We won’t even *know* if “it” (whatever it is) happens, because we won’t know what would have been. Would we have stayed in LIA? Continued down the decline to another ice age? How would that have affected Homo sapiens? Throughout history, warm has been good.

Back to photosynthesis vs. CO2, does not photosynthesis just separate oxygen from carbon, even in the ocean? So, the material that is the base of the food chain is indeed CO2, throughout the biosphere.

There will always be an unknown with respect to climate change, and we won’t *know* until it happens.

Why must we remove it from the “active carbon cycle”?

What if something goes wrong and we remove much more than we want? We *hardly* know the nuances of climate, despite the dogma spewers.

What if we remove the excess CO2 and Earth’s climate goes back to the trend it was on before the industrial revolution, on the slope of temperature from the peak of the MWP to the valley of the LIA?

What do you think would happen to most of 6.5 billion people if Earth cooled off 2 degrees? How much plastic would be burned by the starving masses to stay warm? Do you think you’ve seen air pollution? Not hardly.

Sorry, but the only people pushing the climate disaster angle are the people who will make money off it and their dupes. We simply don’t know enough about climate to even think we know the economic consequences of disposing of excess CO2, let alone allowing it continue to increase. We don’t need to waste productivity for the benefit of a few carbon traders. We need to spend it on a massive increase in climate research, because the penalty for failure is indeed huge.

Let me assure you, there is plenty of doubt about whether or not a warming environment would be bad for the environment, but there is no doubt that a colder one would.

So, it goes back to my original question. Why must we remove it from the “active carbon cycle”? There is no such thing as “the good old days”.

I suppose I could have said plankton are the base of the food chain, including that on the land.

I don’t know that much about how global waming (so-called greenhouse) gases affect clouds. It doesn’t matter in determining the amount of carbon we must remove from the active carbon cycle.

Also, what makes you think 100 ppm of CO2 will not affect clouds? Do you not think CO2 influences convection?

If carbon dioxide is taken as about half of the total forcings, then the total would be reduced to about 2/3 of the current value.

A good estimate of the extra carbon added to the active carbon cycle since the begining of the so-called industrial revolution is 500 billion tonnes (Gt), corresponding to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 280 ppm to the current 384–385 ppm. Removing 350 Gt takes us back to about 319 ppm, the figure in 1950 or a few years later, and removes about 1/2 of the radiative forcing due to carbon dioxide alone.

Since in effect this returns the climate backwards through time, more or less, I am using the past climate to predict the effects of such removal. So I don’t bother to consider clouds, etc.

“Alas, CO2 is not exactly the base of the food chain.”

So what is?

Then:

“A realistic tax is high enough to cause everybody to forgo using unsequestered fossil carbon. Somehow we need to sequester an additional 350 billion tonnes of carbon or so to bring the active carbon cycle back closer to balanced.”

How do you get that number, and what make you think you know what the effect of e.g. clouds is?

A realistic tax is high enough to cause everybody to forgo using unsequestered fossil carbon. Somehow we need to sequester an additional 350 billion tonnes of carbon or so to bring the active carbon cycle back closer to balanced.

I’m not optimistic about either of those being properly accomplished.

As far as tax vs. trade, it’s interesting how environmentalists are aligning with industry and going for the cap and trade angle. Nothing new there – re. the newest climate millionaire, Dr. Hansen. The tax would definitely put a crimp on the carbon traders’ business as well.

The problem is what should be a realistic tax? What if most of the warming is due to other factors and in fact increasing CO2 increases plant growth (aka food) and evapotranspiration to increase low cloudiness (aka albedo) and is a negative feedback after all? Since we have no clue and even a suggestion lately that “global warming” decreases high clouds, letting ir out more easily, how far a shot is it? What’s even worse is the concept of disposing of what may be the closest thing we have to manna, the base of the food chain: CO2.