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Just about every protein unique (or largely confined) to the human species is presently at its highest level in the last 800,000 years; and probably another 10 million industrial compounds, of which maybe 100,000 were intentional, and the other 99% being random and undesired by products around the margins of the defined process (even the smallest amounts discarded instead of destroyed would lead to record-setting environmental levels over a billion-year historical time scale).

What makes CO2 special is that we worked a little harder to crack this nut.

Current cumulative industrial emissions of CO2 is presently on the order of 33,000 million metric tonnes (Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1850–2030). That's 33 petagrams in base metric units, once you collect all the distributed zeros together.

How many chemicals exist on planet earth in excess of 30 Pg?

The entire earth's biosphere clocks in at 1–4 Eg. We can start by eliminating any biological chemical that accounts for less than 1% of the entire biosphere.

Goodbye, glucose, at 3–8 g per human body. ATP? Nope. Glycogen? Closer, but still no cigar. Cellulose stands a chance, if we're generous about counting molecular D-glucose units, rather than actual molecules. Perhaps one lipid, the most common chain length of all fats?

And what if earth had blessed us with ten (or one hundred) Middle East oil fields, where gasoline practically gushes out in finished form? The newly acidic oceans would be halfway sterile of yummy megafauna, but fertilizer for use in terrestrial agriculture would have been practically free.

Not better, not worse; just different.

But cross your fingers God keeps his promise about not sending a second flood, because Noah 2.0's ocean pantry would be exceedingly slim pickings. Yes, a merciful God wipes the slate clean before you waltz off the boat, procreate vigorously, and then discover mass geological reserves of buried hydrocarbons to rival the entirety of God's respiring endowment.

How much is too much? 3 Pg? 30 Pg? 300 Pg? 3 Eg? 30 Eg? Do stop me when your anthropogenic spidey sense reaches its in-built marble ark threat-detection threshold.

FAQ

also this, slightly more peer reviewed: http://www.c2es.org/publications/sea-level-rise-global-climate-change-review-impacts-us-coasts

Thanks for the paper. But after reading it, I cannot find any statements that New York was going to be underwater today, based on predictions made in 1999.

Especially since the paper was written in 2000.

Or are you just having fun playing me?

also this, slightly more peer reviewed:
http://www.c2es.org/publications/sea-level-rise-global-climate-change-review-impacts-us-coasts

"the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is required to regulate emission of pollutants that "endanger public health and welfare.""

I'd say the drought in California, the increased wildfires in Texas and say....Florida being underwater pretty squarely fall in its wheelhouse.

SCOTUS agrees

The Clean Air Act has been modified many times under it's proscribed authority as new pollutants are discovered and/or become a serious threat.

It's their emissions output that is on the rise, not the U.S.'s. Any climate agreement that doesn't include them is a bad agreement.

Yep-- that's why climate agreements are international.

If just one country could solve the problem by itself, it wouldn't be a hard problem.

Also, it's pretty amazing the output level of CO2 from airliners traveling to climate conferences. You'd think they'd use teleconferencing.

Airline emissions are a pretty tiny part of the total. Transportation produces about 34% of carbon emissions, and of that, aircraft are about 9%-- overall, just not the big driver.
http://www.c2es.org/docUploads...

What a flat trajectory may look like.

This is nothing to worry about, though. As we know with 100% certainty, the rate of output of greenhouse gases has zero effect on the global climate. My gut tells me that we can double the amount of CO2 we release every year and see no meaningful change in any measured statistic.

Can we just have science instead of hysteria?

OK. Here's a summary of number of hurricanes and tropical storms, as of 2011 (about the latest good data I can find):
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/tropical-cyclones/201113

I'm not sure I can distinguish a trend from the noise.

But on the other hand, I haven't ever seen a prediction telling me that I should be able to see the trend. Here's what NOAA says:
www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes

"It is premature to conclude that human activities--and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming--have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane activity."

And here what the Center for Climate and Energy Impacts says:
www.c2es.org/science-impacts/extreme-weather/hurricanes

"It’s unclear whether climate change will increase or decrease the number of hurricanes, but warmer ocean surface temperatures and higher sea levels are expected to intensify their impacts."

