[Lemmy]

PluggyRug wrote:

Please tell me you are joking. So no industrial activity, no CO2?

CO2 is not harmful, so no debate is needed. No CO2 no life on Earth.

Joking about what? Businesses should have to pay for their emissions. Period. CO2 is harmful. So is O2. So is sunlight.

[bootlegga]

Gunnair wrote:

Global warming is happening and man is contributing.


I don't think we're the sole cause, however, our actions are contributing through the increase of pollution (CO2) and the decrease of biomass (rainforest, temperate forest)

That's about where I fall. For me, the question is how much we contribute; not very much or substantially.

[Zipperfish]

N_Fiddledog wrote:

And here's one back at ya zip. If CO2 is rising for the past decade or so, why have global temperatures not been?

But here's one I've been wondering about in regard to the particular thing you reference. That being the fact the Vostok ice data shows temperature rise precedes CO2. You have a temperature rise, then 800 years later or so you have CO2 rise. So is CO2 rise at the present time unexpected when about 800 years ago, or so we were still experiencing temperature rise from the Medieval Warm Period? I don't know.

It could be. But then where do the CO2 emissions from human activities figure in? Are they simply incidental to the grand scheme of things in the carbon cycle? Using 5.137 x 1018 kg as the mass of the atmosphere 1 ppmv of CO2= 2.13 Gt of carbon (according to http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html). We put about 8 Gt of carbon into the atmosphere in 2006. In an additive relationship that would translate to about 4 ppm.

Clearly we're not talking about a simple additive relationship, but still...it's evident to me that we are adding an appreciable amount of CO2 to the atmosphere.

So while I'm not ready to discount natural inclination for CO2 rising, I still think that we are heating the planet up through fossil fuel combustion (and land change too, apparently, but I don't know much about that).

[N_Fiddledog]

Zipperfish wrote:

We put about 8 Gt of carbon into the atmosphere in 2006.

Don't Oceans release a varying amount around 330 GT annually, and isn't there a natural bio release of about 220 GT?

Quote:

In an additive relationship that would translate to about 4 ppm.

That's kind of deceptive isn't it? I mean, wouldn't you have to compute in stuff like Henry's law, land use changes, and the natural carbon cycle?

I'm not saying anthropogenic doesn't make a dint. But I've been trying to figure out how sure we are how much comes from where, how exactly it's cycled, and I'm not sure we really know.

I've seen the RealClimate version. I assume you have as well.

For the other side, as well as comments on what's in the IPCC on the subject, see the first NIPCC report here...

http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf

Scroll down to the chapter - How Much Do We Know About CO2 In The Atmosphere - on Page 20.

[Gunnair]

N_Fiddledog wrote:

Zipperfish wrote:

We put about 8 Gt of carbon into the atmosphere in 2006.

Don't Oceans release a varying amount around 330 GT annually, and isn't there a natural bio release of about 220 GT?

Come on, that is an awful strawman. THe slight difference here is that CO2 released by the ocean is a natural process where as CO2 released by man is through industrialization.

[PluggyRug]

Lemmy wrote:

CO2 is harmful. So is O2. So is sunlight.

Harmful to what?

[Gunnair]

PluggyRug wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

CO2 is harmful. So is O2. So is sunlight.

Harmful to what?

Get a CO2 extinguisher, unload it into a small enlcosed space, and go in and hyperventilate...

[gigs]

Gunnair wrote:

PluggyRug wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

CO2 is harmful. So is O2. So is sunlight.

Harmful to what?

Get a CO2 extinguisher, unload it into a small enlcosed space, and go in and hyperventilate...

Everything is toxic in high concentrations. Vitamin E can kill .

[Lemmy]

PluggyRug wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

CO2 is harmful. So is O2. So is sunlight.

Harmful to what?

Lifeforms on Earth.

[Gunnair]

gigs wrote:

Gunnair wrote:

Get a CO2 extinguisher, unload it into a small enlcosed space, and go in and hyperventilate...

Everything is toxic in high concentrations. Vitamin E can kill .

I'm glad you got the point then.

[N_Fiddledog]

According to Professor Will Happer, of Princeton University...

Quote:

Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our US Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels.

So no, Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere cannot be toxic at any level man is capable of putting CO2 into it as a whole. Unless you believe in abiotic oil, we'd run out of fossil fuels before there could be anything to worry about. Toxicity is not an issue.

