Are you not worried about fossil fuels and the effect of burning them?

Question

As a lot of people point out on here, yes, the Earth has gone through periods of fluctuating temperatures.
But what about the fact that the fossil fuels we burn today would have remained dormant in the Earth for tens of millions of years before weathering would have exposed it to the atmosphere were it not due to human intervention?
Surely the dramatic rise in CO2 through the burning of these fuels compared to how things would be if the planet were as "nature intended" is a cause for concern for everyone, although I don't consider myself to be an environmental fanatic, I also don't consider myself naive to the facts.

Answer 1

I know. People are complete idiots. Scientists have been monitoring the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere since the mid 1800's(the industrial revolution). It started out at like 20 ppm (arbitrary number) and the next decade it was 40, then 80, then 160. When automobiles became popular, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere were already growing at an exponential rate; think about the increase now. And we sure as hell ain't planting anymore trees to convert that CO2 back to oxygen. I'm sure the biomass keeps declining every year. Serious situation folks.

Answer 2

U got a lot of it right, The earth or mother nature has set up its recycle system . CO2 in our is taken out by plants and photosynthesis. That is how our air is recycled and is the first step in the fossil fuel recycling. The plants take in the CO2 and holds on to the C and gives us back the O2. The plants have the C in its body and leaves ,and then winter comes along and the leaves fall off ,wash down the river to the delta where it deteriorate into gas,oil and after a long time into coal. Mother nature has this recycle system working just fine. The plants has kept the CO2 very low .

Answer 3

Its interesting to note that both sides of this topic consider the other side to be idiots. The facts is both camps are wrong and right in that the matter at hand is more complex than what has been explained so far. First of all CO2 cannot cause warming simply because it requires energy to warm anything so saying CO2 causes global warming is truely false. But global warming does occur and humans have been causing some of it so the fact is clear that human activity is harming the environment. The thing to be determined is what to do about this. Good engineering can fix all the effects that are deemed to be harmful but so far no one has suggested fixing the harmful effects. Not using fossel fuel might make some people happy without fixing anything but rather making matters worse. Doing away with humans has been suggested also but not with much interest. Anyway, there is no reason anything has to be done other than applying good engineering. It has never been done but most good things begin this way.

Answer 4

I don't lose any sleep at night over it.

Until all of the "Al Gore's" of the world stop using fossil fuels to heat their homes, and power their homes, driving barn bursting gas guzzling SUV's, and stop using private jets to fly around the world spewing all those pollutants into our stratosphere, I really couldn't care less.

Answer 5

I'm very concerned about it but more about the fact that many people couldn't care less.