Once the House passed the Waxman-Markey bill, the next step would have been for the Senate to have passed its own comprehensive climate and energy bill. Unfortunately, the Senate was unable to do so...S.1733 passed the committee by a vote of 11-1, with all seven Republican members boycotting the final vote...Citing a lack of bipartisan support in the Senate, however, Reid announced in July 2010 that upcoming energy legislation would not include a cap on GHG emissions. This effectively ended action on climate legislation for the 111th Congress.

http://www.c2es.org/technology...

There's your "citation." Sixth result on Google, smartass.

Doesn't compute with what you're saying otherwise chap. 100% of residences with the standard install essentially covering 100% of net usage results in massive amounts of over-generation during with the problem that either you get rid of the grid and go to batteries or other storage method or need MASSIVE industry to consume the extra daytime power because if 100% of homes have them then 100% of commercial stores will have them, as will light industry.

Residential is 38.2% of usage, commercial 36.4%, industrial 26.2%.

That 26.2% wouldn't be enough to cover over-generation by homes if their installs are net even, the commercial installs average 'daytime use 100% covered', and industry* does what it can.

At least I'm TRYING to not be insulting here. Again, try to avoid thinking I'm trying to deceive you or even be deliberately stupid. Explain WHY it's stupid.

*Link is to the solar install of the company that made my boiler.

Well, whatever else it does, the recession does reduce GHG emissions:
http://www.c2es.org/facts-figures/us-emissions/trends

so the gas price increase worked, as far as reducing emissions goes, according to your causal analysis.

Now the trick of course is to use technological innovation to decouple GHG emissions growth from GDP.

As to the Thorium, I spotted this in an web article, but could not find much out more about it and was not entirely satisfied that the information was 100 percent good. But here goes anyways. Coal contains Thorium and other radioactive materials that are released into the air when it is burnt. They do not purify coal before the burn it. Coal is a mixture of all sorts of stuff, most of flammable, but some of it other stuff. The scaremonger writing the piece claimed that coal plants spewed more radiactivity into the environment than a nuclear plant. Who knows for sure. I could not google enough up.

Factiods I remember:
1. A coal plant releases more radioactive material than a nuclear plant produces
2. There's more potential energy in the radioactive materials in coal than you can get from burning the coal itself

Okay, here goes: Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste. Uranium and Thorium content of coal. CO2 production of a coal plant,
500MW = 3 million tons of CO2/year. The carbon is 27% of that, and coal is 'almost' pure carbon. Call it 1.7M tons of coal consumed per year for a 1GW plant. Of course, this site says 2M tons of coal. At 1 part per million Uranium and 2 parts per million Thorium, that's ~5-6 tons of radioactive material released per year, 1% of it up the flue(EPA limit). It says that you need about 162 tons of Uranium to fuel a conventional reactor a year.
However, conventional reactors are only about 1% efficient at their fuel burn - if you go to breeder reactors, that could, theoretically at least, drop to 1.62 tons of nuclear material needed per year per GW. Outside of accidents, the nuclear waste isn't released.

Realistically speaking, you could get more electricity out of the coal via nuclear power if you were using breeders. Thorium reactors would be required, but at least they are naturally breeder-type.

So I'd tend to say that my 'coal plants release more radioactive materials than nuclear plants produce' is true - only limited amounts, less than 1%, are actually being converted into more highly radioactive material. It's producing 2 tons of radioactive material*, vs 'release' of 5-6.
Your 'emits more than a nuclear plant' is also very much true.
My last statement - 'more energy in the heavy metal traces' depends on using highly efficient processes and somehow having an energy-cheap way to collect the relatively diffuse uranium and thorium.

*I'm ignoring waste that isn't annual, like the reactor vessel, at the moment, though it's probably only a ton or so more.

I hear about the Chinese Economic Miracle. But when I see the youtube videos of the 'Fog' in Bejing, the price they paid was too high. You could be the richest man in Bejing, but your quality of life, as a living creature, is horrible. This is not some abstract human rights issue. This is breathing filth into your lungs with every breath.

I figure that if you give them another 10 years or so, they're going to start taking their own environmental rules much more seriously, precisely because of this.