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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (61763)	4/13/2005 8:57:24 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

the 15% is total CO2 added by people. Over 100 years, we have added 0.5% to the greenhouse effect. Not that I couldn't trust global warming calculations to some one who gets his wisdom from a guy named Fred on the Internet, but I needed to confirm for myself: What happens to the estimated seven billion tons of carbon from human-generated carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere each year? About three billion tons stay there. The oceans take up about two billion tons. The best guess is that the remainder must also be going into the ocean or be taken up by living plants. Since CO2 is chemically inert, it is not destroyed by photochemical or chemical processes in the atmosphere; either it is lost by transfer into the ocean or biosphere or it builds up in the atmosphere. The mathematics is impossible for me to understand, but I assume the CO2 budget model (as presented below) can be verified. The bottom line is however: The enhanced greenhouse effect will result in significant changes in local, regional, and global temperatures. Some climate models predict that the buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases will result in significant increases in the global mean temperture, ranging from 0.8 to 4.1 K from 1980 to 2030. At or near the poles, glacial and surface ice and snow may begin to melt, raising the mean height of the world's oceans by as much as 20 cm by 2030 and 65 cm by the end of the next century. This will lead to flooding of many low-lying areas of the world presently occupied by hundreds of millions of people. Scientists are also concerned about the response of living systems, including humans, to temperture increases of up to 4 K over a period of only several decades. The CO2 budget model The global Carbon Dioxide budget is complex and involves transfer of CO2 between the atmosphere, the oceans, and the biosphere. Through the photosynthetic process, the land removes about 100 petagrams (10^15 g) of carbon in the form of CO2 per year. However, about the same quantity of carbon in the form of CO2 is added to the atmosphere each year by vegetation and soil respiration and decay. The world's oceans release about 100 Pg C in the form of CO2 into the atmosphere per year and in turn absorb about 104 Pg C each year. Most of the oceanic carbon is in the form of sedimentary carbonates. Burning of fossil fuels adds about 5 Pg C and biomass buring and deforestation add about another 2 Pg C to the atmosphere in the form of CO2 annually. By summing all of the fluxes of CO2 into and out of the atmosphere, we can find that about 3 Pg C in the form of CO2 is building up in the atmosphere each year. The average concentration of CO2 was about 290 ppmv in preindustrial times; now (1990) it is about 350 ppmv and increasing steadily at a rate of about 0.3-0.4%/yr. Since CO2 is chemically inert, it is not destroyed by photochemical or chemical processes in the atmosphere; either it is lost by transfer into the ocean or biosphere or it builds up in the atmosphere.