re: Is there proof that CO2 causes warming?

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Yep, still here.

More plants are growing is what I mean when I say the Earth is greening. LINK

This is just one link, but there are a lot of 'em out there about the Earth getting greener.

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OK. Thanks.

I understand where you are coming from.

To talk about what I want to talk about, we need to talk about reservoirs and flux. Reservoirs are where materials are stored, and flux is the amount/amount of time it takes for materials to move from one reservoir to another.


A tree is made of living tissue and that tissue has carbon in it. That carbon comes from the CO2 in the air and is kept in the tissue as long as the plant is alive.

So, essentially what we are talking about here is a plant is a reservoir of CO2 for about 100 years (estimate). And that CO2 leaves the tree and is returned to the atmosphere once the tissues are degraded/metabolized during decomposition. The new reservoir of CO2 is the atmosphere, which was the initial reservoir that the plants built their tissues from. The flux that movement of CO2 for that plant over its lifespan.

Now think about this for all trees. If you think about it, in the long term, plants should be balanced in the amount of CO2 they take in and the CO2 they release upon death. So, CO2 in the atmosphere should be constant over a long period of time even if plants are present.

The CO2 is still rising and will continue to rise not from plants, but by short-cutting a longer reservoir to reservoir flux: hydrocarbons.

What if lots and lots of living tissue that were in a reservoir was locked away from any measurable flux until mountains were made, or streambanks eroded? Well, that would be balanced too, not a 100 years for a complete cycle, but 100s of millions of years to stay balanced. Humans have found a way to shortcut that system by drilling for these hydrocarbons and using them...creating CO2 putting it in a different reservoir (atmosphere) in an unbalanced way.



Yes, the Earth has had a higher ppm of CO2. Yes life thrived during those times. What didn't happen in those cases was a significant change in the flux of CO2 over short periods of time like we are seeing now, if that happens there's an extinction.