For the Global Warming Prophets of Doom. Where did that Fossil Fuel CO2 originally come from?

Question

Seriously folks. If plants pulled the CO2 from Earths atmosphere at a time when life was thriving, exactly how catastrophic can putting it back actually be?

Answer 1

You're assuming that all life which has ever lived on Earth is equal.  Obviously that is an incorrect assumption.

When there was a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere, the planet was a lot hotter.  Species alive at that time (such as dinosaurs) were adapted to the hotter temperatures.  Species alive now are not.  To assume that we could survive in significantly hotter temperatures because dinosaurs could doesn't make much sense.

Answer 2

Global warming isn't coming from heat trapping gases although the emissions need to be reduced. The global warming argument about C02 causing the problem is flawed but global warming is very much man made.

The Co2 theory developed because we are looking for the cause of the environmental extremes that are happening around the world. All of the science professionals, administrators, politics, economists, meteorology, architects, engineers, planners, forestry, hydrology, environmental sciences, climate change, biologists, agriculture, doctors, etc all attend the best universities and colleges to get the required education to do their jobs. Ideally, we are the perfect compliment to each other and the country is able to provide sustainable economy without impacting future generations. That is why they call it sustainable. Everything we do on the surface of the planet cycles through our bodies so we want to be as natural as possible or it is toxic to us.

Natural in = Natural out

In the global warming argument we need to have a cause because if we are doing our jobs, something is causing global warming.

Did you know that academia is literally blind to building and development function on the surface of the planet? They are designed with seasonal temperature considerations that are completed in a calculator and never verified. Cities sign buildings off as compliant with building codes, sustainability is never verified. Building Codes include warnings of solar radiation impact on buildings being important in consideration.

We completed many years and seasons of using the most advanced thermal imaging applications in the world to verify building performance related to solar impact on absorbent building exteriors. The results contradicted my education in the calculator designing buildings and their energy consumption.

Go to the following link to see the effect of the same solar radiation and UV that burns our skin. Solar radiation is interacting with absorbent building exterior finishes and causing them to generate extreme heat the building isn't designed or insulated for. The research revealed we are reacting to the symptoms with air conditioning and wasted electricity generation that is so significant in California alone that they get knocked off the grid in the summer.

Air conditioning is a nice marketing name, it is really refrigeration that depletes the ozone and requires producing thousands of watts per hour per home. http://www.thermoguy.com/globalwarming-h... will display graphic temperature images showing solar impact.

Generating electricity requires burning coal and fossil fuels that generate emissions including mercury. Acid rain is a result of coal generated electricity. The point is we have 1 planet, 1 atmosphere, 1 water resource and all of these toxins end up in our bodies. Babies don't have the immune system to protect themselves.

Go to http://www.thermoguy.com and scroll down to the picture of the fetus. Click and the link will take you to a study on polluted newborns and the toxicity ratio was 100%. How does a baby that has never taken a breath get banned pesticides, mercury, incinerated garbage, fire retardent, Teflon, etc inside them?

It is fact that animals and humans have fertility problems, what happens when a species can't reproduce anymore?

The images at the link will make you ask why we are worried about heat trapping gases while we are developing heat close to boiling temperature on the surface of the planet with every new building?

Answer 3

You got it exactly right.  Fossil fuels were formed over a period of 100's of millions of years.  We are releasing this same amount of carbon over a period of hundreds of years.

Kind of like the difference between having one beer or chugging a gallon of pure ethanol.

How catastrophic could it be?

A new hypothesis posits that three of the five big extinctions weren’t caused by asteroids, they were caused by CO2. Cycles in plate tectonics cause periodic massive volcanism; CO2 hits 900ppm; the chemistry of the oceans change due to dissolved carbon dioxide; anaerobic bacteria take over from the deep and burp out planet killing masses of hydrogen sulfide. We’ve gone from 250 to 350ppm in 150 years.  1000ppm is at the far range of the IPCC projections.  Ocean chemistry is changing now; it is measurably more acidic due to increased dissolved carbon dioxide.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=impa...

Answer 4

Well, for one thing, most animals (yourself included) can't breath pure CO2.

The big problem with releasing CO2 now is that plant life is decreasing while CO2 production is increasing.  The rainforest is losing thousands of acres per year.  Every time a new building with adjacent parking lot is created, more plant life is taken out.  Furthermore, when a tree or other plant is killed, it releases the CO2 which it stores.

Add to that the growth in population and the fossil fuels that are burned to sustain it, and you have a net gain.

To what extent CO2 and global warming will affect has yet to be seen; only time will tell.  All the same, common sense will tell you that breathing in pollution is not good for anyone.  A radical reduction or elimination of pollution is necessary for public health.

Don't believe me?  Olympic athletes in Beijing are being urged to wear face masks to filter out the terrible air pollution in China.  Check out the website below.

