The circle of life.

[Insurrectionist]

Remember that in photosynthesis:

CO2 +H2O + energy from sun ==> O2 + sugar
Both plants and animals undergo respiration in which

Sugar + O2 ==> CO2 +H20 + energy
In addition, when plants and animals die, the dead organisms decay and give off CO2.

As living organisms undergo respiration (the metabolism of sugars to produce energy for basic metabolic needs), or as organisms die and decompose, the carbon compounds are broken down and add CO2 to the atmosphere. The CO2 is used by plants in the photosynthesis reaction, and the cycle keeps going.

[Grendel]

Remember that in photosynthesis:

CO2 +H2O + energy from sun ==> O2 + sugar
Both plants and animals undergo respiration in which

Sugar + O2 ==> CO2 +H20 + energy
In addition, when plants and animals die, the dead organisms decay and give off CO2.

As living organisms undergo respiration (the metabolism of sugars to produce energy for basic metabolic needs), or as organisms die and decompose, the carbon compounds are broken down and add CO2 to the atmosphere. The CO2 is used by plants in the photosynthesis reaction, and the cycle keeps going.

Yes. And your point is ?

[Pandora]

I guess its another one of these attempts to argue that CO2 is harmless, all a natural cycle, no need to worry, blabla...

edit: by the way, this is where the post is from, almost verbatim. You should really learn to credit your sources.

[Insurrectionist]

Good thing this isn't common knowledge or something you could find in a high school biology book. You will not find in any biology book that all life on earth is base on carbon. How about that carbon is the 4th most common element by mass in the universe. Good thing that can't be found in a high school chemistry book. Good thing you can't find that the human body depends upon four major elements for form and function: Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, and Nitrogen in any book Yep good thing they don't hand info out like that in high school or people would begin to wonder about things like global warming.

[Octopus]

hahahahah. Nice Pandora

[Sergeant Thorne]

Global environment is such a big and complex subject, I think, that the majority of people can't really know for themselves one way or the other, scientifically. So for the most part I judge the subject by the character of the people involved, and I find it very damning for the proponents.

I believe that global warming, or it's presented solutions at least, if they can truly be separated, is/are tied to a character flaw that causes a person to believe that they personally can improve upon people's lives--that they have the answers, and always without the experience truly needed to get those answers.

[Will Robinson]

So basically humans can neither live nor die without producing CO2 unless we stop breathing but keep living to avoid the decomposing scenario.
I suggest all those most concerned with anthropogenic warming go first....1...2...3...HOLD YOUR BREATH!
Now don't breath again or I'll send Al Gore over in his private jet to give you a stern talking to!

[Pandora]

Good thing this isn't common knowledge or something you could find in a high school biology book. You will not find in any biology book that all life on earth is base on carbon. How about that carbon is the 4th most common element by mass in the universe. Good thing that can't be found in a high school chemistry book. Good thing you can't find that the human body depends upon four major elements for form and function: Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, and Nitrogen in any book Yep good thing they don't hand info out like that in high school or people would begin to wonder about things like global warming.

You're seriously telling me that in the U.S. photosynthesis is not part of the high school textbooks? You must be kidding me.

By the way, here is what your source also says (is this why you didn't provide a link?)

No one would argue the fact that carbon dioxide is a necessary component of the atmosphere any more than one would argue the fact that Vitamin D is necessary in the human diet. However, excess Vitamin D in the diet can be extremely toxic (6). Living systems, be they an ecosystem or an organism, require that a delicate balance be maintained between certain elements and/or compounds in order for the system to function normally. When one substance is present in excess and as a result threatens the wellbeing of an ecosystem, it becomes toxic, and could be considered to be a pollutant, despite the fact that it is required in small quantities.

[Pandora]

Here's another thing you cut out from your link. It would have sat right between \"...the dead organisms decay and give off CO2.\" and \"As living organisms undergo...\" in your original post.

According to BBC Weather (2), the present amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere every year by plants is almost perfectly balanced by amount of carbon dioxide put back into the atmosphere by respiration and decay.

Good thing you don't hand out info like this or people would begin wonder why CO2 concentrations have risen by 20% since the 60ies and why the \"perfect balance\" has been broken.

We don't have enough plants to photosynthesize away all the CO2 we are producing.

[Grendel]

Good thing this isn't common knowledge or something you could find in a high school biology book. You will not find in any biology book that all life on earth is base on carbon. How about that carbon is the 4th most common element by mass in the universe. Good thing that can't be found in a high school chemistry book. Good thing you can't find that the human body depends upon four major elements for form and function: Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, and Nitrogen in any book Yep good thing they don't hand info out like that in high school or people would begin to wonder about things like global warming.

