What he said is completely accurate with regards to volcanic eruptions. The net effect from volcanoes over this century has not been one of warming, but one of net cooling. In terms of GHG emissions, the emissions from volcanoes represent approximately 1% of total anthropogenic contributions. Not to mention the compensatory cooling caused by the aerosols volcanic eruptions emit into the upper atmosphere.
The issue is not whether volcanoes can alter the climate (of course they can and have as any paleoclimatic record reveals), the question he was addressing was whether volcanic eruptions are a significant cause of the net increase in ghg concentrations in the atmosphere over the last 50 years (relative to cooling from aerosols), and similarly a significant contributor to the net global warming occurring over the last 50 years. In short there is no evidence that volcanic eruptions can account for recent climate change. They simply cannot. In fact they are offsetting some of the heating that would have likely occurred in their absence.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm
Download the full report, check figure 2.5 and read the caption. The blue band represents volcanoes and solar irradiance.
Also examine the figure and text on page 39.
http://www-personal.buseco.monash.edu.au/~BParris/BPClimateChangeQ&As.html
see figure 1.
The populace which is “panicking” is not the problem, they get it far better than the populace which is apathetic.
It is the mis-led and ignorant masses, along with the culpable media who are the problem. Because it is the media’s failure to educate the general populace (rather than stoke a controversy…much more exciting than an ever increasing weight of consistent scientific evidence point the finger at anthropogenic causes), and the general populace’s inability to understand how the scientific process works, let alone inability to separate legitimate sources of evidence from easily digestible fallacious sound bites…it is all of this plus more which is creating obstacles in democratic societies for governments to make the large rapid cuts in annual greenhouse gas emissions necessary to have a reasonable chance of avoiding more than 2 degrees C warming.
If I understand you correctly, I think you’re confusing who the “sheep” are?