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Old 02-01-2007, 01:55 PM   #8 (permalink)
Don Klipstein
 
Posts: n/a
Re: "Humans 'very likely' making earth warmer" is wrong

In article <a4twh.15247$ji1.4936@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net >, Lee K wrote:
>
>"donquijote1954" <nolionnoproblem@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:1170357571.517834.230020@p10g2000cwp.googleg roups.com...
>>
>> there is a
>> 90 percent chance that global warming is human-caused.

>
>
>" While humanity's three billion
> tonnes (gigatonnes, or GT) per year net contribution to the
> atmosphere's CO2 load appears large on a human scale, it is actually
> less than half of 1% of the atmosphere's total CO2 content (750-830
> GT). The CO2 emissions of our civilization are also dwarfed by the
> 210 GT/year emissions of the gas from Earth's oceans and land.
> Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the uncertainty in the
> measurement of atmospheric CO2 content is 80 GT -- making three GT
> seem hardly worth mentioning."


Human activity is adding more like 25 gigatons of CO2 to the
atmosphere annually, just from burning of fossil fuels. The latest
figures are about 7 PgC, which is 7 petagrams of carbon annually, and
multiply that by 44/12 to get petagrams (gigatons) of CO2.

All the other carbon is just circulating around the biosphere,
hydrosphere and atmosphere. Burning of fossil fuels is adding carbon to
these at a rate of 7 gigatons of carbon, or 25 gigatons of CO2, per year.

- Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)
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