Y Safle

Someone wrote to me regarding the amount of carbon dioxide we are producing, saying:

It is your opinion that the amount of carbon dioxide being put in the atmosphere is not puny, it is not an established fact.

We know what we are pumping into the atmosphere. We know that we have increased CO₂ levels in the atmosphere by more than a third since the 19th century. This is not my definition of puny.

Human emissions are dwarfed by the emissions of termites.

I am unconvinced by this claim. I have seen no sources, and it seems highly unlikely to be correct. However, the fact that the natural carbon cycle pushes CO₂ into the atmosphere in vast quantities is irrelevant, because it is only an issue if you are relying upon vegetation to act as a permanent carbon sink - which it will not. What termites do, and have always done, remains in perfect balance: A termite cannot produce CO₂ if it does not eat. Termites eat wood - not fossil fuels - so the carbon dioxide they release into the atmosphere has been locked up in wood for at most a hundred years or so. They are part of the natural balance

Burning fossil fuels releases carbon locked up for millions of years. This is additional carbon dioxide to that produced each year by termites and other living creatures. Unlike the activities of living things, this burning of fossil fuels is not in balance - and growing forests will not solve the problem, because of those pesky termites.

Consider it another way. Let us suppose you have a houeshold budget. Each year you receive an income, which consists of salary and dividends on investments. Your outgoings each year go on cost of living and a small amount of investment.

Now if our outgoings are no larger than our income, then everything is just fine. Indeed, your investment will grow slowly.

But now consider what would happen if you increased your cost of living, by purchasing bigger cars, private jets and so forth. Suppose that your cost of living alone now exceeded your income by half as much again. How would you finance this?

Instead of growing investments slowly, you would eat rapidly into your capital.

And if your capital is not very large, then before you know it, you will have no capital left, and be worse off than when you began - because you now have no dividend income either!

This is the way it is with the carbon budget. Until now, the carbon cycle has recycled nearly all carbon back into the atmosphere, helped by termites and other living creatures - including us! But the budget has been balanced, and little by little, carbon has been tucked away.

But for the last century we have been squandering that capital, and pushing carbon back into the atmosphere beyond the means of the earth to cope with the increase.

Blaming termites and flatulent cows (or even breathing humans) is the straw man. It is our eating into the carbon capital that is the problem - not the natural process of the carbon cycle.

Not enough is known about the effects of adding CO₂ to the atmosphere to say for certain that burning fossil fuels leads to any problem at all.

Enough is known to say that it is very likely to cause a problem, and that a problem consistent with that expected is being seen. To wait for more is foolhardy - indeed sinful.

For instance, some scientists have suggested and are working on proving or disproving that increased temperatures, if they do exist, will cause more evaporation of ground and ocean water, which creates more clouds, which may block more sunlight, which could allow the earth to cool,

What is the temperature on Venus? About 464 °C on average. What is the temperature on Mercury? About 167°C on average. Why is Venus hotter?

No sources are cited again, but this argument appears to be quite wrong. If we warm the oceans they release more CO₂.