If the man-made-climate-change true-believers are correct, humans thoughtlessly contaminate the earth’s atmosphere each time they exhale.
Why? Because with each breath, humans expel a mouthful of carbon dioxide (CO2), the so-called bad-guy atmospheric gas blamed by environmental guru Al Gore and other climate-change Casandras for increasing global temperatures. (For the record, recent global surface temperatures have been going down, even as CO2 levels have gone up.)
So far, none of the global warmists who jetted into Copenhagen last week to attend the UN’s IPCC climate-change conclave has gone so far as to suggest that their fellow homo sapiens should breathe more sparingly lest the earth turn into a sauna and the polar caps melt.
But for years, government-funded scientists and their legion of “Green” supporters, aided by willing media mouthpieces, have excoriated industrialized countries for polluting the earth’s atmosphere with a noxious blanket of CO2, thereby creating a mercury-rising “greenhouse effect” that, they claim, will unleash a horror of cataclysmic weather events across the globe.
But does the oft-maligned CO2 deserve all the criticism? Is it truly the nasty culprit behind impending climate chaos? Or is it merely the fall-guy – a convenient climate-change patsy forced to shoulder the blame, while the sun, cosmic galactic rays, ocean currents, volcanoes and other climate influencers get a free pass?
These are not unimportant questions. A growing body of climate experts believes it is disingenuous and, frankly, unscientific to blame CO2 – a minuscule constituent of the planet’s atmosphere – for the small increase in average global surface temperatures, roughly 1.33 degrees, that has occurred during the last century.
Here are a few CO2 facts, from Geocraft.com, that have either been swept aside or simply escaped the eyes of mainstream news outlets – those ever-vigilant guardians of the planet – whose job is to inform the public about such weighty matters, but who seem more interested in boosting readership and TV ratings by deluging audiences with a never-ending torrent of climate-change scare stories.
Fact 1: At 385 parts per million (ppm), CO2 is a minor constituent of earth's atmosphere – less than 4/100 of 1 percent of all gases present. Compared to earlier geologic times, earth's current atmosphere is CO2-impoverished.
Fact 2: CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product.
Fact 3: Carbon dioxide is a nutrient, not a pollutant, and all life – plants and animals alike – benefit from more of it. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide.
Fact 4: CO2 emissions do not stay in the atmosphere. They are continually recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth's oceans – the watery repository for most terrestrial carbon dioxide.
Fact 5: Water vapor is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95 percent of Earth's greenhouse effect, and man’s contribution to it is insignificant. Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions are responsible for only about 0.117 percent (see accompanying graph) of Earth's greenhouse effect. Using a real-world comparison, 0.117 percent of a football field would equal just over 4 inches.
Fact 6: When other anthropogenic greenhouse gases – methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and trace elements such as CFCs – are added to the above CO2 figure (.117 percent), the total human contribution to greenhouse gases is .28 percent.
Those numbers are very telling, yet conspicuously absent from the spate of news stories over recent years predicting a climate meltdown. Quite simply, the volume of CO2 produced by humans is tiny compared to the percentage of water vapor, the big kahuna of greenhouse gases.
As the Geocraft article mentions:
“Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small – perhaps undetectable – effect on global climate.”
Even if CO2 levels were to double or triple, no harm would come to the planet. Why? Because, contrary to the nonstop fright-mongering by the IPCC, Green lobby and researchers in search of grant money, CO2 is neither a pollutant nor enemy of mankind. It is one of life’s essential elements.
As researcher Sherwood Idso, president of the Tempe, Ariz. Center of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, has demonstrated, plants thrive in high-CO2 environments (humans, when they exhale, do plants a favor). Atmospheric CO2 enrichment stimulates agriculture by enhancing leaf photosynthesis, resulting in higher crop yields and increased global food production.
During the Jurassic period, CO2 levels in the atmosphere were in the neighborhood of 1,950 ppm – five times the concentration of today’s modest 385 ppm. During that period, the earth flourished in the fertile embrace of life-giving CO2.
As physical science and mathematics professor Richard F. Yada writes in his 2009 paper, “Reality Check: CO2”:
“The great lesson from geologic history is that carbon dioxide is critical to life. The move to label it as a pollutant is simply preposterous. The logical extension to that thought process is that the government has legally regulated life. The notion would be laughable if it were not so tragically real.”
Will the greenhouse-effect prognosticators stand down for a moment from their doom-and-gloom forecasts, reappraise their research, and take a second look at CO2 and its impact on global climate, searching only for the truth instead of the next round of government funding? Don’t hold your breath.
Kirk Myers' Examiner column appears several times weekly. To receive alerts when a new article is posted, click on the “subscribe” button at the top of the page. Upcoming topics: the carbon-credit game, grant money and science, and the Green movement.
