Again with a false "irrelevant trace gas argument".
Clack is just stirring shit
Consider the physics of planetary scale: Carbon dioxide makes up just 0.042% of our atmosphere—roughly 426 parts per million.
Visually, that equates to just 4 molecules out of every 10,000, or a single molecule in a crowd of 2,500. Even with historical shifts, it remains a minuscule trace element.
Like water vapor, CO₂ warms the atmosphere by absorbing specific narrow bands of outbound infrared radiation. But scale matters. Water vapor can make up to 4% of the atmosphere in humid tropical regions, averaging 1% to 2% globally, with clouds covering roughly 69% of the planet at any given time. Concentrations of water vapor are routinely a hundred times higher than CO₂.
Consequently, water vapor is by far the planet's dominant greenhouse gas, driving anywhere from 50% to 70% of the natural greenhouse effect.
Yet, despite its tiny atmospheric footprint, CO₂ is the indispensable foundation for biological life. Through photosynthesis, terrestrial plants convert sunlight, water, and CO₂ into glucose energy and oxygen, forming the backbone of every land-based food chain.
It's not just the trees. In the seas, microscopic phytoplankton drive between 50% and 85% of the world's photosynthesis and oxygen production. Furthermore, dissolved carbon is a fundamental building block for marine life, utilised by corals, shellfish, and pteropods to construct their shells.
But the physical engine of global climate isn't a trace gas at all, nor is it the thin atmospheric envelope above us. It has always been the oceans.
Covering 71% of Earth's surface to an average depth of 2.3 miles, the oceans are the world's true thermal heartbeat. Water is roughly 800 times denser than air, and the top 2.5 metres of ocean store as much heat energy as the entire atmosphere.
The oceanic world holds over 80% of Earth's mobile carbon reservoir and stores more than 93% of the climate system's retained heat energy. Oceanic currents are the planet's true air conditioning unit, endlessly transporting immense stores of tropical heat toward the poles—a global conveyor belt that takes a thousand years to complete a single circuit.
Earth is a dynamic, interactive system driven by the fundamental laws of physics and thermodynamics—not oversimplified computer models or economic spreadsheets.
The idea of a single trace gas controlling the entire biosphere unravels under the sheer weight of planetary reality.