Wharfie, as you can see from the graph you kindly included, this is quite correct: <"We are increasing CO2 production rates, but we are not increasing the rate of CO2 accumulation." >
Note that during the phenomenal increase in oil and other CO2 sources during the early parts of the 20th century and through the 1970s, there was a rapid and increasing rate of CO2 accumulation.
But if you look at the last 10 and 20 years, you'll see that even though the rate of carbon production has continued to increase, the rate of CO2 accumulation has not increased - it's running in a straight line now [seasonal variation aside].
What that means is that for each ton of carbon dioxide produced, there is less of it staying in the atmosphere. The rate of CO2 removal from the atmosphere is a function of the concentration of CO2. Like a leaky bucket, the more we fill it, the faster it runs out.
Plants are wolfing down CO2, shrinking their CO2 breathing holes, drinking less water, which means where available water is limited, plants are not struggling for hydration which means they are able to conduct full-strength photosynthesis.
Oceans are soaking up CO2 faster than ever. As you know from breathing management, the rate of gas transfer is related to gas concentration. The ocean surface is just like a lung membrane.
The issue is what happens to the CO2 once it's in the water.
There is LOTs of chlorophyll in oceans and its job is to metabolize CO2. Plants are eaten by little guys who support the oceanic food chain and end up falling to the ocean floor, being buried in kilometres of sediment and subducted under continental margins.
Guess how the Nullabour plains were formed? How much carbon is tied up there? Where was it before it was tied up and buried for eons?
We will not succeed in filling the ocean with CO2 so that it comes back out as fast as it goes in.
Yes, as everywhere for living things, life in the ocean is not limited always and only by CO2, but getting sufficient CO2 is part of lifestyle demands in the ocean as it is for plants in the air. Not all plants are limited by CO2 at all times. Sometimes they are limited by water [that doesn't apply in the ocean of course - some people and plants have it really easy], sometimes by iron, sometimes by zinc or nitrogen or flies if they are a venus fly trap.
The fact that plants are sometimes limited by something other than CO2 doesn't mean shortage of CO2 isn't usually a major problem for them. There might even be some plants which are harmed by increased CO2 levels, but I doubt that they are more than a minuscule fraction of plant life, recently evolved as CO2 levels dropped due to stripping of carbon from the ecosphere. Can you name one plant which needs LESS CO2?
If you check the graph you linked, you'll see that in the 1990s, there was even a drop in the rate of CO2 increase, even though the rate of total carbon production increase only slowed down. There wasn't actually a drop in carbon output.
Peak people is going to happen in the next 20 years or so and possibly as soon as a year from now if avian flu or some other catastrophe gets going. Peak oil is going to happen about then too even if humans don't go into decline [if we believe the oil production doomsters]. With fewer people, using less oil, coal, gas, we are going to see a dramatic drop in CO2 production.
CO2 will then start dropping quickly in the atmosphere and we'll be heading for a glaciation. That will be really bad news. I'd rather have a 10 metre sea level rise over a century, than a return of the ice age.
Check that graph again and see just how straight it is going now. That's despite INCREASING carbon production. How the heck are we going to keep that graph going up when peak oil is in and carbon production stops increasing? I don't think we can achieve it.
Like the genie, once carbon is out of the lamp, we can't get it back again. It ends up in the ocean. On the ocean floor. Spread very, very thinly. As limestone!! We are heading for a cooling once we run out of carbon to get out economically.
Mqurice |