Oh, and you're missing my point (or maybe consciously deciding to ignore it), so I'll write it again:  My main concern is about pollution in general, not specifically CO2.  I believe CO2 may be a problem, but again, time will tell.  But the pollution coming out of industry and transportation is a problem that will continue to grow.  Asthma rates continue to grow every year, especially for children in inner cities, where pollution is typically high.  Breathing in chemical waste is harmful, and something needs to be done sooner rather than later.

It's not clear from your silly question whether you are attacking the notion of global warming, or if you are just generally anti-environment, or if you just want to insult people.  If you doubt global warming, go ahead, but nit-picking other people's responses as rudely as you do doesn't make you look smart.  It makes you look like a serious loser who likes to condescend to other people to make himself feel important.

If you have something to say, explain your position, and I will listen; I might even learn something.  But if you're going to act that way, I don't even want to share words with you at all.

Answer 5

Wow.

I suggest you learn some of the basic science about the issue before asking why everyone else doesn't see something you believe is so obvious. Increasing co2 atmospheric levels all at once (in terms of geological time) would most likely be catastrophic. In prehistoric times, these changes happened over vast time spans where living things could evolve with the environmental changes slowly.

Answer 6

Do you have any idea what this planet was like when those plants were pulling out the CO2?

Very, very different than today my friend.

Answer 7

When there was CO2 as one of the primary gases, there was no animal life on earth, except maybe single celled types.  Until they put enough oxygen into the air, animals couldn't live out of the water.  If we return the CO2 to the air, besides the greenhouse effect, all land based animals would die.  That said, I doubt that the percentage would get that high, but the greenhouse effect might kill as much as 80% of us anyway.

Answer 8

The left's view is that if it is a greenhouse gas and man produces it, it must be bad.  I know I will get lots of down arrows because they don't like the truth.  If we tripled the CO2 levels, which isn't even remotely likely, then life would go on fine.  I can say this because it has happened in the past.  Some know enough to say that greenhouse gases result in increased warming but they don't seem to know enough to realize that there are many other factors, more important factors, that are driving climate.   CO2 hasn't been the driving factor in climate and there is no indication that it will be beyond their paranoia and apparent hatred of industry and mankind.  

While getting my geological engineering degree, I learned the theory that oil, and coal are fossil fuels as most people are familiar.  There are many holes in that particular theory.  Since then, I have learned a more compelling theory in my opinion.  That theory suggests that oil, high grade coal, natural gas, and methane hydrates are formed from the upwelling of originally acreted methane (much like that found on the moon Titan and in comets).  This theory requires that the outer portion of the earth was never molten and most geologist now accept the cold accretion theory of earth's formation.   Theoretically as the methane rises up in cracks, it encounteres a deep hot biosphere, (the name of a book by Thomas Gold who developed the theory).  The bottom line is that with this theory, most of the petroleum didn't form from CO2 that was in the atmosphere.  The CO2 was forming for billions of years from the degration of the hydrocarbons and it has formed carbonate rock formations that are thousands of feet thick all over the world.  So in this way, carbon has be sequestered continuously.  As the ocean warms, it gives off CO2 into the atmospere but also forms carbonate deposits.  For example, the Bermuda beaches are from sand that is chemically precipitated from a warming ocean.  In other words, there are natural buffers (things that keep it stable) for CO2 concentrations. Still there are other  factors such as warming cycles that result in variation of CO2 concentrations.  But I digress

Answer 9

Seriously?  The CO2 that is contained in the fossilized oil,came from a time on Earth when CO2 levels were much higher.  When it is burned,the excess CO2 is released.  The trouble comes from the fact that this excess CO2 is being released MUCH faster than the CO2 absorbing properties of the planet can deal with it. As a result, the infra-red radiation that strikes the Earth,gets trapped by the "greenhouse" effect of the CO2.  The more CO2, the more climate change.   Weather is powered by heat.  Increase that heat, and the weather increases!  As the ice caps melt away, it changes the path of the jet stream. That increases the severity of storms.  

The ever widening parameters of weather records are a clear sign that climate change is happening!

How much rain is too much?  How deep of a flood is too deep?   How will food crops continue to grow properly if weather gets too unstable?  

We only have this one little wet rock, spinning through space, lets not s***w it up!

Answer 10

If you understood the greenhouse effect and the affect it has on temperatures, you wouldn't have to ask.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library...

Answer 11

I don't know any prophets of doom, but I can answer your question.

The original atmosphere in of the earth was unbreatheable, and the earth was about as hot as Venus.  All of the water that is now in the oceans and icecaps was in the atmosphere as water vapor.  ALL OF IT!  All of the CO2 that had been produced by volcanoes was also in the atmosphere.  There was no life.  Rain would fall, and evaporate before it hit the ground.  There was a lot of lightning.  This went on for tens of thousands of years.  

At some point the earth's mantle cooled enough that liquid water would not evaporate when it hit the ground.  It rained, and it rained, and it rained, for hundreds, probably thousands of years.  All of the oceans formed during this period.  That's a good example of a tipping point.

