Here’s a quote from an article on PlanetSave.com.

Climate Change from Mount Tambora

After the 1815 eruption, the world temperatue dropped a lot, as the volcanic ash rose all the way up to the stratosphere (140,000 feet or 43 kilometers, in total) and spread — “ a stratospheric sulfate aerosol veil remained for years, dimming the sunlight everywhere.” The global temperature the next summer was 0.5 degrees Celsius lower than average (if you believe climate scientists, of course — and why wouldn’t you). For anyone who doesn’t follow climate science discussions, a change in the climate of 0.5 degress Celsius is significant.

Source: Planetsave (http://s.tt/13j5X)

A change of 0.5 degrees Celsius or almost 1 degree Fahrenheit is an average over the entire planet.  That may not seem like a lot, but as an average over the entire globe it is significant. In 1816, it was powerful enough to create “The Year Without a Summer.” Mount Pinatubo, in the Phillipines had a similar effect in 1991.

As a comparison, models show that if countries acted on the Kyoto Protocol spending trillions of dollars over the rest of the century as the UN sponsored IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) recommends we would lower the temperature of the planet by less than 1 degree Fahrenheit. We can spend a lot of money changing the climate very little over 100 years. A volcanic eruption of the nature of Tembora or Pinatubo could essentially have that effect in a long weekend.

Watch Cool It to see more about how to spend our resources wisely and how geo engineering is attempting to recreate the effects of a volcanic eruption or how marine cloud whitening can whiten clouds as a possible emergency response to the risk of rapid climate change.