Global Warming: Scientific Consensus Proved Wrong

[BasketCase]

Okay, look. Y'all are making this human breathing dealie a lot more complicated than it actually is.

Right now, the Humans of Earth are exhaling X amount of carbon dioxide per unit time. It doesn't matter if it's "extra" carbon dioxide or not (I seriously have no idea where MRM got that idea from), or what other animals on the planet are doing. The fact is that X is a number. With a specific value. That value happens to be around ten percent of total carbon dioxide emissions from all sources.

Got a problem with that? Then show me where my math went wrong. So far, nobody has actually pointed out an error anywhere in it. They just say it's wrong without ever explaining how.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Do you have a source to back your claim up that human breathing is causing 10% of the total? Or can you show me how you got to that result? All I saw you do is say you calculated it. I'm not saying it's not possible or not true, I just like to know how you got there.

Show me your math before I will give you my opinion of your math.

 

[bigfatron]

I like these questions!

1 kg CO2 ~ 500l pure CO2 at 1atm
1 human adult tidal respiratory volume~ 500ml
Average adult repiratory frequency: 12 - 20 per minute - let's use 16.
CO2 as a proportion of exhaled air: 40,000ppm (100 x natural air)

So, 1 adult will exhale 16 x 0.5 x 40,000/1,000,000 litres of CO2 per minute
= 0.32l/min x 60 x 24 x 365 = 168,000l per annum = 336kg of CO2 gas per annum.

Given 6bn humans on the planet, and taking adult respiratory volumes (which are substantially higher than for children and the elderly, so is likely to over-estimate the total) for all of them we get:
336* 6,000,000,000 / 1,000 = 2.0bn tonnes of CO2 exhaled by humanity per annum.

This is roughly 8% of the total carbon emissions from human endeavour

Conclusion:
On an order of magnitude, CO2 from human exhalation is a minor component (2bn t) of total human emissions (~27bn t).

BFR

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Total resperation (all living things) number I remember is 440 bn tonnes. So, that means it's nowhere near 10% of total carbon dioxide emissions from all sources.

 

[Till]

Not when the number of humans alive at the same time is going way up.

It's entirely relevant because we humans have eliminated all the natural factors that control our population.

Breathing will remain a zero sum game, unless the plants, which bind carbon from the atmosphere, are raised in a different atmosphere than the creatures that consume them.
The number of creatures doesn't matter, since their emissions will always be limited to the amount of carbon that their food has previously absorbed from the atmosphere.
So if breathing amounts to 10% of all human emissions, we still have 90% of problematic emissions to deal with.

 

[El_Machinae]

Breathing will remain a zero sum game, unless the plants, which bind carbon from the atmosphere, are raised in a different atmosphere than the creatures that consume them.
The number of creatures doesn't matter, since their emissions will always be limited to the amount of carbon that their food has previously absorbed from the atmosphere.
So if breathing amounts to 10% of all human emissions, we still have 90% of problematic emissions to deal with.

80%* of my breathing is subsidised by an equal expenditure* of diesel fuel spent getting the food to my mouth, though.

*Numbers made up. I wouldn't be surprised if much more diesel CO2 was spent getting food into my mouth than is emitted by my breathing.

 

[El_Machinae]

Total resperation (all living things) number I remember is 440 bn tonnes. So, that means it's nowhere near 10% of total carbon dioxide emissions from all sources.

I have heard/seen on TED talks that 98% of the mass of total vertebrate landanimals are domesticated animals and people. 200 years ago, we used to be 2% of the vertebrate mass, on land.

 

[Till]

80%* of my breathing is subsidised by an equal expenditure* of diesel fuel spent getting the food to my mouth, though.

*Numbers made up. I wouldn't be surprised if much more diesel CO2 was spent getting food into my mouth than is emitted by my breathing.

Quite right, especially if you are single, living in a large city, with a preference for oven ready meals... but i hope you agree that this doesn't make breathing problematic, just the needed subsidies.

 

[Merkinball]

Well, Al Gore doesn't think people in Africa and Southeast Asia should have electricty or cars. So, when's he just gonna tell them to stop breathing too?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

How totally beside the point

 

[Murky]

Well, Al Gore doesn't think people in Africa and Southeast Asia should have electricty or cars.

Since when?

 

[Merkinball]

Since he wrote the Earth in balance.

He derides agricultural practices that have turned India from a hungry country, into an agriculutural exporter, is against the use of DDT to wipe out Malaria, against cutting down trees to save the lives of cancer patients.

The last thing Al Gore wants is the whole world to have lives like American's or other westerners.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, Al Gore doesn't think people in Africa and Southeast Asia should have electricty or cars. So, when's he just gonna tell them to stop breathing too?

I this really what you think his position is?

Do you really think that Gore thinks that people shouldn't have electricity or cars?

No wonder you're such a hater.

