Besoeker,
Being absolutely pedantic you are obviously correct. In my previous post I left out other ‘natural’ CO2 emissions because of the general assumption, quoted in the BBC link and further supported in your link, sect. 2.1, quote
Quote:
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The amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere by plants is almost perfectly balanced with the amount put back into the atmosphere by respiration and decay. Small changes as a result of human activities can have a large impact on this delicate balance.
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To be honest, I was trying to keep it simplistic to equate to the general mentality of most posters here, (yourself excluded), and since some had previously raised the volcanic issue, I thought I would try to find independent evidence in clear & simple terms to debunk that one. My link was indeed the first one that I found and amply suited my purpose.
I am aware of the various aspects of the carbon cycle, including the removal of CO2 by silicate weathering although I didn’t mention this in the earlier post. (Your link actually says this is quite low but may have been higher in the past since it has been postulated as a major cause of one of the previous ice-ages due to the rapid rise of the Tibetan plateau – I think about 20 million years ago but would need to check).
I hadn’t seen your link before but it is indeed interesting. As I do with all new information to me, I try to assess its’ objectivity, whether it agrees with my preconceptions or not.. Obviously this is an composed article from various sources including books and since I have not read the primary sources, I cannot comment on the veracity of the detailed figures. That being said, I see there are several references to IPCC material which immediately disposes me to form a favourable view.
Following up one of the references in my earlier link, (Marland, G), I found this site :-
http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/ which gives many independent references and from which maybe some of the figures from your reference may be culled.
Whilst I am utterly convinced that the recent upsurge in CO2 emissions is mostly due to mankind’s fossil carbon burning, I consider there are many other factors involved in the perturbation of the historical, (mostly steady or only very slowly changing), carbon cycle equilibrium. The oft-quoted example is deforestation, both temperate & tropical but a very recent study on re-forestation, see
http://environment.newscientist.com/...l-warming.html indicates tropical being the more critical. Then there is the predicted effect of heat/drought on the destruction of vegetation i.e. fire & desertification reducing a big carbon ‘sink’ (talk to an Australian if you disbelieve this!). And of course the oceans themselves. It is chemical fact that CO2 ‘acidifies’ at least the ocean surfaces and thus will likely interfere with the metabolism of calcifying organisms, the phytoplankton(possibly the biggest potential carbon sink of the planet). Hard data is difficult to come by but read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
That’s just ‘acidification’, - nobody knows what the hell the effect of other man-made pollutants is having.
In my view, the paleo-climate ‘graphs’ produced by doubters have only one practical use and I don’t want to go to the ‘bottom’ of that issue.
Finally, I’m usually quite good at inferences but this time I didn’t understand the ‘disaronno’ quote – could you elaborate?