Sometimes you just go with the flow so when I happened to wader upon a “Green” site while researching the impact of this latest Global Warming SNAFU, so I thought I’d look around. I saw some interesting articles and a lot of helpful hints and then I wandered into the forum. Needless to say within moments I saw posts blaming ex-President Bush for all the woes of the planet so I decided to join and have a discussion.
The interesting thing is I was branded a man made global warming skeptic within minutes. That is actually true as anyone with have a brain cell can see the correlation between solar activity and climate on the Earth. No sunspots, coldest winter. Go figure.
In a thread that seemed to be mainly around greenhouse gases and how mankind was so bad and the end was near. So in my typical fashion I explained that the Ubinas volcano in Peru that erupted in last year spewed more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than mankind has done since the dawn of time. (The dawn of time was incorrect but my point remains the same) This single volcano has had 22 major eruptions. As far as active volcanoes, I will refer to the Global Volcanism Program.
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How many active volcanoes known? |
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Erupting now: |
perhaps 20 |
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Each year: |
50-70 |
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Each decade: |
about 160 |
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Historical eruptions: |
about 550 |
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Known Holocene eruptions (last 10,000 years): |
about 1300 |
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Known (and possible) Holocene eruptions: |
about 1500 |
Source: http://www.volcano.si.edu/faq/index.cfm?faq=03
U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 97-262
Large, explosive volcanic eruptions inject water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), hydrogen chloride (HCl), hydrogen fluoride (HF) and ash (pulverized rock and pumice) into the stratosphere to heights of 10-20 miles above the Earth’s surface. The most significant impacts from these injections come from the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid (H2SO4), which condenses rapidly in the stratosphere to form fine sulfate aerosols. The aerosols increase the reflection of radiation from the Sun back into space and thus cool the Earth’s lower atmosphere or troposphere; however, they also absorb heat radiated up from the Earth, thereby warming the stratosphere.
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 sulfate aerosols also promote complex chemical reactions on their surfaces that alter chlorine and nitrogen chemical species in the stratosphere. This effect, together with increased stratospheric chlorine levels from chlorofluorocarbon pollution, generates chlorine monoxide (ClO), which destroys ozone (O3).
As the aerosols grow and coagulate, they settle down into the upper troposphere where they serve as nuclei for cirrus clouds and further modify the Earth’s radiation balance. Most of the hydrogen chloride (HCl) and hydrogen fluoride (HF) are dissolved in water droplets in the eruption cloud and quickly fall to the ground as acid rain. The injected ash also falls rapidly from the stratosphere; most of it is removed within several days to a few weeks.
So while this all well and good, no charge for the update on volcanic activity, the point I was making was lost on several of the other posters. They would respond with answers that were partially right but saddled with myth. At one point I suggested that they Google this info before spouting off or either go to Wikipedia but I cautioned them not to trust Wikipedia because it’s always partially wrong and then it dawned on me. That’s the same mentality this next generation has about truth, that it only needs to partially right.
Hence the Wiki Generation.
From there it went straight to anarchy.