Guest Post by Steven Goddard
We have all seen lots of pictures of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption now, with steam and ash billowing up in the air. The eruption started one month ago, and as the Guardian reports, The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano is unlikely to have any significant impact on climate but has caused a small fall in carbon emissions, experts say.
The Guardian editors seem to have forgotten that the volcano itself is spewing massive amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. Perhaps their kinship with Plane Stupid is having an impact? Plane Stupid’s goal is to stop plane traffic in the UK, and they must be thrilled by the flight ban and the damage to the economy.
Added:
Volcano CO2 budget (CO2 is emitted independent of ash) ~200,000 tons per day X 30 days of eruption = 6,000,000 tons of CO2.
Plane CO2 Budget – assumes half of EU planes haven’t flown for the past six days 340,000 EU tons per day X 0.5 EU shutdown X 6 days = ~1,000,000 tons of savings.
People using alternative transportation (as Anthony and the BBC pointed out) as a replacement for aircraft – cars, trains, battleships , etc. ~1,000,000 tons of extra CO2 Is a battleship more “green” than a jumbo jet?
The total gain is 6,000,000 – 1,000,000 + 1,000,000 = 6,000,000 tons of excess CO2 from the volcano. The temporary aircraft shutdown has little or no net impact on CO2 emissions, but the volcano has a large impact.
Video and reader poll follow.
Below is a video chronology of the glacier and volcano, giving a feel of the events of the past month. First video shows what the glacier looked like prior to the eruption.
The next video shows the first night of the eruption – March 21. Note the similarity to Hawaiian volcanoes – lava fountains and little steam or ash.
By March 24, some steam and ash is starting to appear as glacial meltwater begins to mix with the magma.
By April 14, flash flooding from glacial melt began to pour down the side of the glacier.
The flooding was widespread and devastating downstream.
By April 17, the eruption was primarily steam, CO2 and ash.
Should climate modelers start differentiating between man made CO2 and “organic” natural CO2?
Reader Poll :
OT but is this really going to happen
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19159977.htm
Iceland will go bankrupt, again, when they have to pay for this CO2 compensation!
Ecotretas
I think you’ve asked the wrong question. Volcanos only contribute small amounts of CO2 to the atmoshpere where are regular transpiration and decay of organic matter in the bioshpere is where the bulk of the CO2 comes from. it would also allow you to have cartoon of an old wrinkled carbon in the CO2 if it came from fossile fuel and a new baby carbon (with a passifier) if it came from decaying cellulosic materials.
Don’t forget the ocean acidification. It has already killed all the coral in Kansas. SOX damage is spreading. I am sure we can see all the superstition that is pretend science that erupted during this event.
The options in the poll are not even close to being mutually exclusive. For example, I think that coverage of GW should be scaled down, we need more runways in heathrow, and that there is no difference between MM and NAT CO2. Although you should differentiate it in models if you are trying to ascertain the impact of MM vs NAT. So, your poll is crap. [toungue poke :-)].
Greens dream of forbidding all air travel (except for when they want to go somewhere) The (taxable) market for Aircraft over the next 20 years is enough to make Obama quiver with excitement –
http://www.naicommercialproperties.com/news/Boeing%20projects%20$3.2%20trillion%20aircraft%20market%20over%20next%2020%20years%207-9-08.pdf
debreuil wrote: “Not to mention there is a lot more driving going on.”
Exactly, and ships being sent by Britian to pick up their stranded citizens, etc. Any comparison of just volcano to planes is missing part of the picture.
“The world would be better of if there was no CO2 1% (5 votes)”
I’m one of those 5 votes! Just couldn’t pass that up! Of course I also fear Hydronium Hydroxide!
Steve in SC (07:56:49) :
Walt Meir (sp?) posited on this very blog that there was a unique chemical signature to man made CO2. Willis Eshenbach agreed with him.
I have yet to see what this secret signature is.
Could anyone shed any light on this, or are they as I suspect full of the digestive waste products of cattle?
