Not only is carbon dioxide's total greenhouse effect puny, mankind's contribution to it is minuscule. The overwhelming majority (97%) of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere comes from nature, not from man. Volcanoes, swamps, rice paddies, fallen leaves, and even insects and bacteria produce carbon dioxide, as well as methane. According to the journal Science (Nov. 5, 1982), termites alone emit ten times more carbon dioxide than all the factories and automobiles in the world.
You can read the whole article here. This, of course, doesn't mean I favor building coal-fired power plants plants all over the country(sulfur dioxide pollution still kills fish, even if the carbon dioxide doesn't warm the planet.), and it doesn't mean I favor drilling for oil off the coast of California (I swim in those waters).
What I think is that there is in man a knowledge that the Day of Judgement is coming, but because we, generally, hate God we don't want to acknowledge that He is coming to judge us. But the knowledge of Doom is is in us. It can not be expunged. Therefore, we make up global catastrophes to worry about. Global Warming is merely the Ragnarok, the appearance of Kali, the overthrow of Zeus, the Gotterdammerung of educated modern pagans. It is better to "repent and be baptized for the remission of sins", and thereby have a good defense on the in the Last of Judgment than to point fingers at SUV drivers and go to Hell.
4 comments:
A certain amount of C02 hold the temperature at a certain amount, all other things being warmer. More C02, you get warmer.
So natural sources bring us to a certain level. Add a few percent and things get a few degrees warmer. Unfortunately we only need a few degrees for problems to happen.
So the fact that most of the rest comes naturally is irrelevant, if just a relatively small contribution is enough to tip the balance.
Hi, Stoo. Thanks for reading my blog.
Yes. I've heard that said. I don't believe it is important/true.
It seems to me that if global warming hysteriacs were really worried about global warming they would talk much more about methane than they do. I hear about capping and trading CO2 but not about capping and trading methane. Why? Because the Global Warming hysteriacs have found allies in the policy makers/think tanks of the anti-industrialists.
What are natural sources? Aren't people part of nature? If activities of termites produces CO2 and it is natural why is the CO2 produced by the activities of people not natural? I see an anti-human attitude in your statement.
erk, I meant to say "all other things being equal" in the first line.
I admit i honestly haven't looked into how much methane contributes Thing is, it could be the same issue again: existing amounts of methane contribute a certain amount of warming, same as existing amounts of C02. But it's the increase in C02 that tips the balance. Has anything happened to boost methane emissions lately?
Remember we want the world to be warmed a certain amount - space is pretty cold! - but can only really function within a fairly narrow temperature range. So balaces are easily upset.
Thing is, I could just as easily say the global warming deniers have found allies in the policy makers\think tanks of big business. Which i'm sure has rather more money to bribe scientists than the hippies do. ;-)
By natural sources i meant whatever is happening without people. Maybe that wasn't the best word? But it's not hard to believe that a bajillion cars and coalfired power stations can affect the state of the world, for the worse.
If I was anti-human I'd say by all means pollute like mad, until the world is wrecked and we destroy ourselves fighting over what remains!
"So balaces are easily upset." I think this is where we disagree. According to some computer models with certain built in presuppositions, balances are upset. According to other computer models with different presuppositions balances are not so easily upset.
But there is also the data to consider. I can tell you, from where I sit in the San Francisco Bay area, this is the coldest summer I've ever experienced. But according to some Global Warming worry mongers one can't tie any specific weather event to global warming. (What is the point of the theory then?)
But there are some serious issues with facts, they are getting in the way of the theory.
1. Most warming in the 20th century occurred before 1930 but most CO2 and other human produced "greenhouse" gasses were released into the atmosphere after 1960. (This is in line with the article I linked to in the orignial post.)
2. Satellite temperature readings do not show an increase in average temperature over the last 20 years.
3. the Argos buoys detected no increase in ocean temperature in the last five years. Funily, this resulted in some scientist questioning the buoys instead of questioning their theories.
4. I've been watching Hurricane Fay for the last few days. This hurricane seems to me to a much more observable event than Global Warming. It is something we know how to measure. We have seen them before. We we have a pretty good idea about how they behave. But scientists can't tell us where a hurricane will form, where it will go, or how strong it will be until after all of those things have happened. THey can't even predict cloud cover accurately. Why should I trust them on Global Warming? Which we have never observed and which we haven't been able to measure.
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