I just watched a YouTube video that touched on the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, and it caught me by surprise. Our atmosphere is 78+% Nitrogen and a shade under 21% Oxygen. Together, they account for 99% of the total. (I thought it was 76-22, which isn't far off, but it's far enough off.) I used to worry that if the climate alarmists got their way and sucked all the carbon dioxide out of the air, we might reach that magical boundary of 24% Oxygen where, it is said, Earth's forests would spontaneously combust. Thankfully, there's no danger of that since atmospheric carbon dioxide represents a mere 0.04% of the total. Phew! Dodged a bullet there.
But wait... atmospheric carbon dioxide is just 0.04% of our atmosphere? And all terrestrial plant life gets by on that measely little sliver? Of course, there's more carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans, perhaps quite a lot more, and that doesn't even get near the portion that's locked up as vegetation, including semi-fossilized forms (coal, oil, and natural gas). I see a problem looming. Can you?
Ultimately, everything we have in this existence is a gift of the Sun. Plants rely on sunlight to photosynthesize carbon dioxide to grow and reproduce. Animals (including human animals) consume those plants (and the animals that feed on them) as food. If we reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we must perforce reduce the amount of plant life that we and our food animals subsist on.
I do not like where this train of thought is leading.
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Update 3/29/2024: I just watched a video that addresses the climate hoax. Interestingly, I think the biggest take-away from the video is that CO2 does not drive temperature, it's the other way around: temperature drives CO2.
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Sixty years ago, carbon dioxide was about 0.032% of the atmosphere (per https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide), so it's apparently increased by about 25% over that timeframe. Supposedly, pre-industrial levels were about 0.028%. So presumably fairly large reductions in the amount of atmospheric CO2 wouldn't kill off the flora.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to say that HIGHER levels will result in the apocalypse or anything. But if such higher levels ARE problematic, there are much simpler and less expensive solutions (like seeding the stratosphere with sulfur, one kilogram of which would supposedly offset the greenhouse effects of several hundred thousands kilograms of CO2) are available. Alarmists seem to prefer being alarmed to actually solving whatever they're allegedly alarmed about.