wrote in message
...
On Jul 27, 9:55 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

But the particular details raised by lumping together all sources and
sinks
of CO2, in this case, lead to a mistaken understanding of the problem.
That's not unusual.

--
Ed Huntress

Lumping all the sources and sinks of CO2 may lead you to a mistaken
understanding of the problem.

However it does not cause Don or I to have a mistaken understanding of
the problem.

Which problem? The question is what is the relative addition of CO2 by human
respiration versus burning fossil fuels.

In fact it does exactly the opposite. For example I
have not seen you address the fact the food production involves the
use of a great deal of energy that is obtained from fossil fuels.

An irrelevant distraction. Much of the world's food is produced with human
and animal power, and the fossil fuel used to help produce food in advanced
countries is not part of the basic equations. It's a circumstantial issue,
not a basic one.

So
the cycle you describe as atmosphere CO2 converted to food by plants
and then the food converted back to CO2 is way too simplistic and
leads to a mistaken understanding of the problem.

You've expanded the problem into irrelevancies. The key question is whether
human respiration adds to atmospheric CO2. It does not. If you use
fossil-fuel-burning machines to produce your food, that's a complication
that you'll want to consider if you're analyzing the whole system.

But we weren't doing that. Nor is anyone here qualified to do it. We were
just dealing with the simple question of whether you have to consider human
respiration when you're looking at the total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere, versus additions that are the result of burning fossil fuel. And
the answer is no, you don't.

--
Ed Huntress