Quote:
Arctic ocean volcano blew its top – even under pressure
* 25 June 2008
* NewScientist.com news service
THE deep ocean continues to surprise: it appears a volcano on the seabed has exploded with a force thought impossible.
In 1999, the largest-ever swarm of quakes was recorded on a mid-ocean plate boundary, on the Gakkel Ridge in the east Arctic basin.
To find out what caused it, Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts, and colleagues peeked at the ridge with a remote-controlled device. They found shattered rock spread over 10 square kilometres, suggesting a series of volcanic explosions (Nature, vol 453, p 1236).
Such explosions can occur in shallow water if the water rapidly vaporises, but beyond 3 kilometres down the pressure is too high. Sohn reckons the magma must have contained up to 10 times more carbon dioxide than thought possible. This separated out as the magma rose and built up in a chamber beneath the seabed. Eventually the roof cracked and the CO2 and magma burst out.
"It opens the door to a lot of things that we didn't suspect could happen," says David Clague of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.
From issue 2662 of New Scientist magazine, 25 June 2008, page 21
Toxic gas emissions are produced when magma rises and gases that are trapped within the magma at depth are released. It works very similarly to carbonation being released when a bottle of soda is opened.
The two most common gases released when magma ascends is sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide. Sulfur dioxide can float high into the atmosphere and mix with water vapor to form sulfuric acid. When it rains, this sulfuric acid comes down with the rain, ruining crops and destroying farms. Carbon dioxide can be lethal to humans and livestock, as it is heavy and usually stays close to the ground.
So volcanoes which have been increasing their activity since 1960 can cause global warming via increased co2 (if that is how the cycle works) or global winter via the ash they release.
They are either way, bad for the environment and people.
According to usgs.gov, Kilauea emits about 1,300,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year. Kilauea is just one of almost 70 active volcanoes on the earth today.
Not only do Volcanoes Produce over 91 Billion Tons of Co2 a year, usgs.gov has reported that volcanoes expel tons of sulfur dioxide, mono hydrogen dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen, argon, neon, methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen bromide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, carbonyl sulfide, and many other deadly and toxic compounds.
Compare that with human output levels pleeze.
Dr. S.M. de Jong has found that gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane drive the oxygen out of the soil and the roots of the trees suffocate. As a result trees are dying over large areas around active volcanoes.
Dr. S.M. de Jong has also found that the amount of Toxic gasses being produced by active volcanoes has been increasing since 1995.
If the amount of Toxic material produced by volcanoes continues to increase over the next 50 years, the earth could increase in Global temperatures by 10 degrees. An increase in global temperatures could destroy our civilization.
According to reuters.com, Gas-belching volcanoes may be to blame for a series of mass extinctions over the last 545 million years, including that of the dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs killed by Indian volcanoes, not meteor: paleontologists
I have no issues with the idea that there is climate fluctuations(global cooling and global warming),
but I have a big problem with where the finger of blame is being pointed. ![Mad :mad: :mad:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)