I've seen so many studies online that claim that volcanic eruptions can't possibly cause climate change. Are we finally willing to admit that it might not all be man-made?
It's not my fault that too many people in the HN community refuse to have actual scientific discussions and instantly go for the down vote (not very intelligent, in my honest opinion).
If you look through my history, I've attempted to have discussions about climate change..and I'm shouted down and silenced.
HN used to have intelligent people posting that actually wanted real discussions. It's driving more and more people away from it with this sort of mob-like behavior.
edit: Meaning normal volcanic activity (in a modern context) has been shown to not be the driver of recent observable climate change. However this does not mean that very large volcanic eruptions won't have an impact on global temperatures when ash is thrown up high enough to block out the sun.
What has never been established is a link between volcanic activity and global warming.
Please take your strawman elsewhere.
Like this article? This article is claiming just that.
"What has never been established is a link between volcanic activity and global warming."
So when man spews massive amounts of CO2, the climate changes. When the same thing happens with a volcano eruption, nothing. heh, that makes sense.
It's puzzling why mentioning volcanic eruptions and climate change is considered a "straw man" to you when the article is about volcanic eruptions and climate change.
"Straw man" is used too often for things that people merely disagree with.
I can't wait for the day when we can have actual open and honest scientific discussion, rather than silencing anything that goes against the popular narrative.
Let's see one recent volcanic eruption that caused quite some trouble:
> 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.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%...
I.e., The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull had a net negative effect in CO2 emission because the effect of grounded European flights alone more than compensated for the natural volcanic emission.
So, yes, when man spews massive amounts of CO2, the climate changes. And pray that the same amount of CO2 is never spewed through a volcanic eruption, unless you long to die in a volcanic apocalypse.
If that were the case, we would already be dead from the amounts spewed from the European flights. No?
I think one of my problems with it all is that we have been hearing the exact same thing since the 1970s. The sky will fall and all life on earth will be destroyed because of global warming, global cooling, and climate change. ~40 years have passed and nothing has happened. The predictions were wrong.
> The Mount Pinatubo eruption emitted 42 million tonnes of CO2 (Gerlach et al 1996). Compare this to human emissions in 1991: 23 billion tonnes of CO2 (CDIAC). The strongest eruption over the last half-century amounted to 0.2% of human CO2 emissions in that year. [1]
In other words, for volcanic eruptions to match human CO2 output, we need ~500 Mount Pinatubo's every year (or roughly two of them every day). Like watching volcanoes?
[1] https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=50
Edit: on second thought, if we have anywhere near that many volcanoes, most of us will be too busy starving to death to contribute anything meaningful to the anthropogenic global warming (which would be no more), so maybe one Mount Pinatubo every week or so would be enough to match human emission.
A strawman argument is when you set up an argument ("Scientists claim volcanic eruptions cannot affect the climate") and then knock it down as evidence disproving a different claim ("Scientists claim volcanic eruptions are not responsible for global warming in the modern era."). It's faulty reasoning at best, and a dishonest rhetorical technique at worst.
Now, I suppose it's possible that you don't understand the nuance of the argument, here, and that you weren't in fact setting up a strawman argument as a rhetorical technique in order to sew doubt about the current scientific consensus regarding human-caused global warming.
But, unfortunately I've seen this type of faulty reasoning too often to assume simple ignorance.
(That these effects lower the global temperature is nothing new. It's one reason the effect of coal burning isn't as bad as it could be -- the particulates/SO2 partially negate the forcing effect of the CO2 emissions. Of course, once you stop burning coal, these effects disappear quickly and you are left with the CO2. If you open up your copy of the 2007 IPCC assessment report, you'll find this mentioned already on page 4.)
This article claims that the volcanic eruption caused cooling, not warming.
It mentions "a summer without heat" and that "15 of the 16 coldest summers recorded between 500 BC and 1,000 AD followed large volcanic eruptions".
This cooling effect is caused by particulates, not CO2.