Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Well, I've put together almost 2,000 posts in numerous climate change threads over the years, and I've never seen anyone say there is a difference between CO2 produced 'naturally'....and the C02 humans create.
Isn't everything natural? Or a byproduct of something that was naturally created? Oil, gas, even nuclear waste.....all from 'natural' resources.
Unless someone stuck his foot into his mouth, which wouldn't be surprising, because I simply do NOT understand that argument.
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I don't want to go into this too much since there are probably better people to answer this, but the answer is no, not all byproducts of something natural will produce natural waste. Burning of fossil fuels don't just emit CO2 (which isn't the biggest concern), it emits CO obviously (incomplete combustion), H2S and so on, disturbing the equilibrium which in nature is bad, even if its 0.1%.
Now, in the past 100 years we have distorted environmental equalibrium, but because we're talking about such a large volume, we arn't seeing the effects. However, this isn't going to be a non-issue forever. This is an escalating problem that for the past 100 years, has been near inconsequential (ie. distrubing equalibrium, no specific event in particular)... but we're getting to the point where its no longer inconsequential. If there's one thing that I know about science that I think many here don't, its that science is not accepted over night and it has to be progressively installed into society for a smooth transition. If things like solar energy and so on push hard, the other side pushes back. What we need to do is start taking baby steps, from the early adopters (i.e. leaders such as Google, China and Dongtan, California) to show that this science does work, then have the others follow. We're not in dire straights yet, but it is time to start installing these types of ideas and values before its too late - and trust me, its has started, ie. Googleplex, Dongtan.