Now on this...

Gunnair wrote:

Come on, that is an awful strawman. THe slight difference here is that CO2 released by the ocean is a natural process where as CO2 released by man is through industrialization.

You ever notice how much people who don't like an inconvenient fact overuse the word "strawman". It's becoming a pet peeve.

In the first place I don't think it applies here, because you need an argument to have a strawman argument, and I'm not sure that line of thought was argumentative. I honestly don't know the answer to Zip's question "Why is CO2 not lowering if the climate is cooling".

It has not been cooling much. I don't think it's even statistically significant. And it's only been happening since 2001. Like a previous commenter, I think I read somewhere there's a 10 year lag between atmospheric temperature fluctuations, and those in the ocean. Not sure about that. If it did cool for a length of time, it does seem reasonable to me that would affect CO2 level in the atmosphere. More CO2 is dissolved in cold water. It's outgassed in warm. So yeah, you'd expect atmospheric global temperature to affect all that. Also there's that whole global ocean circulation thing. When there's more CO2 in the air, more is absorbed into the ocean. I think it can take as long as 1,000 years for that circulation to complete.

Does that mean human released CO2 is not also affecting CO2 levels in the atmosphere? Of course not. It only means, I wonder how much natural cycles might affect CO2 levels. I was wondering specifically about the fact we know global temperature rise causes a rise in CO2, about 800 years after the temperature rise first appears. How much of that might be affecting the current CO2 rise, seeing as 800, or so years ago we were in a warm period.

However...now that you mention it, it does seem reasonable to expect fluctations on a body of 320 gt to matter more than on a body of 8 gt.

[PluggyRug]

Gunnair wrote:

PluggyRug wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

CO2 is harmful. So is O2. So is sunlight.

Harmful to what?

Get a CO2 extinguisher, unload it into a small enlcosed space, and go in and hyperventilate...

You would suffocate from lack of oxygen, the CO2 in this case is irrelevant.You could also say the same about nitrogen, argon, etc. Without O2 or CO2 life would cease to exist.

[PluggyRug]

Lemmy wrote:

PluggyRug wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

CO2 is harmful. So is O2. So is sunlight.

Harmful to what?

Lifeforms on Earth.

In which way?

[Lemmy]

PluggyRug wrote:

In which way?

Depends which of the 3 things (CO2, O2 or sunlight) you're asking about and which type of lifeform.

For humans: CO2 - overdoses causes acidosis (among other conditions) which can be fatal; O2 - breathing highly concentrated oxygen causes lung damage. Ever heard of "anti-oxidants"? Oxygen exposure over a lifetime of breathing, destroys virtually all bodily systems. Oxygen is both necessary for life, in the short-term, and fatal for it over the long-term; sunlight - UV exposure causes skin damage and cancer, not to mention nasty, painful burns.

But I didn't really need to tell you any of that, did I?

Life on Earth depends on a delicate balance of conditions. Increasing the concentration/quantity of any naturally occurring gas in our atmosphere may have drastic effects on life on this planet. Take a SCUBA course and learn a little bit about how fucked up you can become by having your gas-blend even slightly off.

[PluggyRug]

Lemmy wrote:

PluggyRug wrote:

In which way?

Depends which of the 3 things (CO2, O2 or sunlight) you're asking about and which type of lifeform.

For humans: CO2 - overdoses causes acidosis (among other conditions) which can be fatal; O2 - breathing highly concentrated oxygen causes lung damage. Ever heard of "anti-oxidants"? Oxygen exposure over a lifetime of breathing, destroys virtually all bodily systems. Oxygen is both necessary for life, in the short-term, and fatal for it over the long-term; sunlight - UV exposure causes skin damage and cancer, not to mention nasty, painful burns.

But I didn't really need to tell you any of that, did I?

Life on Earth depends on a delicate balance of conditions. Increasing the concentration/quantity of any naturally occurring gas in our atmosphere may have drastic effects on life on this planet. Take a SCUBA course and learn a little bit about how fucked up you can become by having your gas-blend even slightly off.

I don't dispute anything you say, however atmospheric CO2 concentration would have to increase a hell of a lot to be harmful. Life flourished in the past with much higher levels. Also decreasing naturally occurring gasses can be dodgy.

Quote:

Earth's atmosphere today contains about 380 ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth's history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carbo ... imate.html