[JRKrause]

If I recall the math, the yearly total eruption of actual magma mass is on the same order as the yearly mass of CO2 emitted by humans (some like 80billion tons of magma vs 30billion tons of CO2). The percent, by mass, of dissolved CO2 in that magma is in the single digits.

So to answer to your question: It's a drop in the bucket.

[runarberg]

There was an eruption in the same location last year, that lasted for about 6 months. I think it emitted between 1 and 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases. In comparison humans in Iceland emitted around 2-10 million tonnes (depending on what you include) during the same period.

Another fun comparison is that Elon Musk’s 50 min flight in his private jet last Friday between Brownsville, TX and Austin, TX emitted around as much as last years eruption did in a day.

[lostlogin]

Are you sure? Unless I’m messing it up, 1.5m/180=8333kgs. Flying would struggle to make that in an hour wouldn’t it?

[runarberg]

You are right. I’m off by a factor of 1000!

I used this article (https://kjarninn.is/skodun/eldgos-og-co2/ [Icelandic]) which states that the eruption emitted between 4,000 and 7,000 tonnes of CO2 a day. And then I used the @ElonJet twitter bot (https://twitter.com/ElonJet/status/1553102092327321601) to get the 4 tonnes.

Elon’s 12 hour flight back from Greece a couple of weekends ago emitted 65 tonnes of CO2. That is 1/100 of what the volcano emitted over 24 hours. So he has to fly 50 hours to emit the same amount of CO2 as the volcano does in an hour. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are 50 CEOs flying their private jets at this very moment.

---

The Icelandic tendency to write out the word thousand plus all the weirdness of the tonne weight unit (as opposed to Mega-grams and Giga-grams) caused my confusion.

[samatman]

That rascally Elon Musk.

He has enough money to give every American a million bucks and just doesn't do it.

I'll never understand that kinda selfishness!

[runarberg]

You are making the same factor of 1000 mistake as I did. Elon Musk’s net worth is believed to have peaked last year around 300 billion USD there are around 300 million people living in the USA. If his entire wealth was distributed evenly among every person living in the USA, each would get around 1000 USD.

Although my mistake was because I misread the source (in Icelandic it is common to spell out the thousand, e.g. 4-7 thousand). I’m not sure how you’ve arrived at your number.

[samatman]

Except when it isn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnian_pluvial_episode

[runarberg]

Interesting. Although there weren’t many humans around during the Carnian, so the volcanoes are gonna win that for sure.

Also there was a lot of old biomass waiting to be burned back then that exaggerated the CO2 emissions of the super volcanoes, as wood (and other novel carbon structures) evolved before organisms that could brake them down and allow it to rot. I’m not sure a super volcano today would release so much CO2 into the atmosphere as they did back in the late Permian / early Carnian simply because it won’t hit as much stored carbon pockets.

That said. These mega-colossal volcanic eruptions only happen like once every 50,000 years and emit an order of 10-100s of billions of CO2, which is only 1-5 of years of human CO2 emissions at the current rate.

Yes volcanoes do emit greenhouse gasses, but it is not nearly on the same scale as humans.