Your view of CO2

Vote now in our poll, below

[SORRY, but the polling software has been mistreated somehow and until I have time to investigate, no longer functions. – Richard Treadgold, May 2019]

If humanity influences the climate, then the mechanism involves carbon dioxide. There’s nothing else we do that scientists have said might affect the temperature or any other feature of the weather.

But could carbon dioxide dominate the climate? It certainly affects the climate, through raising the temperature a bit — that much is non-controversial. Measuring the temperature increase as it’s introduced to the atmosphere is problematic, but it appears as though the first 120 ppmv has the most effect, about 2.3°C; the next 267 ppmv (more than doubling it) adds less than 0.5°C.

Calculations show that doubling CO2 again, to about 800 ppmv, would add another 0.5°C, but at the current rate of increase it won’t get to that level until 2255.

Some people say the greenhouse effect of CO2 is too small to dominate the climate (it has much less influence than water vapour), while others say that, like a poison in the body, you don’t need much to have a catastrophic effect.

What do you think? Does CO2 dominate the climate?

Vote here

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To comment on the poll, post a comment below.

What now?

Oppose the madness! Spread word of this poll—we’d appreciate your help with that; please tell people you know and email them this link to the poll to come here to vote.

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Any of that will make a difference. And you’ll be a blimmin’ hero!

Thanks!

Ostrich

Visits: 987

15 Thoughts on “Your view of CO2

  1. David du Toit on 12/02/2010 at 8:03 pm said:

    Ha ha ha!

    Your poll only registers NO votes – maybe it even registers YES votes as NO votes!

    What a flippen disgrace – fabricating/manipulating evidence to serve your ideology.

    • Hi David,

      You’re quick to make assumptions, but you are wrong. We have no ideology but truth.

      I can assure there’s no trickery involved, as we don’t host the poll, it’s done offsite by a third party. We have no control over it.

      There is a “no” vote registered now. It is the first one. Perhaps that is your vote. Have another look. When you reload the page the updated voting results will be visible.

      If you’re still unhappy, please leave another comment.

      Thank you for visiting. Perhaps you can record your opinions on one of the articles.

      Cheers,
      Richard Treadgold.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 17/09/2011 at 9:28 am said:

      David du Toit, poll results at this comment date/time

      NO: 128
      YES: 9

      Ha ha ha!

      And your ideology is?

  2. G/S. Williams on 24/02/2010 at 8:46 am said:

    Hi, Richard,

    Regarding your polls, referring to the iceberg one, what about naming a group of icebergs as “a melt of icebergs”; after all, once they have broken off whatever they will have started to melt.

    Keep up the good work.
    GSW

  3. Barry Brill on 24/02/2010 at 12:09 pm said:

    Richard – a small challenge on one point. You say that CO2 atmospheric concentration will reach 800ppm by 2255 “at the current rate of increase”.

    But the current rate won’t continue. It’s quite closely correlated with global population – which demographers tell us will reach a maximum of nearly 9 billion by about 2050, then reduce to 7.5 billion by 2100. So, on this basis alone, the rate of increase will reduce in 40 years and keep going down thereafter.

    Then the second greatest contributor to the rate increase is “carbon intensity”. China says they will reduce theirs by at least 45% within 10 years, and India is expecting to do almost as well. These are the 2 largest future emitters.

    The G20 and others have stated that they don’t want the current level of 285ppm to rise above 350ppm during the next century. On any reasonable set of forecasts, the world will meet that target very comfortably.

    • Excellent news, Barry, thank you! I am pleased to be corrected on these figures, since they were causing some anxiety — distant, but anxiety nonetheless.

  4. FijiDave on 18/03/2010 at 1:26 pm said:

    Barry Brill: “… current level of 285ppm to rise above 350ppm ”

    Shouldn’t that be 385 (or 388) and 450 ppm respectively?

    Just asking.

  5. Good point, FijiDave. Now that you draw my attention to it, I think you could be right. Current level is 388 and the number 450 is a popular one.

  6. Maurice@TheMount on 16/09/2011 at 7:06 pm said:

    One day we will bring all the Carbon Clowns to reality.
    Atmospheric CO2 (Plant Food) is a necessity for all life on earth, and currently earths
    atmosphere is CO2 (Plant Food) impoverished, all life on earth would benefit with more of it.
    CO2 is PLANT FOOD….FACT FACT FACT.

  7. Manfred on 30/05/2012 at 4:08 pm said:

    Great web site – keep up the excellent work. People are slowly coming to realise that this is the biggest single ‘have’ of all time – a ‘have’ worth $300Billion or more in the carbon exchange. Al Gourdo is reaping the rewards of from the gullible, with the assistance of the bureaucrats and the grant driven (see PBRF – Tertiary Education Commission) university research. Mention ‘climate change’ or ‘ocean acidification’ somewhere in the grant application and the chances of funding are raised considerably. Posit a null relationship between these two and quite likely watch the grant sources evaporate.

