Water Vapor

Even the most left-leaning of scientists will only assign CO2 9-26% of the greenhouse effect.

A vast majority of the greenhouse effect comes from water vapor, of which we produce 0.00001% or some near non-existent figure.

So we'll take their middle ground and say that the greenhouse effect is 17% CO2. Well, Mankind is responsible for about one tenth of one percent of the global CO2 emissions. Nearly all of it comes from animal life and other totally natural sources.

So that means that humanity is responsible for .017% of the greenhouse effect. And of THAT number, all but about 10% of that is just the fact that we exhale when we breathe.

So, if we dismantle our economy by enacting Cap and Trade legislation, we can reduce the greenhouse effect by roughly .0017%.

Math is fun. Politicians and enviro-wackos are crazy.


Edit: Sorry, I realize now that this is turning into a hijack. I'll leave my comments at that. I respect your opinions and you are welcome to disagree with me. But please don't spend MY money on your loony quest for climate nirvana.

These are not linear effects were talking about here...you can't just scribble down some numbers on a sticky pad, do some division and claim you've proved we have no effect on climate change. I mean you can, and you are going to, but its simply not an accurate analysis.

One other point: Breathing is carbon neutral, in order to create the CO2 we exhale we have to eat carbon which came from natural sources. We add carbon to the natural system is by releasing sequestered sources of carbon like fossil fuels that wouldn't otherwise be entering the cycle.

I don't know about you, but I like to snack on a lump of coal every once in a while.

Really cleans out the system.

why don't people just wait and see before enacting a huge amount of legislation? For how much advocates claim "consensus" and "facts", it doesn't seem to be a settled debate at all. I wouldn't be surprised if in another 5-10 years we forget about the "global warming debate" and move on to the next crisis that WE NEED THE GOVERNMENT TO TAKE ACTION ON NOW!

edit: I dunno, I guess I'm not a big fan of crushing the economy during a recession when we're not even sure what the hell's going on, and if we even caused it in the first place.

We are sure and the debate is just obfuscation. I am no fan of government but denial of man made gw wilts under any serious scrutiny.

You are sure that 1). the earth is warming 2). man is causing it and 3). if we do not ACT NOW the results will be catastrophic? That's a pretty big claim. You're British, what's the debate looking like over there?

Lol, its amazing that you are willing to ignore scientific arguements and turn to twaddle like this. You understand that a certain amount of green house effect is vital for life on earth, and the natural sources you mention have been kept in a sustainable equilibrium for centuries. The whole point is that we are increasing the effect, not that we are making the entire effect, and lol at the idea that a 1% increase in carbon equals a 1% increase in green house effect.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...nhouse-effect/

I am sure that the over whelming majority of scientists are sure, and are sure for scientific reasons.

Also everytime I come across a counter arguement it is as ridiculous as the one posted above.

My opinion is that there is enough of a general consensus within the scientific community to justify action. There is still dispute over specific numbers, and there will continue to be, as any sort of long-term modeling is not strictly speaking provable in the short term. The problem is not so much how much we have affected the planet already its the path we are on, dramatically increasing the rate at which we are affecting it. In a physics sense we are not just cruising along at constant velocity, we are accelerating rather rapidly...if we don't do something now things could get out of hand very quickly.

The current bill actually sets pretty modest targets in early years, its after 2020 that things start to become more drastic, so there certainly would be time to adjust. The point is that we are really looking 10 years ahead with legislation here, so if we wait 10 more years to act we won't see significant results for another 20...in my opinion that is too long.

Its also possible that the science is wrong, but my personal view is that the probability of this is rather low and the overall cost of inaction would be greater than the cost of action. Especially when you consider that many of the GHG reduction actions we can take will have numerous health and political (energy independence) benefits completely independent from mitigating climate change.

Edit: Here's a table of the emissions targets, its a few months old but I don't think these have changed since then.

I don't think "overwhelming majority" means what you think it means.

Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill, that passed the House and is now in the Senate, in it's current form will do little to curb CO2 emissions. Here's one groups thoughts:

Greenpeace Opposes Waxman-Markey

Also cooperation among world govts is needed to effectively reduce CO2 emissions. I suppose that passing the Waxman-Markey bill arguably sends a signal that USA is ready to cooperate with other govts. The well known refusal to cooperate by India and China seems to be an insurmountable hurdle. I've posted regarding climate models before (I don't hate them as one poster acccused me of) so won't repeat any of those comments. Estimates of the end user costs to consummers vary widely if Waxman-Markey in it's current form becomes law but the price of energy will rise.

Oh yeah, opposition to Waxman-Markey is led almost exclusively by oil company tools.

All this does is reflect on the lack of intelligence (common sense is probably more appropriate here) shown by the average American laborer.

Their employers have to stand up and protect their jobs because they're too ignorant to do it themselves.

How do people not understand that Waxman-Markey will completely and permanently dismantle what's left of the US Industrial sector?

I have an idea, lets quadruple the cost of energy in this country and see what happens to energy-dependent manufacturing businesses!

Well, Greenpeace opposes the specific bill because they don't think it's strong enough. They also want to see some limits on nuclear power, which they are not going to get (and shouldn't get).

India is just posturing right now. There's no way they don't get on board very, very soon since they will face water shortages, agricultural problems with rice and huge amounts of Bangladeshi refugees.

Greenpeace argues that the bill does not set the cap low enough, I don't necessarily disagree, but I made a post earlier on this very subject. There has to be some sort of compromise between and economic impacts or nothing will ever get done. I personally hate watching the political process destroy well intended legislation, but this is a reality and I'd rather see something passed that nothing for the time being...if the bill gets much worse I may change my mind.

The U.S. is still responsible for 20% of global emissions and Europe 14% (wiki), reducing 34% of global emissions significantly would have an impact. I don't buy the 'China won't make any changes anyway so why should we even bother' excuse, we still pollute just as much as China with 1/4 the population, and 4 times more than India with 1/3 their population. To me that's just a cheap way of ignoring the issue.

More worldwide cooperation would of course be better, but there is almost 0 chance anyone will take our threats/requests too seriously in Copenhagen if we can't get our act together to do something at home.

Muresan for MVP: there's huge scientific consensus on climate change with a few petroleum company sponsored outliers. A few seconds on google will confirm this with national scientific organizations around the globe coming out on climate change.

I also hate the Republican excuse that "China will keep polluting." Who cares? The ball is in our court, and continuing to deny this global reality only lets it spiral out of control.. take action on climate change now.

Haha, come on even you can't believe this. The relevant numbers are the changes in the rate of production of these gases not the total amount produced. Also, an exactly linear response of temperature to Co2 LOL. It would be best for your side if you left science policy debates to scientists and people with basic math literacy.

The basic underlying logic still applies.

LOLOL, no, it doesn't. There are numerous incredibly basic mistakes. You are talking about the total amount of these gases when all that matters is the change in production per unit time. This number is much, much smaller than the total production per unit time. All the numbers you give are useless. The response obv won't be linear either. You should read some global warming denial literature, even the worst ones don't make mistakes this obvious.

Lol. Do you think it's hotter in the summer because we are closer to the sun?

Wait, you don't?

Someone get this man a gradeschool science book!

Hint: 23.5 degrees 4tw.

I'm glad to see your not a completely hopeless case

Good post but here's where we disagree.

1) Waxman-Markey bill is horrible. There's just too many special interests that have lobbied to get a better shake in this bill. It's another one of those 1300 page bills that has more than it's share of complicated language and things like that.

2) USA is put at a disadvantage economically in my view compared to countries that don't adopt it.

3) Getting world govts to cooperate on something like this would be unprecedented in my view.

I see #2 claimed a bunch, but what is the rational for this. Most heavy industry has been moved out of USA already, and if you either tax or cap greenhouse emissions you are incentivizing new technology and efficiencies. the development of new technologies generally leads to new jobs, with engineering oriented and other high value occupations being rewarded.

1- at least it is trying.
2- we're already at a disadvantage compared to countries that can pour poison directly into the river..
3-unprecedented, and completely necessary. the hard part is getting the american corporations to stop roadblocking and lobbying and let the world take action....

this is the worst reason I've ever heard. I'll let others elaborate...