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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: steve harris who wrote (314665)12/9/2006 10:03:05 AM
From: combjelly  Read Replies (3) of 1572025
 
"Numbers I've seen are humans contribute less than 0.4% of all greenhouse gas emissions."

Do the math. The atmosphere masses about 5*10^15 tons. CO2 accounts for some 0.035% of that or 1.75*10^12 tons. Now China and the US alone produce 2.8*10^12 tons of coal per year, virtually all of which is burned.

worldcoal.org

Now the atomic mass of C is 12, the atomic mass of O is 16, therefore the atomic mass of CO2 is 44. So take 44/12 (ratio of the mass of CO2 produced to C burned) and multiply it times the amount of the C in the coal produced and you get around 10^13 tons of CO2 produced just from the coal mined in the US and China alone. Per year. Or about 5-6 times what is resident in the atmosphere at any one time. Now a certain amount is going to wash out in rain. A certain amount is going to go to increased plant production. A certain amount is going to carbonate formation in bodies of water. But for natural sources to dilute human contribution to less than 0.4% would mean that there would have to be an enormous amount of CO2 in the rainfall(entire rivers of carbonated water), a tremendous increase in vegetation production and we probably would have islands of carbonate forming all over the world.

The numbers just don't add up for a figure of less that 0.4%.
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