Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Do the maths on Global Warming

In yesterday's National Post, Lorne Gunter effectively puts the math of man made CO2 and global warming into layman's terms :
Think of the atmosphere as 100 cases of 24 one-litre bottles of water -- 2,400 litres in all.

According to the global warming theory, rising levels of human-produced carbon dioxide are trapping more of the sun's reflected heat in the atmosphere and dangerously warming the planet.

But 99 of our cases would be nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%), neither of which are greenhouse gases. Only one case -- just 24 bottles out of 2,400 -- would contain greenhouse gases.

Of the bottles in the greenhouse gas case, 23 would be water vapour.

Water vapour is the most abundant greenhouse gas, yet scientists will admit they understand very little about its impact on global warming. (It may actually help cool the planet: As the earth heats up, water vapour may form into more clouds and reflect solar radiation before it reaches the surface. Maybe. We don't know.)

The very last bottle in that very last case would be carbon dioxide, one bottle out of 2,400.

Carbon dioxide makes up just 0.04% of the entire atmosphere, and most of that -- at least 95% -- is naturally occurring (decaying plants, forest fires, volcanoes, releases from the oceans).

At most, 5% of the carbon dioxide in the air comes from human sources such as power plants, cars, oilsands, etc.

So in our single bottle of carbon dioxide, just 50 ml is man-made carbon dioxide. Out of our model atmosphere of 2,400 litres of water, just about a shot glassful is carbon dioxide put their by humans. And of that miniscule amount, Canada's contribution is just 2% --about 1 ml.

6 comments:

Naserke said...

what a nice way to put this stupid water bottle theory.....
How nicely u said that 98% scientists on Earth are stupid and are conspiring against others....
remember.. "half knowledge is dangerous". Please don't oversimplyfy everything...

Jonathan Lowe said...

id love you to let me know where i said "that 98% scientists on Earth are stupid and are conspiring against others"

or are you completely making this up?

Anonymous said...

Well, you posted this nonsensical propaganda text. If it were true then that implies that almost all climate scientists are stupid or part of some big conspiracy.

Anonymous said...

Strange how an opposing view to climate change is branded 'propaganda'. Heaven help those who question the conclusions of the global warming scientists.

Anonymous said...

"Strange how an opposing view to climate change is branded 'propaganda'"


It's not an 'opposing view' at all. Deliberately misrepresenting climate science by ignoring the known facts makes it propaganda meant for the uneducated people.

Water vapor is always in dynamical equilibrium on time scales longer than about a week or so, methane is in equilibrium when you consider periods of a few years but CO_2 has an atmospheric lifetime of a few centuries.

Anonymous said...

Count Iblis said...

CO_2 has an atmospheric lifetime of a few centuries.

PROPAGANDA.

Posted by Derek with no google account, hence anonymous.