Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
Couldn't read every post in this entire topic and if I'm being redundant just ignore this post but..

3% of greenhouse gases on this planet are CO2.

3% of this CO2 is anthropogenic.

A 30% decrease in CO2 emission leaves us with..

.0027% decrease in greenhouse gases. That'll save the planet!

WAKE UP people.. the bigger threat is obviously population explosion, but that isn't even addressed because it doesn't make anybody any money.

It's not really that simple, water vapor is the biggest contributor, HOWEVER water vapor itself increases with temperature. What this does is create the possibility where a significant increase in one direction could easily spiral out of control. The point of C02 reduction is to reduce the chance of that happening.

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by oliii
Would that be at the times where 90% of the said species died?

Not that I know of, although I do know ice ages tend to have that effect.

So far it seems they have bigger fish to fry; like, not ending up in our frying pans.

I think it would be a shame if we were responsible for another wipe out (climate change or otherwise). I quite like my wildlife documentaries. :)

Quote: Original post by oliii

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by oliii
Would that be at the times where 90% of the said species died?

Not that I know of, although I do know ice ages tend to have that effect.

So far it seems they have bigger fish to fry; like, not ending up in our frying pans.

I think it would be a shame if we were responsible for another wipe out (climate change or otherwise). I quite like my wildlife documentaries. :)

Look at the bright side: if there's a wipe-out, and we manage to survive it, we may get to watch new species evolve into the ecological niches left behind by the ones that went extinct - evolution in action! Granted that it would take some time, but still. Instead of wildlife documentaries on species that are already established in their ecosystem, you'll get to watch wildlife documentaries on how other species are readapting to their new niches. I personally find that more interesting, but YMMV.

Quote: Original post by HostileExpanse

Quote: Original post by Eelco
.... this 5% is based on not taking into consideration an effect estimated at similar magnitude as the direct CO2 forcing...

Where did this disclaimer come from? (Page number would be immensely helpful)

Its in the conclusions; one of the last pages.

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by HostileExpanse

Quote: Original post by Eelco
.... this 5% is based on not taking into consideration an effect estimated at similar magnitude as the direct CO2 forcing...

Where did this disclaimer come from? (Page number would be immensely helpful)

Its in the conclusions; one of the last pages.

Maybe I'm missing something. You have a link?

Quote: Original post by WazzatMan

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
Couldn't read every post in this entire topic and if I'm being redundant just ignore this post but..

3% of greenhouse gases on this planet are CO2.

3% of this CO2 is anthropogenic.

A 30% decrease in CO2 emission leaves us with..

.0027% decrease in greenhouse gases. That'll save the planet!

WAKE UP people.. the bigger threat is obviously population explosion, but that isn't even addressed because it doesn't make anybody any money.

It's not really that simple, water vapor is the biggest contributor, HOWEVER water vapor itself increases with temperature. What this does is create the possibility where a significant increase in one direction could easily spiral out of control. The point of C02 reduction is to reduce the chance of that happening.

After some quick research the amount of anthropogenic CO2 added to the atmosphere is more like 3% every decade (somewhat inaccurate because % is a poor way to measure since its relative to the existing levels, also I did the math fast).
graph

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
Couldn't read every post in this entire topic and if I'm being redundant just ignore this post but..

3% of greenhouse gases on this planet are CO2.

3% of this CO2 is anthropogenic.

A 30% decrease in CO2 emission leaves us with..

.0027% decrease in greenhouse gases. That'll save the planet!

Did you make those numbers up yourself or did someone else make them up for you? What matters with CO2 is it's contribution to the greenhouse effect.

Gases ranked by their contribution to the greenhouse effect

* water vapor, which contributes 36–72%
* carbon dioxide, which contributes 9–26%
* methane, which contributes 4–9%
* ozone, which contributes 3–7%

Your claims are debunked here:

Quote:
For the 30% rise in CO2 there has been so far, that would imply that would represent around 3% of the natural greenhouse effect – a good order of magnitude bigger than that suggested above. Of course, this is at equilibrium and not applicable to a transient change. If one takes into account the human-induced changes in the other GHGs (CH4, N2O, CFCs), you’d get something like double that. Given that even a 5 or 6 ºC cooling was associated with the huge ice sheets 20,000 years ago, and that 33 ºC cooling would reduce our planet to a near-snowball-like state, a potential increase of 5 to 6% of the natural greenhouse effect is not to be sniffed at… nor dismissed as irrelevent with highly misleading arithmetic.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
WAKE UP people.. the bigger threat is obviously population explosion, but that isn't even addressed because it doesn't make anybody any money.

So there's no money in birth control and condom manufacturing? It's not money that is the hold up, it's ideology, typically Christian fundamentalist ideology and it's obsession with abstinence only approaches to the issue.

Anyay, here's more...

We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction (Mar 8, 2009)

China says population controls help fight climate change (Dec 11, 2009)

Quote: We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction [www.truthdig.com] (Mar 8, 2009)

I wouldn't call that article reliable. The author, an obvious demagogue, seems desperate to shift the entire burden of dealing with this situation to industrialised Western countries, where birth rate is slowly shifting to the negative, while simultaneosly removing it from poorer countries where the problem is actually occuring. In fact, I would argue that our financial support, which only sustains the population and it's goverment in the short term, and is rarely used to implement significant infastructure building, is actually one of the causes of this, and many other, problems.

Of course, the author doesn't give a solution for "population control", because we all know the minute a solution is implemented he will be writing an article complaining about it, unless it "takes care" of him too.

Sigh... wikipedia. Didn't you question why the ranges were so broad and vague? (and had no citation)

First this

Then this

And this:

Energy Information Administration - Government Website

"Given the present composition of the atmosphere, the contribution to the total heating rate in the troposphere is around 5 percent from carbon dioxide and around 95 percent from water vapor."

A CO2 percentage attribution anywhere near 26% is physically impossible. If you don't believe me, do a calculation on what the average temperature would be if we cut CO2 emission in half. Assume ~.44 celsius as the global mean (i think what it was in 2008)

The problem is that all these statistics and measurements exclude water vapor, even the EPA's numbers. All this "feedback" and "forcer" stuff is just a weak excuse to skew the numbers. Interestingly, the links I had

And if you don't understand the economics of carbon trading than you really aren't seeing the bigger picture here..

All of your sources seem to be ten to twenty years old.

Either way keep in mind if we had 0% greenhouse gases earth's oceans would freeze soild, 1% is a significant variable.

EDIT:
Also on your first link it claims its dishonest to only show change in ppm rather than total ppm and then immediately makes a projection that uses the lack of precision from trying to show total ppm to soften the projection with data from the 50's.

EDIT2:
or more specifically it creates a linear projection from a clearly exponential trend, even if you assume the rise will level off in the near future on its own its dishonest to use such old data