The exact growth time is meaningless. The time it took to grow has to be equal or less than the time between fires since obviously fires don't burn imaginary plants.

So let's assume a hillside takes 10 years to grow, and in the 10th year, every plant on it is burned to a crisp. 1000 years or a hundred cycles later, what is the net increase in C02? zero...

In California much of the growth is being burnt off that has built over 30-100yrs or more. The last few years have been worse then any time in our recent history.


We're not talking about 1000 yrs because the Global Warming crowd is claiming we have less then 10 yrs. Any addition to the amount of CO2 adds to the total. Not to mention all of the toxins that are being released at the same time as the carbon. Burning a pine tree is like burning Kerosene......dirty Kerosene at that.

But this just goes to show, people who have figured out the zero carbon angle have discovered a way of being dishonest without appearing to be.

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When you know the details of how these systems work, that isn't much comfort.

What does it mean for the earth to "clean up" the CO2 we've put in the air? Rain does NOT "wash it out" -- it's not like smoke or other particulates. Plants do absorb it, yes. But when they do, it does not disappear. It becomes part of the plants, and when the plants die, it's returned to the atmosphere. The carbon has then become part of the carbon cycle, and everything becomes amplified by its presence: plant growth, atmospheric CO2, global temperatures.

The burning of fossil fuels is non-cyclic, or rather, it's completing a cycle that began millions of years ago. So for practical purposes it's non-cyclic, and is altering balances, resulting in a new setpoint.

The net effect of fossil-fuel burning so far greatly exceeds that of any forest fire (which, being part of the cycle, is actually nil), and also exceeds that of volcanic eruptions over time (although a really big eruption exceeds the effect in any one year), and as far as lasting effect is concerned that of volcanic eruptions is also nil. The only natural effect that comes to mind that exceeds what we're doing at present is a big asteroid collision like the one that's believed to have killed off the dinosaurs. We have, so far, not reached that point. Do we want to?

For that matter CO2 was in the air before and was deposited in plants which were covered over by dust or soil ether after a asteroid hit the earth, or a great flood, or an Ice Age, and that CO2 was taken out of the cycle, and now we're slowly putting it back into the environment. You act like we're putting it all back at once. Wrong, very wrong.

The net is still zero. The only way it wouldn't be is if it were taken from somewhere else, another planet, and released here.

What forest-fires and volcanoes do is release massive amounts of CO2 and other noxious gases and particulates into the air all at once not over a long period of time so nature becomes more of a threat then man. It's not how much is released but how short of a time period that it is released that has the most adverse effect on the environment. The Earth is only able to clean so much and when that ability to clean is overloaded then it becomes toxic.

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CO2 concentration in our atmosphere has increased in recent years. This increase is due to man. CO2 does help regulate our planet's temperature as do other gases. How much of an effect this increase in CO2 has had on our planet's average temperature is being studied.

As long as it is being studied we really don't know what the effect is and Global Warming folks are scamming us into believing something they don't even know themselves.

The Sun and moisture in the air have the greatest effect on the planet's temperature. Water vapor heats and cools the planet like a battery. Everything is contingent on the Sun and where it is located in the sky. The closer your location is to the Sun the hotter it is and vice-verse. This is why the tilt of the axis of the planet controls the seasons.

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There is too much hyperbole involved in this issue from most angles. Gore and Hansen make it too easy to dismiss the hyperbole. My fundametal issue is with Kyoto. I believe something needs to be done, but something equitable for all governments involved in reducing carbon emissions. Even so, and until the emotions from both sides are able to evaluate the issue rationally, I see nothing wrong and even encourage all to do their part in reducing carbon emissions.
It's a system that is quite complicated with ongoing studies to determine which factor has the greatest effect on temperatures. All influence our temperature. My take is that we need to consider the probability that CO2 concentrations are getting quite close to drowning out other effects and do something about reducing these emissions. However, Kyoto is too knee-jerk and inequitable for my tastes.

Bottom line, emotions need to let the science speak for itself and, until then, CO2 needs to be given good consideration without selling our souls.

I realize that the carbon was in the system before it was taken out to become fossil fuels. That's why I said we were completing a cycle that began millions of years ago. In returning the sequestered carbon to the atmosphere, what we may be doing is recreating the climate that existed before it was removed, in the Triassic and Jurassic epochs. Do we really want to do that?

Understand, this is not necessarily bad for the earth or the biosphere as a whole. Life will adjust over time (meaning several million years) and do just fine in the long run. But an abrupt climate change such as the one we're engineering will cause a mass extinction, because all species currently alive are adapted to the conditions that prevail at present. Our own species may or may not go extinct as part of that -- if I had to predict I'd say not, because we're very adaptable and very good survivors, so very likely we'll survive this. But survive how? And how many of us? Maintaining civilization under those conditions won't be easy.

Excellent. That's exactly what I've been saying, and exactly why burning fossil fuels is such a problem.

The only point of disagreement I have is that CO2 is not toxic, although it's true that some other fossil-fuel byproducts are. But in warming the planet, we are not poisoning it. We're just raising the overall average temperature a few degrees, and returning conditions to what they were in the age of the dinosaurs.

So what are we arguing about?

On the warming point, we are currently in a cooling trend. The warming trend reached it's peak in 1999.

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Whether the fires here in California can be compared to the burning of fossil fuels w/r/t global warming. They cannot.

No, it didn't. There are always going to be fluctuations around the midpoint from year to year even as the midpoint rises. Some years will be cooler than the ones before for that reason. Nobody has ever suggested that the burning of fossil fuels is the ONLY factor in what happens with the climate -- except, of course, those erecting such an idea as a straw man.

The Earth was cooling in the 70s and fears of a new Ice Age surfaced, but then the Earth reached it's warmest point in 1999. This is why Clinton tried to pass some kind of Global Warming tax that never made it through committee because of his impeachment.

One reason that the Clintons are pissed at Al Gore. He took advantage of the Global Warming hoax and they couldn't.

The Earth's temp goes up and down in cycles. We don't have any control over it. I think it has something to do with our orbit around the Sun.

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It's hard to stay mad at someone who makes you laugh - Jay Leno

Sadly, I have no doubt that there are libs out there who actually believe that...

To spice up the discussion, the danger in "wait and see" is that unlike other experiments, we are living in the petri dish. No one is going to live or die based on a classical experiment looking for a new particle in physics. We as a society maintain strict restrictions on direct experiments on human subjects, but very lax restrictions on incidental experiments. Direct experiments are outlawed if they have the possibility of harm - indirect experiments are allowed until it is proven they are killing people.

DITTO--I survived the Hayman fire in Colorado a few years ago. I was up in Breckenridge over the weekend & could not believe the once "green" healthy trees, have turned into "mountains" of dead beetle kill. The forest service has done nothing. The spred is beyond belief from what I remember 8 years ago. And we wonder why we get massive fires? Judging from what I saw it has nothing to do with global warming, but a very disturbing practice of simply not taking care of our forests.

You "survived" the Hayman fire? Given that the only deaths were firefighters killed in a bus accident, that's not much of a feat.

The pine beetle spread is a direct result of drought more than anything.

You originally from Texas or something?

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Staun mah grun, an be na afraid.
Thochts ae hame tak awa mah fear
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