The proportion of the atmosphere that is CO2 today that wasn't CO2 when Thomas Jefferson was President is?

Question

approximately:

a) 1/100th

b) 1/10th

c) 1/1,000th

d) 1/11,000th

Answer 1

Oxygen is 20.9% of our atmosphere.

CO2 is about 380 ppm. that is .000,380 % of our atmosphere...

Answer 2

The truth is that even doubling CO2 levels would have no discernible impact on climate because more than 90% of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour.

Answer 3

Your inference seems to be that it's insignificant.  But that makes about as much sense as me comparing my net-worth with Bill Gates.  I've gained a decent amount of wealth over the past 2 decades, but comparing it as a percentage of Bill Gates would make it sound like nothing.

Are you being disingenuous or do you really not understand that Nitrogen & Oxygen (which make up about 99% of the atmosphere) aren't greenhouse gases?  Any percentage computations of greenhouse gas changes, based on the entire atmosphere, would give a completely false impression.

Dana's comment about arsenic is more appropriate than you seem to realize.  Because not only do you breath CO2 regularly, but you probably also regularly drink a little arsenic. The EPA has set limits of 10 ppb (for arsenic in drinking water) and a significant number of public water systems have exceeded that.  So the obvious question to you is, would you mind if the level of arsenic in your drinking water increased by 1/100th or 1/10th or 1/1,000th or 1/11,000th of the total water?  I suspect not.

Answer 4

What Dana is trying to do is hide their dirty little secret.  The percentage of human induced co2 in the atmosphere is very minuscule.  What their hypothesis states is that this very small percentage will be amplified many times over to produce catastrophic results.  They call this climate sensitivity.  This part of AGW science is highly debatable.  There are many articles written about climate sensitivity. Most of the public would find that very hard to believe.  So they down play that part and avoid mentioning it.  

Arsenic will not kill you directly and not through a strong positive feedback.  So that is a very poor analogy.

Answer 5

Ha!  Parts Per BILLION! I love ppb! Until about 20 years ago we could not measure ppb!

Yes and if they exceed the "standard" by several more PPB-- so what. At the age of 61 ------ I drink water from a plastic water hose in the yard (when I was a kid) and guess what no one died! PPB is so small as to be insignificant-- now they are measuring in parts per Trillion and finding all kinds of "BAD" stuff. Ha!  :)

Answer 6

What Dana does not understand is that there are serious concerns about what triggered the rapid cooling event that preceded the deep part of the little ice age in the late 17th century. Did the Co2 level drop suddenly below the 250ppm level or did something else do it. The first of my ancestors who came here did so in the early mid 17th century with the Dutch long before the pilgrims came and it was warm and nice then and farms prospered. Just a few year later though about the time the pilgrims came over temperatures fell drastically and many people starved to death because of the cold. My ancestors and their suffering then leave me with a preference for warmth although I do not mind mild winters I hate severe ones.

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

H.L.Mencken

Answer 7

When Jefferson was president it was around 280 ppm.  It's now over 380 ppm.  This is an increase of 100 ppm, or 1/10,000.

Of course, that doesn't tell you anything about global warming, so I'm not sure why this question is in the global warming section.

What does tell you something about global warming is that this is an increase of 37% in atmospheric CO2 - a greenhouse gas.  Also, roughly 99% of the atmosphere is composed of molecules which are not greenhouse gases, so that 1/10,000th doesn't mean anything.

This is a typical purposefully deceptive denier question.  Cherrypick one number which makes AGW seem illogical, and ignore the other information which proves otherwise.

By your argument, you shouldn't worry about drinking a glass of water containing 100 ppm of arsenic.  After all, that's only 1/10,000th of the molecules in the glass!  But drink it and you're dead.

*edit* Arsenic is arsenic?  Really?  Wow, I learn something new every day.  Thanks for clarifying that, and completely missing the point in the process.  This is why deniers are taken so seriously by the scientific community.