Dupre-<<Look at the averages - 5x10^11 kg/year CO2 from volcanic activity. 18x10^12 kg/year from all human activities. So humans produce 36 times the amount of CO2 that volcanoes do - it's no use making an arbitrary comparison that no-one can put into context with any accuracy (playing on their emotions, rather than giving hard numbers).>>
It's all very well trotting out (hard) numbers like this, but where exactly do they come from and really, how exact do you think they are. I would say they were 'leap of faith' environmentalists projections producing the result they want. The world has a 'steady state' restoring trend (otherwise it would have gone runaway greenhouse or the other way eons ago). I would say that it can cope with the minute amount of carbons etc humans 'pollute' with- it has after all coped with monstrous meteors opening up the crust and creating continent wide super volcanos (i.e. Indian Deccan Traps). I hope humans have advanced enough to take off to another world when conditions get bad enough (if they do- the jury is still out) and go pollute elsewhere- but you can bet, Ice Ages come and go, climates change with volcanic activity. The sum total of human damage ain't so bad and will be recovered from. I used to be a strong environmentalist in Greenpeace and FOE until I realised they were mainly on a doom preaching strangely political agenda and definitely dodgy. I burn hundreds of tons of fuel a day with a clean conscience!