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Re: News Advisory: Still Crazy After Oil These Years!
David Beorn <dbeorn@freenet.vcu.edu> wrote:
>On 19 Jul 1996, Scott Nudds wrote:
>
>> David Beorn
>> : Exactly - human CO2 is basically insignificant compared to what
>> : nature produces.
>>
>> Very false. The actions of man have substantially increased the
>> amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and rates of emission continue to
>> increase.
>
>And where is your evidence of this????
>
>> You might as well try to argue that you can not die from 1 litre of
>> water because your body is contains 81 times as much without any harm at
>> all.
>
>And that would probably be true - I doubt if I would die - unless you
>injected it in my veins of something.
That doesn't mean you can't. All you need to do is to be unconscious
in a puddle a couple of inches deep.
>But I don't see the analogy.
>Don't "environmentalists" contend we are THE MAJOR contributor to CO2
>productions, ozone depletion, etc??
No. "Environmentalists" (why do you put this in quotes?) are aware
that CO2 emissions from human sources form a rather small part of
the overall scheme of things. What leads you to believe otherwise?
>Your analogy would seem to indicate
>that you realize it's small but you want to maintain that it's still >more harmful anyway. The point here was NOT that CO2 production was
>small as a percentage of the EXISTING CO2 but small as a percent of the
>GENERATED CO2 - i.e. NEWLY generated.
It's pretty small either way. And yes, it's more harmful. When we
burn fossil fuels we are taking CO2 that has been sequestered under
the ground for millions of years and returning it to the atmosphere.
There is a natural balance of carbon flows in the biosphere, and
we have become numerous enough and are now causing enough additional
emissions that we are upsetting it. As Scott has mentioned, that's
why scientists are measuring increases in CO2 concentrations in
the atmosphere.
>
>>You have a closed mind John Boy. You should really try to open it.
>
>Hardly - I'm open to any evidence you might have on this subject and any
>solid proof of YOUR contentions - but I suspect you have little or none
>and will hold fast to your conclusions despite the evidence (which is
>what *I* would call closed minded).
OK, here is some evidence. There is a good article that covers the
basics by Richard Houghton and George Woodwell in SCIENTIFIC
AMERICAN, April 1989, Vol. 260, No. 4. It provides a summary of
natural carbon flows and describes the measurements that have been
taken of CO2 concentrations. It also explains how ice-core data
>from Antarctica indicate that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere
today are higher than they have been for the past 150,000 years.
Suggest you check it out.
>Despite what many scientists would have you believe, there are still >many unknowns in our world, and the more we find out, the more we
>realize that we don't know. Yes - out knowledge is greatly increased
>over years past but we also have a complex world and we've got a LOT to
>learn.
Agreed. However, one of the things we don't still have to learn
is whether CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising (they are).
Tom Gray
Director of Communications
American Wind Energy Association
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Gray <tomgray@econet.org>
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