A friend told me that a certain mountain emitted more carbon dioxide than all the cars that ever existed. T/F?

Question

May be called Mt Penutobi. Emits more every day than total car emmissions ever!?

Answer 1

thay might be right sonds more like a seme acktiv volcano to me.

Answer 2

A mountain can't emmit by itself carbon dioxide. The best chance is that it's actually a volcano or has some sulfuric springs to do that. It is true that in case of a large eruption a big volcano can emit a hudge amount of CO2 but it's not compared with the total car emissions ever. However, there is no Mt. Penutobi, or any large volcano, with similar names so I guess it's F.

Answer 3

Its strange, but i can think of two instances where CO2 was emitted in large concentrations from a volcanic lake region in Africa in the 1980s that caused a large loss of life. excerpted from the BBC news report:

In 1984, a sudden release of carbon dioxide from Lake Monoun killed about 40 people by suffocation. Two years later, a similar incident at Lake Nyos resulted in much larger loss of life, estimated at nearly 2,000 people.

They have had to install pipes to literally allow the CO2 to emit off at a safe rate to prevent this from happening again. Maybe this is your mysterious CO2 emitter?

Answer 4

I think you mean Mount Pinatubo, in the Phillipines, and that sounds about right. This volcano erupted in 1991, and "the injection of aerosols into the stratosphere is thought to have been the largest since the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, with a total mass of SO2 of about 17 million tons being injected—the largest volume ever recorded by modern instruments." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo)

Answer 5

To quote from the web page below:
"Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons of carbon dioxide per year while man's activities contribute about 10 billion tons per year."

Now not all of man's emissions are from cars, but I am pretty sure that more than 1% comes from cars. Then again, not all of the volcanic CO2 emissions would come from one mountain either.

Answer 6

Probably true. The Krakatoa eruption plunged the whole planet into a period of long, cold winters. Volcanoes are one of the most powerful forces on the Earth and are responsible for a lot of climactic change.

Answer 7

Mount Pinatubo, when it erupted in the Phillipines. Also Mount St Helens, and several other recent eruptions.

Answer 8

Maybe