See the picture above? If you can’t see it clearly, you may need to view it at its original place I found it on facebook, here:
I have often seen this claim made, and I have even tried to make this claim myself, believing it to be true.
I have been told by a number of climate “alarmists” that it’s false, and they will proudly point to Snopes saying it’s false as evidence that they are right and that I am wrong.
However, I happen to know that Snopes LOVES to claim things are false, then give horrible logic/reasoning behind their judgement of the claim being “false”. It’s often difficult to suss out, and most people don’t even bother going through the tedium of fact checking the fact checkers… but in this case, I think I can do so. Get ready for a point by point rebuttal as I fact check the fact checkers.
First, a link to the Snopes article itself.
To start, we have BLATANT “poisoning the well” in the writing of this article. The very second word begins the process:
“The myth that a single volcanic eruption puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than all of mankind to date, let alone 10,000 times more, is one of the most pervasive as well as one of the most demonstrably false climatological claims out there.”
The MYTH, huh? Aren’t you jumping to a conclusion you have not yet made?
Next, we have more disparagement… and the commission of the “Genetic Fallacy”.
“It stems, ultimately, from a geologist named Ian Rutherford Plimer, infamous for writing a widely discredited book titled Heaven and Earth, which attempted to argue that humans have had an insignificant effect on global climate.”
They have “widely discredited” linking to two different articles where they show that claim to be true… one from “Skeptical Science” (which is a known climate alarmist apologetics site), and The Guardian, which is a very far left UK rag that is hardly worthy of citation as a rebuttal. Neither site is free of bias, and in fact both sites are stinky with such left wing bias as to be totally lacking in any credibility for the purposes of debunking a scientist making statements in his field.
Notice also the language of “attempted to argue”… no, he ARGUED that… whether the arguments are valid or not is up for debate… but he did not ATTEMPT to argue… he actually DID argue…
Next Paragraph:
“In a 2009 editorial written for Australia’s ABC news, he echoed a sentiment he had argued with similar inelegance in his book by providing the following statement, widely spread nearly word-for-word in climate skeptic circles, without any supporting citation: “Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day.””
An editorial written for a news paper or magazine is NOT the same as a peer reviewed scientific journal. The expectation that he would cite sources in a scholarly manner is rather incredible. This is a case of the fact checker holding the person to standards that no one would reasonably hold anyone to.
Again, notice the language. The term “inelegance” displays the rank disgust the fact checker has for this person. It’s more poisoning the well. It’s posturing and positioning the opponent as one who is a buffoon and thus unworthy of our respect.
I, personally, read the quoted sentence as being quite elegant. The fact checker may see it as being inelegant, because they are incapable of reaching outside of their American xenophobia to read things the way an Australian or Brit may phrase things… there ARE distinct differences in the way sentences are structured between these cultures, after all… It’s actually far more likely the appearance of a lack of “elegance” is due to the fact checker’s lack of worldliness and their own ignorance of proper British English.
Next Paragraph:
“This brief statement — a mere 28 words — yields a remarkably dense buffet of spurious claims and outright falsehoods. It also is rife with ambiguity. What numbers is he actually comparing? What is a volcanic “cough”? From a fact-checking standpoint, there are no interpretations of Plimer’s second sentence that can produce a factual assertion. The only way to make the first sentence work is with a scientifically useless comparison. All other interpretations fall well short of reality.”
1) More disparagement (they love to just pile it on, don’t they?) making even MORE poisoning the well… this is what, 3 or 4 times now before making any actual arguments?
Disparaging language: “A mere 28 words”, “dense buffet of spurious claims and outright falsehoods”, “rife with ambiguity”
2) Notice how the ambiguity is the last disparagement given, but is then immediately addressed? What about the FIRST negative claims of it being “dense [with] spurious claims and outright falsehoods”?
3) What numbers is he actually comparing? It’s simple to figure this out, but this is the very beginning of the fact checker’s intentional obfuscation of the claim so they can strawman it and thus make the claim false.
4) What is a volcanic “cough”? This is indeed a non-scientific measure, but one would assume that it’s an outgassing event that relieves some gaseous pressure without any pyroclastic flow or eruption of very much solid material. Probably a singular event, occurring over the course of a very short period of time (like, say, minutes or a few hours?) It shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out and understand… the use of such colloquial language is intentional to underscore just how SMALL of an event it could be.
Also notice that the original quote is now missing some important “weasel words”. “One volcanic cough ***CAN*** do this in a day”… It CAN, but that doesn’t mean it WILL. The claimant has deliberately couched his claim in terms of what is POSSIBLE, not what is CERTAIN. Note how the fact checker has shifted the tone and tenor of the claim from being one of possibility, to being one of scientific certainty.
5) Also, the answer to the question of what a “cough” is… is embedded in the very last word of these “mere 28 words”… “day”. Or the last 3… “In a day”… So there’s your time frame. A volcano CAN out gas X amount IN ONE DAY…
6) Now notice how the fact checker begins setting up the strawman. He makes the claim that you can’t parse the claim of Plimer’s in any reasonable or scientific way… but you absolutely CAN. The fact checker merely makes the ASSERTION that you can’t.
