OT: Steering a train?

[Andy Hall]

.. and why is this exactly?

[dennis]

Well if you burnt all the known fossil fuel reserves you could probably increase CO2 by a couple of percent. You would have to cap the volcanoes and kill a lot of bacteria and dump loads of vegetation in the deep sea trenches to actually keep the CO2 to the couple of percent we would produce by burning all the fossil fuel available.

So the real question is..

does the extra 0.1% of CO2 that is a result of man make a difference when added to the 30+% of natural CO2 produced? Is warming due to CO2 exponential and are we near the steep part of the curve?

Answers on a postcard to:

Tony Blair global warming research grants.

10 Downing Street. London.

[OG]

What _are_ you talking about?

30%, 0.1% ? made up figures?

[渠云]

Good!

[dennis]

Do some research and you will find that the CO2 produced by man is much less than that produced by nature. Basically if we stopped burning fossil fuel it would have almost no effect on the amount of CO2 produced each year. So its just as well that CO2 isn't very good at being a greenhouse gas.

Just look at some of the "facts" that environmental groups use..

they admit that water vapour has much more effect than CO2.. but we should reduce CO2 because we have no control over water vapour.

[OG]

I was asking specifically what you meant when you talked about "does the extra 0.1% of CO2 that is a result of man make a difference when added to the 30+% of natural CO2 produced?"

What is the "30%+ of natural CO2 produced"? 30% of what?

[dennis]

Isn't that what they claim is the increase in CO2 in the last hundred years or so?

[The Natural Philosopher]

30%? not sure.

Sounds about right tho.

This is a good picture.

The well known effects are all positive..and of far greater maguinituted than the lesser known effects.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes..31%

[OG]

So you claim that 30% increase is 'natural' and 'anthropogenic' causes are

0.1% - can you justify that claim?

[Roger]

The message from "OG" contains these words:

FWIW the figure I heard several years ago was not 0.1% but 3%. If that is correct Denis is out by a factor of 30. Is that a record?

[OG]

No, that would be a 33

[dennis]

So take your figure then..

CO2 has gone up by 30% of which 3% is man made. So if we halve production it would only have gone up by 28.5%. All this in the last 100 years.

So we delay it all by about three years if natural CO2 carries on increasing and we halve production or about six years if we go back to the stone age.

[OG]

But I don't accept that 'something someone heard a few year ago' is really justification for any particular value. Would you?

Here is some evidence based analysis of the question

explained, atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the last 150 years have increased from about 280 to 380 ppm. An audit of fossil fuels extracted and burned plus land clearance over that time would be enough to have raised atmospheric CO2 levels to over 500ppm during that period. The 'natural' contribution of CO2 has actually been to REDUCE atmospheric concentrations by about 120ppm.

I'm not an expert, and I'd want to see more recent figures; but on the face of it, the argument seems to be against you.

[dennis]

Not at all. What is shows is that despite things like bush fires, volcanoes, etc. (natural events) shoving out huge amounts of CO2, more than we do, the natural processes have buffered it. Probably (but who knows? #1) in the oceans which haven't warmed up much as a result of global warming.

#1. There doesn't appear to be a consensus for where the CO2 has gone ATM.

[OG]

That's right Natural processes are buffered by other natural processes and we have a stable CO2 concentration which is what we've had for millennia.

150 years ago mankind started pumping out extra CO2 from fossil fuels and the CO2 levels increased. As has been said, the extra CO2 from manmade sources is more than enough to explain the increase over that period.

It doesn't really matter how much atmospheric CO2 is created by natural processes each year if other natural processes remove it from the atmosphere at the same rate. The _increase_ is because mankind has for the last 150 years been consistently increasing the CO2 creation rates so that creation is no longer balanced by natural removal processes. The only variable is the output by mankind.

[Roger]

The message from "dennis@home" contains these words:

Earlier messages have expired so I can't check the context to see if I misinterpreted something but the 3% I referred to was our share of the annual output and FWIW that apparently is less than the year on year increase so without our output atmospheric CO2 would be going down.

[dennis]

Don't go near this 100-150 year myth. There has been no GW that followed the CO2 in that period. It has been the CO2 that followed the temprature by about a decade over that period. I have yet to see any records that show what happened to other greenhouse gases over that time frame as the information appear to be buried.

There are lots of variables, bush fires, volcanoes, etc. You can't conclude that there is a natural process that can tell the difference between CO2 from a volcano and a factory.. if they can cope with the natural variations they can cope with what we output.

[Roger Hunt]

OG wrote (snip)

IRTA "marmalade sources", and wondered

Mmmm

[OG]

So did CO2 concentrations drop in the period 1940 - 1970?

What do you mean "they can cope"? Clearly they haven't 'coped' otherwise CO2 concentrations would not have increased.

Fossil fuel burning has increased CO2 generation and CO2 removal processes are not able to keep up.