Evidence for CO2 causing global warming?

[Tigger]

Then there's Global Dimming

[mistermack]

I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean. All that is proposed is reducing the carbon emissions we put into the air. The earth will still produce its own CO2 like it always has. You're making it sound as if the proposal is to suck all the CO2 out of the atmosphere somehow.

No, I was going from the ice-core graphs. The last three ice-ages started with a sudden plunge from precisely the point where we are at now in the cycle.
Looking at the graphs, it looks like it would be hard to stop, once it starts.
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If we suddenly need some greenhouse gas, it's not really going to be much of a problem for us to make it on short notice.

I think it would be an impossible problem. The price of fuel would rocket if you did that, and you would be burning off the very fuel that would be desperately needed in a cooler climate. It just wouldn't happen.

There would be the prospect of releasing CO2 stored under "carbon capture" programs though. ( if that's practical ).
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[Coito ergo sum]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO0sCs8j ... grec_index[/youtube]

[mistermack]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for saving the rain forests, but not because they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Because they DON'T !!
What the rain forests do, is TAKE CO2 in, and PUT CO2 back out. In virtually equal quantities. The only carbon that gets fixed, is when a tree is felled, and the wood is preserved by human use. And that's for only 100 years max, before it's scrapped and either burned off, or put into landfill producing methane.
The other negative thing that the rain forests do is convert CO2 into the much more warming gas, METHANE, via digestion of dead wood by termite colonies, and various soil bacteria.

The only way CO2 is actually permanently removed from the air/sea environment is by deposition of carbonate type rocks on the sea bed. The rest of the mechanisms, like the rain forest, just cycle it round and round.

So by all means lets save the rain forests. But not with bogus talk like this. If you don't tell the truth, people will not believe ANYTHING you say.
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[Animavore]

Complete bollox. Trees absorb the carbon from CO2 leaving only the oxygen.

[mistermack]

Complete bollox. Trees absorb the carbon from CO2 leaving only the oxygen.

In a balanced forest, the wood decays at the same rate as it grows. (otherwise you would have wood just lying around everywhere).
The carbon in the wood is released as CO2 and methane, as the wood decays.
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[Animavore]

Complete bollox. Trees absorb the carbon from CO2 leaving only the oxygen.

In a balanced forest, the wood decays at the same rate as it grows. (otherwise you would have wood just lying around everywhere).
The carbon in the wood is released as CO2 and methane, as the wood decays.
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I find that very hard to believe. It's not like trees are falling down every second. Where are your sources for this?

[mistermack]

I find that very hard to believe. It's not like trees are falling down every second. Where are your sources for this?

Where do you think the carbon goes, when a tree takes it in? It goes into leaves ( which rot quickly) and wood, which stands for a while, and then either gets destroyed in forest fires ( into CO2 ) or digested by fungi, termites and bacteria, producing CO2 again, plus significant quantities of methane.
It has to go somewhere. Trees don't magically destroy carbon.
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[Animavore]

I find that very hard to believe. It's not like trees are falling down every second. Where are your sources for this?

Where do you think the carbon goes, when a tree takes it in? It goes into leaves ( which rot quickly) and wood, which stands for a while, and then either gets destroyed in forest fires ( into CO2 ) or digested by fungi, termites and bacteria, producing CO2 again.
It has to go somewhere. Trees don't magically destroy carbon.
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I know where the CO2 goes. But there isn't a constant supply of rotting trees because trees live to be so old. A forest can stay more or less the same for centuries. With the odd tree dying. Hardly going to be giving off much CO2. So I ask again, what is your source on this?

[Warren Dew]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for saving the rain forests, but not because they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Because they DON'T !!

While you are correct that rain forests do not continuously remove carbon from the carbon cycle, saving the rain forests is good from a carbon standpoint because the alternative is basically burning them down for agricultural land, with the concomitant one time increase to the CO2 load in the atmosphere.

[mistermack]

I know where the CO2 goes. But there isn't a constant supply of rotting trees because trees live to be so old. A forest can stay more or less the same for centuries. With the odd tree dying. Hardly going to be giving off much CO2. So I ask again, what is your source on this?

I would repeat, what do you think happens to the carbon taken in to the rain forest? If it takes in millions of tons of carbon per year, and doesn't release the same amount, it would be hundreds of feet deep in wood by now.
Every single gram of wood eventually rots or burns. ( the only exception to this is when coal is being deposited, by wood falling into oxygen-poor swamp water.
There is very little of this happening today).
So you have a perfect cycle, with every bit of wood eventually rotting, and giving up it's carbon.
Look up CARBON CYCLE on wikipedia, to start with, if you want references.
(Link)
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[mistermack]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for saving the rain forests, but not because they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Because they DON'T !!

While you are correct that rain forests do not continuously remove carbon from the carbon cycle, saving the rain forests is good from a carbon standpoint because the alternative is basically burning them down for agricultural land, with the concomitant one time increase to the CO2 load in the atmosphere.

I agree. Of course I want the rain forests preserved. There is a one-off increase of CO2 when they are destroyed, as you are pulling the plug on a carbon reservoir.

Personally, I'm more concerned about the extinction of species, that's something that can never be repaired.
I'm just pointing out that people don't help their cause by putting out false facts. It just degrades the credibility of what they are trying to say.

If you destroy the rain forest, you do cause a one-off release of CO2, but you don't remove something that was "swallowing net amounts of carbon", in fact, you long term overall just reduce the release of methane.
(But like I said, I hate to see it happening).
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[Pappa]

Every single gram of wood eventually rots or burns.

Much of it is eaten by xylophageous creatures or used by fungi. These are eaten by other creatures, etc.

[mistermack]

Every single gram of wood eventually rots or burns.

Much of it is eaten by xylophageous creatures or used by fungi. These are eaten by other creatures, etc.

Yes, the term "rots" covers a multitude of processes, including bacteria and fungi.
But like us they all produce CO2, and when the wood is broken down in the abscence of oxygen, methane is produced.
Termites produce huge quantities of methane, much more than cattle. They burp it, from the front end, unlike cows, who fart it from the back. And wood rotting in low oxygen ponds produces methane, which eventually bubbles up.
Even the Carbon that is apparently "fixed in stone" by the deposition of carbonates on the ocean floor, is actually eventually released back into the atmosphere through volcanoes, when the rocks are heated by subduction into the mantle.
The only permanent way carbon can be removed, is if the Earth's crust gets thicker.

I like the rainforest, and hate seeing them destroyed. But it's entirely false to intimate that they help cool the planet. They actually heat the planet, by producing methane, and vast quantities of water vapour. Both more significant greenhouse gases than CO2.
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[Animavore]

I like the rainforest, and hate seeing them destroyed. But it's entirely false to intimate that they help cool the planet. They actually heat the planet, by producing methane, and vast quantities of water vapour. Both more significant greenhouse gases than CO2.

But realising more CO2 heats up the atmosphere creating more water-vapour in a positive feedback loop.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-v ... se-gas.htm
I've read your link on the carbon cycle and as far as I can make out the carbon remains roughly the same if things are left as they are but when humans come along and cut down forests and burn fossil fuels they release more carbon into the atmosphere and upset the balance so I don't see where anyone is making any false claims here.