Still not making a point. Trying to stir up a stink ? Or just trying to look stupid ? What's that about carbon now, you started w/ CO2. Just because something contains carbon doesn't mean it's harmless -- CO2 is toxic to humans, CO even more so. Photosynthesis & the role of carbon in life not common knowledge, right. Maybe for some home schooled people.

Some excerpts from here:

Carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere by a variety of natural sources, and over 95% of total CO2 emissions would occur even if humans were not present on Earth. For example, the natural decay of organic material in forests and grasslands, such as dead trees, results in the release of about 220 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide every year. This carbon dioxide alone is over 8 times the amount emitted by humans. Although natural sources represent most CO2 emissions, they do not contribute to the recent observed increase in concentrations because natural sources are balanced by natural sinks that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The increase in carbon dioxide concentration arises because the increase from human activity is not completely balanced by a corresponding sink.
...
During the 100,000 year ice age cycle, CO2 varies between a low of approximately 200 ppm during cold periods and a high of 280 ppm during interglacials. Recent human influences have increased this to above 380 ppm. There is a large natural flux of CO2 into and out of the biosphere and oceans. In the pre-industrial era these fluxes were largely in balance. Currently about 57% of human-emitted CO2 is removed by the biosphere and oceans; without this effect CO2 levels would be even higher.

[Insurrectionist]

Or just trying to look stupid ?

You got me I stupid.

You're seriously telling me that in the U.S. photosynthesis is not part of the high school textbooks? You must be kidding me.

Yes I was kidding you.

Seem like the debate isn't over after all. Maybe instead of taxing us for exhaling they should just plant trees. Natures air scrubbers.

I love the line

95% of total CO2 emissions would occur even if humans were not present on Earth.

[Grendel]

Or just trying to look stupid ?

You got me I stupid.

If you say so. DNFTT for the future it'll be.

[Spidey]

\"An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community\"

Welp…that covers just about all of us…

[flip]

LOL

[Insurrectionist]

[woodchip]

Some excerpts from here:

Carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere by a variety of natural sources, and over 95% of total CO2 emissions would occur even if humans were not present on Earth. For example, the natural decay of organic material in forests and grasslands, such as dead trees, results in the release of about 220 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide every year. This carbon dioxide alone is over 8 times the amount emitted by humans. Although natural sources represent most CO2 emissions, they do not contribute to the recent observed increase in concentrations because natural sources are balanced by natural sinks that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The increase in carbon dioxide concentration arises because the increase from human activity is not completely balanced by a corresponding sink.
...
During the 100,000 year ice age cycle, CO2 varies between a low of approximately 200 ppm during cold periods and a high of 280 ppm during interglacials. Recent human influences have increased this to above 380 ppm. There is a large natural flux of CO2 into and out of the biosphere and oceans. In the pre-industrial era these fluxes were largely in balance. Currently about 57% of human-emitted CO2 is removed by the biosphere and oceans; without this effect CO2 levels would be even higher.

I read the same article Grendel and they make a very good case about preserving tropical forests by trying to show how the vegetation pumps water back into the atmosphere. Without which there will be a significant loss in water in rivers to maintain hydroelectric power and rain for crops.

Also:
"A new study shows that air pollution -- leading the sky to become hazier and smoggy --have caused plants (to) soak up carbon dioxide more efficiently that under a pristine atmosphere."
"If pollution control measures continue to increase atmospheric clarity, the boost in natural carbon sequestration provided by diffuse radiation will abate to near zero by the year 2100, the researchers note."
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009- ... 244848.htm

So now we have a interesting argument against keeping our air too clean.

[Sergeant Thorne]

So now we have a interesting argument against keeping our air too clean.

That wouldn't surprise me one bit.

[Grendel]

There are a gazillion theories about what is and isn't going to happen in the future. My take on the whole thing is:

CO2 levels increased over the last 200 years from 280ppmv to 380ppmv. This is directly linkable to the global fossil carbon emissions from the same time period (humans digging up fuel and converting it to CO2 w/o a sink.) \"It is currently the predominant scientific opinion that carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of global warming observed since the mid-20th century,\" I see no reason not to believe it. Since we don't exactly know what the side effects off this will be, trying to keep the status quo or even reducing CO2 seems like a good idea to me (esp. since most of the predictions are on the ugly side.) All I can really do is to keep my \"carbon footprint\" as small as possible by only using the car when necessary and being conscious about what I buy. And by voting for representatives that promise to keep an eye on environmental protection of course. I don't want to spent my last hours in a hostile environment if I can help it.

[ccb056]

There may be more CO2 in the atmosphere now than there was 200 years ago. So what?

