The Carbon Cycle and Royal Society Math

[Chris_]

The Carbon Cycle and Royal Society Math
^{By Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser  Wednesday, October 13, 2010}

The recent “rebellion” by senior members of the Royal Society (RS) forced it to revise their guide “Climate change: a summary of the science”. The new guide, published on 30 September 2010, has a single paragraph under the heading The Carbon Cycle and Climate. In that, it says:

    â€œCurrent understanding indicates that even if there was a complete cessation of emissions of CO2 today from human activity, it would take several millennia for CO2 concentrations to return to preindustrial concentrations”

One can easily (on the back of an envelope) calculate the order of magnitude of the amounts of carbon currently present in the atmosphere, and those burned in the world, hence the amounts of CO2 produced (assuming complete combustion). The former leads to approximately 5x10^14 kg C present in the atmosphere (of course in the form of CO2). The latter computes to 0.4x10^13 kg C (as CO2) per annum from oil, 0.7x10^13 from coal [1], or 10^13 kg C from coal and oil together. Any additional amounts from the combustion of natural gas and biofuels, or from natural sources (volcanoes) are excluded [2].

On that basis, if there were no CO2 removal processes, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere should double every 15 years. But, in fact, over the last 100 years, at most it has increased by only 1/3, i.e. approximately from 300 to 400 ppm (parts per million in weight).

The much lower than expected increase (based on fossil fuel consumption) in the atmospheric CO2 can only be explained by a strong (natural) removal process.

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Canada Free Press

[RightCoast]

HA! I knew it!

[JohnnyReb]

I've been eating all the carbon based life forms I can....some of y'all are gonna have to pick up the slack.