Showing posts with label climate skeptics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate skeptics. Show all posts

Sunday, January 22, 2012

390 parts per million. Do you know how small that is?

I see, over and over again, the claim that CO2 is less than 400ppm (0.04%) of the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. That's entirely correct. The conclusion we are meant to draw is that such a tiny fraction of a sliver of a gas can't possibly have a noticeable effect on the climate.

QED, right? Can a very small amount of a substance dramatically alter the behavior of a complex system?

200-300mg of cyanide constitutes a lethal dose. A large human weighs perhaps 100kg. So the lethal dose of cyanide is about 3ppm.

0.1 mL of dimethyl mercury can be fatal. An adult has perhaps 30 L of volume, which figures out to about 33ppm.

The LD50* of ricin is 22 parts per *billion*, or 0.02ppm.

So such an argument, standing by itself, carries zero weight.

* the dose that kills 50% of the subjects it's given to.