We talk about saving the world, but it's just vanity gone mad

[venta]

So...
1. Choking plumes of ash in the sky, lots of sulphorous gas emitted.
2. Very little aviation in parts of Europe for 24 hours.

Is that a net gain or a net loss for climate change?

Comments

[zotz]

Aren't ash and sulphates cooling rather than warming?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I admit I have absolutely no idea - I just filing them all under "crap in the sky". I wasn't assuming that because the volcanic stuff is naturally occuring it was necessarily non-harmful.

[zotz]

The tendency is for volcanic eruptions to cool the earth for a while after. They tend to reflect sunlight rather than absorb reemitted heat.

This can cause its own problems, of course.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Indeed - some of the wackier geo-engineering solutions to climate change involve dumping lots of sulphates in the stratosphere (IMO a pretty bad plan) or tickling volcanoes to get them to erupt a lot (IMO a staggeringly bad plan, especially when done with nukes).

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Mmm, acid rain.

[thegreenman.livejournal.com]

Dunno, but it's nice and quiet.

It must be amazing in somewhere like Windsor, directly under the flight path. You can probably hear the birds and stuff...

[lnr]

Round here there's still lots of car noise, and there's never usually much plane noise anyway.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Kew Gardens must be at the most awesome it has been since about 50 years ago.

[condign.livejournal.com]

Obviously, to stop global warming we must pass an immediate ban on volcanic activity.

[metame.livejournal.com]

:-)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Cap and trade, surely. The UK doesn't have any volcanoes, so Iceland should be paying us money. More money, I mean.

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Volcanic ash is cooling. While less plane rides is also an improvement on the status quo.

However this eruption is way too tiny (so far) to really impact global temps, and the loss of half Europes aviation for three days is equally meaningless. So a tiny net positive for the climate.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes. Although I didn't know the details of the effect of ash on the atmosphere, I wasn't really asking the question with any overtone of seriousness ;)