I'm glad the volcano myth is being slowly knocked on the head.
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Originally Posted by Waxing_Gibbous
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I've wondered about this too.
The eruption of the Tibetan plateau DID pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than humans have or will.
(Seems we made out just fine).
But the Tibetan Plateau is massive (easily the size of Tibet) and you'd need a good many volcanoes to equal it.
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I'll disagree here. The Tibetan plateau did not erupt. The Himalayas, including the Tibetan plateau are the result of uplft from the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates. Certainly there is volcanism associated with this along the northern margin where there are a few andesitic volcanoes. However only a tiny part of the high ground in the region is volcanoes. Most of it is just rocks that have been pushed up as the Eurasian plate has ridden over the Indian plate.
I don't doubt that the associated eruptions put CO2 into the atm, just as they do further west through the middle east and into Europe and also the west coast of the Americas, but I don't know how the quantites compare. On the other hand the uplift exposed a lot of fresh rock to weathering. A major weathering mechanism involves the formation of carbonic acid from CO2 and H2O and so it removes CO2 from the atm. I think the general concensus is that the uplift actually decreased the atm CO2 concentration. Of course, whatever did happen happened slowly, at least by human reckoning.