Why does the IPCC global warming report omit non man made air emissions ?

Question

It seems I read somewhere animals, underwater sea vents and volcanoes emit an enormous amount of CO2. Algae and trees, organisms that convert CO2 to energy bring the planet into equilibrium don't they ?

Answer 1

They don't omit it. Volcano emissions are dealt with in section 2.7.2 of the IPCC WG1 AR4 Report.

But the bigger issue is that your question seems to infer that humans may not be responsible for the increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. And that is completely false.  It doesn't matter how much volcano or algae emits, what matters is that humans emit enough on top of the natural emission rate to increase the atmospheric levels by 30% and growing.  The natural emission/absorption rate used to be in balance, with the addition of human activities it's now out of whack and the levels are growing.

Answer 2

Climate change is a money and power grab scheme by the bottom feeder politicians and power brokers. It's nothing to do with ecology and everything to do with money.

Con artist and politicians (here unnamed, but you may call him "Mr. Environment") have enriched themselves on this issue, taking home Oscars, Nobel Prizes and millions of dollars. Meanwhile, evangelical leaders are setting up their flocks for extreme fleecing by leftist politicos who will speak with great charm in the appeal for Christian votes by talking in glowing, biblical-sounding terms about "being good stewards of God's creation."

Here is truth about global warming:

Global warming is one-half of the climatic cycle of warming and cooling.

The earth's mean temperature cycles around the freezing point of water.

This is a completely natural phenomenon which has been going on since there has been water on this planet. It is driven by the sun.

Our planet is currently emerging from a 'mini ice age', so is

becoming warmer and may return to the point at which Greenland is again usable as farmland (as it has been in recorded history).

As the polar ice caps decrease, the amount of fresh water mixing with oceanic water will slow and perhaps stop the thermohaline cycle (the oceanic heat 'conveyor' which, among other things, keeps the U.S. east coast warm).

When this cycle slows/stops, the planet will cool again and begin to enter another ice age.

It's been happening for millions of years.

The worrisome and brutal predictions of drastic climate effects are based on computer models, NOT CLIMATE HISTORY.

As you probably know, computer models are not the most reliable of sources, especially when used to 'predict' chaotic systems such as weather.

Global warming/cooling, AKA 'climate change':

Humans did not cause it.

Humans cannot stop it.

Answer 3

Some greenhouse gases (such as holocarbons) have no natural source.  Analysis of isotopes, which can distinguish among sources of emissions, demonstrates the the majority of the increase in carbon dioxide comes from combustion of fossil fuels.  Methane and nitrous oxide increases derive from agricultural practices and the burning of fossil fuels.

Answer 4

The IPCC report only gives verified science, not what it "seems" you read "somewhere".

Answer 5

The IPCC ignores any area of study, that does not support their hypothesis of catastrophic warming.

Answer 6

It is in a dynamic equilibrium with temperatures changing all the time which affects sea levels, CO2 concentrations, Methane concentrations, water vapor concentrations, etc.  There is much that we don't know.  You could go to a nearby oil field (at least there are some near here) and put a vapor trap on the soil).  What you would find is that methane and CO2 are seeping from the soil at far higher rates than previously known, based on recent studies.   How are you going to account for this in climate models.  It is extremely poorly understood.  Alarmists who like to pretend to be omniscient will certainly claim that modeler know about this and have included it in their models or that it is unimportant.  The problem is that they don't know and this is just one of many many unknown variables that might or might not have significant impact.

Note: halogens or halogenated compounds are not significant greenhouse gases so human emissions should not significantly (or at all) affect the climate.  Frankly, the IPCC report is more about political conclusions than science in my opinion.  Trying to guestimate how much humans have increased the CO2 by Carbon 14 isotopic analyses (assuming that is how it was done by IPCC) is fraught with many assumptions and potential errors IMO.  Also it assumes that the CO2 is driving temperature change which is probably incorrect.

Answer 7

As page 3 of this IPCC summary shows, the levels of atmospheric CO2, etc. were fairly stable until recently:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report...

Natural variability such as volcanos is handled in IPCC FAQ question 9.2:

Can the Warming of the 20th Century

be Explained by Natural Variability?

http://www.gcrio.org/ipcc/ar4/wg1/faq/ar...

