Quite right, the process would be neutral, but the CO2 level would rapidly decline: <Unfortunately, if atmospheric CO2 is the fuel, there will be a very rapid decline in CO2 concentrations, rather than a long and gradual one like the increase. The increase was slow because vast amounts of CO2 are stripped from the atmosphere and dropped as marine sediment to a permanent oceanic crust graveyard, trundling along to subduction zones for conversion to oil, gas or volcanic activity [or to just remain as interstitial carbonaceous materials]. The decrease if the same amount of fuel is provided, will be very fast. >
We'd be back to 280 parts per million and at grave risk of glaciation returning. The glaciers are even now lurking in cirques waiting to descend and cover huge areas while snow accumulates by the kilometre [thickness, not width].
Each kilogram of carbon Craig Ventner gets from the atmosphere is a kilogram not got from coal which means less CO2 for the atmosphere. That will mean slower growing crops, more water required [as their stomatas open more to get the thin gruel of CO2 in competition with Craig].
The current thinking is that CO2 is a bad thing. It is in fact a GOOD thing. It's really quite surprising that Greenies call it a pollutant. Their very name, Green, derives from chlorophyll, which is has the purpose in plants of processing carbon dioxide. Calling CO2 a pollutant is like calling rice a pollutant in human terms. Rice is our food. It's absurd to call food a pollutant.
It's true that too much rice would be a pollutant, causing health problems, but not many people eat too much rice. They eat too many "foods" made from fat, sugar, salt, flavours, and other non-food ingredients.
I have never heard of a plant eating too much CO2, so it's tough to think of it as a pollutant. Too much would make it hard to breathe, and it's certainly a pollutant in human physiology if getting into the thousands of parts per million range.
By making large enough green areas, such as covering Australia in his algae/microbes with sea water pumped in to wet it, he'd be reducing reflected radiation and thereby heating the atmosphere, so perhaps a glaciation would be avoided and we could get by with less CO2, back at the 280 ppm level.
Personally, I think water, clouds, ice, oceanic and atmospheric circulation and plant cover are the homeostasis drivers for the climate. Anthropogenic CO2 is a bit player of negligible consequence.
Mqurice |
