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1. For every one of the 6 billion people on earth, nearly four tons of carbon dioxide is spewed into the air annually.
2. World wide, rainforests are dissapearing at a rate of one and a half football fields per second. Each spring the forests beathe in oxygen and the earth breathes out again the following autumn, but like a heavy smokers lungs the earth is loosing its ability to breathe at all. Just a few centuries ago, earths equator was girdled by a green belt of 15 million sq. miles of rain forest, an area about 5-times that of contiguous US.
3. Americans consume 22% of the worlds oil, even though they make up just 5% of the world's population - as a result the past 100 years has seen heat trapping gases increase by 22%
4. Other 'warming gases' are; methane, nitrous, oxide and chloroflurocarbons (or CFC's). CFC's were invented by Thomas Midgley, Jr. whilst working for General Motors. CFC's exist at parts per trillion (ppt), however, each molecule has more than 12,000 times the heat-trapping potential of a molecule of CO2.
5. Our atmosphere was first compared to a "Glass Vessel" in 1827 by the French mathematicians, Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier. IN 1850 British physicist James Tyndall took things further and tried to measure the heat trapping properties of various componenets of the atmosphere. He discovered that (suprisingly) that the twomost common gases, nitrogen and oxygen, have no heat-trapping ability; 99% of the atmosphere has no insulating properties at all. It's up to a few trace gases, water vapour, CO2, methane and others to keep the planet cosy.
6. Importance of CO2 as earth's climate regulator was confirmed when scientists drilled out Ice Core in Antartica. They extracted a mile long cylinder of ice. Dating back 160,000 years they found an unbroken record of both temp and atmospheric levels of CO2; these two factors alone controlling previous thaws and ice ages.
7. Every time CO2 descends so do the temperatures. When temps were avg. 5oC, CO2 = 190ppm (parts per million) Throughout the 160,000 years the temps fluctuated between 190 - 280 ppm.
By the end of the 1900's CO2 = 300 ppm
8. "we are evaporating our coal mines into the air." You used to be able to stand on a hill and see up to 70 miles away, now you can only seeabout 15 miles.
9. In the year AD1 there were about 250million humans on earth. It took 1,650 years for that number to double. Between 1650 and 1930 the human population rose 4 times to 2 billion. By the turn of the century 6 billion on Earth - 3X the population just 70 years earlier.
10. There are about 500 million cars on the planet and by 2030 it is expected to double to 1 billion cars ... It is believed that current fuel supplies peaked in 2006.
When you consider that the entire atmosphere of Earth weighs 5 million, billion tons, it seems okay - but remember only a little CO2 controls the warming.
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