1. Taken from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth
Assessment Report (2007) available at http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm
Last accessed 7/7/2008. The reports in the IPCC have probably undergone the
most rigorous review of any natural science research ever done.
2. This increase is from burning fossil fuels: You can calculate the amount of CO2 formed by knowing the molecular weights of carbon and oxygen, then knowing how much carbon is released in the combustion of a gallon of oil or pound of coal. Oil and coal have set chemical structures with a known number of carbon molecules. Atmospheric CO2 concentration measurements coincide with the rise in fossil fuel use.
According to Lamlom and Savidge “Carbon Content Variation in Boles of Mature
Sugar Maple and Giant Sequoia” published January 15, 2006 online in Tree
Physiology available at http://heronpublishing.com/tree/summaries/volume26/a26-459.html,
last accessed 7/11/08.
4. Brown University (2008, April 27). Biodiversity Is Crucial To
Ecosystem Productivity. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 7, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424112451.htm
5. All of the carbon in a rainforest system is aboveground…the soils are "poor."
4. If you check out R.H. Whittaker’s book
Communities and Ecosystems, Ed. 2, 1975, there is a real nice chart in there
that provides much more detail. Go ‘old skool’ and check it out in your local
Sending your yard waste to the incinerator adds additional CO2 to the system due
to the gas burned for transportation and firing the incinerator.
8. And you
thought what happens in Vegas stayed in Vegas, didn’t you?