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Quote by: TRIGGER  The graphs mean nothing unless you give the percentage of the over all emissions. Emissions of carbon by human industrial sorces is only about 4% or less of the over all carbon emited. |
Thank you for the information, Trigger. I'll try to dig up some detail on that and determine its accuracy, pertinency, and context.
I think you have a couple things wrong though.
One, I suspect you premise that 4 is a much smaller number than 100 and no cause for concern. It depends greatly on the context however. If that extra 4 means you end up parking your car on a railroad track, then the implication is that extra 4 is pretty bad. To say 4 is smaller than 100 so I'll think nothing of it, is really quite premature.
Two, the graphs aren't meaningless. Each separately is merely interesting. Taken together they are telling, however, at least to the objective scientist who has no preconceived political notions.
Assuming for the moment that your 4% figure is correct, and assuming separately that it actually represents what you remember it implying, does this make it unimportant? That isn't a logical conclusion. Without further information, comparing 4 to 100 does nothing to aid you in assessing long-term implication. For example, carbon dioxide which fluctuates between 250 ppm - 300 ppm between ice-age and warm period. In 1958, we were at 315 ppm. Every single year since then we have increased the concentration, at a pace of about 2 ppm/yr. on average, and about 3 ppm/yr. at present. We are now at roughly 393 or so ppm and increasingly increasing. We haven't been past ~ 300 ppm in at least the last 650,000 years, and quite probably not in millions upon millions of years.
650,000 B.C.-1900 A.D: ~ 250-300 ppm between ice age and warm periods
1958: 315
2006: 393
Carbon dioxide (CO2), being triatomic as opposed to diatomic (O2, N2) is a potent absorber of heat.
I think what people are doing is learning just enough to suit their political agenda, or at least their pre-conceived notions. If we were back in the middle ages, these people would be campaigning against Galileo. There is no scientific conspiracy; it's one thing to be skeptical of others. You should compound that further however by being skeptical of yourself and forming your conclusions only after you are swayed by the evidential tendency and objective, scientific analysis.
I don't want you to vote for a Democrat or a Republican.
