Summary
World leaders meeting in Copenhagen in December face a huge hurdle. How will the world pay for it? The price tag is estimated to be $100 billion/year by 2020 but some put the cost closer to $1 trillion. The money is needed to assist India, China and Brazil convert to costly but cleaner technologies as they industrialize. Poorer countries will need help relocating their populations as the seas rise. Without the financing, the international climate agreement may not happen. Tax airline flights?
Analysis
Without the complete and total plugging of the world's estimated 540 volcanoes, little or no chance exists for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. When one of those babies blow, it really blows. Volcanoes blow smoke, ashes, molten lava, pumice, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, rocks, everything. We can all remember how Mount St. Helens in Washington state did its thing back in 1980, killing 57 people and scattering tiny bits of real estate all over the country. Mount St. Helens remains active today blowing smoke and noxious gases. It needs to be plugged. In 1902, Mount Pelée blew in Martinique killing 28,000 as it wiped out much of St. Pierre. But that was nothing compared to Mount Tambora in Sumbawa, Indonesia that blew for 3 days in 1815 killing 92,000. We must not forget Vesuvius overlooking Naples Bay. When it blew in 79CE it cleaned out Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae. No one knows for sure how many people died in that one. The point is that without volcano control, how can we really expect to reduce emissions? How much would it cost to plug the average run-of-the-smoker volcano? A heavy duty road would be required from some base point up to the summit. Bulldozers, skip loaders, semi cabs with tandems for loads of cement and steel reinforcement bars. Halliburton or similar cementing equipment would be needed. Civil engineers would be required to plan the plugging which would have to be made in stages and volumetric calculations would be required to determine how many sacks of cement would be used. Mere construction cement would probably be inadequate. The type of cement would be a function of depth plus bottom hole temperature. Who wants a flash set while cementing up a volcano? A flash set is bad enough when cementing oil well casing. So the cement alone would be pretty expensive. Just an educated guess but I estimate it would take around 1 billion each to do a credible and lasting cement job on a high pressure, hot volcano. So that is another 540 billion that would have to be raised on top of all the other costs. Then there is the possibility that the first cement job would not hold. Recementation could be required. That would be another billion. Maybe more if the cause of failure was an indignant blast response by the volcano. What all of this means is that the world leaders in Copenhagen have really got their work cut out for them. Maybe it would be better to take a chance that the climate will stabilize and even turn down down a degree or two. With global cooling, we could tolerate a few volcanic eruptions if only for the warmth they would bring us.
Michael Lynch consults with leading institutions through GLG
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