Comments
You have confused the concentration of a GHG with the amount of radiative forcing it produces. Water vapor accounts for 36 to 70% of radiative forcing, carbon dioxide 9 to 26%, methane 4 to 9% and ozone 3 to 7%. Since the mid 1700s, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased 36%; methane has risen 148%. This level of carbon dioxide increase is due to human activities, 75% of it coming from the burning of fossil fuels, most the of rest from changes in land use (deforestation, e.g.). The concentration of carbon dioxide today is higher than at any time in the past 650,000 years, based on Anarctica ice core studies (of trapped ancient air bubbles); the last time the atmosphere had today's level of carbon dioxide was 20 million years ago.
SUB:ENVIRONMENT -SENSITIVE INDEX
SAHANA VAVATU-SAHANAU BHUNAKTU is a derived Energy on the Earth region for all Beings.
NAHI-NAHI PASYATE DRUKKUM KARANE- The Invisible field Links are Sensitive and may not be
apparent to the Eye-view.
PRIDHVEEM SHANTHIH- The Earth region must sustain the Stability
A special quest for the Human-Being in-depth is to create the
Necessity-Demand-Curiosity-Sustain a Sensible Index and define Life Support.
Vidyardi Nanduri
Cosmology Vedas Interlinks
I read the opening line and went to the comments. Looks like not much of value here, just some guy with an opinion which amounts to repeating words and phrases commonly used to glean web traffic.
Opinions are not necessarily always funded by commercial interests, but when they are they follow a strict set of guidelines.
Typically fill the page with funny/clever/pathetic name-shifts like North Gitmo, economic trainwreck, or use proper nouns like Cassandras or wingnut... ie: lift emotions, then hit with absurd twists on data that are so far from the actual data that it is just fiction.
If you live for fiction, yer right at home...
If you didn't even read the article then don't comment on it's validity
Geocraft.com uses very questionable sources and/or cites the sources incorrectly. Very sketchy. Looks like a coal-mining astroturf site.
I hate these stupid comments like we should breath less because we exhale CO2. It is so dumb it is hard to make fun of. People who are scientifically illiterate should not be expressing opinions about a scientific subject. I will just point out that until animals start living on fossil fuel they are carbon neutral.
According to every scientific study I've seen, the biggest contributor to CO2 is dead trees and plants. They give back all of the CO2 they've collected during their life when they die and rot. The second biggest contributor are the oceans, volcanoes and other natural events. Man comes in a distant third. Also, if you look at the charts on sunspot activity and compare temperature fluctuations, there is a direct correlation. Another possible factor is a substantial decrease in the effectivense of the Elctro-magnetic shield, and man has no effect on it. From what I see, it looks like a money and power play by the likes of Al Gore and Michael Moore.
There you are!
Todd Gilmour has just proved it. Man man global warming is not happening. Look back to how many ice ages and "climate change seasons" the Earth has gone through since 20 million years ago. Even recently!
Compare the "climate change seasons" with long term Sunspot activity then we hit the nail on the head.
Even if "man made climate change" was on the ball it wouldn't be a drop in the ocean of a problem compared to the fact that we are half way through our trapped fossil carbon reserves. The second half will be harder and ever more expensive to mine and refine until its impossible. The real killer of man will be "man made population change". Notice this: Its people who burn things.
No fuel --- no transport -- no food -- no heating/cooling -- no life. Goodnight. Merry Christmas!
Some predictions for the next 10 yrs;
Global climate change will finally be realized as it is, always changing.
More Americans will figure better, more responsible ways to do business in order to keep more money here in America. No more worries over the Al gore scare tactics, freedom to do Biz will flourish again by making more workers independant small companies on their own with less income loss and more tax deductions.
Gov't and it's self perpetuating tactics will prove itself less and less effective with Americans becoming increasingly real in many many ways esp. when it comes to money and it's responsibilities for our future. Free enterprises will find more effective and profitable ways of regulating environmental laws and handling the many services needed in America.
Al Gore will be left in a quiet camp realizing the reality of things in American Society.
If I can get away with plugging her show here, I highly recommend Kim Greenhouse's web radio show for interviews with the likes of Dr. Willie Soon, Lord Monckton, Dr. Sherwood Idso, and many, many others.
itsrainmakingtime (dot) com/broadcasts/recent-segments/
Recent Segments
2010
January 12 The Founding Documents & the State of America Featuring Edwin Vieira
January 11 The Art of Weather Featuring Art Horn
January 8 An Inquiry Into Polar Bears Featuring Dr. Mitch Taylor
2009
December 28 Ellen Brown says “Yes They Can!” as Countries Stand Against IMF Featuring Ellen Brown
December 23 Stories From The Great Depression Featuring Delores Logsden
December 22 The Blueprint For A Zero-Cost Economy Featuring Dr. Farid Khavari
December 15 CO2: Breath of Life or Pollutant to “Eliminate”? Featuring Dr. Sherwood Idso
December 14 21st Century Medical Diagnostics Revolutionize Health Industry Featuring Dr. Art Robinson
December 10 Are You Holding Your Breath? Featuring Pam Grout
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