaynaputina 48 MtSO2pa Shinohara (2008) 33.02 MtCpa 1452AD Kuwae 150 MtH2SO4pa Witter & Self (2007) 67.40 MtCpa 934AD Eldja 110 MtSO2 Shinohara (2008) 75.68 MtCpa 1645BC Minoa 125 MtSO2pa Shinohara (2008) 86.00 MtCpa circa 71,000BP Toba 1100 MtH2SO4pa Zielenski et al. (1996) 494.24 MtCpa

Notice how all but one of the individual annual volcanogenic carbon outputs, estimated above, dwarf the global subaerial volcanogenic carbon outputs estimated by both Gerlach (1991) & Kerrick (2001).

Gerlach is Guesswork ;-)

You really need to qualify what those units are.

But also, again, if what what you were saying were true, why does it not show up in the atmospheric CO2 record?

Because plants and algae consume co2, this is school biology.

If CO2 levels are rising overall, and you claim volcanic eruptions utterly dwarf man made emissions, then years with volcanic eruptions should show an increase in atmospheric CO2 outside of the trend, and years without them should be flatter.

This is not shown in any of data.

But now you claim plants and algae are consuming all the volcanic CO2. So where is the overall increase coming from then? And I'd they are doing this, why, in non-eruption years, does CO2 not fall greatly due to all this biomass?

Read this too. http://deforestation.geologist-1011.net

Ahem,

> The volcano released approximately 0.15 million tonnes of CO2 each day, but the massive reduction of air travel occurring over European skies caused by the ash cloud, saved an estimated 1.3 to 2.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere by 19 April 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_April_2010_Eyja...

> The grounding of European flights avoided about 3.44×10^8 kg of CO2 emissions per day, while the volcano emitted about 1.5×10^8 kg of CO2 per day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%...

One small volcano vs all European flights.

Now look at this:

Notice how all but one of the individual annual volcanogenic carbon outputs, estimated above, dwarf the global subaerial volcanogenic carbon outputs estimated by both Gerlach (1991) & Kerrick (2001)

So you're bringing up the Toba eruption (circa 71,000BP!), probably the largest eruption in the past 100 thousand years, which was so extreme that some scholars suspect that it created a "genetic bottleneck" in human DNA by killing off the majority of humans.[1]

According to your list, it emitted 494.24 Mt of carbon.

By comparison: "Since 1751 approximately 374 billion metric tonnes of carbon have been released to the atmosphere from the consumption of fossil fuels and cement production. Half of these fossil-fuel CO2 emissions have occurred since the mid 1980s. The 2011 global fossil-fuel carbon emission estimate, 9449 million metric tons of carbon, represents an all-time high and a 3.4% increase over 2010 emissions."[2]

Fun fact: "In 2014, about 136.78 billion gallons (or 3.26 billion barrels) of gasoline were consumed in the United States."[3] Gasoline's density is 719.7 kg/m^3, so this is roughly 372 Mt of gasoline, of which most is carbon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Geneti...

[2] http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob_2011.html

[3] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10

Unfortunately there is no magic fingerprint to distinguish between tectonic, volcanic and antropogenic carbon. The thing is that there are about 130 000 intraplate volcanoes leaking co2 to the ocean all the time. And it is very probable that the whole human output to carbon release during the whole industrial history is less than carbon input of the Pacific Ridge in just 10 years. Another thing is that over the last 800 years or so volcanic activity increased. So 30 percent or such increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the last 100 years is not a human sin. Planet is larger than you think, and humanity is smaller. Take a hike up the Yenisei river from Chita, see for yourself.

> Unfortunately there is no magic fingerprint to distinguish between tectonic, volcanic and antropogenic carbon.

Wrong again. Fossil fuels come from plants and animals, and they all ultimately come from photosynthesis, which prefers C12 over slightly heavier C13 atoms.[1]

As a result, CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels have a lower concentration of C13.

"Plants have a lower C13/C12 ratio than in the atmosphere. If rising atmospheric CO2 comes fossil fuels, the C13/C12 should be falling. Indeed this is what is occuring (Ghosh 2003) and the trend correlates with the trend in global emissions."[2]

As for "humanity is smaller", I'll refer to the excellent xkcd[3]. I believe no further elaboration is necessary.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopic_signature#Carbon_isot...

[2] http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=109

[3] http://xkcd.com/1338/

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