HOWCANRELATIVELY LITTLE CO2 EMITTED BY HUMANS MAKE A DIFFERENCE ?
There is an important difference between the CO2 produced by nature and that emitted by human activities. While nature produces about 30 times more CO2 than human activity, the carbon emitted by nature is part of a finely balanced cycle. The emissions by humans are over and above the natural balance, and consequently result in a net increase in the concentrations of atmospheric CO2. Since the industrial revolution about 850 billion tonnes of CO2 have been emitted due to combustion of fossil fuels, oil, coal and natural gas. An additional 370 billion tonnes have been added through changes in land use and deforestation. Every year humans emit around 25 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, which equals approximately 48,000 tonnes every minute. Some estimates show that a reservoir of 37, 000 billion tonnes of CO2 is buried in the ground as oil, coal and gas. The largest portion of this CO2 reservoir is in coal, and the second largest is in natural gas. This is a chilling reminder of