With the Greenhouse Gas of water vapor mostly out of the atmosphere, the earth cooled again, more rapidly probably for a few hundred years.  What was left was CO2, Methane, ammonia, and sulfur compounds like sulphur dioxide and sulphuric acid.  Things stayed this way for quite a while, probably around a billion years.

The origins of life are debated, and not fully understood, for obvious reasons.  It's agreed that simple organic (carbon based) molecules were necessary precursors for life.  When I was young it was thought that these had to form spontaneously in tidepools, etc.  Both Methane and CO2 are soluable in water.  There was no obvious mechanism so it was theorized that it would take a very long time to occur randomly.  In fact, life is believed to have arisen fairly suddenly in similar fashion in widely separated areas all over the planet.  Spectroscopic astronomy after WWII gave what is probably the explanation.  Organic compounds were not rare unlikely molecules that would take a long time to form.  They are found everywhere we have looked, on other planets, in meteors, comets, even intergalactic space.  We know that thousands of the comet/meteor type strike earth every day, and lots more back then.  There would have been plenty of them in the early oceans.

We know that if you put organic molecules in a chemical bath with the same ingredients as the early ocean, amino acids form fairly quickly.  We also know these will assemble into simple RNA, especially with catalysis of electrical discharges, which would have been abundant.

Given time and a supply of assorted amino acids, RNA can form DNA and similar proto-life compounds.  I think it can be said with good confidence that they could lead to the "quasi-living" forms we find in fossils, similar to viruses, but smaller.  From there you'd have a natural transition to larger organsims similar to a virus or bacterium, then to cell colonies.  However it happened, at about the 1/2 way point of the history of life on earth we reached the level of the single celled green plant.  They remained the dominant for of life on earth for millions of years, and began the work of removing the CO2 from the air, one molecule at a time.  

If you had it in school you know that the process (photosynthesis) is very energy intensive, and not real efficient, and not real fast.  One electron = two photons, so as photons arrive at the plant and degrade to electrons (Einstein's photoelectric principle) the electrons then move in a "cascade" fashion through a chain of reactions, adding the electrons to the outer shells of a compound to create new compounds until you have a hydrocarbon, usually a sugar.  It's sort of like a conveyor belt and stops if the energy input is interrupted.  Oxygen is released during one phase of the process.  This had to have gone on for many millions of years before anything else changed.

As this took place, the sky slowly began to clear.  The acidity of the oceans would have dropped.  The temperature of the planet fell again, as some sunlight began reflecting back into space.  Once things reached this state, animal life probably evolved fairly quickly.  With the oxygen and abundant high energy hydrocarbon fuel provided by the plants, and no competitors, animal life would have evolved rapidly, to single celled protozoa, paramaecium, etc, to cell colonies like jellyfish, to vertebrates.

When the oceans began to get crowded, both plants and animals expanded onto the land.  The original oxygen level was probably higher than today (since animals evolved later).  When tiny mollusks and other creatures with shells or skeletons made of calcium carbonate evolved they converted the CO2 to a stable solid that remained as ocean bottom and eventually land for billions of years.  The White Cliffs of Dover are an example.

So when you say " If plants pulled the CO2 from Earths atmosphere at a time when life was thriving, exactly how catastrophic can putting it back actually be?"  you would be talking about taking things back to as they were immediately after the single celled plant evolved, and before the animal life evolved.  (the animal life isn't possible until after the events I listed).  So how catastrophic?  You can judge as well as I.  Some would say it would be doing the earth a favor.  Myself, I'd prefer that it not happen.

I can't imagine in what possible way you might delude yourself into thinking I am missing your point. My point is that doing what you suggest would kill off everything back to the level of single celled plants.  To me, that would be a bad thing.  Or have I missed something?  If you think the CO2 was removed from the atmosphere during the Carboniferous Era, you're just ignorant.  Sure there was CO2 being removed then, and every minute of every day since.  The period of time when the CO2 was removed to the point the atmosphere became breathable was much much earlier.

Answer 12

From the air.  BUT....

The natural carbon cycle pulled it from the air over MANY thousands of years.  We're putting back in a couple of hundred years.  That will be catastrophic, if we do nothing about it.

Look at this graph.

http://gaw.kishou.go.jp/cgi-bin/wdcgg/qu...

The little squiggles are nature doing its' thing. CO2 falls a bit during summer when plants are active, and rises during the winter. The huge increase is us, burning fossil fuels. The scientists can actually show that the increased CO2 in the air comes from burning fossil fuels by using "isotopic ratios" to identify that CO2.  The natural carbon cycle buried carbon in fossil fuels over a very long time, little bit by little bit. We dig them up and burn them, real fast.  That's a problem.

Man is upsetting the balance of nature.  We need to fix that.

Answer 13

the atmosphere. but putting it back up there is not such a good idea. last time that happened there was a mass extinction. i don't think we want to experience one up close.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-E...