On CO2 Atmospheric Content Increases Being Infinitesimal & Therefore Doing Nothing Not Being Risky At All

According to the "lumanarious" AGW skeptic Roy Spencer (an individual oft quoted by the blogger Willis Hart) "the idea that severe weather, snowstorms, droughts, or floods have gotten worse due to the atmosphere now having 4 parts per 10,000 CO2, rather than 3 parts per 10,000, is... sketchy" in an article from his website titled "Hey, IPCC, quit misusing the term risk".

Mr. Spencer's Number one fan agrees, saying (in a recent post) that people thinking that this infenitesimal increase will cause a global catatastrophe "is exactly what happens when science and government crawl into bed together".

But this increase is really not as small as the Hartster implies. Dr. Barry W. Brook, a research Professor at the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute, explains - on his blog "Brave New Climate" - just how LARGE this increase in the trace gas actually is...

Barry Brook: Every cubic metre of air contains roughly 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of CO2 (10 to the 22nd power), [which is] a rather large number. ... let's try to get a feel for just how large a number this is. The number of stars within the 14-billion-light-year radius of the visible universe (Hubble volume) is estimated to be thirty billion trillion, i.e., 3 x 10 to the 22nd power. Thus, a mere 3 cubic metres of air, which would sit comfortably on most dining tables, contains as many CO2 molecules as there are stars in the vast span of the visible Universe. Bearing these mind-boggling numbers in mind, it's perhaps not quite so hard to understand how trace atmospheric gases in our atmosphere really do a good job at intercepting infrared radiation. (CO2 is a trace gas, but what does that mean?).

Sounds to me like this 33.3 percent increase is actually quite large and very much a cause for concern. Also, that Mr. Spencer's assertion that something is small when it is actually large is but one reason why this dude can't be trusted. Spencer says "hey, IPCC, quit misusing the term risk", but doing nothing when CO2 levels are increasing so dramatically sounds very risky to me.

OST #9. See also SWTD #249.