The point of this note is to raise the view that man's effect on the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere should be questioned and not just accepted because a politician says so.
According to the chemistry references the number of elements are 96 well defined another 20 possible. When you look at an "Abundance of Elements" chart the abundance, measured in mass, is inversely related to the atomic number of the element.
This is true to such a degree that the four simplest atomic structures make up 99.5% of the earths mass with the remaining near 100 making up less than 0.5%!!! It is the 4 simplest elements I want to comment about. These 4 elements are hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon.
That's it—these 4 elements comprise 99.5% of our world mass. BTW the one that causes a double-take is helium; it is true but not part of our discussion.
Hydrogen and oxygen are easy because that is H2O, water and hydrogen is all around since it combines easily with carbon and many other elements. Carbon and oxygen combine easily to form CO2 which is stable and is the result of combustion at high temperatures. But also carbon and oxygen can combine at much lower temperature. Considering the fact that carbon and oxygen comprise about 1.5% of the earths mass then throughout the world long history as the earths temperature varied there had to be a
mechanism to maintain a balance between the two.
Now here I am talking time periods measured in thousands, millions and billions of years.
There is a major group of scientists that believe the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is very much related to the earths temperature i.e. if the temperature rises the amount of CO2 will increase and conversely if the temperature decreases the amount of CO2 will decrease. But throughout the earths history the amount of CO2 has lagged the earth temperature.
The earth temperature is pretty stable but it has varied several degrees decade to decade and studies of ice cores, etc show this correlation. Just now for political reasons a group want to claim that the CO2 can cause the earth temperature to rise and claiming "Doomsday" unless we stop using oxidation of carbon as an energy source. If you think about this a bit this would require a "runaway" condition and if true would have happened 100s if not 1000s of years ago.
An aside: Most living organisms are based upon carbon and at death the decomposition produces mostly CH4 and CO2. While CO2 is blamed for the greenhouse effect, in fact CH4 and H2O vapor can be worse offenders.
The recent flurry of concern about the validity of the temperature data is understandable because the cause/effect of CO2 is so slight that you need timelines based on centuries or more. Shorter timelines are at best speculations and NOT hard science."Cap and Trade" is at best a political ruse—at worst it really hurts the economy.