Why vulcano eruptions do not contribute to CO2 levels?

[ha]

Title.

[Prometheus]

No.

[leandrombraz]

Certainly because Firaxis don't want to have something that the player can't control in someway. If you're producing too much CO2, you can reduce it. If another Civ is producing too much CO2, you can go after them. If a volcano is producing too much CO2, you can't conquer the volcano nor explain to it the consequences of climate change. A volcano do what a volcano do.

Basically that wouldn't add anything to the game aside from being an annoying source of CO2 that you can't do anything about, so why have it?

[gimmethegepgun]

If you want to look to more realism-related reasons, volcanoes don't really emit all that much over human-relevant timespans compared to the amount industrialization releases, and they didn't include the various natural processes that slowly remove CO2 from the atmosphere that would counteract the volcanic activity to some degree.

[Astasia]

Volcanoes on average produce less than 1% of the CO2 humans do. They instead produce sulfur dioxide and ash which float in the atmosphere and reflect light causing global cooling. Super massive volcano eruptions cause ice ages.

[Charlemagne]

Actually, volcanoes are part of the normal carbon cycle, i.e. without human interference. Their emissions throw CO2 and other gases back to the atmosphere from the deep layers of the Earth, which had been fixated there from fossilization (is that the right word?) in previous eras. This cycle is stable over the millennia, perhaps one year too much volcanic activity increases the CO2 a bit too much, but other years there are less eruptions.

However, humans have broken this cycle by burning fossil fuels that weren't supposed to be vaporized into the atmosphere yet, or pulled up from the Earth at that rate. That's why volcanoes are not considered a cause of greenhouse effect- They're just doing their thing.

[ha]

Originally posted by Charlemagne:

Actually, volcanoes are part of the normal carbon cycle, i.e. without human interference. Their emissions throw CO2 and other gases back to the atmosphere from the deep layers of the Earth, which had been fixated there from fossilization (is that the right word?) in previous eras. This cycle is stable over the millennia, perhaps one year too much volcanic activity increases the CO2 a bit too much, but other years there are less eruptions.

However, humans have broken this cycle by burning fossil fuels that weren't supposed to be vaporized into the atmosphere yet, or pulled up from the Earth at that rate. That's why volcanoes are not considered a cause of greenhouse effect- They're just doing their thing.

I sorta agree, there were periods with enormous amount of vulcanic CO2, long long long long ago, afterall. It is not an issue for thousands of years but still, it is a very weird thing to see CO2 levels 0 after 3 eruptions in 10 turns. They should change it to industrial CO2 or something similar , for accuracy.

[SamBC]

It is apparently necessary to remind people that this forum is not the place for discussions of a political character, and the reality or otherwise of anthropogenic climate change falls under that heading.

[caps]

Originally posted by SamBC:

It is apparently necessary to remind people that this forum is not the place for discussions of a political character, and the reality or otherwise of anthropogenic climate change falls under that heading.

[Dray Prescot]

It is a matter of geological record that the Earth has had several spells of ICE BALL Earth, perhaps 650 to 800 million years ago and and several billion years ago.

When that happens most of the oceans are ice at the top and the land gets very dry with little weathering processes which normally ABSORB CO2 and greenhouse gases, and transport them into the oceans were they get deposited into sediment, etc.

Scientists USED to think that once the Earth Turned into an Ice Ball, it would be trapped there forever. But they did not allow for all of the Volcanic emissions (much of it under the oceans) and with little CO2 being run into the ocean by weathering, after 10 or 20 MILLION years, enough Green House Gases would raise the temperatures enough to melt the Ice. (Quite possibly melting ALL of the ICE on the whole Earth) There may have cycles of multiple Ice Balls followed by melting caused by Volcanic gases.

See the book "Rare Earth" which discusses this and many other things that make it hard for advanced (multi cellular) large organisms to survive and develope. The period before the Cambrian Era (when large fossils first appear) had several ICE BALL episodes.