Steve in SC, the difference is in the 13C/12C isotope ratio. When plants use CO2, they use preferentially 12C (the most abundant), thus the carbon in living and dead (fossil) plants has less 13C, compared to 12C built in.
Volcanic CO2 is mostly from buried carbonate rocks and/or (sea)water, which has a far higher 13C/12C ratio.
There is no direct way to make a differentiation between “modern” CO2 from vegetation, directly from decay or indirectly from breathing animals and humans (which have been fed by recent vegetation at low 13C). But there are two indirect ways:
– the 14C (radiocarbon) content of fossil fuels is essentially zero (much too old), while recent vegetation has some 14C incorporated. This caused radiocarbon dating to use corrections after about 1870, due to fossil fuel burning, but the nuclear tests in the 1950-1960’s caused an extra mess with that.
– the oxygen use from fossil fuel use can be calculated with reasonable accuracy. This shows a slight deficiency after about 1990. Which means that the whole biosphere (vegetation + animals + humans) produces more oxygen than it uses, thus more CO2 is absorbed than released (about 1.4 GtC/year extra CO2 is absorbed by vegetation) and as that is preferably 12C, this would leave more 13C in the atmosphere.
But as there is a clear decline of 13C in the atmosphere and upper level oceans, the only source which can cause that is the burning of fossil fuels.
See the graph made by the late Bert Bolin:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/bolingraph.gif
and the decline of 13C in atmosphere and upper oceans:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
CO2 emission from volcanoes are caused by the decomposition of calcite (lime rock) CaCO3+heat=CaO+CO2
gcb (08:07:20) :
None of that is actually germane to the discussion at hand, of course. But I have yet to see any discussion of atmospheric C12:C14 ratios that would conclusively indicate what percentage of atmospheric CO2 is actually derived from human activities.
About 6% of the current atmosphere is from the use of fossil fuels, deduced from the 13C/12C ratio. But near the total increase (30%) in CO2 quantity in the atmosphere is caused by fossil fuel burning. Over time, a large part of individual molecules of CO2 are replaced by the seasonal exchanges: these mainly replace CO2, don’t add any CO2, but remove a part of the excess CO2 (about 45% is absorbed by oceans and vegetation, 55% of the emissions remained in the atmosphere as mass, not as individual “human made” molecules).
CO2 and H2O are like your mother and father. The third factor (containing mostly nitrogen) is the spirit of life -religious people (like me) call that God.
now, if you say your father or mother is bad, what does that say about yourself?
stevengoddard (08:40:19) :
Steve in SC (07:56:49) :
Isotopic composition doesn’t affect chemical behaviour or spectral absorption in any significant way.
Those properties are controlled by the electron shells, not the number of neutrons in the nucleus.
But Steve, don’t the CO2 molecules with the heavier carbon nuclei settle near the ground and feed plants, while the lighter ones float higher and cause all that damaging warming? Thus whichever source has the lowest ratio of light-to-heavy is the good source, while the source with the highest ratio is the baddest source, pure evil!
Yes, I’m grinning while I type this. No, I have no idea offhand which has what ratios. Yes, I would grin wider if it turned out that by “gravitational separation” fossil-fuel CO2 was the “good” one. Not that it matters either way except as a source of possible irritation and/or amusement… 😉
Oh oh, I guess Trenberth’s lost heat made it all the way down to the magma!
Hmm…looks like the computer models aren’t perfect:
‘Air ban led by flawed computer models’
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0821cc00-4bb5-11df-9db6-00144feab49a.html
“…a Lufthansa spokesperson. “The mathematics and the reality in the air have no correlation,” he added, referring to computer models used by the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre.”
Sounds familiar.
Is Fossil Fuel CO2 Different From Volcanic CO2?
Yes, sorta: the temps may continue to drop as a result of volcanic eruptions, so (albeit indirectly) that CO2 will have an effect on climate.
