Here’s a new thing to think about.
“When you take the load off, it’s just like opening a Coca-Cola bottle or a champagne bottle.”
— Brad Singer, University of Wisconsin–Madison geoscientist
cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/223955
In a feedback of fire and ice, thinning ice sheets over geologic hot spots could allow more eruptions, while increased volcanic activity may speed the meltdown.
By Bob Berwyn
Add to the long list of global warming concerns that melting ice caps could trigger more volcanic eruptions.
From Inside Climate News via this RSS feed
Yellowstone will erupt and americas climate change problem will be solved forever
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Singer, the lead author, called it a “negative feedback loop” for the climate. “If you start getting more eruptions underneath ice that is thinning, you could more rapidly cause the ice sheet to slide into the ocean”
Its certainly an odd choice for this article to never make reference to the cooling effect caused by volcanic eruptions, as if that doesnt exist. It talks about them belching CO2 into the atmosphere, among other things, but fails to point out that massive eruptions putting shit into the air reflects sunlight and generally cools global temperatures.
Now, Im not saying that aspect really improves things, because even if we cool for a bit we will just ultimately flip back into the warming cycle in the long run. Not to mention a volcanic ice age would mean millions of people starve to death. But its just very odd to me for volcanologists to not talk about that aspect of volcanos, especially when they are actively talking about the last ice ages. Ice ages (or mini ones) that were caused by volcanic eruptions. Like the volcanic winter of 538.
Just an odd journalistic choice
It’s a perfectly valid journalistic choice.
The temporary raising of albedo from eruptions is not relevant since it does not last, it doesn’t exist on the relevant time scales. Volcanic cooling does happen (even in recent recorded history!) but it’s very short-lived. Any aerosols injected into the atmosphere by volcanism (what is what causes the cooling) typically only lasts for a few years, as a general rule, not more than a decade, while warming from greenhouse gases is persistent and cumulative. It’s not something that is worth mentioning as any kind of genuine mitigating factor. Just like the people hoping that nuclear winter from another world war would offset climate change. It won’t, it just makes things even more chaotic on a short time scale without actually helping the problem at all on any time scale that matters.
A “volcanic ice age” would be short, maybe nasty, catastrophic for agriculture and civilization, but it would not help us, it wouldn’t do anything to solve the underlying problem of anthropogenic warming. Once the aerosols clear, the warming resumes, but now with added CO2 from the eruptions. So yeah, perfectly appropriate that the article doesn’t go into that.
(edit: changed the word “lowering” to “raising” which is what I meant - I’m tired.)
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