Volcanic Eruptions Cause Global Cooling: Man Made Pollution Has a Very Small Effect

Volcanic Eruptions Cause Global Cooling: Man Made Pollution Has a Very Small Effect


Global temperatures over time are dependent on major volcanic eruptions and not on man made pollution as the global warming crowd claims. Volcanic eruptions have caused some heating, but the main effects have been global cooling.

There are many examples of global cooling, some of which are described in the following paragraphs. (Reference 1,2) Approximately 74,000 years ago there was an eruption of a volcano in Java named Toba. This eruption is described by volcanists as “Humongous.” The eruption killed almost all humans on earth at that time. This is not a theory but is well established by scientific data from different sources. They include geologists, geneticists, anthropologists, and others. (Reference 1,2)

We are a single species which we all are descended from and survived in east Africa. From there this migration has been traced first east, then north and east, and later west. Recently Science Daily, (May 10, 2007, reference 3) reports that new research DNA data shows that the Australian Aborigine people came from the same genetic background as the people who migrated out of east Africa. The same is true for the people of New Guinea.

The estimated eruption volume of the Toba eruption is fourteen cubic miles. This is based on evidence from a large number of sources. It is enormous compared to the pollution that the global warming crowd claims is doing so much damage. There is evidence that there were a number of years of global cooling with freezing or near freezing temperatures along the equator with lower temperatures at higher latitudes (Reference 1).

A number of volcanic eruptions have been related to global cooling. The Tambora eruption in Java in 1815 is an example of this. The year following this eruption was known as the year without a summer. In the United States’ Northeast there were snow storms and frost in June, July and August. Many people lost their lives in Java, perhaps as many as 10,000 directly and many more indirectly (Reference 1 pages 68 – 70).

Volcanic eruptions started in Iceland in 1783, continuing until 1784. These eruptions were along a line, approximately twenty-seven kilometers long. More than twenty-five percent of the population died from volcanic ash, poison gas and starvation.

Benjamin Franklin, at the time, represented the United States in France. He speculated that the eye stinging haze and cold winters of 1783 – 1784 were the result of the Iceland volcanoes. North America winters were especially cold to the extent that the Mississippi river froze at New Orleans. Ice cores from Greenland contained significant concentrations of sulfuric acid for the years of 1783 – 1784. Sulfuric acid is one gas contained in the eruption gases.

On April 5, 1815 the volcano Tambora in Indonesia erupted. This was the largest eruption in the last 10,000 years. An estimated thirty-six cubic miles of ash and pumice were ejected. In New England, 1816 was called “The year without summer.” In June 1816 the average temperature was seven degrees Fahrenheit below the preceding years for the entire period from 1780 to 1968.

In 1883 the island of Krakatau erupted causing a loss of life of 36,417 official recorded deaths to an estimated 120,000. The average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius with unstable temperatures until 1888 (Reference 4).

It is very difficult to separate war, politics, and climate. Washington crossing the Delaware in December of 1776 encountered very cold weather with snow on the ground and below freezing conditions. This is evidence of a volcanic eruption somewhere on earth. There were volcanic eruptions in the Wudalianchi Field in Northeast China that took place in 1776. This may have caused the bad weather Washington encountered. In any case Washington’s victory appears to be greatly due to his crossing the Delaware under very difficult conditions (Reference 6). Currently we are experiencing much loss of liberty and freedom as a result of high taxes and more government regulations which are completely uncalled for.

More than 2,000 years ago the eruption of Mount Etna probably caused colder temperatures in Italy and led to famine in Rome and Egypt. Starting around 535 AD and continuing into 540 AD, there is evidence of extremely short summers and periods of extreme cold. This has been attributed to the eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia (Reference 1, pages 68 – 91).

Around 1630 BC Greek Island of Thera erupted and apparently caused the beginning of the end of the Minoan Civilization. Radio and carbon data indicated cold weather in the northern hemisphere including China. Tree ring data from various parts of the world set the time at 1628 BC. Recent studies indicate that the eruptions injected an estimated fifteen cubic miles of earth. The plume reached a height of eighteen to twenty-one miles (Reference 1).

Climate cooling in the northern hemisphere as indicated by the tree rings, from many locations, frost in July as reported from China, heavy rain in Egypt. There is even evidence that the myth of Atlantis actually occurred and was caused by the Thera Eruption, (Reference 6).