[CUDA]

there are also fewer trees

[Sergeant Thorne]

I'm really interested in trees. Here's an exerpt from a book I've been using: 101 Trees of Indiana, A Field Guide by Marion T. Jackson (copyright 2003)

During presettlement years (prior to 1800), of the 23,227,000 acres which now constitute Indiana, about 20 million acres (87%) were originally forested. The remaining portion was prarie, wetlands, water, and other non-forested vegetation types (Petty Jackson, 1966).
About half of the state was covered by forests dominated by American beech and Sugar-maple; nearly 30% by some combination of several oak and hickory species; with more than 7% of a more mixed forest of Appalachian origin (western mesophytic) (Lindsey et all., 1965).
In the words of Bramble and Miller (1966),

As seen by early French explorers, the great forests which sprawled from the lower tip of Lake Michigan, far southward to the Ohio River, were a magnificent yet forbidding wilderness of giant hardwoods.... Forty-two species of the hardwoods in the Wabash Valley were reported to reach a height of one hundred fifty feet or more.... With the exception of local concentrations of coniferous trees, plus the more extensive praries and sloughs of the north, scattered meadows and Indian clearings along the Wabash, the great hardwoods dominated and overwhelmed as far as the eye could reach.... As isolated settlements sprang up, the great trees began to fall. Hundreds were felled, rolled into the closest ravine and burned, to make room for the plow.

By 1917, the state's forested land had shrunk to 1,660,000 acres (slightly more than 7% of the total area), causing the State Forester Charles C. Deam to predict in 1922 that the state would be treeless in 15 years. Fortunately, Deam was wrong at least once! Today, about 4,500,000 acres of Indiana are forested, or nearly 20%. Since the 1960s, Indiana's forests have shown a yearly net increase in acreage, an encouraging trend that hopefully will continue. Presently, private landowners own about three-quarters of the forestland in the state (in some 100,000 tracts, most of them relatively small), with the remaining quarter about evenly divided among federal, state, and corporate ownership.

So, to re-cap, that's:
87% prior to 1800
7% by 1917
20% and rising by 2003

Interesting, eh?

[Insurrectionist]

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Again people are trying to hide the real problem by Carbon capture and storage. By pumping CO2 under ground or trying to come up with a way to store it.

Some carbon dioxide capture and storage projects are trying to use trees, plankton, etc. to capture CO2 which I think is a better idea instead of pumping it into an oil well.

How many here planted a tree on april 24th?

The only real problem with the whole global warming thing I have is, the ones who are making the money off of it. I mean come on it's ok to have a manson that gobbles more electric in a day then I do all year and then to say it's ok I bought carbon credits from myself you should buy some too.

[Pandora]

planting trees may seem like an easy fix, but - sadly - the reality is more complicated.

1. Trees take up excess CO2 only when all the other nutrients and water are available in abundance.

In two forest experiments on maturing pines exposed to elevated atmospheric CO2, the CO2-induced biomass carbon increment without added nutrients was undetectable at a nutritionally poor site, and the stimulation at a nutritionally moderate site was transient, stabilising at a marginal gain after three years.

2. Trees also have a warming effect because they darken the earth surface, allowing more sunlight to be trapped in the athmosphere. Planting trees therefore leads to cooling only in the tropics:

Apparently, these natural carbon sinks only do their job effectively in tropical regions; in other areas, they have either no impact or actually contribute to warming the planet.

3. We don't have enough space for all the trees we would need to get rid of our CO2:

The team found that the trees in the 2050 atmosphere converted more carbon dioxide into plant matter, locking up 27 per cent more carbon than at control sites. However, even if this extra growth occurs in existing temperate forests all over the world in 2050, the trees will only absorb 10 per cent of human-generated CO2,\" says Schlesinger.

4. Finally, when the trees die and rot they release all the CO2 that they have stored so far.

[Pandora]

There may be more CO2 in the atmosphere now than there was 200 years ago. So what?

There is more CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time in the last 650.000 years.

edit: here is a pretty graph:

[Duper]

errrk! wrong.

Data compiled incorrectly. Been here, done this, not explaining again.

[Insurrectionist]

So back when the earth was covered in forest the earth was warmer than now? Lets leave out the fact that dead trees makes soil and nutrients from the decaying husk it leaves behind.

[Pandora]

Data compiled incorrectly. Been here, done this, not explaining again.

Then provide a link (either to your previous explanation or somewhere else. Would love to see something like this. There are some (nutty) arguments against the temperature record but I have yet to see anyone challenge the CO2 record.

[Pandora]

So back when the earth was covered in forest the earth was warmer than now?

Who said that?

[ccb056]

There may be more CO2 in the atmosphere now than there was 200 years ago. So what?

[Insurrectionist]

2. Trees also have a warming effect because they darken the earth surface, allowing more sunlight to be trapped in the athmosphere.

Just following the logic that trees have a warming effect.

[flip]

There's also strong scientific evidence that points to increased or decreased sunspot activity having the most effect on warming and cooling.

