More inconvenient truths

Toronto Sun ^ | 2007-03-04 | Lorrie Goldstein

[mountn man]

1. Water vapor has a much greater greenhouse effect than CO2, so that CO2 is quite a bit smaller contributor. 2. Most of the production of CO2 is from natural sources, man-made CO2 is less than 10%. You are right regarding the balance, except for the fact that we are digging up carbon from the ground where it was probably produced from CO2 gas many centuries earlier (but see above).

ALL occuring CO2 is less than 1% of our entire atmosphere.

Man made CO2 is estimated to be between 3-5% of total CO2.

Man made CO2 equals about 0.036% of the entire earths atmosphere.

[arthurus]

That's what the science says

No. That's what the computer models suggest, not the same thing at all. The computer models operate on their input which is not representative of all the factors that go into climate, and can't be because many factors are simply not understood well enough to "model" them. The models have to be constantly tweaked to allow for the present reality as it has differed from past projections.

[mountn man]

I don't think your post was retarded, but I do think you were in error.

At one time there were alot more trees. In cities, there used to be nothing but forests or fields, but they've been paved over.

Forest have been removed or thinned to make more farm fields.

Planting trees would just replace what was naturally there to begin with. Unless of course your trying to plant a forest in a desert or a prairie, where nature never supported one.

[pepsionice]

If one goes back to the 1600s...the land mass east of the Mississippi was heavily forested. There is no doubt that a large forestation program would shift the numbers...although it would take 30 years to prove that point. But thats alot better than destroying our economy.

Personally...I can't see why Bush doesn't start a mass 1-billion trees per year program...and get the Canadians also into the same scheme. Between the two countries...in five years....thats 10 billion trees. The same logic in China, Asia, South America, and Europe would fix the problem in a efficient manner.

[Don W]

That would mean it has to carry far more than 120,000 lbs. of fuel to burn up, which is more than the weight of the plane itself??

More than 2/3 the weight of CO2 is from the oxygen drawn from the atmosphere during the combustion of the fuel.

Carbon has an atomic weight of 12. Oxygen has an atomic weight of 16. Hydrogen has an atomic weight of 1.

So, if (for demonstration's sake)you burn one unit of CH2 [atomic weight 18], you have generated one unit of water (atomic weight 18 [1 oxygen plus 2 hydrogen] and one unit of CO2 [atomic weight 44].

You car uses about 15 pounds of air for every pound of gasoline it burns, because air is only 20.9% oxygen, 79% nitrogen, and 0.1% ALL OTHER GASES.This includes water vapour, CO2, methane, ozone, the works.

To think that we tiny humans have ANY effect on climate is the height of hubris.