On March 17, 1963 the volcano Agung on Bali erupted explosively. The gases reached the stratosphere and the troposphere fell about eleven degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature in the northern hemisphere fell slightly. At the end of March and beginning of April, 1982, the Volcano El Chichon in southeast Mexico exploded vertically. There was a slight lowering of the temperature in the northern hemisphere of several tenths of a degree Fahrenheit.

There are a number of factors that appear to influence the climate both local and global. The size of the eruptions is perhaps the most profound on the global climate. The humongous eruption of Toba around 74,000 years ago wiped out almost all humans on earth. It is the largest in the last 100,000 years.

Volcanic eruptions occur somewhere on earth almost continuously (Reference 7). The larger ones contribute to global cooling. The smaller ones are not well understood but some appear to contribute to global cooling. This needs to be explored with honest research based on good data and not on computer models based of false assumptions. Computer models are valuable in research as long as the input data are well founded and the limitations are recognized.

Research to date has yielded much information on the details of the effects, however much more remains to be discovered. Small eruptions may cool the troposphere with only an insignificant cooling globally. Some eruptions cause short term heating and larger long term cooling; an example being the Iceland eruption of 1873 – 1874. The composition of the gases erupted makes a difference. The amount of sulfur dioxide is also important; the larger amount resulting in the larger global cooling. The direction of the eruption is significant. If it is mostly vertical the more likely it will spread globally as compared to lateral eruptions.

Governments and politicians can make a critical difference on the lives lost. The Mount Pelee eruption is perhaps the most misguided case. Authorities claim the volcano was extinct up to the last. Many thousands lost their lives needlessly (Reference 2, page 203). In the Iceland eruption of 1883 – 1884 the magma was stopped before it was able to destroy a much needed harbor by a major effort of water cooling (Reference 2, page 136).

Is a current global warming crowd giving us bad advice? Bad advice was given to the residence of Mount Pelee before the eruption causing the needless loss of life. In other words, are we going in the wrong direction mainly out of ignorance?

There is much scientific data that supports the out of Africa human migration after the Toba eruption. A study of the human mitochondrial DNA indicated that the human population was reduced to as few as 5,000 people between 70,000 and 80,000 years ago. This fits exactly with the people in nearby New Guinea.

Now we have a complete picture, the Toba eruption reducing the human population to only a few thousand. They were all located in east Africa. From there they repopulated the earth. Their migration has been followed first east, then north, and then east and west.

The global warming crowd claim man is to blame and if not corrected will do much damage to the climate. Al Gore has become rich and famous as a leader. Obama has obtained perhaps the world’s greatest political power and at the same time has done enormous damage to the United States and world economy (Reference 10, 11, 12). Global warming has a great appeal in that they are saving mother earth. It turns out over the long term mother earth is not kind and gentle. When it comes to volcanic eruptions she can be mean and vicious. It is time this is recognized.

Currently it appears there is little that can be done before another Toba type eruption. Given time it may be possible to predict such an event and a much greater percentage of people could survive. Fortunately, such an eruption appears unlikely for thousands of years in the future.

There is much that can be done for smaller eruptions. A great amount of research needs to be done with the objective of predicting the location, size, and nature of future eruptions. The result of this work should be used to determine what measure can be used to reduce the loss of life and property damage.

Obama appears to believe that the wealth of the United States built up over the years was at the cost of the poor foreign nations. His stated objective is to reduce the standard of living of the middle income American. Most Americans do not believe this is true and American wealth was built up by private enterprise and individual freedom (Reference 8).

Higher taxes, and more government regulation, which is what the Obama administration has been imposing, is going the wrong way. More and more regulation dictated from Washington which appears to have no regard to the economic impact which results in making Middle Americans poor. Middle Americans produce most of the new jobs. The thought of higher taxes and more regulations makes planning for the future difficult.

The population can be divided into two parts, consumers and producers. The entire populations are consumers. The producers are a smaller part. An economic system that encourages producers is much more likely to prosper than ones that do not. As F.A. Hayck pointed out (Reference 9) historically the free enterprise system has proven to be more productive than planned systems, such as socialist, dictatorships, communist, etc.

