How much carbon dioxide does it take to affect the global temperature?

Question

As a long-term average, volcanism produces about 5X10^11 kg of CO2 per year. That's roughly 550,660,792.951542 tons of CO2, not counting eruptions such as Mt ST Helens.

Answer 1

Gentlemen CO2 is not what u are claiming . First it is very heavy and is right on the ground.Second there were plants introduced and they have taken care of most of the CO2 . Plants need CO2 just as much as we need oxygen . If it were as bad as u clame people would be dieing. when u displace oxygen to a point of below 19.5 % u will pass out and fall on the ground where the concentration would be much higher and u suffocate.

Answer 2

That is a question I don't think anybody not directly involved with the debate can answer. At average humidity, what does that mean when talking about CO2. The top of the atmosphere is very dry of water, and that is where the level of CO2 is being impacted. I once heard that if you imagine a large globe with a single coat of glaze on it, the thickness of that glaze is relative to the size of the Earth's atmosphere. Now that is extremely thin when you think about it like that. The part I've interpreted myself out of that is, if a colony of ants lived on that globe, how much and how quickly would their existence there impact that layer of glaze. I have to imagine it would be pretty easy for them to start wearing it away. Well we are nothing but ants to the Earth, and where our population has remained pretty steadily small for our entire existence,(under 1 billion worldwide) It has skyrocketed in the past few hundred years.(over 1 billion just in China alone.) The Earth can only sustain that much life if it is only one species I believe. And we are changing the world so that most of the life on it will not be able to adapt, except for those of us humans who survive the changes.

Answer 3

In the past 50 years, we've increased it from 300 parts per million to a little less than 400. That has warmed the planet about 0.7 degrees Centigrade, more than one degree Fahrenheit.

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

There are a great many natural sources and sinks for carbon dioxide. But the present global warming is (mostly) the result of man made CO2 from burning fossil fuels.

There is a natural "carbon cycle" that recycles CO2. But it's a delicate balance and we're messing it up.

Look at this graph.

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_record/mlo_record.html

The little squiggles are nature doing its' thing. CO2 falls a bit during summer when plants are active, and rises during the winter. The huge increase is us, burning fossil fuels (in addition to the shape of the graph, the increase numerically matches the increase in fossil fuel use; an unlikely coincidence). The natural carbon cycle buried carbon in fossil fuels over a very long time, little bit by little bit. We dig them up and burn them, real fast. That's a problem.

There is a very dangerous "loop." Man makes CO2 which warms the oceans, which then release CO2 which causes more warming. This could get a lot worse, faster than we think.

Man is upsetting the balance of nature. We need to fix that.

Answer 4

THAT is the question! It is the real source of all the debate about global warming. Carbon dioxide is actually a weaker green house gas than water vapor, and at average humidity there is about 100 times more water vapor in the air than carbon dioxide. All the models that say Earth will warm up a lot depend on the tiny effect of carbon dioxide causing more evaporation and increasing the water vapor in the air. All by itself, the carbon dioxide is no worry at all.