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

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (753244)	11/17/2013 10:35:50 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578369

of course the carbon sinks have never given up all of their carbon. Argue with the poster I was responding to. That was his claim. Carbon sequestration is usually a combination of biological and geological processes. It is primarily driven by biological ones. The geological ones are only significant in the absence of significant biological activity. The mass extinction event at the end of the permian has never been tied to any cause. There were several causes. But, except for a possible collision event, all revolve around CO2 sooner or later. The C12/C13 ratio is strong evidence that there was a general clathrate destabilization, probably because of warming water due to rising CO2 emissions, resulting in a massive release of methane in a very short period of time. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, but gets oxidized to CO2 very quickly. The temporary sequestration of carbon in living organisms isn't meaningful to the climate. A plant grows, it gets eaten or dies and eventually releases its carbon. It's when the carbon is taken out of the life cycle that you care about. Though it all ends up back in the life cycle anyway. The calcium carbonate shells of the microscopic (and non-microscopic) organisms are eventually subducted and later released as CO2 from volcanoes. You are being disingenuous here. Those are not the only options for biological resources. Clathrates, which are almost certainly the result of bacterial activity, can lock up carbon for a very long time in oceans and permafrost. Likewise bogs can, and do, sequester carbon for extended periods of time and can eventually wind up as coal and oil. Carbonate can wind up in sedimentary rocks. True, eventually all of this might wind up deducted, but that can take billions of years. Likewise, the release of the carbon can occur in a variety of ways. The problem is, that doesn't necessarily occur at a steady rate. As noted, large amount of clathrates can be destabilized in a short period of time. The can be periods of much higher than normal vulcanism. Changing climate can cause bogs to dry out and oxidize. Or melt the permafrost making that methane and sequestered carbon available to the atmosphere. And so on. These events can also be related and have been implicated in the events that end an ice age. The point is that the sequestration tends to happen at a slow and steady rate. The reverse does not have to be.