How does a volcano erruption emit more CO2 in 1 second than all of man's activities in the last 180 years?

Question

How does a volcano erruption emit more CO2 in 1 second than all of man's activities in the last 180 years?

Answer 1

Below they explain the processes by which CO2 is generated by volcanoes.

Answer 2

This is an often repeated urban myth; it come in many forms.

Here's some relevant questions from "Ask a volcanologist"

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/ask_a.html

Someone recently told me that volcanoes put out more pollution than cars and factories. Is that true?

"No . . . that is a holdover from a quote by Ronald Regan who claimed that Mount St. Helens was adding more atmospheric pollutants than human activities add. The scientific truth is that the activities of people produce more than a hundred more times the pollutants than volcanoes."

Sincerely,

John Dvorak

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_q...

Here's what Reagan said:

"I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind."

--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time magazine, October 20, 1980. (According to scientists, Mount St. Helens emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day at its peak activity, compared with 81,000 tons per day produced by cars.)

Here's another from Ask a Volcanologist:

When Volcanoes erupt and emit C02 into the atmosphere, what effect does this have on climate?

"The short answer is as follows: As a long-term average, volcanism produces about 5X10^11 kg of CO2 per year; that production, along with oceanic and terrestrial biomass cycling maintained a carbon dioxide reservoir in the atmosphere of about 2.2X10^15 kg. Current fossil fuel and land use practices now introduce about a (net) 17.6X10^12 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere and has resulted in a progressively increasing atmospheric reservoir of 2.69X10^15 kg of CO2. Hence, volcanism produces about 3% of the total CO2 with the other 97% coming from anthropogenic sources. For more detail, see Morse and Mackenzie, 1990, Geochemistry of Sedimentary Carbonates."

Sincerely,

Scott Rowland

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_q...

How much CO2 did Mount St Helens' eruption in 1980 release into our atmosphere? Can you give me some idea of how much CO2 volcanoes add to the atmosphere generally?

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_q...

Gases: Man versus the Volcanoes

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man....

If you'd like a more formal treatment see:

Global carbon dioxide emission to the atmosphere by volcanoes. Williams, Stanley N.; Schaefer, Stephen J.; Calvache v., Marta Lucia; Lopez, Dina. 1992. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 56, Issue 4, pp.1765-1770.

"Volcanic CO2 presently represents only 0.22% of anthropogenic emissions."

Answer 3

He is having a few thousands,years of heartburn.

Answer 4

They don't.  Where would you come up with something like that?