humanities graduate, and paid blogger for the telegraph, asserts absurdities such as this:
from his blog
Delingpole:
..note here that a good volcano could easily wipe out several years of any anthropomorphic (it looks human?) Co2 savings we might make..
- Debunked here:
Measurements of CO2 levels over the past 50 years do not show any significant rises after eruptions. Total emissions from volcanoes on land are estimated to average just 0.3 Gt of CO2 each year - about a hundredth of human emissions (pdf document:http://www.bgs.ac.uk/programmes/landres/segs/downloads/VolcanicContributions.pdf).
Human output of CO2 is between 100 and 200 times global volcanic activity - a volcano like the one that ground european flights only puts out a few hundred million tonnes of CO2 - in contrast humanity is responsible for billions of tonnes per year._______________________________________________
In another part of Captain Delingpole's latest travesty of a blog, he alludes to the water vapour myth. Many climate deniers try to side line CO2's importance in a number of ways, including the suggestion that CO2 is insignificant compares to water vapour.
Delingpole:The majority of greenhouse gasses are water vapour. Carbon dioxide represents 2% of greenhouse gasses,
Debunked here:
How does this work? The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere exists in direct relation to the temperature. If you increase the temperature, more water evaporates and becomes vapor, and vice versa. So when something else causes a temperature increase (such as extra CO2 from fossil fuels), more water evaporates. Then, since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this additional water vapor causes the temperature to go up even further—a positive feedback.
Also, water vapour concentrations are mainly in the lower troposphere, but CO2's influence is felt strongest in the cold dry part of the atmosphere.
as we get higher, the air gets colder - and the peak of the emission curve moves to the right. This will interact more powerfully with highly absorbing CO2. Water vapour is not quite as absorbing, and not present in high quantities at that high altitude.
