A Dr. William Happer testified before the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee and said we are in a CO2 famine, citing that 80 million years ago when evolutionary man first appeared CO2 levels were 1000 ppm.
If we’re going to compare CO2 levels back then and now, shouldn’t we also take into consideration all the other variables from then and now? A few hundred compared to almost 7 billion people worldwide is an extreme difference from then until now as are decreasing forests and open land compared to an unspoiled earth, unpolluted vs. polluted seas, air that was devoid of particulate matter from industry unlike now, and literally no man made contaminants to add to the mix back then. Maybe without all the other contaminants 1000 ppm for CO2 was all right, but I’ve read a lot of reports of excess CO2 killing fish, trees, and other living things.
The urgency now is about stopping a rise in CO2 before it reaches 500 ppm because “When the CO2 exceeds 500 parts per million, the global temperature suddenly rises 6C and becomes stable again despite further increases or decreases of atmospheric CO2. This contrasts with the IPCC models that predict that temperature rises and falls smoothly with increasing or decreasing CO2.” (Dr James Lovelock at a Royal Society event in 2007).
This amounts to what has been predicted about global warming all along, that we have ten years to turn things around. After that, whatever we do is of no consequence. I trust Dr. Lovelock foremost since he is the first scientist to realize the enormity of environmental science as we try to study it today. It involves all the scientific disciplines, physics, chemistry, and biology applied to the study of thousands of ecosystems worldwide that have a symbiotic relationship to one another. When a system is crippled it does little to help, and many times hurts other systems.
We’ve polluted the crap out of everything, cut down forests, and injured many of the ecosystems that work to right imbalances that will cause drastic climate change. We even seem to be entering a cycle where a worsening climate perpetuates itself, i.e., forest fires, floods, volcanic activity, etc. Fires put more pollution in the air, take out trees that eat CO2. Floods carry huge amounts of toxins straight to the ocean, and cause rotting plants that emit more bad gases.
So this is not only about CO2 but all types of pollution and overuse. By curbing CO2 emissions, we curb a lot of other pollutants like mercury in our fresh water supply, and particulates in the air that cause respiratory problems.
But most importantly, Happer received way too much money from Exxon Mobil to be an impartial scientist. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have flowed Happer’s way from big oil over the last decade. Ethically, he is a bad source to speak about CO2 emissions.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/27/co2-famine-exxon-paid-sci_n_170473.html