Global Warming

95 % of the greenhouse gases (which Al Gore and his ilk like to claim is the root cause of "global warming") are actually caused by nature (mostly through photosynthesis). That would leave the remaining 5% of greenhouse gases caused by people (specifically the big bad Americans since it is claimed by some that we cause 25% of the worlds air pollution.) Spock (the Vulcan, not the doctor) might find this to be "illogical".

About 95 percent of the greenhouse effect — the atmospheric warming due to the trapping of solar energy that makes life possible on Earth — is due to water vapor, 99.999 percent of which is of natural origin.

The other 5 percent of the greenhouse effect is due to carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other miscellaneous gases.

Although carbon dioxide is the most dominant of these gases by volume, comprising about 99.4 percent, the other gases trap more heat. So the contribution of carbon dioxide to the 5 percent of the greenhouse effect not due to water vapor is much less than 99.4 percent — it's about 72 percent.

Carbon dioxide, therefore, is responsible for roughly 3.6 percent of the greenhouse effect (5 percent, representing the percentage of the greenhouse effect not due to water vapor, multiplied by 72 percent, representing the percentage of that 5 percent due to carbon dioxide).

But carbon dioxide is produced both naturally and by humans. About 97 percent of atmospheric carbon dioxide is natural, in fact. Only about 3 percent is from human activity.

That means that only about 0.11 percent of the greenhouse effect (that is, 3 percent of 3.6 percent) is due to human releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Put another way, about 99.89 percent of the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with carbon-dioxide emissions from human activity.

Factoring in the other greenhouse gases, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is about 0.3 percent. In other words, about 99.7 percent of the greenhouse effect is due entirely to nature.

When you consider that the greenhouse effect contributes about 60 degrees Fahrenheit to the Earth's average temperature (which would be about zero degrees Fahrenheit without the greenhouse effect), it doesn't really seem like atmospheric carbon dioxide levels — even if they triple or quadruple because of human activities — are all that important to global climate.

If the carbon dioxide-emissions reductions called for by the Kyoto global warming treaty were implemented, human greenhouse contributions would be reduced by about 0.03 percent. Atmospheric physicist Fred Singer says this would have an "imperceptible effect on future temperatures — one-twentieth of a degree by 2050."

As the Kyoto protocol would require cutting energy use by about 30 percent by 2010 — necessarily causing inestimable negative economic consequences — it's easy to see why U.S. politicians can't run away from the Kyoto protocol fast enough."