Well maybe HE can’t, but others can if they actually read the words of the claim… which shouldn’t be difficult since there are only 28 of them.
Next Paragraph:
“That useless comparison would be the total mass of carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by human activity (roughly calculated here by taking the roughly 120 ppm rise in CO2 since pre-industrial times converted into 936.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide gas) compared to the total mass of the entire atmosphere (estimated to be around 5,100,000 gigatons). This yields roughly 1 part post-industrial CO2 rise in 10,000 parts of the entire atmosphere.”
This is where the fact checker (fc) REALLY goes off the rails.
1) The FC assumes as fact that the entire rise in atmospheric CO2 is caused by human activity, which is exactly what the original claim is attempting to say is false. The FC then uses that total as his baseline for HUMAN CO2 contribution… and compares it entirely without reason, to the rest of the mass of the whole atmosphere for some unknown and incomprehensible reason.
This is what I would call a deliberate obfuscation with large numbers and complex math that most people will simply skim over and take as fact, without checking the logic or even the mathematical accuracy of it, because their eyes will glaze over.
The problem is, this FC is ONLY demonstrating how to come up with a PPM calculation, and he’s using a PRESUMED and utterly UNSUPPORTED claim of all of that CO2 being put in the atmosphere by humans, to compare it to the CO2 put in the atmosphere by volcanoes.
But ask yourself this: Have volcanoes continued to erupt (and “burp”) in the last 150 years, during the industrial revolution? The entire fucking POINT of this claim being made is that the rise in CO2 in the recent past has been caused QUITE A BIT by volcanic activity and NOT the industrial revolution! So why is this FC trying to make a counterclaim that assumes the consequent that the claim is already false?
This is illogical… it actually violates the most fundamental rules of logic. He’s using unsupported and possibly false “facts” to debunk the very thing that makes his facts false in the first place. He’s saying “These are facts that we know to be true, because the claim that they’re false is false, because the very data we’re using to say that the claim is false couldn’t be true if the claim is true, so we assume OUR claim is true so as to determine the attempted debunk of our claim is false… because if we were to assume the claim we’re debunking is TRUE, then we would not be able to use our own data, because it disproves our data, and we can’t allow that, so we have to assume we’re right and they’re wrong to preserve our rightness…”
That’s exactly what this guy is doing.
Going in to the math more…
That useless comparison would be the total mass of carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by human activity (roughly calculated here by taking the roughly 120 ppm rise in CO2 since pre-industrial times converted into 936.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide gas) compared to the total mass of the entire atmosphere (estimated to be around 5,100,000 gigatons). This yields roughly 1 part post-industrial CO2 rise in 10,000 parts of the entire atmosphere.
120ppm rise in CO2 since pre-industrial times… all calculated out to be a portion of the mass of the atmosphere, so he can compare gigatons to gigatons… rather than molecular composition in terms of “units per million units”, it’s now “what percentage of the overall MASS is it”?
Why the conversion from PPM to Mass Percentage? Those are two different measures, and again a way to obfuscate the claim and show it’s false by making the math say something the claimant never intended the math to say…
“You say 2 plus 2 is 4? But both 2s have curves in them and only a single straight line each! And the 4 has 3 straight lines… so that’s only 2 total straight lines and as such it can’t construct a 4… and *scoffing*… what about the 2 discarded curved lines? You’re an idiot for thinking that adding 2 and 2 together makes 4 from a geometrically analytical point of view!”
So the rest of the article proceeds down this path… which is an utterly invalid path to travel down, because it’s a total strawman of the entire claim made in the first place, using bogus math and calculating irrelevant figures, all to show that you can’t get “1 in 10,000” the way the person making the claim has said.
This is how MOST fact checks by Snopes go… and Politico, and other “Fact check” sites. They come up with a predetermined conclusion that they WANT, to support or destroy various narratives…
Logical fallacies galore… mainly some convoluted way to strawman the original argument or claim… mixed with a whole hefty scoop of condescension and incredulous snark.
Basically the entire rest of the article is in the wrong room entirely… we’re over here in THIS room arguing about how much a volcano can pump out into the atmosphere in a single day and comparing it to actual measures of HUMAN CO2 emissions… and they’re in THIS room over here arguing about total gigatons of CO2 that has gone into the atmosphere from ALL sources since the industrial revolution began, without any signs of trying to differentiate between natural and unnatural causes…
Also not explored: CO2 absorption rates of the oceans… just because we saw a 120ppm rise doesn’t mean that’s ALL the CO2 that has been pumped into the atmosphere… the FC is assuming all that has gone INTO the atmosphere has not been also drawn back out to some large degree… (I mean gee… plant life does this, and the world has gotten greener in the last 150 years… I wonder why… and I wonder if CO2 has been pulled back OUT of the atmosphere in the process… geee… hmmmmm…. )
So the actual original claim is actually NEVER explored, NEVER addressed, and certainly NEVER debunked!
