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sci-tech

Can a volcanic eruption be the solution to global warming?

This past week I just listened to To the Best of Our Knowledge and they featured Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog (if you don’t know what that is consider yourself to be young or maybe you were just too stoned at the time).

Brand talks about how globally things cooled down when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. Globally temperatures dropped .5 degrees Celsius a year after the eruption due to the massive amount of Sulfur Dioxide emitted into the upper atmosphere. Brand even suggests we may have to pump SO2 directly into the upper atmosphere to combat global warming which he feels is already out of control. He also advocates nuclear power, not that he’s so pro-nuclear but because it’s the fastest way to get off the fossil fuel diet.

Now we have a new volcano ready to blow in the Philippines, the Mayon Volcano. Though generally volcanic explosions are bad, especially if you live close to one due to ash, mudslides, tons of rock being ejected and that matter of molten lava making a mess of things, could this help reverse global warming slightly buying us time?

You can listen to the broadcast with Brand here.

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