    Without plentiful and cheap power, life in the 21st century is as life was – a hard, short lived drudge, in which most of one’s time is spent undertaking simple tasks performed by appliances be they washing machines or computers. The increasing cost of power and its association with the carbon dioxide tax are ways in which massively expensive renewable energy generation gets to look like an ‘investment’ against the far cheaper more reliable alternatives and the UN gains its cut from the carbon exchange to pursue its global governance agenda. The basis is spurious. Green house gases are vital for our survival. The increased fraction of approx 100ppm (about 30%) equates to a third of 0.001% atmospheric composition. There is no evidence that climate sensitivity (currently unknown) is acutely responsive to such minute changes in gaseous (CO2) atmospheric composition (except in the IPCC models where sensitivity is high) and there is mounting observational evidence to suggest that other mechanisms may play a critical role. What is clear, is that global temps. have been considerably higher than at present – in the past – in the absence of higher levels of CO2, and very much lower, in the presence of high concentrations of atmospheric CO2.

    CAGW remains the spurious policy driven politically correct hypothesis and the putative solution, the primitivisation of society, is nothing more than a toxic political agenda rivaling those of other despotic groups that litter the dustbin of history and the cemeteries of the world.

  8. Wolfgang Haumann on 11/02/2016 at 4:58 am said:

    Votes are nice, but facts are more important.

    If anyone can explain to me how a small amount of carbon-dioxid gas in the air can achieve a heat radiation back to earth that ends in a permanent warming i will probably accept AGW.
    There should be real measurements everywhere in the atmosphere to proof the CO2 effect or falsify it.
    Anything else is ideology, not science.

    Has anyone followed the way CO2 takes from our cars or powerplants up there in the atmosphere.
    Remember it has significantly higher weight than ‘normal’ air.

    Sorry for my english, i’m from rainy and cold Germany.

  9. william on 18/12/2018 at 9:29 pm said:

    CO2 only constitutes 4% of all greenhouse gases, yet its blamed for all weather events, rain, snow, hail and sunshine.

  10. Richard Treadgold on 18/12/2018 at 10:05 pm said:

    Right. Thanks William. Small correction: I think you mean to say CO2 constitutes 0.04% of the atmosphere. Given the difficulty in tracking the amount of water vapour, I don’t know how much of them CO2 accounts for. But it may well be close to 4%.

  11. As an avid “man-driven CO2 is going to cook us all” denier, I have explored as a matter of interest New Zealand’s effect on the atmospheric level of CO2, wrote this article several years back, emailed it to someone in NIWA and surprisingly did not receive a reply—well, not surprisingly!

    The problem
    New Zealand maintains the right to explore and exploit the seabed and water column within its EEZ and I cannot see why we should not be allowed to exploit its carbon-sequestering ability, especially since New Zealand is practically unique in this position of having a large EEC and a small population. This is a natural CO2 sink, and we should take economic advantage of it as a CO2 mitigating component.

    The maths
    The total area of the world’s oceans is approx. 356 million sq. km excluding ice-covered ocean (5 million sq. km). The world produces from fossil fuel consumption and forest burning, etc., approx 7-8 billion tonnes of CO2 annually. Of that we know 3 billion tonnes remains in the atmosphere and accumulates. The rest 4-5 billion tonnes goes into the ocean and terrestrial biosphere. It is generally accepted that 3/4 of this amount, 3.75 billion tonnes, is taken up by the oceans, where for all intents and purpose it remains. Approx 0.1% is permanently deposited on the bottom and buried in sediment effectively forever.

    The rest revolves in various cycles, even being re-emitted at the equator and other warm waters but then being reabsorbed again in cooler waters, but effectively remains in the ocean.

    Not all of the world’s ocean’s absorb CO2 year-round. A giant swathe of ocean either side of the equator right around the earth is a net emitter of CO2 so we will take its area off the total from above, 356 million sq. km — 41.5 million sq. km = 314.5 million sq. km cooler waters.

    New Zealand’s output of CO2 only, fossil fuels, etc., (not equivalent) is around 32 million tonnes. So from that we can say 32 million / 4 million people = 8 tonnes—the amount of CO2 each individual in NZ is responsible for per annum, excluding agriculture.

    We know how much of the world’s CO2 production goes into the ocean every year and effectively stays there. If we divide that figure by the total area of the world’s cold absorbing ocean (3.75 billion tonnes CO2 / 314.5 million sq. km ocean) we get 11.92 tonnes of CO2 per square kilometer being absorbed by the world’s cold oceans every year.

    The conclusion
    New Zealanders individually produce 8 tonnes of CO2 per annum (excluding agriculture). Our cold deep ocean within 200 km of the NZ coastline absorbs 11.92 tonnes of CO2 per sq kilometer per annum and we lay claim to 4.1 million square kilometers of Exclusive Economic Zone which is therefore capable of absorbing 48 million tonnes of CO2 annually, 50% more than we produce!

    Effectively our industry, transportation and energy-related production of CO2 (from fossil fuels) does not even make it past our exclusive economic zone!

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