The Earth's natural systems deal with huge amounts of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere by natural sources every day. It can certainly handle the relatively tiny amount that humanity contributes--and although it may seem huge to us, to the systems that nature brings to bear it is tiny. A single eruption by Pinatubo blew more CO2 into the atmosphere than humanity has contributed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Ditto for Mt. St Helens, back in the '80s. Do you know what happened to the global average temperature following those eruptions? The sunsets got more spectacular and the average global temperature dropped for two or three years afterwards. Nature handled it. Do you really believe that CO2 produced by Man is somehow fundamentally different from the CO2 spewed out by volcanoes, in such a manner than Mother Nature somehow can't deal with it? I promise you, the chemical composition is identical.
Humanity's CO2 contribution is minuscule compared to natural sources. If you want to look at a greenhouse gas that actually does increase temperature, look at water vapor -- there's tons of it in the atmosphere, and it does cause the atmosphere to warm. But you can't get rid of water vapor -- we'd die without it -- just as we'd die without CO2. Without CO2 the plants die and we need plants to produce more 02, which we breathe. It's a closed system, and all the parts are necessary for it to work. That's one of the things that worries me about the drive to scavenge CO2 from the atmosphere. If we jump into this, not knowing what we are doing, we could conceivably cause a lot of damage.
The jury is still out. I don't care what a bunch of scientists with big government research grants dangling in front of them say. If you can accuse the scientists who disagree of financial incentive, I can do the same to those who say that AGW is real. They aren't above financial influence either.
The truth is, all the facts aren't in yet. There have been periods in the past where the CO2 level was high and the temperature was much lower than today. Similarly, there have been periods where the temperature was high and the CO2 level was low. We need to figure out what is really going on before we jump in with both feet and discover too late that we've screwed up and have caused more trouble than we started with.
Nan
