Mike Huckabee claimed that a single volcanic eruption "will contribute more than 100 years of human activity" toward global warming. This is far from accurate.
Humans actually pump upward of 100 times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than all the world's volcanoes combined. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines, was one of the largest in modern history. This eruption released 0.05 gigatons of CO2, or about 50 million metric tons. Humans emit more than 30 billion tons of CO2 every year. The 1980 explosion of Mount St. Helens in Washington, released even less CO2 than Pinatubo, in spite of its fearsome and deadly local impacts. That eruption released only about 0.01 gigatons of CO2, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The USGS says (using 2010 CO2 emissions), you would need 700 Pinatubo's or 3,500 Mount St. Helens' eruptions, to match a single year of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. To get to 100 years of human emissions, as Huckabee said? That would take 70,000 Pinatubo or 350,000 Mount St. Helens eruptions.
Sanders goes too long on teen jobs
Bernie Sanders has repeatedly said 51 percent of young black high school graduates are "unemployed." That's wrong.
Sanders' figure comes from a left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report on underemployment - which includes not just the unemployed, but also part-time workers who want full-time work.
EPI based its calculations on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' alternative measure of labor underutilization known as the U-6, which is the broadest measure of underemployment. EPI: "Our measure of underemployment is the U-6 measure from the BLS, which includes not only unemployed workers but also those who are part-time for economic reasons and those who are marginally attached to the labor force," On occasion, Sanders properly cites the EPI report, when he explained that he was talking about the "real unemployment rate for young people," when he defined the "real unemployment rate" as a combination of people who are unemployed, working part-time for economic reasons, and those who have given up looking for work.
Cruz out of order on gay marriage
Sen. Ted Cruz said "states not directly involved in the gay marriage lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court 'are not bound' by the court's ruling."
Several legal experts told Politifact the idea that states not party to the marriage cases weren't bound by the court's ruling may have technical merit, but that's all. Richard Fallon, a Harvard specialist in constitutional law, said, "Any official who failed to issue gay marriage licenses would be sueable for failure to do so, and any court in which the suit was filed would be obliged to follow the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling."
Randy Barnett, a professor of legal theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, said, "It is futile for states who are not parties to resist. More importantly, when a ruling is clear, ignoring the Supreme Court's decisions until a court directly orders them to obey undermines the rule of law. Bad people say, We won't obey the law until you make us.' Good people follow the law before they are directly commanded."
Stephen Vladeck, an American University law professor, called Cruz's statement "literally true, but deeply misleading. Vladeck: "Every state and federal court is ultimately subject to the supervision of the Supreme Court at least where federal law is concerned. That's why those courts generally apply the Constitution as it has been interpreted by the Justices in Washington; if they don't, they're likely to be reversed."
Politifact rates the claim mostly false.
Chip Tuthill lives in Mancos. Websites used: www.factcheck.ord www.politifact.com