Alas? <But alas, no eruption.. Last one was in May.. > If for some reason I am temporarily anywhere near a volcano, I do NOT want it even thinking about erupting, let alone actually doing it. If it was one of Auckland's scoria cones it would be interesting as they do not suddenly let rip with big blast. But Krakatoa was one of the biggies of the world. Not on the scale of Taupo, but certainly a bit of a megablast.
Even though it might look like a lot of stuff coming out, apparently a count of all volcanic emissions is not much compared with the millions of tons of carbon being burned each day by people, largely unseen because it's distributed in a billion different places, much of it with nothing to show for it. An A380, ship, locomotive, power station and hordes of cars just pour it out the exhaust without much fuss and nothing much evident.
If the combustion processes worldwide were all combined into one big flame, it would be enormous.
A 20 megaton atomic bomb makes quite a big commotion. That's something like a day of carbon combustion. So spread that 20 megatons over a day and that would give an idea of what size flame would be running continuously. Something like a million tons an hour. Or 20,000 tons a minute. Or 300 tons a second. That would be shock and awe to really give some shock and awe.
Actually, now that I write that, it's not so much. When Taupo goes off, it's megatons of burning fuel heading for the sky in minutes, or at most hours. The process is a bit like Old Faithful, except that the column is 10 km across rather than 10 inches, and when the gases hit the air, they catch fire [the steam in Old Faithful just blows around], so it goes up 40 kilometres instead of just 40 metres.
Mqurice |
