Recently I wrote not all carbon is equal. Scientist can take samples of CO2 and determine if it came from fossil fuel, or a dead rat. Dead rat carbon is what you want to breath, not coal or car gas carbon.
First, we don't make CO2 breathing, my stupid business associates are always saying stop breathing if you want to stop global warming, then they slap their knee. We take it in when we inhale, then out, it's the same, we didn't filter or add to it. OK, got that.
14C is a radioactive isotope of carbon. It is only found in carbon which has been sheltered from galactic rays, below the surface. Carbon that has been cycling around the earth in and out of trees, oceans, grass, rats, that carbon has had the 14C hammered out of it by "the force" or some magic guy in the sky.
So, next time your uncle says they can't prove CO2 comes from human activity, think of C14, and every tailpipe smokestack and kiln is spewing it out. That is pollution. That adds to greenhouse gases, and increases a little tiny teenzey bit the atomic poisons in the sky. The tree that falls and rots, that CO2 is not pollution, it was here before, and absent C14. When they drill down for ice samples, or amber, or mud samples from a thousand years ago, it's all good CO2. Out there on the tundra, the sea, and in balloon 5 miles high know that there is a geek (or his mechanism) with a tiny little butterfly net scooping up CO2, and most of it has our fingerprint on it.
Mauna-Loa Observatory, where the first 400 ppm of CO2 was recorded last week. Temperature follows CO2. CO2, Methane, water vapor and other greenhouse gasses let sun rays through but reflect back infrared rays. This is good, this is why we have the goldielocks atmosphere. But as they increase they make the atmosphere more dense, slowing the heat loss to space, rising the temperatures. Stephen Hawking says we can end up with some regions on earth reaching nearly 200° and a very acidic atmosphere. Oh, what does he know, he never played football.
Aren't we humans also producing CO2 as waste from cellular respiration, not just breathing it in and out?
ReplyDeleteHumans do not produce CO2, none. The CO2 that passes into and out of us by breathing or the burning of our food is already part of the constant. The earths carbon volume is fixed. Nothing we do makes more carbon. The harm is from the large scale relocation of Carbon. Where we are moving it is the problem. Humans accelerate the natural carbon cycle by cutting and burning forests and so on, releasing more than can be re-absorbed. But worse and more harmful we introduced an unnatural cycle by mining carbon from safe locations deep underground and shooting it into the sky where it reflects infrared heat waves and into the oceans driving up acidity. Anony, don't stop breathing, that won't help, but consuming less will.
DeleteI normally delete anonymous posts that I can't follow back, but your question was so important I am glad you brought it up.
Darrel.
DeleteAnonymous - Just like syphilus - He is back.
Me, cutting half and acre of grass with a small walk-behind and now eight days of radiatiion tratment - the radiation things are becoming longer in duration - I can sense that and the big thing that does the beam has changed its routine - Is just now starting to take its toll on me. Darrel, I am bone-assed tired! And, some appetite issues.
Hey, I have it easy compared with the others I see -
Met a Chinese linguist today - stationed at Yokota AB, Japan and Osan AB, Korea back in the late sixties - has troat cancer and is on a tube feed.
Hanging in there.
Hit Hooters for a beer after treatment.
Sandwich and chef salad and in the recliner....
Bests,
Ron
Ron, Your father left your mother lots of money, find a lawn service to mow her place for the next 2 months, it won't even dent her savings. Not to sure beer is good for this kind of tired. This is not the kind of tired coming from work and need for calories and rest. This is something else. Be careful with that. Ron, keep your stick on the ice.
DeletePoint of clarification:
DeleteI wrote above people do not produce CO2, well, sort of sort of not. Maybe I should have answered "it depends on your definition of produces". Anony is correct in that we take in a lung full of the atmosphere, which includes oxygen and carbon dioxide CO2, dust, soot, and so on when we inhale. When we puff it out there is less oxygen and more carbon dioxide in that lung full unit. From food we burn and a life time of breathing we keep a little carbon to make bones and stuff, this is released beginning when we join the dead rat.
This is part of the cycle of exchange, plants move the atom around when they take it in, we animals move it back when we get it. It is a circle, not a line. We are not increasing the overall carbon of the world by breathing. And we don't add any C14 when we exhale, all that (along with the swell in CO2) comes from our massive inefficiency in fossil fuel use and resources waste including recreational consumerism. That's a line, a flat line.
Thank you for addressing the anonymous question. Your answer is very helpful to me, and I hope to others.
ReplyDelete