Obama seems to be working hard to turn the United States economy into a third words economy. His weapon has been the myth of global warming. As pointed out in the preceding paragraphs, global climate is determined almost entirely by volcanic eruptions and is not man made. Obama played global warming propaganda for much more than it is worth. Eventually he wants to be a dictator, where the subjects have very little freedom and are almost all very poor. Printing money is one way Obama administration is working to destroy the economy. Restriction banks from lending money is another.

Al Gore (Reference 13) appears to be another want to-be dictator that would subject the United States to a planned economy based on the global warming myth. Again this is likely to result in the loss of much personal freedom and great damage to the economy.

The United States economy is far from being a free enterprise system. However, if the effects of volcanic eruptions on global temperatures are properly accounted for, it would be a major step forward. The effects of man made pollution on global climates are similar to the tail wagging the dog. In this case it is a very small tail wagging of a very large dog.





























References

Savino, John, and Jones, Marie D. “Super Volcano, The Catastrophi Event that Changes the Course of Human History.” The Career Press, Inc, 2007.




Zeilingade Boer, Jelle, and Sauders, Donald Theodore. “Volcanoes in Human History” Princeton University Press, 2007.




Science Daily, May 10, 2007.




Krakatoa – Wikipedia, Free Encyclopedia 10/29/2011.




Fischer, David Hackett, “Washington’s Crossing” Oxford University Press, 2004.




“Minoan Eruption” – Wikipedia, Free Encyclopedia.




“Kraktoa” – Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.




Smithsonian / USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report.




Hayek, Friedrich A. “The Road to Serfdom” Special Abridged Edition, The Heritage Foundation, University of Chicago Press, 1994.




Horner, Christopher C. “Power Grab” Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2010.




Milloy, Steve. “Green Hell” Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2008.




Horner, Christopher C. “Red Hot Lies” Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2008.




Gore, Al. “An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It.” Rodale, 2006.




John Cooper Martin worked as a research engineer for thirty-five years. Investigations include earthquakes, volcanoes, earth stresses, soil mechanics, land subsidence, hydraulic fracturing, geothermal power, oil field performance and economics, exterior ballistics, supersonic flow, etc. The results were used to guide company or government policies. Some results were published in technical papers or used to initiate research projects at government laboratories or universities.

 

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There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions can cool the environment. There is also is no doubt that the global temepratures are rising. The consensus of the climatologist agree that the main cause of the warming is man made. Your rants about Obama trying to turn the US into a third world country is silly and shows that you are more interested in politics than science.

 

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Strange that the worlds worst polluter, China, doesn't want to try and stop polluting and refuses to sign any agreements that the rest of the world wants to have. Even if humans aren't causing a catastrophic problem with their pollution they are creating a very bad problem that's only getting worse everyday. Trying to change the way humans pollute today will only be helping tomorrow be better.

 

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@ Jhon,

Denial of global warming is pretty serious offence. If you are wrong you are helping to kill millions by contributing to support that man did not cause it.

I'd rather see mankind err on the side of caution. I'd like to think we can grow enough food in 6o years from now for my family to live content.

I am not going to debate it now as it is a common topic here, but I do think it is wrong to think mankind has made no impact on the environment. We have 600 million autos on the road everyday smogging up the world. It is visible in most cities.

Arguments against global warming are now in the minority where they belong.

You joined Sciforums just to post this so I am guessing also that you are doing it for political motivations which would make you "evil". Possibly not but probably so.

You argue lives could have been saved if people recognized an active volcano, yet you do not think it is prudent for mankind to help cool the planet. Is there danger of the world become too cool in your opinion? Are all the volcanoes going to go nuts all of a sudden?

I saw three parts to your sermon. Anti-global warming rant; some talk about Volcanoes, and a whole lot about the current administration.

Obama inherited 2 wars and had a third thrust in his lap by the U.N.
Million dollar bombs don't come cheap, and all of these wars have depleted the american coffers. Obama did not start the wars.
Nobody is happy when all of their money is going to defence spending, but that's the price when you live in a military superior country. The U.S. need to advance its military faster than the rest, and also renew its supply stash.

Obama graduated in the Top 10 percent from Harvard University. He has great insight how policies and decisions will affect the country. It is a shame he is a scapegoat for the current U.S. economic mess, when the main problem hurting Americans is past and present military spending.

