18 August 2008

Volcano Pictures!

Posted by Ryan Anderson

The folks at the Boston Globe clearly knew ahead of time that I would be making a series of posts about volcanoes, and therefore chose to feature some spectacular eruption photos in their “big picture” section. Check it out!

Update: Also, I just noticed that there is an incredible amount of stupid going on in the comments to those photos, with people pointing at the CO2 release from volcanoes and questioning climate change. What these people are missing is that the release of CO2 from volcanoes has been about the same for millions of years! So, no, we’re not worried about all the volcanic CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere. The earth system is in equilibrium with that amount of CO2 and can deal with it easily. But yes, we are worried about all of the extra CO2 being released by recent human activity at a rate much faster than current natural mechanisms can compensate.