Hockey Schtick (08:37:44) :
According to the unvalidated IPCC computer models, there is a difference between the two sources of CO2:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/03/co2-lifetime-which-do-you-believe.html
HS, the graph compares two very distinct things: the residence time of a CO2 molecule (whatever the origin) is about 5 years, but that is caused by seasonal CO2 exchanges between oceans, vegetation and atmosphere (about 150 GtC over the seasons). That in itself doesn’t add or remove CO2 to/from the atmosphere. The removal rate of the extra CO2 is currently only about 4 GtC/year, thus much slower. The time needed to remove halve of the current 100+ ppmv excess is about 40 years, far longer than the average residence time, but far less than the IPCC model, which includes faster and slower terms, the latter only for a small percentage of the excess.
Thus you (or Segalstad, where your graph origins) are comparing (sceptic) apples with (IPCC) lemons…
We seem to neglect the amount of ash. Judging by what has fallen on my car – the easiest place to see it – the amount is pretty thin. It’s no more than the occasional Sahara sandstorm blown North. But will it do my garden any good? Will it improve the soil or degrade it? (I live in an acid soil area). Just thinking. Any gardeners out there who might know? (As you might gather, I’m not really concerned about CO2 – this eruption is minor compared to what we might actually get).
There’s absolutely no doubt that reverting to pre-industrial, 18th Century technology would be far far better for all of us. (Well the 2% that Fat Alert & Co. have reflected on their secret ‘Domesday Book of Post AGW Survivors’; understand it’s costs a bit of change and you need the “appropriate” referrals to get into that little booky-wooky.)
For the 98% of us that won’t be around after the ‘Great Revolution’ it won’t really matter will it? I understand that there’s one heck of an IQ Test given that takes as long as the California Bar Exam (3days), and you have to have the correct genetic makeup –something a little shy of perfectamundo, but not shy by much.
Well, I guess we should have known; we only had to think about it a minute –when was the last time Big Al and Big Tipper invited us over for a Big BBQ at the Big House?
Some plants, corn for one, prefer C12 to C13 or C14, so coal is deficient in the C13 and C14 percentages.
So there is a difference
The other night I was watching a Bay Area news program about the snafu with the Iceland volcano and towards the end of the news piece the lady “reporter” perked up and said there is a positive to the volcanic eruption – her comment was somewhere along the lines of “the SO2 emitted by the volcano will cause global cooling to help reduce the recent global warming”. This comment reminded me why I don’t watch the news anymore, or that if I do I need to have a few grains of salt handy.
Grumpy Old man (09:28:27) :
But will it do my garden any good? Will it improve the soil or degrade it? (I live in an acid soil area). Just thinking. Any gardeners out there who might know?
I use basalt as addition to the sandy soils in my garden, which is beneficial. In general volcanic ash is quite positive for agriculture (therefore one sees so many people living near volcanoes!). But the Icelandic ones have a nasty extra: quite much fluoride salts, which are poisonous. The local deposits are deadly for animals, but much depend of quantities deposited and the ratio of the different components in coarse and fine dust.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (09:22:37) :
Please read the file by Dr. Antti Roine at:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/AnttiRoine/AnttiRoineSeaWaterCO2.doc
which shows that the equilibrium curve for CO2 over seawater is far from saturated with no evidence to suggest that we are anywhere near saturation, and explain why this near instantaneous sink is “much slower”.
Anthropogenic CO2 has built in GPS so it knows to release energy only at the right time, altitude and direction.
Information is Beautiful, but Correct Information is Even More Beautiful.
I had a look at the source of the Guardian article, as mentioned in the comment of Sean Peake:
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/planes-or-volcano/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+InformationIsBeautiful+(Information+Is+Beautiful)&utm_content=Bloglines)
They started with an estimate of 7,412 tonnes of CO2 from the volcano, then doubled this value to 15,000 tonnes and now come up with 150,000 to 300,000 tonnes. Now if you would compare the 300,000 estimate with the value of 344,109 for the daily emission from planes, savings in CO2 are less than 13%. Even when taking the average of 150,000 and 300,000 the reduction is less than 35%, not a 60% savings that is claimed in the Figure. Haven’t seen any correction in the Guardian’s post yet (they still stick to the 15,000 tonnes value).