Reply To: Cap and Trade

[Lerner]

Brian, CO2 in the atmosphere is currently rising by about 0.5% per year. As your figures show, the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere each year by fossil fuel burning alone (not counting deforestation) is 1% of total CO2 in the atmosphere. So, fossil fuel consumption alone is more than enough to account for the whole rise in CO2.
To see the situation clearly, imagine a water tank with a faucet and a pump. Water from the faucet enters at 1 gallon per minute and leaves by the pump at 1 gallon per minute. The amount of water in the tub—50 gallons—remains constant. Now start pouring water into the tub from a pitcher at the rate of 1 gallon per hour. The amount of water in the tank will then increase by 1 gallon per hour. ALL the increase is due to the water from the pitcher, even though that flow is much less than the flow from the faucet and the pump.
With CO2, the situation is more complex because rising temperatures cause the release of CO2 from the oceans and increased CO2 may cause increased plant growth, which drains CO2 from the atmosphere. Probably most significantly, concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now a lot larger than that for equilibrium with CO2 in the oceans, leading to large absorption of CO2 by the oceans.
But there is no doubt that human-created CO2 is very large compared with the CHANGE in CO2 now occurring. It is more than double that change, not 3.5% of it. Whether or not that change in CO2 is responsible for the 0.5C increase in global temperature is a more complex issue. Have fun debating it, but keep your numbers straight.