Al Gore Speaks Some More

I saw the movie Logan Lucky yesterday: an entertaining yarn that lost me in places. I mean it was hard for me to understand some of what was happening, but that may be more of a statement about me than of the movie.

One of the pre-movie trailers was of the Al Gore sequel. He’s still urging us to stop the inevitable. Maybe he’s got an upcoming presidential campaign? 

Here’s my problem with his thesis. Almost 80% of the earth’s atmosphere is nitrogen and about 20% is oxygen. Greenhouse gases comprise about 1% of our atmosphere, and most of that is water vapor.  CO₂ is only a very small percent of this. In fact, carbon dioxide is about 400 parts per million.  How much of that carbon dioxide is produced by processes under man’s control?  About 5%. So, if you have a million units of atmosphere, the stuff Al Gore wants us to stop producing accounts for 20 of those million units. Let’s suppose we doubled our emissions. Now CO₂ would be 420 parts per million. And if we stopped altogether, then what?  380 parts per million. Somehow it doesn’t look like what we are doing matters a whole lot. Climate is changing with or without us. We do not control solar activity, and this seems to be mainly what drives climate change.