Wharf, I have it figured out already thanks. What I have to wait for is to see the actual results in the natural world, not what you or Al Gore think.
What has happened in the quarter century since I've been watching the Greenhouse Effect in action is that my original 1987 ideas are about right [having watched for several years before that to figure it out].
You would do better to use a scientific and numerate mind to figure out what has happened, what is happening and what will happen. Don't bother counting how many people think something then copy them if you are in the 25% minority of Americans but the rest of the world thinks something different.
Numbers of minds have zero to do with the correctness of those minds.
The results that have come in over that quarter century are that despite a doubling in the rate of CO2 emissions since the graph in Hawaii began, as determined by hydrocarbon production, which you can see in the BP Statistical Review of World Energy bp.com
the rate of CO2 accumulation has had only a slight increase.
It's interesting to note that reserves have doubled too over those decades.
Peak Oil is nowhere in sight. Well, it is, but it's because Peak People is in sight, with demographic trends, H5N1 [or similar], AIDS, wars, one thing and another, combined with old age, resulting in Peak People and Peak Oil both occurring in 2037.
That is likely to also be peak CO2. Then it's off back into the ice age and a mass migration towards the equator. Fortunately, there is a LOT of land in tropical regions. The Sahara and Australia are both quite empty and would be suitable for accommodation. Everywhere is quite empty really, outside cities. People like to pile up together.
You have probably been confused by the way they present the CO2 graph in Hawaii. An old trick of graphical representation is to take a small chunk of the graph and stretch the vertical axis so it looks as though it's the side of a steep mountain, which instinctively gives people vertigo.
If you redraw the graph with the vertical range from 0 to 5000 ppm and have a look at the levels of CO2 over the last 500 million years, which is the time that matters to living things [considering only the last half million years is like reviewing your life based on what happened since breakfast], you'll see that the increase in CO2 is trivial.
The increase is trivial, even though people have spent 100 years in vast efforts to burn hydrocarbons and have got umpty million vehicles roaring around, power stations and other contraptions burning millions of tons of the stuff.
Since we haven't achieved much in the way of CO2 increase after a century of serious effort, it's not likely that we are going to be more successful in the next century, when the number of people drops by half and people spend more time in cyberspace than in SUVs, ships and DC8s.
Leave the magical thinking, mind counting and "the end of the world is nigh" doomsterism. Look at data. Use numbers. Think causal relationships. Examine plate tectonics. Consider biological oscillations. Albedo. Look at history.
Mqurice |