I rest my case…
9 replies on “Fact checking the fact checkers! (Snopes, Re: CO2 of volcanoes)”
The climate change battle is so intense that they are even going to the effort of removing people from google so you cannot find out about them.
Take for instance Greenpeace. Patrick Moore, an actual climate scientist, is no longer listed and they are trying to wash him from google all together.
Why? Why would they do this? They are trying to whitewash anyone who can actually prove their narrative wrong. Thousands of scientists agree with climate science study blah blah. Patrick Moore says the opposite, gives reasons why, states why their studies are false and not conducted properly and many other things. But he also states that we have high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. But then in turn says that this isn’t a bad thing and gives reasons why.
Snopes has been disproved so many times. They are hacks. Sometimes they get shit right, but just like any subject. If you choose your sources properly, you could probably write an article promoting the slaughter of the Jews in Nazi Germany as a good thing if you do it right. Because that’s how writing works and writing about things that are important to you. You cherry pick your sources that support your claims, use those to prove your wild accusations and make sure to slam the other belief structure as bullshit because of your topics at least once and viola! done! You’ve just proven whatever goofie shit you want. And because our academic system doesn’t give 2 shits about what you publish, they will just post these as academic journals and fact when in fact if you research them a bit, you’ll find out they are false.
So how much CO2 gets released during a volcanic eruption? I imagine it varies quite a bit from eruption to eruption. How does one even measure the amount of CO2 coming out of a volcano?
Years ago, Bill W. lead me to the discussion that Burt Rutan organized on these topics. I found them rather interesting. Here’s just one of the interviews that can be found:
https://youtu.be/oxFm1TXshZY
Rather than examine the logic of the debunker, lets look at the logic of the original claim…
“Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day.”
Really, this does sound hyperbolic. Don’t get me wrong, I truly am a man-made climate change skeptic, but as do you, I try to think logically. We can actually look to historic events to check this claim. Plimer himself uses a classic technique of misdirection. 1 in 10,000 sounds paltry, but to frame it in a more familiar manner, that is 100 PPM. At any time in history has a single volcanic event raised global CO2 100 PPM? Not any that I can find. It would actually be pretty silly to think it is even possible, especially in one day.
However, I am skeptical that CO2 has a significant impact on temperature, since over the last 12,000 years, until just very recently, change in CO2 levels has lagged and mirrored temperature change, not the other way around.
Scientists who equate global warming with mass extinction are disingenuous at best, ignoring the fact that most mass extinctions have been attributed to glaciation, not warming, and warming is associated with rampant diversification of life on Earth.
The point I’m making is not to assert the validity of the person making the claim, but to point out that the people claiming that it’s “false” have not adequately debunked the claim.
This piece is an indictment AGAINST Snopes, not in favor of the original claim.
I agree with you. As you can see, Snopes went through such logical and linguistic gymnastics to make a case that you so artfully and soundly deconstructed, when I debunked it in three, simple sentences.
Yeah, my goal was not to validate the claim of the image shown… I still don’t even know if it’s true or not. I have not seen ANY information about just how much CO2 a volcano’s “burp” might actually produce or expel into the atmosphere. I am not closer to the truth for having read the Snopes article… truth has been obfuscated and (I believe intentionally) muddled with irrelevancies and deception.
I mean, I understand that the claim in the original image may be hyperbolic, simply for the purpose of illustrating just how little impact humans have… I mean, I haven’t even validated that this claim ORIGINATES with this Plimer guy as the Snopes article claims! What I’m more interested in, is finding examples of just how these “fact check” sites deliberately LIE for propaganda and narrative reinforcement purposes… I may do more “fact checking the fact checkers” posts… just remember, it’s not about validating the original claims that are being fact checked… it’s about demonstrating how fact checkers use logical fallacies and rhetorical devices to fool the public into believing that they have accurately “fact checked” whatever it is they claim to have determined to be true or false.
Thanks for the explanation. AGW is a pet peeve of mine, but so are hyperbolic claims… about anything.
As to whether Plimer’s claim that a volcano “burps” as much CO2 into the atmosphere in a single day as humankind has in 150 years, it truly beggars logic.
Plimer claims that in 150 years humans are responsible for “just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere” or 100 PPM. Volcanoes have continued to erupt over that time. Since the CO2 concentration has only risen by 130 PPM in that time, and Plimer acknowledges that humans are responsible for 100 PPM (actually, doubtful), by his own statement, that means that all volcanoes that have erupted in the last 150 years, assuming volcanoes are the only other cause of rising CO2, have only added 30 PPM of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Well that’s not necessarily true. Oceans absorb CO2. Plants absorb CO2. The 130ppm uptick is only the SURPLUS in that system… So let’s say that without any CO2 sinc mechanisms, the CO2 concentration would have gone up 2130ppm… but because of oceans and plants, 2000ppm have been absorbed, you end up with a surplus of 130 on the positive side of the ledger sheet.