Quote:
Originally Posted by Clippo
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Sounds terrifying, doesn't it? But what happens to this claim when you actually break it down and analyse it? Quite simply, it falls apart.
From the article:
The average change in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 600,000 years has been just 22 parts per million by volume, Zeebe said, which means that 22 molecules of carbon dioxide were added to, or removed from, every million molecules of air.
The avarage change
per what? Per year? Per millenium? Or over the whole of the last 600,000 years? To me, it reads over the last 600,000 years, and averaging out over this kind of timeframe allows for deviations far beyond 22 PPM. And exactly what does average change mean? It means that if the number of CO2 PPM rises by 100 over 10 years and then falls by 100 over 10 years the average change is zero. So a change of 100 PPM
per se means nothing. If it had never happened before then perhaps it would be a concern.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century, ushering in the widespread human use of fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 100 parts per million.
And what have we here? A paragraph that makes it sound as if indeed it has never happened before. Could this be true? In fact, no it's not. At the end of the last ice age CO2 PPM rose by, guess what, 100 PPM. What was that all about? Were the wooly mammoths using 4x4's? Or could it be that the changes we are seeing today are quite capable of being caused by nature? Well, given that I've yet to hear about a fossilised Nissan Terrano, I dare say it's the latter.
That means human activities are putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere about 14,000 times as fast as natural processes do, Zeebe said.
No, it means that the rise in CO2 PPM is not unprecedented and in fact may be completely unrelated to human behaviour.
EVEN IF the rise in CO2 is
ENTIRELY caused by man, it is exactly the same as the rise at the end of the last ice age, therefore it is
NO FASTER than natural processes can achieve.
However, I'm sure the AGW fanatics are capable of spinning 14,000 times faster than the Earth is via natural process.