problem...this, from his opening chapter on "Motivations"...frankly, I'm equally as concerned with continuing to incinerate a finite resource that takes eons to produce...and has so many other uses that are desperately needed.
----------------------
"The burning of fossil fuels is the principal reason why CO2 concentrations have gone up. This is a fact, but, hang on: I hear a persistent buzzing noise coming from a bunch of climate-change inactivists. What are they saying? Here’s Dominic Lawson, a columnist from the “Independent”:
“The burning of fossil fuels sends about seven gigatons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere, which sounds like a lot. Yet the biosphere and the oceans send about 1900 gigatons and 36,000 gigatons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere - …one reason why some of us are skeptical about the emphasis put on the role of human fuel-burning in the greenhouse gas effect. Reducing man-made CO2 emissions is megalomania, exaggerating man’s significance. Politicians can’t change the weather.”
Now I have a lot of time for skepticism, and not everything that sceptics say is a crock of manure – but irresponsible journalism like Dominic Lawson’s deserves a good flushing.
The first problem with Lawson’s offering is that all three numbers that he mentions (seven, 1,900 and 36,000) are wrong! The correct numbers are 26, 440 and 330. Leaving these errors to one side, let’s address Lawson’s main point, the relative smallness of man-made emissions.
Yes, natural flows of CO2 are larger than the additional flow we switched on 200 years ago when we started burning fossil fuels in earnest. But it is terribly misleading to quantify only the large natural flows ‘into’ the atmosphere, failing to mention the almost exactly equal flows ‘out’ of the atmosphere back into the biosphere and the oceans. The point is that these natural flows in and out of the atmosphere have been almost exactly in balance for millennia. So it’s not relevant at all that these natural flows are larger than human emissions. The natural flows “cancelled themselves out.” So the natural flows, large though they were, left the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and ocean constant, over the last few thousand years. Burning fossil fuels, in contrast, creates a new flow of carbon that, though small, is “Not” cancelled. Here’s a simple analogy, set in the passport-control arrivals area of an airport. One thousand passengers arrive per hour, and there are enough clockwork officials to process one thousand passengers per hour. There is a modest queue, but because of the match of arrival rate to service rate, the queue isn’t getting any longer. Now imagine that owing to fog an extra stream of flights is diverted here from a smaller airport. This stream adds an extra 50 passengers per hour to the arrivals lobby – a small addition compared to the original arrival rate of one thousand per hour. Initially at least, the authorities don’t increase the number of officials, and the officials carry on processing just one thousand passengers per hour. So what happens? Slowly but surely, the queue grows. Burning fossil fuels is undeniably increasing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and in the surface oceans. No climate scientist disputes this fact. When it comes to CO2 concentrations, mankind’ is significant.
-------------------
IMO, an excellent analogy for what we are experiencing...btw, for those who haven't heard of the book, you can get it free just by Googling "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air"...if you're skeptical of the author, check out his Wikipedia page.
Note: I check on Roy Spencer's Global Temperature Data (RSS/UAH) regularly...temp trend is up...not down.