My response to climate misinformation

My dad forwarded me the following email:

Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland, since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet, all of you.

Of course you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress, that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow, and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans, and all animal life.

I know, it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of: driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cents light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs...well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes - FOUR DAYS ONLY by that volcano in Iceland, has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud any one time - EVERY DAY.

I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in its entire YEARS on earth. Yes folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year, think about it.

Of course I shouldn't spoil this touchy-feely tree-hugging moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keep happening, despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.

And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.

Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you on the basis of the bogus ''human-caused'' climate change scenario.

Hey, isn't it interesting how they don't mention ''Global Warming'' any more, but just ''Climate Change'' - you know why? It's because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down.

And just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme (that whopping new tax)
imposed on you, that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer. It won't stop any volcanoes from erupting, that's for sure.

But hey, relax, give the world a hug and have a nice day!

PS: I wonder if Iceland is buying carbon offset

Here is my reply:

I have to point out that most of the 'facts' listed are incorrect or highly misleading. It's not surprising that no sources are given for any of the numbers.

Although the Icelandic volcano put out a lot of CO2, this appears to have been offset by the drop in CO2 emissions from air travel. There is a debate as to how the two figures compare, but it seems they are in the same ballpark. (source: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/planes-or-volcano/)

The argument about CO2 being vital for life is completely bogus. Water is also vital for life, but too much and you drown. If there were no CO2 in the atmosphere, we would all freeze to death (source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=628). If there were to much, well we're on track to find out what happens in that case as atmospheric CO2 is currently around 40% above levels at the start of the industrial revolution, and set to rise further at an accelerating rate.

Volcanoes emit around 0.3 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. This is about 1% of human CO2 emissions which are around 29 billion tonnes per year. (source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming-intermediate.htm)

Mount Pinatubo is said to have released 0.042 billion tonnes of CO2 in 1991. (source: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/04/16/204541/a-volcanic-emission/)

I suspect that the original source for the "information" on volcanic emissions was from a book by a man called Ian Plimer. He claims that volcanic emissions are far higher than human emissions. This is disputed by the US Geological Survey, as well as pretty much every other scientist in this field. He claimed that the US geological survey had not included underwater volcanoes in their figures. They responded that they had. They are a respected authority on volcanoes worldwide, he is a man with a book to sell. Unlike the original e-mail, his book does cite sources, but when people started checking the sources, they found that many of them didn't say what Plimer said they did, or in some cases, even said the opposite.

Here is a link to an article in which Ian Plimer's book is reviewed by an astronomer.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/story-e6frg8no-1225710387147
If you don't have time to read that, here's an excerpt:

Plimer probably didn't expect an astronomer to review his book. I couldn't help noticing on page120 an almost word-for-word reproduction of the abstract from a well-known loony paper entitled "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass". This paper argues that the sun isn't composed of 98 per cent hydrogen and helium, as astronomers have confirmed through a century of observation and theory, but is instead similar in composition to a meteorite.

It is hard to understate the depth of scientific ignorance that the inclusion of this information demonstrates. It is comparable to a biologist claiming that plants obtain energy from magnetism rather than photosynthesis.

Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not "merely" atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer's book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken.

Many people have an inherent feeling that humans are too small to affect the planet, but you only have to look at the sheer number of cars, planes, power stations, factories, etc in the world, to see that they soon add up to a lot of emissions. Furthermore, it can be proved that the increase in atmospheric CO2 has been caused by humans, since CO2 produced from fossil fuels has a different isotope number to that typically found in the atmosphere, and that this isotope has been increasing in atmospheric concentration as expected. (source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Are-humans-too-insignificant-to-affect-global-climate-intermediate.htm)

The email states that the world has cooled 0.7 degrees in the last century. In fact it has warmed by that amount (source: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf - page 5). Even the few climate scientists who downplay global warming agree that the world has warmed. I've seen a lot of dodgy arguments on this subject but have never seen anyone claim that the planet cooled over the 20th Century, so I suspect the author of the original email just made it up. Since the 1980s, each decade has been warmer than the previous one, including the 2000s. 2010 is tied for the hottest year on record in most temperature data sets. (source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/2010-record-warmth-weird-weather.html)

Re. "Global Warming vs Climate Change" - both terms have been used for decades. "Climate Change" has always been more commonly used in the scientific literature. The two terms refer to different but closely related physical phenomena - e.g. global warming will lead to changes in rainfall patterns, an example of climate change. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm

I can't write any more as I have repetitive strain injury. It was a lot of effort for me to write this email, and I would much rather not have had to do it, but this issue is too important to allow misinformation to spread unchallenged. I will leave you with some links to correct the remaining points in the original email:

"It's a natural cycle": http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-natural-cycle.htm
"It's the Sun": http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
"It's Cosmic Rays": http://www.skepticalscience.com/cosmic-rays-and-global-warming.htm