by Giovanni P. Gregori
Istituto di Acustica e Sensoristica (IDASC) – Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) giovanni.gregori@idasc.cnr.it

The global climate change (or global warming, GW) is in progress, closely analogously to several other – eventually also much more violent – documented occurrences reported during the long history of the Earth. At present, the demographic expansion – altogether with the ever increasing energy demand – make humankind to be an unprecedented driving factor in the “climate” system. The consequent pollution has certainly to be suitably taken into account as an important aspect in climatology. However, contrary to a well known and often strongly claimed warning, no objective evidence seems to support the hypothesis of any leading role of CO2. Other drivers, which are essentially independent of the humans, certainly play a paramount and most relevant role. The very recent maps of the CO2 planetary distribution provided by the NASA satellite OCO2 give an unexpected clear support for the inferences of a major contribution from sub-surface degassing as further discussed in a recent paper by Gregori (New Concept in Global Tectonics, vol. 3, no. 4, 2015).