Burning Up About Carbon Pt. 1

The other day former VP Gore testified before Congress about "cap and trade" taxes vs. carbon taxes. His answer: "both". Last week, the EPA decided to regulate CO2.

Unfortunately, I'm handicapped when it comes to these sorts of issues. I understand science and numbers. My BS and Doctorate might not compare to Mr. Gore's journalism degree and JD when it comes to talking "all that scientifical stuff", but I'll give it a whirl.

Point One - Atmospheric CO2 DOES NOT cause temperature increases.

Atmospheric CO2 lags behind temperature rise. How can CO2 increases cause the temperature to rise if the rise happened first? This is akin to saying your farts cause you to eat beans.

So why the lag? Wiki says there are 50 times more CO2 in the oceans as int the air, and increasing temps decrease ocean solubility. Therefore atmospheric CO2 rises.

Another possible cause of increased CO2 following warming would be life itself. If the warming is caused by the nearest convenient heat source, the Sun, then the CO2 rise is logical. Solar radiation is the basis for almost all life here. If it goes up, the life that uses it, plants, do better. The secondary life, animals, having a larger food supply also increase their population. All these extra animals exhale CO2, causing it to increase.

Point Two - Our CO2 production doesn't matter. WARNING - MATH AHEAD!!

I was going to figure out my own numbers, but I found
Wikipedia's while researching this. I'll be using their numbers so I'm not accused of cherry-picking the data. Opening the link in a new window would be helpful here.

Please note that the total atmospheric CO2 is 3000 gigatonnes, or 3,000,000,000,000 metric tonnes. Their data lists all human CO2 emissions at a total of 27 billion tonnes, or 27,000,000,000 tonnes. Lest knock off 9 zeros from each to make comparison easier.

Total CO2 = 3000 gigatonnes, human annual emissions = 27 gigatonnes.

So they're saying that human activity should be increasing total CO2 by 0.9% annually. That's equivalent to 9 parts per thousand (ppt). But their data also shows the total annual change at 3 ppm or less. That's only 1/3000th of our total carbon footprint from all sources. So either their data is hosed, or our activity just doesn't matter to the planet.

If their data is correct, the Earth would seriously be losing almost 1% of it's CO2 annually if it weren't for humans. At that rate all plant life on the planet would be dead within 100 years, and all animal life would follow within months. Does anybody believe that GIGO induced hypothesis? Why doesn't anybody do the math before publishing?

So we now have two possibilities from the data. Either our CO2 is the only thing saving the planet, or the Earth is a 4.5 billion year old self-sustaining system, so huge that our puny butts don't matter to it. I know which one I'll bet on.

Since our CO2 is totally unimportant to the planet scientifically, just why are we talking about taxing it or trading it or regulating it? We'll get to that in
Part 2.

The Grey Man