[Sergeant Thorne]

3. We don't have enough space for all the trees we would need to get rid of our CO2:

The team found that the trees in the 2050 atmosphere converted more carbon dioxide into plant matter, locking up 27 per cent more carbon than at control sites. However, even if this extra growth occurs in existing temperate forests all over the world in 2050, the trees will only absorb 10 per cent of human-generated CO2," says Schlesinger.

Trees are only one of the ways that CO2 is put to productive use in this world. What about other greenery, and what about oceanic flora?

4. Finally, when the trees die and rot they release all the CO2 that they have stored so far.

Which means what? Do you have any notion how much is that compared to the amount they deal with over the course of their lives?

I'm afraid these points are terribly incomplete.

[Spidey]

Good points Thorne…

Arguing against planting trees is like arguing against windmills, because they only help X amount.

[Grendel]

There's also strong scientific evidence that points to increased or decreased sunspot activity having the most effect on warming and cooling.

Not really.

[woodchip]

There's also strong scientific evidence that points to increased or decreased sunspot activity having the most effect on warming and cooling.

Not really.

Grendel, you may want to look at my link and see what a number of actual scientists found out about mean average global temps. there seems to be a bit of variation yet the averages show just prior to 2000 the temps had peaked and were coming down. No correlation to sunspot activity tho:

http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW/ ... ryInfo.pdf

[Grendel]

Grendel, you may want to look at my link and see what a number of actual scientists found out about mean average global temps. there seems to be a bit of variation yet the averages show just prior to 2000 the temps had peaked and were coming down. No correlation to sunspot activity tho:

http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW/ ... ryInfo.pdf

Good read, I would suggest to take a look at something a bit easier to digest tho

The series ends with a downtick because the last set of points are averages that include the cool decades of the 1960s and 1970s.
...
The improved plot [..] shows little change from the graph above, although for data reasons, the last point now represents the 29-year average temperature centered on 1935.
...
[Loehle and McCulloch] found evidence that temperature variations over the past 2,000 years indicate that the earth’s average temperature bounces around naturally to a larger degree than other paleo-reconstructions indicate, and further, that temperatures about 1,000 years ago were not that dissimilar to today’s temperatures.

Haven't checked for peer reviews yet, something to keep in mind.

I'm not too worried above the past climate (*), I'm worried about the future -- that's where the human influence becomes bigger and bigger. Since we are in a relative comfy zone right now it seems reasonable trying to keep it there.

(*) Interestingly the most pronounced past climate events are ice ages. Now that's something that really would mess things up.

[Pandora]

Grendel, you may want to look at my link and see what a number of actual scientists found out about mean average global temps. there seems to be a bit of variation yet the averages show just prior to 2000 the temps had peaked and were coming down. No correlation to sunspot activity tho:

Hogwash.

Loehle's proxies ended in the 1970 to 90ies (most of them much earlier), so his data do not allow any conclusions about whether temperature has peaked "just prior to 2000". Of course, we also know from the actual instrumental record that they had NOT peaked, but continued to rise quite a bit. So even if you use Loehle's flawed paper (admitted by himself and now partially corrected) you'll find that temperatures now are much higher than even at the warmest points (e.g. medieval warming perior) in Loehle's reconstruction.

[flip]

But the jury is still out on how much sunspots can (or do) affect the Earth's climate. Times of maximum sunspot activity are associated with a very slight increase in the energy output from the sun. Ultraviolet radiation increases dramatically during high sunspot activity, which can have a large effect on the Earth's atmosphere. From the mid 1600s to early 1700s, a period of very low sunspot activity (known as the Maunder Minimum) coincided with a number of long winters and severe cold temperatures in Western Europe, called the Little Ice Age. It is not known whether the two phenomena are linked or if it was just coincidence. The reason it is hard to relate maximum and minimum solar activity (sunspots) to the Earth's climate, is due to the complexity of the Earth's climate itself. For example, how does one sort out whether a long-term weather change was caused by sunspots, or maybe a coinciding El Nino or La Nina? Increased volcanic eruptions can also affect the Earth's climate by cooling the planet. And what about the burning of fossil fuels and clear cutting rain forests? One thing is more certain, sunspot cycles have been correlated in the width of tree ring growth. More study will be conducted in the future on relating sunspot activity and our Earth's climate.

Heres my point. Not that it's really a complicated matter to me seeing as we get our heat from the Sun, I would think it's thermostat would have a lot to do with our temperatures here. Asides from that one personal opinion, no one else has conclusively shown anything one way or the other. I do know the Sun is hot though

[Pandora]

Flip, nobody is denying the influence of the sun. We know, for instance, that differences in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth explains past temperature variations very well, through all the known temperature record reaching back many 1000s of years. However, the warming we have since the 1950ies goes way beyond any influence that we would expect from the sun ALONE. Variations in the sun can therefore not explain the recent warming. There needs to be another influence.

[flip]

Right I agree. I only mean to suggest that there are 1000's of possible influences.