Human race’s influence on output of CO2 underestimated

Reader D Wood of Goole (Yorkshire Post, January 27) repeats the common mistake of focusing his insufficiently accurate arithmetic on the current atmospheric proportion of CO2, rather than its trend – 
and he underestimates the proportion due to human influence.

It is quite true that CO2 represents only about 0.03 per cent of gases in the atmosphere, the bulk being nitrogen (78 per cent) and oxygen (21 per cent), with 0.9 per cent of argon.

Since none of those are thermally active, the CO2 actually represents nearer 35 per cent of the greenhouse gases which make up the remaining 0.1 per cent of the atmosphere – a much greater level of significance.

Conventionally, the proportion of CO2 is expressed in ‘parts per million (ppm)’ and the figure for CO2 has been established through the geological record to have been stable at around 280ppm for many millennia until about 150 years ago, since when it has increased to nearer 350ppm. This represents a 25 per cent increase in the most significant greenhouse gas, in a blink of geological time, and due almost entirely to human activity.

The majority 75 per cent of current CO2 is indeed present due to natural processes, and all the CO2 emitted naturally over time is also absorbed naturally through the various ‘carbon cycles’. Therefore it is not relevant to the argument about human influence: it is the constant background. The enormous relative change due to human activity over a tiny timescale in planetary terms is the real issue.

It seems many people have difficulty in perceiving the subtleties involved in the disproportionate influences on climate of relatively small proportions of significantly active atmospheric components, and the need to assess these over much longer time scales than living memory, let alone a political cycle.

Humanity may or may not be willing or capable to do anything about it, but the climatic changes resulting from our recent past and continuing profligacy with fossil fuels are becoming ever clearer.

From: Paul Gerrard, Halton, Leeds.

THE op-ed column “US is enjoying a cheap and safe energy boom” (Yorkshire Post, January 28) felt more like an advertisement feature than anything else. Nicolas Loris painted such a comforting picture of fracking you might think it would be heaven to live in an industrialised countryside with tankers churning up the roads delivering water, and removing toxic waste water. Only the day before, one of the fracking companies in the North West had to throw in the towel because they haven’t got a licence to process the radioactive waste their activities will generate.

I also notice Mr Loris didn’t make any grandiose claims for shale gas bringing down the price of energy in the UK – just as well since Energy Minister Ed Davey, and none other than 
Lord Browne, boss of Cuadrilla, have admitted that will not be the case.

I believe that 100 years ago in the First World War soldiers were offered bromide in their tea to calm them down. The bromides Mr Loris offers will not assuage us today.