Global warming and volcanoes

Sometime ago, I posted a comment that referenced data that suggested a link between La Nina /El Nino events and underwater volcanic activity.

Basically, these volcanic events have to do with the puzzling appearance and disappearance of hot water masses in the Pacific Ocean that affect the flow of currents and, consequently, air masses that affect our global climate. The Pacific Ocean is rimmed by highly active tectonic ridges and volcanoes. This model certainly makes more sense than to claim that parts-per-million changes in the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere have massive changes on ocean water temperatures. Among other events, recent major droughts in the southern U.S. and Brazil and limited monsoon activity in southern Asia have been linked to La Nina activity.

Here is the article that I referenced:

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/18084

This is interesting because of the recent upsurges in tsunami and earthquake-generating tectonic activity around the Pacific Rim’s “Ring of Fire”. Shifting tectonic plates (an idea bred by skeptics in 1912 that only gained currency in the 1970s) would be expected to generate more volcanic activity.

And here, from the BBC, comes a story that suggests an unusual degree of recent submerged volcanic activity creating “weird”, hitherto unrecorded effects. Pumice is a stone, created by volcanic activity, that actually floats.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19207810

Incidentally, at a meeting that I attended this spring, a climatologist predicted that the La Nina events linked to the hot summer and drought experienced in the southwest and south-central parts of the U.S. would end by late-July as an El Nino event began to develop. He was right on the money. The rains of August have returned to the Midwest.