A highlight page I posted on May 7, 2010.
It's hard for me to know how many people have seen this or how many people know what I talk about in it, but I think it's something more people should know. The bold print at the bottom is the summary.
I'll leave the "money quotes" here:
In a pretty nifty piece of do-it-yourself science, World Climate Report
determined the amount of CO2 required to raise the temperature of the
globe 1C. It takes ~14,138 million metric tons (mmt) of CO2 emissions
to raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration by ~1 ppm and it takes ~125
ppm to raise the global
temperature ~1ºC. So multiplying ~14,138mmt/ppm by ~125ppm/ºC gives us ~1,767,250mmt/ºC.
That's our magic number-1,767,250 million metric tons of CO2 per ºC. To
the precision we know such things, that's more like 1.8 million mmt
(million million metric tons).
So let's say you wanted to reduce your carbon footprint. Being a
fanatic little greenie, you decide to give up your car. According
to some online sources, if you stopped driving your average
mid-sized car for a year, you'd save about 5.5 metric tons (or
0.000055 million metric tons, mmt) of CO2 emissions per year.
Divide 0.000055mmtCO2 by 1,767,250 mmt/ºC and you get 3.11 *
10^-12 degrees C (3.11e-12 in calculator-jockey jargon). If you
took every car in the USA off the road, roughly 150 million,
you've only changed the temperature .000466C per year.
There has been talk about reducing the US CO2 output to 80% of its
current levels - at one time that was in the Cap and Trade bill that has
been in congress off and on for the last year. The 2005 carbon output
was about 6000 mmt, so 80% below that is 6000-4800 or 1200 mmt.
4800/1,800,000 is .0027C. So if you took 150 million average mid-sized
cars off the road and reduced the power generation and other carbon
uses, those add up to a whopping .003C! In other words, nothing. In no
statistical test could you distinguish that result from zero. Bupkis.
Now, the economic havoc of that sort of restriction set is unimaginably
awful. No cars, extremely limited electrical power, no ambulances, no
police cruisers: a rural, agrarian lifestyle. There is no benefit. You
are destroying the USA for no reason at all. If you choose to live
that way, help yourself. Move out of the city, grow your own food, live
on a farm. Knock yourself out. Most of us prefer modern
civilization.
If you watch Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel,
he has a video of a guy he calls "the Wizard", Joel Rogers, saying
exactly what I just demonstrated here with a few calculations. If you
do all these things, it will have no measurable effect. At about 45
seconds into this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bh3jWqiUw0&feature=player_embedded#!
And that's the dirty, stupid little secret. Imagine there really is
manmade global warming. Use their numbers. Calculate how much effect
you would have on temperatures by virtually destroying everyone and
everything you now know or ever have known, and it has no effect at all.
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