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>>You know, we joke about this kind of stuff, but see this:
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>>http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/5173/carbon_dioxide.html
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>>They conveniently fail to mention that carbon dioxide is created by respiration in living organisms. I suppose we need to make it against the law to exhale. Animals that are caught exhaling need to be eliminated! :)
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>They also fail to mention that while atmospheric CO2 has doubled, somewhat
increased
sorry!


parallel to the increased volcanism of the last half of the last century, the real green house gas is water vapor! It is 300 times more abundant in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide and has seven times the IR absorbing capacity that carbon dioxide has. Further, CO2 is constantly being flushed out of the lower atmosphere by rainfall to such an extent that its level is generally constant at around 345ppm. Measurements in 1800 centered the CO2 around 280 and have risen over the last two hundred years to an average of 345ppm.
>That gives an approximate doubling time of 670 years, and the curves are very smooth. Some folks like to give the impression that an asymtope is being reached by squeezing the units on the x axis. The fact that CO2 is part of an equilibrium relationship with water, calcium and carbonates prevents wild fluctuations in the average CO2 atmospheric amounts.
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>Thre is even some agricultural work that uses enclosed growing buildings to grow crops in atmospheres that are controlled at 10% CO2. It really accelerates plant growth and they have to pump the CO2 into the bldg to keep it elevated. The same would happen to our ecosphere. Excess CO2 would encourage an increased growth of plants, further greening our planet. That, supposedly, was the way it was eons ago, when places like Point Barrow, Alaska, had tropical forests and aligators.
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>-0.02