Your diatribe about Obama talking about global warming is nonsense. The worlds leading scientists are telling him it is a real concern, and have been saying it for a lot longer than he has been in office.

Please tell me the name of a presidential candidate who will not be concerned about global warming so I can not vote for him.

If any politician tries to make environmental change that hurts a taxpayers pocket then he will get voted to the curb. This is a flaw in free countries. Sometimes; in instances like global warming politicians should be able to raise gas prices by a dollar (not that Obama has done this) without people voting him out. People will vote for whoever makes their immediate life easier, and not who makes their long term lives easier.

 

You are absolutely correct in both those statements.

BUT

Volcanic eruptions with large stratospheric SOx and soot releases are an infrequent occurrence and their effect, which can be intense in the hemisphere it occurs in, is relatively short lived. Typically on the order of months, huge ones can be a year or so.

BUT

While the it's true that the annual emissions of our GHGs has only a small incremental effect, about half of what we release each year stays in the atmosphere for a very long time and so the concentration of GHGs increases every year, and has been doing so for about a century.

Which will eventually start causing some undeniable and somewhat unpredictable problems.

For a lot of people.

So, while it is not the end of the world, not even the start of the end of the world, it is something that we do need to deal with.

Now.

Now we could wait until the problem resolves itself when we literally exhaust our Oil, NG and Coal supplies, but prudence suggests that we slow down their consumption and start ramping up on Nuclear and Renewable resources to meet the expanding energy needs of the 9 Billion people expected on the planet around 2050.

Global economic incentives that favor the latter over the former is clearly in everyone's self interest.

Getting the globe to agree has been the issue.

Agreements like Kyoto, that leave China, India, Brazil, Mexico out, make no sense and simply cause the location of the production of the GHGs gases to move.

 

Yet another political rant where someone confuses their own anger over some political cause for science. Anger does not validate any personal view of science; indeed, it generally makes you leap to the wrong conclusions.

 

Presumably you worked directly for the oil industry, or perhaps in preference to the oil industry, and this is why you disapprove of the President's position against exploitation of third world economies, as well as his stance against the oil industry and corporate greed and his tax cuts for incomes below $250,000, and related policies.

To support a claim that America is not guilty of exploiting foreign countries, you would need to disprove existing works. I recommend J William Fulbright's The Arrogance of Power and Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

In other words, to prove your point concerning exploitation, you would need to rewrite history.

As far as your research into vulcanism, if your intent is to controvert the accepted global warming evidence and recommendations, then you would need to show a time correlation between volcanic activity and trends in climate change. You would also want to show that earth scientists are at adds with climatologists over this issue. Otherwise your idea stands in the fringe with the highly unlikely outcome that you are the first person to make this connection, or that you stand in a position of a minority group that owns superior information which is suppressed by the mainstream, or some other reason to explain the superiority of a minority view.

In order to gain credibility with data, you would also need to qualify the accuracy of the number of cubic miles associated with an eruption, particularly when it was not directly measured. The estimates for Pinatubo, as far as I can tell, vary by an order of magnitude. You might also want to show a cooling trend associated with Pinatubo. I remember it altered the sunsets, but I do not recall any correlation with global temperature.

 

As I pointed out, it's real, but typically (on a climatic scale) pretty short lived.

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The impact of Mt Pinatubo in 1991 is clearly seen in the record.

El Chicon in 1982 is also associated with a cooling event as it released ~7 million tons of SOx into the Stratosphere.

Back in 1815, Mt Tambora was associated with what is called "the year without a Summer"

 

. . . remember in the 60's and 70's . . .the rants and bumper stickers proclaiming . . . "Burn wood, not atoms"?

 

Remember back in the 60's and 70's when there weren't any decent computer models of climate behaviour? When there weren't any decent computers?

There weren't many climate scientists either. Now we have experts all over the place.

But I'm afraid that attributing global cooling to volcanos alone just doesn't fly. There are other major sources of particulates which can have a cooling effect. However, particulates can also have a warming effect, if the particles warm up by absorbing sunlight and then sinking (in rainfall, say), carrying heat to the surface, not reflecting it away into space.

To be an expert, you need to take a lot of other factors into consideration, because climate change is not driven by just one factor, so it can't be true that volcanic activity causes only cooling, nor can it be true that only volcanic activity causes cooling. It just isn't that simple. You can't dumb it down.
People who claim that it is that simple are just intellectually challenged by it.

