I’d like to write a follow-up to Tim’s amazing graphics-filled analysis of past and current trends of atmospheric CO2 concentrations and resulting temperature changes…I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the “dual nature of carbon.” Carbon is, obviously, the most basic life-element on Earth. We need it…to build our cells: plant, animal, fungi, and all microorganisms. Plants and photosynthetic bacteria need it to photosynthesize, and we non-photosynthesizers need plants to create oxygen for us. That’s the good side of carbon. The scary side of carbon is the side we’re bringing out into the open in part through the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of other carbon sinks (natural reservoirs of carbon on the planet that isolate carbon from the atmosphere) such as peatlands and forests.
Fossil fuels: petroleum (oil), coal, and natural gas.
As Tim so eloquently illustrated in the previous post, this activity is resulting in exponentially increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere, which decreases the Earth’s ability to reflect heat back into space. In my entry, here, I’d like to discuss the natural cycling of carbon. I think it’s important, going forward, for the people in charge of making decisions in our energy and environmental policies to understand the very basic mechanisms by which our biosphere functions. (That said, one of the things I’d like to focus on in this blog is making this information a. accessible to non-scientists, and b. presented in a way so clear as to be irrefutable. For example, I think Tim’s graphs below do this beautifully.) A lack of this understanding, plus the purposeful ignorance by which many of our politicians function, will result in disasterously inadequate climate policies, or none at all. We just don’t have time for that anymore. We are quickly spiraling out of control, quickly approaching the threshold of no return. At a certain point, our Earth System’s mechanisms will no longer be capable of correcting the massive anthropogenic perturbations we’re throwing into the mix. This entry will discuss how these mechanisms can “self-correct” (or “us-correct” might be more appropriate for our current situation)…up to a certain point.
Installment #1:
The Organic Carbon Cycle and the Biological Pump
The Organic Carbon Cycle:
The basic way in which Earth’s organisms contribute to system cycles is by recycling carbon (in addition to other nutrients and materials used in life processes) throughout the biosphere. …read more
