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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mel221 who wrote (753091)	11/16/2013 12:09:42 AM
From: d[-_-]b	Respond to of 1578048

Another 96% decline would take us to 8ppm. That would probably kill 96% of all animals and plants - good thing we still have volcano's.

To: mel221 who wrote (753091)	11/16/2013 9:44:25 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578048

At one time, much of that carbon was in the atmosphere and was biologically active. Nonsense. There are lots of carbon sinks. Some of those sinks are biological, like trees, calcareous biological parts, bogs, etc. Others are physical, like the oceans. As long as we have had life, those sinks have never given up all of their carbon to the atmosphere. The planet's apparent natural tendency to sequester carbon over long periods of time. Let unattended, it appears the planet is going to continue sequester carbon until very little is biologically active. In the billions of years there has been life on the planet, this has never happened. So I think your scenario is not based on reality. Like so much of your thinking. But, OK. Say that did occur. What would happen? The majority of the carbon sequestration occurs because of biological activity. If biological activity were to significantly decline, per your scenario, carbon sequestration would also decline. Given that volcanoes aren't going away anytime soon, CO2 levels would start to climb. See where this is going? This is an example of what is called 'feedback'. All things being equal, it keeps a steady level of CO2. But what happens when all things aren't equal? In the geological record, we can see examples of that. One example would be those periods of heightened volcanic activity. More CO2 was poured into the atmosphere faster than the biological processes could sequester it. The results were spike in temperature and a wave of extinctions, up to 95% of species then extant. Ocean life tended to get hit exceptionally hard, especially those whose formed carbonate body structures. Seem that as ocean water absorbs CO2 it grows more acidic. And calcium carbonate dissolves in an acidic environment... That further compromises the sequestration of carbon. Eventually, land-based plants adapt to the elevated CO2 and the accompanying elevated temperatures and start to sequester carbon at an elevated rate. As long as the rate of CO2 being released into the atmosphere doesn't accelerate, the CO2 level starts to decline. As the oceanic pH starts to increase, new organisms that form calcium carbonate can evolve and kick in that leg of carbon sequestration. Of course, that takes time. On a human scale, a great deal of time.