Carbon, carbon and carbon.

Carbon is a good thing - it's the basis for all life. Because of that fact, it's also the basis of all fossil fuels. Too much carbon dioxide is a bad thing - it's linked historically with high temperatures and high sea levels. As far as a balance goes - 1960 was a very good year.

You would need to go back even further than this to see the proper balance of emissions to consumption (i.e. green algae, trees, etc..). by this you would need to go back when humans didn't depend on fossil fuels to create the added emissions. The most recent test is looking at ice capsules which date back 100,000's of years, and in them is trapped CO2. Those were the good days.

Even though we haven't harnessed fossil fuels to their fullest potentials (efficiencies), they are simply part of the time period.

It's like oxygen: a few percent less and no fire would be able to start. A few percent more and no fire would be capable of being put out.

Plants need CO₂ to grow - indeed they can grow twice as fast with levels of 1%.

Humans, however do not like high levels of CO₂ - over 1% and we lose concentration, get headaches, etc, and by 4% will not survive for extended periods.

The problem at the moment is not the level of CO₂, but the rate at which the level is rising. We need more plants on the planet to regulate the levels, but awareness of the problem has caused some to think of treating the symptom rather than the cause.

$25M for someone to say "Plant more plants!" I'm in. The challenge is to remove gasses...Not prevent them. Money (and solutions to problems) don't normally grow on trees...but this one actually does.

So someone win the prize and use the $$$ to make us 200MPG car so we can all commute to work with a clear conscience!

will not survive for extended periods.

That's a great quote!!!

Glad you approve!

It kind of explains the H&S requirements for breathing aparatus when welding in confined spaces........and nausea if you do not comply.

As the others said "it is the major component of life". I believe you can have anything if it's in the right quantity. Too much of a good thing, (or bad) and things go wrong. Too little and things never even get started. It's all in "What are my threshold Limits?"

One of the unknowns in the global warming controversy is: How much carbon in the atmosphere is too much? At the present time, power companies are dumping 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. We can say instead that 10 billion tons equals one piddle. Earth's atmosphere has a mass of about five quadrillion tons. We can say instead that five quadrillion tons equals one ocean. Therefore, every year, all of the power companies together on Earth dump one piddle of carbon dioxide into one ocean of atmosphere. Most scientists seem to agree that 0.97 piddles is too little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that 0.98 piddles is too much. If we don't slow down our carbon emissions, we might soon have 1.1 piddles or more of CO2 in the ocean of atmosphere. If that happens, babies will melt in their mother's arms, and we will have to swim in lava pools to cool off.

Exactly. Don't you sometimes wonder just where the macro-perspective goes out the window when you hear reporting about human's so-called "carbon footprint?"

Not only is the carbon "footprint" of the entire human race minuscule compared to the carbon available, but returning it to the atmosphere by releasing it in the form of CO2 from storage in fossil fuels just makes it available to the current plant life.

CO2 is NOT an environmental toxin in any available concentration on a large scale. More of it just makes the grass greener, the trees taller, and the flowers bloom. Which results in more absorption of carbon, which reduces the CO2 levels while increasing the available oxygen, until we cut down the switchgrass and make ethanol out of it and turn the beans into bio-diesel, releasing CO2, which gets used by new plants...

The "global warming" crowd is not being supported because they have any kind of valid science, it is a political movement for government control over resources. Period. Yes we have a statistically valid change of ~.6 deg over 100 years, but we're still 3-4 deg lower than it "used" to be. When Anchorage is selling beachfront property for sunbathing I'll still not worry about it, I'll just wish I'd bought some. At that point all of Canada will be a huge farmer's paradise and we'll have more food than we have people. You'd think the population-control idiots would be happy.

Now I would readily admit that air and water quality, and control of the release of TOXINS in the environment, particularly man-made synthesized ones, deserves much MORE coverage. Every government should be regulating all industries and products that release concentrations of toxins into any part of the environment that do not bio-degrade quickly.

It's a shame that we've lost the "conservationist" attitude and so many have jumped on the enviro-wacko bandwagon. Good intentions become nothing more than excuses for more bad laws and higher taxes, and still don't address the real problems. Control the poisons, forget the natural gases, and make energy efficiency a priority. That combo wins all the way around, and who cares if California's beach moves up 12" over 50 years. sheesh.

If your house is too hot, you go turn down the furnace, you don't stop breathing or tell your wife she can no longer cook the food. Assuming she could cook to begin with... Problem with Earth is, we have absolutely NO control over the furnace (sun) and what tiny amount we "may" have effectual impact on for "greenhouse" gases that trap energy is nearly irrelevant compared to what goes up from one single volcano, or a single forest fire, or simple gas-phase pressure changes over the ocean from a slight temperature change freeing tons of gases from solution.

When I hear the greenies calling for an immediate program to cut access roads and fire-cut swathes through every forest on earth, even if they're curvy instead of straight lines, and clean out the undergrowth within 50' or so of each of those paths, I'll know they've finally caught on and are interested in reality. Getting government fingers out of free market solutions will take care of the rest.

You talk a lot of sense, Sandman, but "When Anchorage is selling beachfront property for sunbathing" what will be happening around the equator?

My guess is that the deserts will have doubled in size, so the population cannot be sustained, and there will be a huge influx of refugees to eat the food you have - so the trees will be felled to make fields for crops........

Growing more plants has to be the way to get the planet to regulate itself - the problem is to find a way of growing useful crops in areas where they no longer grow naturally - and without using millions of gallons of fresh water without being able to replace it.

I have been watching this thread with great interest, but as yet have held back any comment. What's this global warming thing anyway, changes in the earths average temperature are part of a well documented cyclic phenomena. perhaps in 200 years or so "we" will all be worrying about the next cycle of global cooling.