Win, those CO2 records only go back 400,000 years. nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu 400,000 is chicken-feed and excludes the time when the air had heaps more CO2 in it - what was it like in the carboniferous era for example? Recent peaks around 300 ppm with us now at 365 ppm means we don't need to worry at all. There will NOT be a runaway greenhouse effect turning earth into an oven. The only question remaining is how far we'll be able to fill the leaky tank before the carbon sinks defeat us.
Because the previous peaks were around 300 ppm doesn't mean we should limit ourselves to that. We are running the world to suit ourselves, not keep within some random numbers which nature has recently set. Nature is not interested in us. We are interested in us and we had better look after our interests. If our interests mean we'd be better off with 600 ppm, then pump it out!
The current peak was already there before we started producing oil, coal and gas in any quantity, so our effect is trivial and simply part of the recent CO2 spike. The graphs showing increases over the last 100 years are just part of that long-running spike up in CO2 over the past 10,000 years. We shouldn't claim to have caused the spike because we've added a few million tonnes per day of carbon dioxide to the air for 50 years. We are responsible for something like 10% of the atomspheric CO2 [if it all stayed in the air]. Which is a good achievement, but small compared with nature's efforts of raising CO2 from 180 to 280 ppm in the current cycle of increases, with NO help from us.
The bloviating doomster Luddite Pundits [I had to look up Pundit and bloviating to see just what they mean] have always been fearful of new stuff. Sure, cars squash people, aircraft fall out of the sky, thalidomide damaged people, lead poisoned our brains, mercury in dental treatment poisoned our brains and x-rays caused cancer. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use those things. It means that we had better be careful and expect some carnage. But we are stuck with carnage if we do nothing, so might as well alleviate problems by taking the chance of flying in aircraft and developing cyberspace and minimize the consequential damage by wearing seatbelts, using radar and avoiding virally-risky websites and email.
Mqurice |
