Carbon stripped from the atmosphere and buried for millions of years: sciencedaily.com <Siliceous limestones devolatilize negligibly throughout the range of temperatures in the subduction zone.
"Most of the initial carbon dioxide and water in subducted marine sediments will not be released beneath volcanic arcs," say Kerrick and Connolly.>
No wonder Earth has been cooling for 100s of millions of years as carbon is stripped from the ecosphere and buried in vast limestone, coal, oil, gas, bituminous, shale and sedimentary graveyards [ocean crust] and by subduction processes into the mantle.
Earth is on a one-way trip to a frozen wasteland.
We were about to plunge into another glaciation, but were saved by America's SUV drivers, Boeing's aircraft, ships, trucks, trains, heating furnaces, power stations, Spindletop and OPEC oil.
Carbon now settling onto the ocean floor will not reappear in the ecosphere either forever, or until it has spent millions of years trundling to a subduction zone, down into the mantle, circulating around to an upwelling at Hawaii, or at the mid-
Atlantic ridge fumaroles or somewhere.
There is a LOT of carbon already buried.
For example, the Nullarbor plain is a giant limestone slab. Imagine how much carbon is locked up in that more or less forever. en.wikipedia.org <It is the world's largest single piece of limestone, and occupies an area of about 200,000 km²>
Earth is freezing to death, literally. Petatrillions of little guys buried in one giant tombstone, just in one place there.
Mqurice |
