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Originally Posted by Ladogaboy
I'm sorry, I still don't buy the goats.
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(Sigh) How can I get it across to you that what you buy or don't buy really doesn't matter? You may not buy the fact that the Earth isn't flat, but that doesn't change its shape.
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Bringing it back to modern times, how much of the CO2 output and levels in the air has to do with the plant life and vegetation that has been lost due to deforestation and other issues...
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Basically none. There are several different ways to figure out where the excess CO2 comes from, and they all agree. A fairly complicated on involves measuring isotope ratios in the CO2. Because fossil fuels have been buried underground for tens or hundreds of millions of years, all the short-lived isotopes like C14 have decayed to stable forms. So when the fossil fuel is burned, that creates a deficit in those isotopes in the atmosphere. Do some math, and you can figure out how much of the CO2 comes from fossil carbon.
The easy way is just to look up figures for annual fossil fuel production from some source of economic data, like the CIA World Factbook. Apply a little knowedge of chemistry, do some math, and you come up with a number for how much atmospheric CO2 should have been increased from burning that fossil fuel. Then you compare the number you get with the actual increase, and see if it matches. And it does*. If you're ambitious, you could do this for a number of years, and find it still matches.
*Actually the CO2 generated by burning fossil fuel is somewhat larger than the observed increase. This is due to factors such as some of the CO2 dissolving in ocean water.