So you're saying every single research tool I've used is fulla shit and your biased site isn't? https://antipollutionplan.com/how-much-pollution-did-mt-st-helen-put-out.html
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Executive summary
The claim on antipollutionplan.com that “a single eruption from a volcano puts 10,000 times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all human activity throughout history” is unsupported by mainstream science and contradicted by multiple government and fact‑checking sources [1] [2] [3]. Measured volcanic CO2 releases — even from large eruptions like Mount St. Helens in 1980 — are large for hours or days but orders of magnitude smaller than cumulative and ongoing human emissions when placed in annual or historical context [4] [5] [3].
1. What the popular claim says and where it comes from
The antipollutionplan.com piece repeats an extreme numeric assertion — that a single volcanic eruption can emit vastly more CO2 than all human activity in history — and cites the 1980 Mount St. Helens event as emblematic, claiming about 10 million tons of CO2 from that eruption [1]. That dramatic framing echoes older viral statements and misinterpretations that circulate online and are critiqued by established outlets [3] [2].
2. How scientists measure and compare volcanic vs. human CO2
Scientists estimate global volcanic CO2 output using direct gas sampling, remote sensing and syntheses of subaerial and submarine vents; those global estimates fall well below anthropogenic fluxes, typically in the tens to low hundreds of millions of metric tons per year versus tens of billions from humans [4] [5] [3]. Agencies such as NOAA and the USGS note that individual eruptions can match human emission rates only briefly — for hours — but are too infrequent and short‑lived to rival annual human totals [4] [5].
3. The Mount St. Helens example — dramatic but misleading alone
Mount St. Helens did release on the order of 10 million tons of CO2 during the immediate eruption phase, a number cited repeatedly in government and academic accounts [5] [4]. But that single‑event figure must be compared to human emission rates: authoritative analyses put human emissions such that humanity emits an equivalent Mount St. Helens–scale CO2 pulse every few hours (roughly every 2.5 hours according to USGS/NASA summaries and fact checks), which undercuts claims that a single eruption dwarfs human history [5] [2] [6].
4. Why the extreme “10,000×” claim is false
Fact‑checking organizations and peer‑reviewed syntheses show the 10,000× number is not grounded in measured fluxes; Snopes, Reuters and other reviewers explain that to equal cumulative anthropogenic CO2 to date would require thousands of Mount St. Helens–scale events in an impossibly short span, not a single eruption [3] [2]. Global volcanic CO2 emissions all together are estimated to be a small fraction of human annual emissions — often cited as 1% or less of the anthropogenic total — which is inconsistent with the antipollutionplan.com statement [4] [5] [6].
5. What volcanic eruptions do affect — but differently
Volcanic eruptions have significant short‑term climatic effects primarily through sulfur dioxide converting to sulfate aerosols that cool the planet temporarily and through local air‑quality hazards from ash and SO2; these mechanisms are distinct from long‑term CO2 forcing and are well documented by the USGS and other sources [5]. The antipollutionplan piece conflates different pollutants and scales, a common rhetorical tactic that amplifies perceived impact without matching the scientific comparison [1] [5].
6. Reading the evidence and spotting agenda
The mainstream scientific and fact‑check literature (NOAA, USGS, Snopes, Reuters, AP, Yale) consistently conclude volcanic CO2 is real and locally important but far smaller than human emissions in annual and cumulative terms; multiple sources explicitly refute the hyperbolic 10,000× claim and note that human activity emits a Mount St. Helens–scale CO2 pulse every few hours [4] [5] [3] [2] [6] [7]. The antipollutionplan article appears to cherry‑pick the dramatic Mount St. Helens number and amplify it without the necessary context or cross‑checks, which creates a misleading impression even if specific eruption figures cited are themselves used in scientific literature [1] [5].
Bottom line
The conclusion is unequivocal in the scientific record: the claim that a single volcano has emitted more CO2 than all human activity in history is false according to multiple independent scientific and fact‑checking sources; large eruptions can be momentarily intense but do not negate the much larger, continuous and cumulative contribution of human fossil‑fuel combustion to atmospheric CO2 [3] [2] [4] [5].