579 or Zero

With "coludists...denialist...religion"

Where are your arguments, your logic man?

The ice caps melting are doing wonders for Russian oil exploration and extraction. What's wrong with that?

Aidan
no, you'll have to do better than that.. high levels of CO2 are well known to be an overall benefit to plant life - and its known that additional CO2 quickly disperses around the world. Now that I think ab out it, additional CO2 in any one area, as opposed to any other area, would be very small indeed .. unlike sulphates and aerosols which hang around in one spot.. so the iron uptake thing would be a very minor effect if it exists at all.. you best go back and see what conditions they claimed for the effect to exist.. as for the dictionary definition if there are such definitions then they are clearly wrong, for the reasons outlined.
So remember - CO2 global, other pollutants local..

Curmudgeon
You miss the point: the combination of the CO2 level (which doesn't vary much globally, but varies a lot from what it used to be) and local factors (high calcium soils) creates a local iron uptake problem. Obviously the strength of the effect depends on the characteristics of both the soil and the trees, but it's easily corrected by human intervention (giving the trees iron supplements).

It's certainly a minor problem compared to the potentially much bigger problems of declining marine pH and glbal warming, but it shows global problems can have local effects.

The dictionary definition did not claim that CO2's effects as a pollutant were local.

Aidan, so refreshing to read someone who clearly understands science.
As for renewable energy, why limit ourselves to that as a solution, when we own enough thorium to power the world for 700 years, or our own competitive industries for thousands of years.

Mass produced and trucked in ready to produce power in just weeks, Thorium reactors > micro-grids, could possibly halve the cost of industrial energy.

And by several means.
One, limiting the usual and often costly transmission line losses, and indeed, ending the need to maintain the gold plated national grid.
And two, eliminating all the profit taking middle men; even more so, where and when the target enterprise owns and operates the adjacent power station.
And thirdly, given the very low fuel use for the life of the plant, which could be as little as a few tons over 25-50 years?

And the cost of that fuel falls into insignificance, when measured against coal and the transport of millions of annual tons of it, and at higher and higher rates.
And last but not least, the ability to mass produce and truck these things as very wide loads, brings the production and or decommissioning costs way way down!

Moreover, one could purchase the entire fuel needs for the entire life of a thorium plant, and transport it as a single truck load?

Other than thorium, we who always produce problematic biological waste, could chose to convert it to methane (bladder stored biogas) and then use that scrubbed to power all our domiciles on demand, 24/7.

Substituting the current stationary engines in the working examples with (80% energy coefficient) ceramic fuel cells, literally doubles the amount of energy created, given no moving parts to use up so much of it in the process.

Meaning, not only could we power all our homes with this whisper quiet combination, but create around a 50% salable surplus into the bargain, or just use the surplus to charge up the electric car.

New batteries currently in development, are said to double the current range of lithium ion.
Cheers, Rhrosty.

The Australian Government has an Inventory of Pollutants. This is compiled by the Department of Environment and has been around since 1995. Carbon Dioxide is not on the list. The only carbons listed are Carbon Disulfide and Carbon Monoxide - both worthy of inclusion. http://www.npi.gov.au/substances/substance-list-and-thresholds

Perhaps, maybe, a way to get past this seeming impasse would be to check out references under the topic A Buddhist Understanding of Global Warming.
One site asks how do we act guided by the principles of right action enunciated in the Noble Eightfold Path

Buddhists quite rightly teach that everything and everyone is in one way or another inter-connected. Co-dependent origination as distinct from the usual Western mis-understanding that the world is merely a collection of separate human beings and "things".