The Earth often has ways of making the “science” of climate change seem a bit ridiculous in the face of the great power of nature, and this year the eruption of Tonga’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano is only the latest example of that might.
Global warming alarmists constantly point to manufacturing, power plants, automobile emissions and even cow flatulence as sources of the end of the world as we know it. But the amount of damage these things can actually do to the climate is arguable.
What isn’t arguable is the amount of change the Earth itself can do to the climate.
Scientists are now realizing that the amount of water vapor that the Tonga volcano spewed into the air is immense. So immense that it is likely to have serious consequences for the world’s water patterns for years to come, NPR reported on Wednesday.
According to NASA, the Tonga volcano dumped an additional 10 percent of the normal amount of water vapor into the stratosphere.
The amount of additional water vapor pushed up into the upper atmosphere is approximately 58,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water, NASA scientists noted. And this vapor will hang in the air for years, they warned.
A lead researcher on the effects of the volcanic eruption, Luis Millán, who is a scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted that the Tonga blast is unprecedented in modern history.
The study Millán helped produce noted that the eruption pushed a 35-mile-high flume of ash, gases and water vapor into the air and caused a sonic boom heard in Alaska, more than 5,800 miles away, according to the Tonga Geological Services.
The eruption occurred on Jan. 15, about nine hours east of Australia, from a volcano that is more than 12 miles wide, with a caldera situated about 500 feet below sea level.
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Researchers said that in most cases, the sulfate aerosols dumped into the atmosphere by most volcanic eruptions take up to three years to fall from the sky and back to the earth. But because of the amount of water vapor from the Tonga eruption is so vast, the particulates may take up to 10 years or more to filter back to Earth.
Because of this, Tonga’s eruption may be a scientific first and “may be the first volcanic eruption observed to impact climate not through surface cooling caused by volcanic sulfate aerosols, but rather through surface warming,” researchers said.
The vapors from Tonga’s volcano have already altered water patterns in the upper stratosphere that are so reliable that many scientists think of them as a “tape recorder” that replays every season.
The researchers noted that “by short-circuiting the pathway through the cold point, [Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai] has disrupted this ‘heartbeat signal’ in the planet’s normal atmospheric water pattern.”
The point is, of course, that the Earth itself has far more capacity to alter water and weather patterns than anything man can do.
In fact, some of man’s most powerful bombs are but a tremor in far-off places, barely discernible by scientific instruments. For instance, the U.S. military deploys a long list of scientific instruments, microphones and seismic readers to try and detect nuclear testing by countries, Scientific American reported in 2019. But without all these instruments, most testing would remain secret and unknown outside the military groups performing it.
The Earth, though, is far more powerful than we pitiful humans.
For instance, the explosive eruption of the volcano on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in August of 1883 produced a sonic boom heard all around the world and is deemed the loudest and most violent thing known to have happened on Earth, according to Classical FM.
The shock waves the eruption created were so great they rocked ships in the waters near South Africa, nearly 6,000 miles away on the other side of the Indian Ocean. And the explosion itself was heard for distances up to 2,000 miles from the source.
Sound is not the only major effect that the Earth can produce. The vibrations created by a series of earthquakes across the Mississippi Valley, called the New Madrid Earthquakes, were so violent in December of 1811, that the Mississippi River ran backwards for a few hours. The earthquake was so mighty that several Midwestern towns were totally destroyed, and an 18-mile-long lake was suddenly created by the conflagration.
But, guess what? We’re all still here, aren’t we?
Think of this mighty power the next time some leftist complains that a cow fart is going to destroy the Earth. Nature itself has far, far more awesome powers to change the climate than do we poor mortals.
