Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Mother Earth Causes Global Warming

VOLCANO, Hawaii - Kilauea volcano, one of Hawaii's most popular tourist attractions, is also by far the state's worst air polluter. Researchers now are trying to determine if that also makes it one of the state's biggest health risks.

Since it began erupting on Jan. 3, 1983, the volcano has been sending an average of 1,000 metric tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere each day, according to the Hawaii chapter of the American Lung Association.

This is 6,000 times the amount emitted by a major industrial polluter on the mainland, making Kilauea the nation's top producer of sulfur dioxide.


You know, if we had signed the Kyoto protocol, that volcano wouldn't be polluting like that, right? It's true - my fortune cookie said so. Which really makes me wonder...with all the methane gas deposits, CO2 deposits, sulfur dioxide and other naturally occuring pollutants issuing forth from the Earth, why aren't the environmentalists protesting the Earth? It's trying to commit suicide! It's trying to abort itself! Or maybe, like scientists have been saying for decades, the Earth equalizes itself, and there is really no harm being done by people. How silly we are to think we can negatively, or positively for that matter, affect a system that is simultaneously bigger than us and beyond the scope of our knowledge.