Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Who is behind deforestation and consuming fossil fuels?

re: Who is behind deforestation and consuming fossil fuels?

"...
Both activities release huge amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, and those activities were years ago predicted to cause global warming.
The polar ice cap is melting, etc....All kinds of reproducible proofs show it is happening.
That's science."

Let's say Human activity emits 30 Gt per year.

All the rest of the animal lifeforms on Earth emit about 220 Gt per year. So, Humans of all the other animal lifeforms emit about 12 % of CO2 from all animals on this planet- quite a bit for such an insignificant animal and a lot considering it's multicellular animal. But 30 Gt is pretty insignificant in terms of having large affect upon planet Earth, and it quite possible that the amount CO2 emitted by animals is more than 220 Gt, it might be 250 Gt, thereby in a sense erasing human emission simply in the amount error in measurement of animal emission.

Plants emit about 220 Gt of CO2, that could be wrong and the error be more the the total human emission. Plants also absorb CO2, land plants absorb about 440 Gt, that number could in error more than the amount the human emission. It not just possible but probably that plants are absorbing more CO2 from the atmosphere now as compared to 100 year ago when there were lower level of CO2. Probably more than 5%, but 2% increase from 440 is 8.8 Gt [more than Dr. Canadell says human emit per year].

As for polar caps melting, the polar caps have been melting for the last 10,000 years. And about thousand year ago Greenland was probably warmer than today. And in last few thousand year glacier have advance and retreated. Today there are a few glaciers which a advancing and the Antarctic seems to be adding ice, though for the last 150 years more glacier worldwide are retreating and only a small amount have been and are advancing today.

And as far as polar sea ice is concerned, it not likely there will enough ice free ocean to make a non-icebraker trip through the northwest passage this year and even less likely that one will have a period of 5 weeks in which such travel will be possible- as was reported last year.

But all the above is not to say we aren't in a warming period, a warming period which has lasted for the last 150 years, and despite the latest cooling, will probably continue the warming trend in coming decades and centuries.
But the period before 150 years ago was somewhat abnormally cool as compared to temperature during last several thousands years and it's unclear that current temperatures are as warm as earlier warming periods within the last 10,000 years.

Raoul continues:
"Those who negate this take a completely different point of view: not used to hard science and because they don't want to listen to it (too boring), they don't appreciate the constant reminders (often not argumented enough, true) and feel attacked and it indeed looks like an opposing religion to them."

I believe I have negated what you claimed. And you correct that my view is different than yours, but nevertheless my point is to look at the science.

Here is question you should able to answer if you are interested in the science. If planet Earth has 300 ppm of CO2 and it increases to 400 ppm, how much increase in global temperature is due to just the CO2 increase? [not including other possible factors]. Now same thing but include all forcing factors from CO2, what is total increase? [and what forcing factor should be the most significant? Oh, assume such change in CO2 occurs in 100 years of time or less].

I don't need a quote from IPCC {though feel free to use that information if you want} rather I simply want what you think is the answer.

Bonus questions [and I don't already have the answers to this, so it's possible demonstrate your above claim had some merit to it]
What was total human emission from beginning of 1988 to end of 2007, what was total emissions from 1968 to 1987 and from 1948 to 1967. I would also like your opinion [and why] if you think the amount of CO2 emitted by human activity during 1948 to 1967 has any effect upon CO2 levels in 2008.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (4 posts)