“Dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a varying amount of water vapour, on average about 1% at sea level and 0.4% in the whole atmosphere. ” [Wikipedia, Atmosphere of Earth]
In other words, carbon dioxide accounts for 400 parts per million, ppm, of the total number of molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere.
300 of these 400 ppm has been there for a long time and it is not likely that this good old amount all of a sudden should begin to have an adverse effect on our climate when it hasn’t had that for many centuries.
Of the 100 ppm that has been added since the 1950’s, man can be “held responsible” for only 15. The rest comes from natural processes in the biosphere and in the oceans.
15 ppm corresponds to an increase of 1 or possibly 2 CO2 molecules for every 100 000 molecules in the atmosphere.
People that claim, with certainty, that CO2 emissions linked to human activity are severely damaging the climate and therefore are a direct threat to our common future thus also state that one or two CO2 molecules determines the temperature of nearly 100,000 other molecules. If that would be the case, CO2 must be an extremely powerful gas with properties unknown until lately.
The same people also argue that humans can “stop climate change”. All we have to do, they say, is to end all our carbon dioxide-generating activities once and for all. They also believe that this must be done quickly and that no price is too high to “save the planet”. The result of such a fast shutdown though would be sky-high for the world economy and for individuals. Many times higher electricity prices and unreliable electricity production depending on unpredictable weather would quickly preclude much of that which we in the Western world nowadays take for granted.
Absolutely nothing supports that climate threat extremists are right and absolutely nothing speaks for that world leaders should listen to and take seriously what screeching, rude, emotional, ignorant, and mentally disturbed youngsters are hollering about in this matter. This issue is far too important for that, but it is also too important to be handed over to opportunistic, populistic and stupid politicians.