Climate Change update

One area where I spend the most reading time is Climate Change. If you have read my prior posts on this topic, you know I haven't been fully convinced we (the world) have a real handle on the issue.

An area I recently needed to better understand was CO2 in the atmosphere. We generally hear pundits, scientists etc. all point to the idea that CO2 is put into the atmosphere where it resides for hundreds of years. Every day we compound this problem with another car, cow or human.

But that isn't really true. CO2 is a natural part of our global system of air, water, land, plants and animals. We are carbon based life forms. So in reality, carbon is a big system cycling from air to land or water etc every day. Limestone is the result of carbon trapped in sediment and shells. Trees are 50% carbon. Water dissolves carbon, even in the air, so rain washes carbon from the atmosphere.

So what's all the fuss about? We humans take a lot of long-term carbon like trees, oil, coal, natural gas and we burn them. Taking hundreds to millions of years of stored carbon and releasing it into the air to start the cycle over. Another example is making cement, it takes limestone and heats it releasing lots of carbon stored millions of years ago.

So what we (you and I) do is take long term carbon and turn it into very short term carbon in our atmosphere. There it blocks the sun's earth-reflected radiation from escaping back into space.

But it is rained out, deposited into the water and onto the land as part of the natural cycle. So, the good news is it isn't up there forever, the bad news is, the earth can't deal with it all as quickly as we can make it.

Bottom Line 1 - Atmospheric CO2 is part of a natural cycle. Some of that cycle is long term, and some is short. What's at issue is that we take too much long term CO2 and turn too much of it into short term (atmospheric) CO2.

One has to remember that our earth is a closed system. The only things that leave or enter our environment is solar radiation and the odd meteor. We, including Mother Nature, don't create any matter or elements, we just convert them. The amount of CO2 is fixed, the only question is the form it takes.

Bottom Line #2 - The older the carbon is and the longer it takes to make it into a given form, (oil is old) the more we are artificially changing the CO2 cycle.