1. 

You are being cute and playing with numbers.

An increase from 180 ppm to 380 ppm is, unless you qualify your statement, a ~40% increase. It is only a .02% increase if you include the words "as a percentage of the atmosphere". The way normal people use percentages without qualifiers, a .02% increase would be "multiply the previous number by 1.0002 to get the new number" (if I mathed that right, the number of zeros may be wrong, but you get the general idea)

If I increased the amount of dye in a typical swimming pool from 180 ppm to 380 ppm, you would not see a .02% change in the color, you would see a ~40% change in the color. It's basically the same for atmospheric CO2, since for the most part the parts of the atmosphere that aren't greenhouse gasses are *completely irrelevant* to the absorption of outgoing infrared radiation, which is what causes the greenhouse effect.

As far as the 97% vs 3%, you're talking about something entirely different. You are talking about the *total* CO2 emissions in a given year. However, the thing you have to remember is that, for the most part, that 97% is *balanced*.

I exhale CO2 because I ate plants (or ate animals that ate plants) that previously absorbed that much CO2 from the atmosphere. So it's not "new" CO2 being added to the system (or, at least, it's not new *carbon*, the individual CO2 molecules are new, but that's not the important bit). But the CO2 from us burning coal and oil is, at least on human timescales, new to the system. It's carbon that has not been in the air for millions of years.

"why do you think this scant amount of change is catastrophic? "

It's not that the change is "scant" or not, it's the effect of the change that matters.

I notice that some people like to say CO2 has "only" increased by about 0.012% (I believe it's actually 280ppm to 400ppm today) and other people like to say it's increased 43%. Those are very different numbers and the reason is that the first is an absolute difference and the latter is a relative difference. But neither figure tells you what the effect is.

And to be frank, skeptics use the lower figure and alarmists use the higher figure. There's nothing surprising to me about this, it's human nature when trying to win an argument. I'm more interested in the contributions by nature vs. man and the function of carbon sinks.

There are many natural sinks and sources of atmospheric CO2 and only one man made source. The ratio of all those is what we should be talking about along with the actual effects of any changes. Bantying about percentage numbers and banging your chest gets you nowhere.

According to measurements made by me personally between July 1976 and October 1989, CO2 in the Southern Hemisphere near the Tropic of Capricorn increased from 0.032% v/v to 0.0345 % v/v. These samples were taken on the eastern edge of a small city where the winds were usually north east to south east and crossed over about 30km of bush and farmland from the Pacific Ocean. They were average results from a number of samples taken over two or three days.

In absolute terms that is an increase of 0.0025%, in relative terms about 7.6 %. So as far as I can see, 0.02% is a lie whichever way you look at it.

Carbon dioxide in the Northern Hemisphere atmosphere is higher with greater seasonal variation because of higher populations, greater land mass and more deciduous forests.

Wow, suddenly its 2008 again! Welcome back Doktor.

Lets look at this from another angle.

150 years ago the atmosphere was 99.972% NOT co2.

The atmosphere we have today is 99.96% NOT co2

Doesnt seem like much change considering all the effort we've put into burning or blowing up anything we could get our hands on for the past 150 years does it?

No matter how you figure it, its still inconsequential , barely detectable & only worth arguing about to anal nitpickers with nothing else to do..

I gave Jeff M thumbs up because he didn't use 180 ppmV that Gary F used. It seems likely that humans have added 100 ppmV and the previous concentration was 280 ppmV and humans may be responsible for roughly 100 ppmV. We don't know what the concentration would be without human emissions but it would likely be well above 280 and well below 400 ppmV.

That said, I don't think it is that big of a deal.

There is no doubt that man has increased CO2 in the atmosphere, arguing about the percentage is rather pointless, deciding what will be the effect of this man increased CO2 is what matters, personally I believe there will be very few negative effects.

You are playing with the numbers. 200 ppm increase is 0.02 percentage points.

on top of 400 ppm, it is a 50% increase.

And what counts is not what % of the annual CO2 flux is man made, but what is the % increase of the net level. Man might have caused ALL of that. (100% of it)

It is making a mountain out of a mole hill. The only logic behind it is to scare the wayward. It is unquestionable that this scare tactic has resulted in millions, if not billions, of dollars in the pockets of the already rich. It has also resulted in the peasants giving up liberty after liberty in the name of saving the earth from this dastardly GW.

Notice that the CO2 level has increased for over a decade and the Earth's temperature has gone down during the same time. Does CO2 drive the temperature up, as Al Gore says? Obviously not!

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/30/ho...

0.87 degrees in 353 years? Is that a real big deal? Obviously not. But you can't take away anyone's liberties and get rich with that kind of thought, even if it is true.

The whole mess is a scam. And these con artists want you to believe in a problem, even if there is no problem. This has been a well thought out scam.

Quote by Club of Rome: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention....and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself....believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or….one invented for the purpose."

And that invention is to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

Since when is an increase of 280ppm to 400ppm 0.02%? Another curious thing is you stating that man-made is only 3%. However the atmosphere is increasing at a rate of 2ppm or 15.6 billion tonnes annually while human emissions from cement manufacture and fossil fuel use amount to over 32.5 billion tonnes annually.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends...

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global....

Co2 has increased from about 180ppm to about 380ppm in the last 100 years. That's an increase of about 200ppm or 0.02%. 97% of co2 is natural coming from decaying plant material, volcanoes, and forest fires. seeing that man is responsible for 3% of the 0.02% over the last 100 years, why do you think this scant amount of change is catastrophic?

>>Co2 has increased from about 180ppm to about 380ppm in the last 100 years. That's an increase of about 200ppm or 0.02%<<

It is an increase of over 100%.

nature is not controlled by man he doesn't know how to so how does he know what's good or bad she makes her own mind up if she decides it's enough then there isn't a thing we can do about it and we aren't going to fix it would you taunt a tiger and to us she is a tiger a bloody big one at that, that can gobble us up with ease is it really worth pushing our luck

the effect is a big deal. do you think glaciers melt by magic?

the atmosphere is very fragile