Kyoto: Not even a drop in the bucket

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, April 22^nd is no longer celebrated as Lenin's birthday. It's called Earth Day nowadays. Google came up with a "melting iceberg" logo. No, the logo is not there to mark the end of the Little Ice Age that drove the Vikings out of North America but to "rise awareness" of what's called "global warming" and "climate change". Thousands attended a protest march in Montreal to pressure the government on Kyoto. The protestors want the government to cut greenhouse gas emissions (rather than reducing air pollution) to avert what they believe is a climate change. Well, they better do the math.

Think of the atmosphere as 100 cases of 24 one-litre bottles of water - 2,400 litres in all.

According to the global warming theory, rising levels of human-produced carbon dioxide are trapping more of the sun's reflected heat in the atmosphere and dangerously warming the planet.

But 99 of our cases would be nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%), neither of which are greenhouse gases. Only one case - just 24 bottles out of 2,400 - would contain greenhouse gases.

Of the bottles in the greenhouse gas case, 23 would be water vapour.

Water vapour is the most abundant greenhouse gas, yet scientists will admit they understand very little about its impact on global warming. (It may actually help cool the planet: As the earth heats up, water vapour may form into more clouds and reflect solar radiation before it reaches the surface. Maybe. We don't know.)

The very last bottle in that very last case would be carbon dioxide, one bottle out of 2,400.

Carbon dioxide makes up just 0.04% of the entire atmosphere, and most of that - at least 95% - is naturally occurring (decaying plants, forest fires, volcanoes, releases from the oceans).

At most, 5% of the carbon dioxide in the air comes from human sources such as power plants, cars, oil sands, etc.

So in our single bottle of carbon dioxide, just 50 ml is man-made carbon dioxide. Out of our model atmosphere of 2,400 litres of water, just about a shot glassful is carbon dioxide put their by humans. And of that miniscule amount, Canada's contribution is just 2% - about 1 ml.

If, as Mr. Dion demands, we honoured our Kyoto commitments and reduced our current CO2 emissions by one-third - which would involve shutting down all the coal-fired power generating plants in Canada (and living with constant brownouts and blackouts); or taking all the cars or all the commercial vehicles off the roads; or shutting down the oil sands; or some combination of all these - we would be saving one-third of 1 ml - the tip of an eyedropper.

And somehow, that is supposed to save the planet from warming; the tip of one eyedropper out of 2,400 bottles of water.

Source (Also available here)