 

@Arfa Brane
I think I agree. The graph shown has a ripple behavior of unidentifed cause. Also note:

Other than the time correlation, it does not seem to stand out from the almost periodic ripples in the data. If Pinatubo were not annotated on the graph, I would not have assumed that it was the cause of the 1991 fluctuation.

The data doesn't seem to correlate with a 1982 eruption. Whatever happened in 1983 appears to have had an equivalent shape as 1991. And apparently Chichon was 10 to 100 times smaller than Pinatubo, yet the trends (at 1983) look similar in amplitude to Pinatubo.

It makes me wonder what exactly is the cause of the ripple in the data.

The other thing I noticed is that there is a trend over 30 years for the average to rise about 0.5°, but like you say, probably not due to vulcanism.

And of course, none of this seems to correlate with rising CO2, which the OP skirted anyway.

 

Nah, go back and read the reports written at the time, the drop (notice how steep the drop is) is quite clear and it is very hemispheric (Volcanoes tend to have a much more pronounced effect in their own hemisphere).
That chart of course is the entire globe so it smooths it out a bit.

Amplitude isn't the factor, it is the height of the injection of material and the type of material injected. Chichon was noted for its large quantity of SOx which has a strong cooling effect.

???
Temp is going up and CO2 is going up.
Do you expect there to be a linear relationship?

 

. . .re: specific time-correlation with eruptive activity . . . there are likely other climatic or global factors that could hinder or delay (or exacerbate) such direct correlations.

Re: CO2: CO2 dissolves in seawater . . . . Basic chemistry --> CO2 is MORE soluble in cold water and less so in warm water . . . . and one can assume that there is an equilibrium between dissolved and atmospheric CO2 . . . when sea water cools, more atmospheric CO2 is removed (indirectly . . with an unkown 'lag' time, via CO3= dissolution) from the atmosphere (i.e., dissoved in sea water) . . when sea water warms, more atmospheric CO2 is released from sea water into the atmosphere. Global warming (of seawater) will produce more atmospheric CO2. Climatologists do not consider this relationship, and commonly (and mistakenly!) attribute (global and sea water) 'warming' as a consequence of increased atmospheric CO2. The reverse relationship is actually demonstrable.

 

Boy, I sure wish there were some Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Brazilian, some more Asian, and Russian citizens that were members of this site. It would be nice to hear the opinions of people, just anybody that weren't victims of corporate mass media propaganda, mass compulsory state education modeled off the Prussian systems, and Jesuit and Zionist endowment influenced higher education. You know, people who own their own minds and are truly free thinkers, who understand what epistemology is and understand what the origin of knowledge is and where the origin of their own ideas and thoughts are. Dum dee dum. . . ever hear of follow the money?

Global warming and world wide taxing protocols, all global governance schemes, and all global financial schemes . . . I wonder where all this centralized power concentration of wealth will eventually lead and how it would help humanity and help the planet? I'm sure I know how it would help the western power elites control the business, social affairs, foreign policy, populations, economic fortunes and futures of those countries the posters in this thread feel are the worst polluters. When really, they forget that national sovereignty is still the most sacred thing people should hold dear. You know what is most sovereign though? Your rights as a free person.

It is these that the lies are meant to destroy, and don't you forget it. First goes your national sovereignty, then your state and local sovereignty, and then your personal sovereignty. In fact, here in the U.S., congress and the President just neutered the Bill of Rights, effectively revoking your personal sovereignty that the forefathers recognized as rights given by the creator. . . . . Well, those elites are all atheists at heart now anyway. Your rights, such as you have them, are privileges now, and if and when you have any of them, they shall be granted to you now by the state, little by little if you are lucky. . . as privileges. :bugeye:

Now it's time to tax you for breathing!!!

 

. . . can you provide to me a list of . . . . "ALL THE VARIABLES?" . . . As I originally stated (paragraph 1), there are other global and climatic factors to consider.

 

Since 'breathing' increases one's "carbon footprint" . . . . on your last statement . . . if there is a way . . . they probably will . . . we could always roll-it-into ObamaCare!

 

Makes sense to me . . . that's true of most soluble gas-water systems . . . . thanks!

Is THAT the entire list? . . . I was hoping for more . . . . Merry Christmas!

wlminex