 

[Merkinball]

I this really what you think his position is?

Do you really think that Gore thinks that people shouldn't have electricity or cars?

No wonder you're such a hater. - El

I guess that depends on how genuine Al Gore really is about what he proclaims. Al Gore wants us all chorraled into unsafe hybrid cars, unaffordable alternative energy cars, or huddled into inconvenient mass transit. He expects American's to sacrafice freedom, and their quality of life in the name of the environment. Is there any question of that? So wouldn't it be fair to apply this to the third world? Particularly in regards to his books? All Gore thinks that TREES are more important than dying cancer patients who can be saved by TREES.

Al Gore can't have his cake and eat it too. He can't, on one hand, bemoan the American way of life at every turn, and then on the other, want the billions of poor people on earth to live like us too.

There are too many damning quotes from not just him, but from his ilk as well, about the developing world.

But then again, Al Gore might not whole heartedly believe in what he says. He might just be about controlling American's, and not care about the progress of the developing world. I don't know. I'm not in Al Gores head. But his comments about India, DDT, and cancer patients are very telling if you ask me.

 

[El_Machinae]

No wonder you dislike the climate change debate so much.
Wow.

 

[Murky]

Environmentalist types do want to see progress in the developing world. They often volunteer ideas and time towards that end. They see it as a blank slate to place green technology/ideas into the hands of people who just want some improvement. The average african village couldn't run a coal powered plant if they had one. Give them a solar array and clean drinking water and it improves their lives without causing harm to the environment.

 

[Bad Player]

One thing I want to point out is that scientific consensus is taken as a surrogate endpoint for scientific truth. It often may be a valid surrogate but it is not one and the same with truth.

 

[Dr Tiny]

It is easy to see that the additional CO2 that has entered the atmosphere over the last 150 years is from burning of fossil fuels and land clearance, as opposed to respiration. The way to do this is to look at the ratio of carbon isotopes (C12 and C13) in the atmosphere.

CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels or burning forests has a different isotopic composition from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes (12C vs. 13C); thus they have lower 13C/12C ratios. Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the same 13C/12C ratio – about 2% lower than that of the atmosphere. As CO2 from these materials is released into, and mixes with, the atmosphere, the average 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere decreases. This can be easily measured using several different methodologies eg tree rings, ice cores etc. If you are intersted then google it.

Thus the change in the 13C/12C ratio correlates with the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last 150 years or so, and is entirly consistent with the hypothesis that burning fossile fuels is driivng the increase.

FACT. END OF.

Some references:
Stuiver, M., Burk, R. L. and Quay, P. D. 1984. 13C/12C ratios and the transfer of biospheric carbon to the atmosphere. J. Geophys. Res. 89, 1731–1748.
Francey, R.J., Allison, C.E., Etheridge, D.M., Trudinger, C.M., Enting, I.G., Leuenberger, M., Langenfelds, R.L., Michel, E., Steele, L.P., 1999. A 1000-year high precision record of d13Cin atmospheric CO2. Tellus 51B, 170–193.
Quay, P.D., B. Tilbrook, C.S. Wong. Oceanic uptake of fossil fuel CO2: carbon-13 evidence. Science 256 (1992), 74-79

 

[Merkinball]

Environmentalist types do want to see progress in the developing world. They often volunteer ideas and time towards that end. They see it as a blank slate to place green technology/ideas into the hands of people who just want some improvement. The average african village couldn't run a coal powered plant if they had one. Give them a solar array and clean drinking water and it improves their lives without causing harm to the environment. - murky

Give them a solar array to pump water, and someone will soon break it, and sell the parts at a local market for money. I've seen this happen a few times. Two years in the third world, and I don't think I ever saw or met one environmentalist, or people there to improve the environment. Most of the people I encountered were either private enterprise (particularly Saudi's Chinese, and people from Dubai), or religious types with NGO's doing "God's work." I can't recall ever meeting one person from outside Djibouti and Ethiopia that was there to "help the environment."

 

[Murky]

Give them a solar array to pump water, and someone will soon break it, and sell the parts at a local market for money. I've seen this happen a few times. Two years in the third world, and I don't think I ever saw or met one environmentalist, or people there to improve the environment. Most of the people I encountered were either private enterprise (particularly Saudi's Chinese, and people from Dubai), or religious types with NGO's doing "God's work." I can't recall ever meeting one person from outside Djibouti and Ethiopia that was there to "help the environment."

Obviously, no one would be stupid enough to go to sub-Sahara Africa and try to sell people on saving the lions, trees or whatever. They'll more likely try to show the people how to get free energy, clean drinking water and food to eat. There are African environmentalist that do care about the saving the wildlife but the other problems often overshadow those issues.

Sure, there's lots of people that go there for other reasons. Some of them want to prey upon the easy pickings from the ignorant/corrupt people there and others want to convert them to their religion.