On 30-6-2009 18:10, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> much, much less. Simply because there were less people. 
> 
> I think the problem is not so much the number of people burning stuff as 
> it is the mining of carbon in the form of oil and coal that has been 
> buried since before humanity arose. No matter how much wood you burn, 
> the forests will turn it back into wood. But if you burn 100 forests 
> worth of carbon, the one forest nearby will have trouble keeping up.
> 
It is of course both the number of people and what they burn. My point 
was simply that if the number of people had not risen so much there is a 
good change that nature would have been able to accommodate burning of 
the limited amount of coal by these people. e.g. by sinking it in the 
ocean.

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