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No, you're wrong. Not being carbon neutral is the problem. Global warming is proportional to the amount of GHG is the atmosphere. A good fraction of the CO2 onc
by adrianN 5y ago
No, you're wrong. Not being carbon neutral is the problem. Global warming is proportional to the amount of GHG is the atmosphere. A good fraction of the CO2 once emitted (and Methane once oxidized back to CO2) stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years and traps heat until geological processes sequester it. We probably could go back to 17-th century amounts of coal burning and still run into a climate crisis eventually. It would just take much longer than at current rates of emission.
- KingOfCoders 5y agoNo you are wrong, humanity hasn't been carbon neutral for 5000 years at least.
- adrianN 5y agoI don't claim that humanity has been carbon neutral. I claim that we have to become carbon neutral to stop heating up the planet.
- jacquesm 5y agoWe may have to do a lot better than that for a while to stop the clock, there are some nice positive feedback loops in there.
- loopz 5y agoCO2 and temperature have been in the same stable envelope since past 10 000 years and rise of civilization, until around 1980's.
- KingOfCoders 5y agoYes, and from around 3000BC to 1980 humanity has not been carbon neutral.
- adrianN 5y agoAnd atmospheric carbon dioxide has been creeping up very slowly for the last few thousand years until the industrial revolution where the chart really took off as both carbon-per-capita and population started growing quickly: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/CO2_40k.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/CO2_40k....