Socialized Health Care in the USA

[eppie]

The alarmists should also acknowledge that human contribution to the global levels of CO2 are minute in comparison to the entire global carbon cycle.

This is absolute nonsense. Apart from an (especially on geological timescale) enormous CO2 release because of burning of fossil fuels we also have (the last few 1000s of years started removing enormous quantities of carbon bound in plant material. We must be at an value of -30 % (guesstimate) in total plant life compared to equilibrium of a few 1000 years ago. This is very significant.
If you simply look at the total amount of carbon on our planet, and then take the amount we burn, it might seem small but the problem is that we don't let the CO2 concentration equilibrate anymore.

My view is that there are many natural processes which keep the atmospheric composition in equilibrium although they do fluctuate between extremes over geological time scales. Atmospheric CO2 has been shown to have increased by about 100ppm over the last 100 years, from about 280 ppm to 390 ppm now, and it seems to have done so very linearly.

As I replied Zenda. I finally couldn't care less about if people are 100% to blame*, or that we are talking about a fluctuation in a timescale much larger than the scale we use (human life, century whatever). The problem is that a climate change will have disastrous consequences.....so instead of blaming somebody we can work towards an answer. We know what we can do about it so we try to moderate this fluctuation, not for the sake of the planet, but just for us, humans.

*although I think we are

The largest sink of atmospheric CO2 is the ocean which sequesters carbon (carbonic acid) within sea water, over time, corals , mollusks, and other sea life use these carbonates, but also release CO2 as they fix carbon molecules.

Nope, the equilibrium is wrong here, lower pH will damage creatures that as CaCO3 for making shells, corals etc. Many people actually say that ocean acidification might be a bigger problem than temperature rise.

As the ocean temperature increases, its ability to contain CO2 decreases which may result in a vast increase in atmospheric CO2, unless there is another process that compensates. I suspect that there is also a process that benefits from the increase in ocean acidity, possible increasing the availability of calcium, and other minerals.

See plants would use CO2.....but we are also reducing their quantities.

Another process is that at great depth, CO2 condenses and forms icy hydrates on the ocean floor thus freeing sea water (esp. when extra calcium is present) to bond with more atmospheric CO2.

CO2 hydrates are quite unlikely on the sea bottom, methane is present as hydrate, but of course it also deosn't react with water.

Algaes and land based plants, have a non-linear increase in photosynthesis efficiency in the presence of greater ppm's of CO2 (up to about 1%, or 10,000 ppm which as you pointed out is toxic to animal life). Plants also seems to grow denser structures when in the presence of higher CO2 levels resulting in up to double the fixation of carbon.

Indeed, and this would work great if there wasn't a species on earth that tries its best to destroy all forrests.

Anyway, the point being here that I don't believe that we fully understand the capacity for nature to use and transform CO2.

Not fully no, but we understand enough.

Man, if we didn't have this economic crisis, and governments would put all the money they now paid to bail out banks in a big jar and use it to construct windmills, solar power stations etc. we would be well on our way to meet the CO2 goals we stated......and most of the money would be spent on peoples salaries......giving us a super healthy economy. But somehow I think we would have never done that.