There is one major omission however in carbon cycle science, as the accounting is currently practiced:

Q. Should we be concerned with human breathing as a source of CO2?

A. No. While people do exhale carbon dioxide (the rate is approximately 1 kg per day, and it depends strongly on the person's activity level), this carbon dioxide includes carbon that was originally taken out of the carbon dioxide in the air by plants through photosynthesis - whether you eat the plants directly or animals that eat the plants. Thus, there is a closed loop, with no net addition to the atmosphere. Of course, the agriculture, food processing, and marketing industries use energy (in many cases based on the combustion of fossil fuels), but their emissions of carbon dioxide are captured in our estimates as emissions from solid, liquid, or gaseous fuels. [RMC]

http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html

The omission is the assumption that people represent a "closed loop".  That's only true to the extent that you assume that population remains constant.  With rapidly increasing world population however, the addition of new crops and land use conversion to support the increase in size of that so-called "closed loop" has a definite impact.

Given that the U.N. oversees the IPCC however, it is politically incorrect to attribute that impact directly to population growth (which would reveal developing nations as playing a leading role in global warming).  It must be hidden deep in an obscure section such as "land use changes".  How does the impact of today's 6.6 billion people compare with the 3.7 billion in 1960, the 1.6 billion in 1900 or the 800 million in 1800?  The difference is non-negligible and the topic deserves far more discussion than to camouflage it as land use change.  In fact, the sharp uptick in warming rate over the last 40 years may essentially boil down to the approximate doubling of world population.

For more detail on the various CO2 emissions sources and natural sinks, look into the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program:

"The U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program is clarifying the changes, magnitudes and distributions of carbon sources and sinks, the fluxes between the major terrestrial, oceanic and atmospheric carbon reservoirs, and the underlying mechanisms involved including humans, fossil fuel emissions, land use, and climate. Program scientists are now beginning to reveal and quantify some of the intricate complexities and interactions between the Earth’s carbon reservoirs and climate.  Ten federal agencies coordinate and support the program activities..."

http://www.carboncyclescience.gov/

The First State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR):

Executive Summary:

http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sa...

While we're on the subject of flaws in the 2007 IPCC report, the IPCC also lumps black carbon in with aerosols, which are said to have a net cooling influence.  However, the reality is that black carbon has 60% of the warming influence of CO2, and reducing black carbon soot is the fastest and only proven remedy that we have available to us:

Black carbon pollution emerges as major player in global warming - PhysOrg

http://www.physorg.com/news125500721.htm...

Reducing Black Carbon, or Soot, May Be Fastest Strategy

for Slowing Climate Change

http://www.igsd.org/docs/BC%20Briefing%2...

Again however developing nations are primarily implicated (developed nations reduced their particullate air pollution 80% in recent decades), so the U.N. will likely bury that information and continue its clown-like antics, engaging in a lot of finger-pointing at developed nations.

The ultra rich residing in Hong Kong, Beijing, Mumbai and other major cities in developing nations appear to be poised to reap windfall profits from the U.N.'s reports and proposed policies.  I suspect that most U.N. politicians come from those same wealthy families that will benefit greatly from the U.N.'s seriously flawed and one-sided approach towards the issue.  The rest of us are just pawns in their dangerous game of wealth accumulation.

Acknowledging that current global warming has a solid anthropogenic component is no excuse to provide incentives for CO2 emission growth in major CO2 emitters such as China and India, and it is no excuse to ignore underlying factors such as black soot pollution or population growth.  

Elementary school math applied to the growth rates in China and India show that Kyoto-style partial solutions are a dangerous and pointless deception, which only delay the eventual global emission reductions that are required.

Answer 8

They don't.

1) Regarding the global warming caused by CO2 - that doesn't matter where the CO2 came from.  They just measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and calculate how much warming it will cause.

http://ess.geology.ufl.edu/ess/Notes/070...

2) We know by examining isotopic ratios that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due almost entirely to human emissions from burning fossil fuels.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=8...

3) The natural carbon cycle is in balance.  Fossil fuel emissions are not part of the natural carbon cycle.  When we release carbon which has been stored in fossil fuels for millions of years, that adds extra CO2 which the natural cycle can't absorb, so it accumulates in the atmosphere, causing global warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycl...