Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The world has a CO2 problem – there is not enough free CO2 in the atmosphere, to maximise food production, alleviate world hunger, green deserts, and to attempt to hold off the next ice age. But if my calculation is correct, raising CO2 to a safer level would be surprisingly affordable.
Although a lot of nonsense has been written about CO2 harming plant growth, the reality is commercial greenhouse growers maintain elevated CO2 levels of around 1000ppm, because one of the most effective means of promoting plant growth is to make sure plants get enough CO2 – enough being defined as a significantly higher concentration than is currently available in the atmosphere.
The world is also almost certainly teetering on the brink of the next glaciation. I’m not suggesting it will start tomorrow, but interglacials, of the kind we are currently experiencing, typically only last 10-15,000 years. We are well past the Holocene Climatic Optimum, the peak of our current interglacial. Without serious anthropogenic intervention, it is all downhill from here. There is no guarantee raising CO2 will prevent or mitigate the slide into the next glaciation period, but given the catastrophic consequences the coming ice age will have on human civilisation, it has to be worth a try.
How much energy would be required to raise atmospheric CO2 to 1000ppm?
According to Wikipedia, cooking a kilogram of Limestone in a regenerative kiln takes around 3.6MJ / Kg.
Calcium has an atomic weight of 40, Carbon has an atomic weight of 12, Oxygen has a molecular weight of 16. Burning Limestone produces Calcium Oxide (Quicklime) and Carbon Dioxide.
CaCO3 + heat => CaO + CO2.
So burning 1Kg of Limestone releases:
(12 + 16 + 16) / (40 + 12 + 16 + 16 + 16) * 1Kg = 0.44Kg of CO2.
The atmosphere, at 400ppm of CO2, contains 400ppm x 2.3Gt / ppm = 920Gt of CO2.
To raise CO2 to 1000ppm, we need another 600ppm * 2.3Gt / ppm = 1380Gt of CO2.
This will require burning 1380Gt / 0.44Kg CO2 per Kg Limestone = 3136Gt of limestone.
This would require the expenditure of 3.6MJ / Kg * 3136Gt or limestone = 1.1289 x 10^19 joules of energy.
The total global energy budget is 3.89 x 10^20 joules per annum, so if the energy expenditure was spread out across say a decade, we’re talking about 1.1289 x 10^19 / 3.89 x 10^20 = 0.3% of global energy expenditure.
At around $30 / MWh (source Wikipedia), or $30 per 1,000,000 x 3600 joules = 3.6×10^9 joules, the total cost would be:
1.1289 x 10^19 / 3.6 x 10^9 * $30 = around $100 billion dollars.
Obviously there are additional costs for building the kilns and mining the limestone, but even if these additional costs drive the price up to $300 billion, the return on investment would be tremendous – slightly milder winters and substantially improved farm productivity on a global scale. Spread over 10 years, a cost of $300 billion is $30 billion per year – a lot of money, but in the context of previous vast expenditures such as President Obama’s Trillion dollar Stimulus Package, $300 billion would be affordable, for all the good it would deliver.
In addition, I haven’t considered that a lot of the heat for cooking limestone would likely be delivered using fossil fuel – so the amount of limestone which would have to be cooked to achieve this goal would likely be less than the amount indicated by the calculation.
One final issue would be what to do with the approx. 1500Gt of Quicklime which would be produced by burning the limestone. The obvious solution would be to dump it into the ocean, where as Calcium Hydroxide it could counter any ocean acidification caused by the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels, and would hopefully not promote rapid re-absorption of the released CO2.
Update (EW) – h/t daveburton, Leonard Weinstein – unfortunately my calculation was way off, so this scheme is currently impractical. However in a hundred years, let alone a millennium, mankind’s engineering capability will be far greater than we currently enjoy (think Wright Brothers to Apollo Moon Landing). Engineering projects such as this one should become feasible well before our civilisation is endangered by the coming glaciation.
Update 2 (EW) – higley7 and Miso Alkalaj pointed out that rapid ocean absorption of the released CO2 would make it difficult to maintain the desired atmospheric concentration.
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Now that would take a u-turn in govt policy.
Not really…just more of the same old…same old
Funnel more of our money to China…through Wall Street….China will build even more….and use even more cement
…they are a “developing” country so it’s ok
problem solved
Poor Alarmists, this will make them wet their pants.
Right after their heads explode.
Maybe it would be more economical to use acids, like HCl. Since Chlorine is an inevitable side product of NaOH manufacture, you could transfer it into HCl and together with CaCO3 that would produce CO2 and CaCl2. The latter could also be dumped in the oceans or partly used as frost protection for streets.
What about solar furnaces? Could they get hot enough?
I like that better than using fossil fuels that we will want in the future.
Solar furnaces have already been invented to cook limestone. Our future is secure.
Hard on passing birds, but not hard technologically.
Cooking CaCO3 would produce CO2 and CaO, which in water is Ca(OH)2, a weak base. Your plan would produce enormous quantities of NaOH, one of the strongest bases, which could NOT be dumped into the oceans. The CaCl2 is fine, just as the Ca(OH)2 would be. What to do with NaOH?
Lutefisk?
Hi Higley7
Thanks for you your comment but you have misunderstood my suggestion:
Our chemical industries need huge amounts of NaOH anyhow for a lot of technical uses. Today we have the problem that the dangerous byproduct Chlorine must be used for something because it is out of the question to release this corrosive gas into the environment. At the moment, Chlorine is used in the production of PVC and HCl, and the latter is also needed in great quantities for the chemical industry. But the use of PVC is waning, so we need new rational uses for the excess Chlorine and I suggest taking just this excess to transfer it into HCl and let it react with CaCO3 for the welcome CO2 liberation. The byproduct CaCl2 would be rather unproblematic in the oceans and one could dump it in down welling sea-water like e.g. the Northern Atlantic gulf stream region where it could enhance the salinity of the arctic melt water, which would be a nice side effect BTW.
PS: Ca(OH)2 is not really a weak base, because its base is actually the Hydroxide ion which is the same as in NaOH. Ca(OH)2 is merely not so well soluable than NaOH but this difference means nothing because of the great dilution in the oceans…
Typo correction in PS: “soluble” …
We could dump the NAOH into the mid ocean where nothing lives.
It would disassociate into NA+ and OH- and the change in the NA+ content of the ocean would be insignificant.
Plus it would help stop ocean acidification. The real solution to ocean acidification is to dump strong bases in the mid-ocean until the warmunists quit complaining about ocean acidification.
Castile soap
Hi PA
NaOH is a very useful substance for many industrial and technical applications. So there is no need to dump it into the oceans…
Anyway, we have not to expect an ocean “acidification” by a higher CO2 content in the atmosphere that would be really dangerous for most sorts of aquatic life. Marine life did quite well with much higher CO2 concentrations than today e.g. in the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods.
BTW: The symbol for Sodium is Na and not NA. This correction could be judged as hair-splitting, but writing the second letter in element symbols large is a widespread mistake, which can produce a totally wrong meaning. (Not in the example of Na but CO and Co or SN and Sn are quite different things.)
OOPS!
Messed up the blockquote. This is what should have been in it instead of my comment.
You’re off a decimal point. It’s 3% of global energy budget over 10 years.
not really, he just forgot to include ‘divide by 10’ to account for spreading it out over a decade
Surely not a good idea? The extra CO2 in the atmosphere will cause the earth’s orbit to wobble out of control and crash into the sun! We might even brush past Venus on the way and get an extra dose of deadly CO2 making it even worse. I read this in the Guardian and it has shaken me up quite a bit.
All the material involved is coming from the Earth so the Earth’s mass does not change.
sar·casm
/ˈsärˌkazəm/
noun, the use of irony to mock or convey contempt.
Jimmy Edwards – always one of my favourite comedians.
SteveT
CO2 doesn’t produce any heat nor does it prevent heat escaping the atmosphere.
Yes, based on what we’ve seen so far, raising CO2 to 1000ppm will give us bupkus degrees F! Or 0C.
But that wasn’t the point!
Exactly, the point was to produce more CO2 so plants can grow more and faster.
..but without undue side effects, such as raising the earth’s temperature.
For quite some time I’ve suggested that in the future nations will realize we need fossil fuel production to keep atmospheric CO2 levels high to support global foodstuff production, which is just the opposite of their current inane policy.
I had to look at a calendar to make sure this was not April 1st (all fools day) but no – it is not.
1
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v510/n7503/full/nature13179.html
Dietary deficiencies of zinc and iron are a substantial global public health problem. An estimated two billion people suffer these deficiencies1, causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually2, 3. Most of these people depend on C3 grains and legumes as their primary dietary source of zinc and iron. Here we report that C3 grains and legumes have lower concentrations of zinc and iron when grown under field conditions at the elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration predicted for the middle of this century. C3 crops other than legumes also have lower concentrations of protein, whereas C4 crops seem to be less affected. Differences between cultivars of a single crop suggest that breeding for decreased sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 concentration could partly address these new challenges to global health.
So you have to eat 10% more to get the same nutriton. How is that bad. You are talking about a tablespoon of beans more per serving. Since there will be so much extra food I don’t see the downside.
Most likely our poop will become a little less “rich”. Most people already eat more than they need.
Went to your link. Something is not right. The claim is that they are growing these crops under “field conditions” yet somehow raising the amount of CO2 they receive. To my knowledge “field conditions” would be open fields. Somehow they are controlling the amount of CO2 in open fields?
Something is definitely wrong with their experiment as presented — and undoubtedly also with their conclusions.
Eugene WR Gallun
And as another thought. Since it seems improbable that these crops were grown under REAL “field conditions” but were instead in some type of enclosure — the question has to be asked — under the exact same conditions except with lower CO2 did they grow a crop for comparison with their higher CO2 crop. Or did they just take figures from crops that were actually grown in open fields? If not then how can ignore that it might be the experimental conditions and not the CO2 that is causing lower levels of zinc and iron. They can’t. Therefore their experiment is worthless.
Eugene WR Gallun
As I recall seeing a FACE (Free Atmosphere CO2 Experiments) a section of an open field was surrounded by CO2 emitters coming from pipes so that the crops within the circle could be subject to the desired level of CO2. I thought at the time that as winds shift from different design the circular CO2 source was a good idea. Please see this page and the list of publications and pictures.
http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~sleavitt/MaricopaFACE.htm
we include 1 beetle with every bag of flour.. fixed 🙂
Leonard Lane
Pst!!! Pzat!!! Sputter!!!! O! Noes! It’s BETTER than I thought!!!
Went to the link you recommended. Not only did it give a short explanation of how these “open field” experiments were conducted but also said that control areas were also planted and that was how the comparisons was made. The use of isotopes to determine CO2 uptake was interesting.
Everything seems on the up and up. Thankyou for relieving me of a small portion of my ignorance.
Eugene WR Gallun
Irrigate with “trickle” pipes discharging soda water.
LOL This is such a funny and obvious goofy study.
Dietary deficiencies of zinc and iron are a substantial global public health problem. An estimated two billion people suffer these deficiencies1, causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually
Another absurd position.
1. The C3 plants evolved above 1000 PPM. They aren’t supposed to require as many nutrients as they do now and are supposed to grow much faster. At about 750 PPM C3 photosynthesis is more efficient than C4. The CO2 level has to be below 750 PPM for C4 to even evolve.
2. Plants are mostly carbohydrate/starch. A seed, other than the germ and part of the coat is just carbohydrate/starch. Carbohydrates are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/a-host-of-ills-when-irons-out-of-balance/?_r=0
3. About 13% of the elderly population has iron levels that would be considered heavy metal poisoning. Too much iron causes organ damage among other things.
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/2/347S.full
4. Premenopausal women and some kids have iron deficiencies. They should be eating whole grains (to reduce iron inhibition), more iron rich foods such as meat, or take supplements. Protein in meat is more bio-available. “Let them eat meat.”
5. If we adjust nutrient levels to prevent deficiency in women we will start killing some men and old people.
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/
6. As far as zinc, 1 oyster, 6 oz. red meat, 3 cups of fortified cereal, or 1 1/4 pounds of chicken gives 100% of the USRDA.
Basically people need to eat more red meat (and certain seafoods), and the consumption of refined grain products by people under 50 should be illegal.
The zinc and iron concentrations are down in C3’s with higher CO2 because they are growing faster with less nutrient needs. That’s quite obvious. It just means eating a bit more or take supplements, which are cheap and easy. Done.
To increase the nutrient content, according to the hidden reasoning Smueller is using, we should lower CO2 so that the plants grow more slowly, thus concentrating the zinc and iron.
Ridiculous. Cereals are all about sugars and carbs. Nobody eats cereal for the zinc and iron because it only contains a tiny amount of those trace elements. Most people get their iron and zinc from eating meat or fish. Vegans get theirs from green leafy veg or nuts. Not in cereal.
According to NIH (Not Invented Here) 3 oz. of oysters have 493% of the USRDA. Depending on size that is one or two oysters. I used to do oyster shooters down on the Annapolis docks and didn’t realize I was doing it for the zinc. I probably got a weeks worth of zinc.
Earing a portion of red meat, shellfish, pork, or beans at each meal gives you enough zinc. Otherwise deficiency is possible. Bacon is as good as lobster and a lot cheaper.
2
http://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/69726/gleadow-2009-cassava-online.pdf
Global food security in a changing climate depends on both the nutritive
value of staple crops as well as their yields. Here, we examined the direct
effect of atmospheric CO2 on cassava (Manihot esculenta Cranz., manioc), a
staple for 750 million people worldwide. Cassava is poor in nutrients and
contains high levels of cyanogenic glycosides that break down to release
toxic hydrogen cyanide when damaged. We grew cassava at three concentrations
of CO2 (Ca: 360, 550 and 710 ppm) supplied together with nutrient
solution containing either 1 mM or 12 mM nitrogen. We found that total
plant biomass and tuber yield (number and mass) decreased linearly with
increasing Ca. In the worst-case scenario, tuber mass was reduced by an
order of magnitude in plants grown at 710 ppm compared with 360 ppm
CO2. Photosynthetic parameters were consistent with the whole plant biomass
data. It is proposed that since cassava stomata are highly sensitive to
other environmental variables, the decrease in assimilation observed here
might, in part, be a direct effect of CO2 on stomata. Total N (used here as a
proxy for protein content) and cyanogenic glycoside concentrations of the
tubers were not significantly different in the plants grown at elevated CO2.
By contrast, the concentration of cyanogenic glycosides in the edible leaves
nearly doubled in the highest Ca. If leaves continue to be used as a protein
supplement, they will need to be more thoroughly processed in the future.
Obviously the answer is GM cassava. Breed out the toxins or snip them at the DNA level.
Not the answer.
Once cooked, the cyanogenic glycosides are not harmful in any normal case of ingestion. The cyanide (and also benzaldehyde) poisons are only released in the presence of an enzyme called beta-glucosidase and are neutralised by another enzyme (rhodanese). It is interesting to note that cancer cells have more of the former enzyme, and less of the latter enzyme than normal cells, for which the reverse is true. This may account for an increase in destruction of cancer cells. What is not in doubt are the much lower levels of cancer incidence among populations where cassava or similar cyanide bearing compounds are part of the staple diet.
Don’t take my word for it, do your own research if you have an interest. There may be lots of flak, but this usually means you’re near the target.
SteveT
You’re so funny. First this, can I call it a study?, propaganda piece is so obviously created with the goal in mind. Here is the first sentence of their abstract: “Two major problems facing the world are global climate
change and food security.”
As everyone with a brain knows, ‘global climate change’ was the new propaganda phrase when they realized the world would eventually catch on to the fact the models forecasting horrendous global warming were wrong. Plus it is from Australia, need I say more.
Smueller, I think something smells very fishy in your propaganda post. How much are you getting paid to be a shill for the AGW crowd?
We found that total plant biomass and tuber yield (number and mass) decreased linearly with increasing Ca.
http://www.academia.edu/9175136/Cassava_about-FACE_Greater_than_expected_yield_stimulation_of_cassava_Manihot_esculenta_by_future_CO2_levels
89% more tuber for doubled CO2.
Your older Australia study either had some sort of problem, things work upside down on the bottom of the world, or the scientists were simply crappy farmers.
I don’t know why scientists do some of these studies, they should leave plant growing to professional farmers. Any scientist that does plant growth studies should be required to be certified as competent to grow plants.
This is sure to fan some flames ROFL
Atmospheric CO2 content was counting down for millions of years to dangerously low levels, CO2 is naturally inclined to be absorbed, it could be the normal geological process for carbon, so in that context it might be essential for us to produce CO2 to keep agriculture alive. Obviously I am just speculating, but looking at the CO2 levels, they have more or less consistently declined for millions of years.
This would possibly suggest Earth was geologically destined to be mostly rocky and arid, if it were not for man kind, unless there is some drastic geological event that causes CO2 to jump right back up and the long term view we currently have, accuracy up for question, net CO2 appears to go into the ground over thousands of year time periods to millions of year time periods, so with that in mind, we might actually have to keep putting it back into the atmosphere in order to sustain ourselves.
Who knows.. but every time I look at the this I wonder, was CO2 on it’s way out and plants with it until man made a difference to the gas volume?
http://www.paulmacrae.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/co2-levels-over-time1.jpg
Temperature increase of the oceans seems to return some, but even with the large increase 250 million years ago it is still a massively declining trend. As such what Eric suggests might be a necessity.
Note I said “Might” “could” “may” which means what I say is, like many climate papers, meaningless. 😀
Oceans and Plant life regulate CO2 atmospheric over different timescales. Which is why CO2 does not follow temp too well. Plant life has it’s 24hr exchange and also it’s growth and death cycle. This is impossible to model and verify except for extremely rough numbers without a way of validating them because we are not measuring biomass.
Oceans work on several timescales, including ocean currents and oscillations.
But still the net absorption of CO2 trumps both, sinks dominate, it’s clear to see. This sink absorption had it happened a million years earlier, may have means no man kind
As the half-life of CO2 (and methane) in the atmosphere is about 5 years, human activities have little effect on CO2. We are certainly not seeing any effect of out ramped up CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2. No linkage there.
This is incorrect. Human activities do have an effect, mostly through sink removal.
If you look at the red spot in Africa (below the lake), Tanzania burned for fuel 27% of its forest during the 1982 to 2010 period of the CSIRO study that produced the above map. The 11% growth that the study announced is actually the growth after deforestation. The real global plant growth increase was more than 20% possibly as high as 30% in the “plants still standing”. If you match deforestation to the above map it is clear the majority of the map should be dark green.
The lost carbon sinks and the emissions from the burned trees and soil may be responsible more of the CO2 rise than fossil emissions.
Balmy as this idea is, it is actually a saner one than the geoengineering schemes of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The Greenies have things bass-ackwards. Instead of demonizing “carbon” we should be celebrating life-giving CO2. Instead of taxing it, and punishing coal and oil especially for emitting it and rewarding costly and unreliable “green” energy, if anything, they should be rewarded.
Don’t you mean “Barmy”?
3
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/08/churchills-inconvenient-truth-regarding-al-gores-claims-on-lake-chad/#comment-2232952
Re: “400ppm of CO2, contains 400ppm x 2.3Gt / ppm = 920Gt of CO2.”
That should be 8 Gt / ppmv CO2, not 2.3.
(Note: “400 ppm” customarily refers to ppmv, or, more precisely, dry molar fraction.)
The Earth’s atmosphere has a mass of about 5.3 Gt (some sources say 5.1 or 5.2).
However, atmospheric gas concentrations are customarily expressed in ppmv (parts-per-million by volume), so to calculate the mass of one ppmv requires scaling according to the molecular weight of the gas in question. The average molecular weight of the Earth’s atmosphere is 28.966 g/mole (~29). So, for carbon dioxide, 1 ppmv CO2 (molecular wt 44.01) has mass ~(44/29) × 5.3 Gt = 8.053 Gt.
Thus 400 ppmv CO2 has mass 400 × 8.053 Gt/ppmv = 3221 Gt.
Unfortunately, getting CO2 to stay so high would require a large, expensive, continuing effort. Already, over half of anthropogenic CO2 emissions are removed from the atmosphere every year, by “greening” on land, plus various ocean processes, including dissolving of CO2 in the oceans, and coccolithophore growth. The IPCC estimates that our current, slightly elevated CO2 levels are enabling natural terrestrial ecosystems to absorb an estimated 13%-44% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions (2.5 ± 1.3 PgC/yr), every year, according to AR5, p. 6-3.
Typo correction: “The Earth’s atmosphere has a mass of about 5.3 Gt”
should be: “The Earth’s atmosphere has a mass of about 5.3 million Gt”
Oops!
Ref: http://www.sealevel.info/conversion_factors.html
Thx V M for the link, dave!
We could switch all existing all existing power stations back to coal, mandate that all
wind and solar be replaced with coal, and that all future power generation be coal.
The savings in energy cost would make the additional cost of burning limestone to
add the additional CO2 to the atmosphere minor
I started reading about climate in the 70’s when my children were coming home from
school, saying that we were going into the next ice age if we didn’t stop emitting CO2.
I bought several books and became convinced that, based on simple cycles, we were
headed for the next ice age.
I am much more concerned about the coming cold than the possibility of a little extra
heat.
/not sarc!
Technically, the 1970s ice age scare wasn’t worry about CO2 emissions, it was particulate emissions. But yeah.
Per GH theory, more CO2 combats oncoming ice ages!
The article has several major flaws. The first comes from:
“This would require the expenditure of 3.6MJ / Kg * 3136Gt or limestone = 1.1289 x 10^19 joules of energy.”
He forgot to convert MJ/Kg to GJ/ton, so the result is 1000 times too low.
A second major error is that as you add CO2 to the atmosphere, it also is increasingly taken out of the atmosphere (dissolved in seawater, taken up in plants, etc.) so CO2 addition is not a one time event, but a continuous process. I am afraid the approach is not practical.
……make more cement
win…win
But we don’t have enough sand to make that much concrete! See Sand Wars, as referenced in a recent post.
Clarify: Do you mean cement or concrete? One is a chemical binder and the other is a building material.
All we need to do to get more sand is to require the China Govt to stop making sand islands in the S. China Sea. Simple!
But will the forests echo with laughter?
LOL
If no one is there?
Only the lady we all know
Tom
got my flower, got my power :-}
I am astounded and shocked to hear whispered discussions among my fellow esteemed Vatican astronomers, even within the sacred confines of the Gregorian Tower itself…! that serve to lay in and fester this idea of heliocentrism promulgated by the heretic Galileo Galilei.
Stay this madness! Let not the truth arise beyond 400 parts per million!
To be serious for a moment, NO don’t do anything to accelerate CO2 rise beyond what is strictly necessary to preserve modern life. Which shouldn’t be much if we get off our stupid and go nuclear.
Because, specifically, increased algae blooms, which would be globally devastating and directly threatening to life in every ecosystem. And would result in the hunting of those who engaged in raw deliberate CO2 release and placing their heads upon pikes. To achieve this they’d have to start manufacturing pikes again, which would further boost CO2.
Oh, don’t be silly. Algae is the bottom of the aquatic food chain, and necessary for everything which eats it. Pikes are made of wood, which is sequestered carbon. More pikes = carbon sequestration. So there’s nothing to worry about.
Eric must be a fan of “A Modest Proposal” by Swift.
Nature produces much more CO2 emissions than all anthropogenic emissions. It absorbs at least 95% of all emissions (including anthropogenics which includes lime kilns) each year. Even if five percent of anthropogenics were left to accumulate, it would not hardly make a blip in global atmospheric concentrations. Lower atmospheric temperatures in the tropics are controlling the natural emission rates of CO2.
Yes, common global biogeochemical carbon cycle amounts are:
Atmosphere CO2 at 3100 gigatonnes
Annual exchange rate of 20 percent equals at least 600 gigatonnes per year, about equally divided between biology and abiotic cycles.
Human addition of around 30 gigatonnes per year, or about 5 percent of the total exchange.
Note that the amount of CO2 lost to very long term processes, ie permanent removal, is about 5 percent of the atmosphere total or .05×3100 equals 155 gigatonnes per year. This permanent removal has two parts. One part is biotic, the biological pump, and abiotic, ocean exchange into deep storage, at least 1000 year cycle times. This is replaced by deep sources, that mirror the deep sinks.
Also yes to the tropical sources of CO2, confirmed by direct observation by the OCO2 satellite.
The bottom line is that CO2 never “accumulates” in the atmosphere, from any source.
China is doing their part. They have produced more cement the last three years than U.S in the last hundred. It takes a lot of cement to build ghost cities and artificial islands, all according to plan.
Maybe that is why Christina Figueres likes China so much.
Thank you for solving the mystery of why lively plants purchased at the plant store wither after a couple of weeks at home.
1000 ppm CO2 in a house is rather normal, we are breathing 40.000 ppm. Didn’t you forget to water your plants?
Wim, most people overwater a recently bought plant. Usually it was over watered when purchased.
OK, going off on a tangent here to respond more fully to the question of why many people do poorly when tasked with caring for a potted plant:
The average person has little clue of the specific requirements of plants, potted houseplants included.
And most people have zero clue how much less light there is inside even a well lit seeming room that outside in even a shady location.
Outside full sun is around 10,000-15,000 foot-candles or so, depending on latitude and time of year.
Outside on a cloudy day, or under a dense shade tree on a sunny day, 3,000 to 3,500 foot-candles are typical numbers.
In a very brightly lit office or store, or room in a home, 100-200 foot-candles is a typical reading, while 75 fc is sufficient light for easy reading.
Many rooms that may be thought of as “well lit” may have a light level of 30 fc or so.
I have personally investigated the death of very many plants when, after making a sale, unhappy people brought them back saying they did everything I told them to do.
Told to put the plant or tree in a sunny room, I have found that the plant was placed in the farthest and darkest corner of said room.
Light levels in such a spot may be 1/20 of what is available next to a window, which may in turn be less than 1% of what the plant has been used to in the nursery or garden center.
Told to give plenty of water, I have found that people gave large tropical plants in 15 gallon pots a tall glass of water once or twice a week.
And the low humidity common in indoor settings is very hard on plants, especially if placed in the direct path of vents or registers. Most indoor houseplants are tropical plants, and prefer somewhat humid conditions.
Just as a person running a marathon or working outside in the Summer will need far more water to survive than a person sitting in a air conditioned office, the amount of water a plant will transpire can easily vary by a factor of 20-50 depending on humidity levels, temperature and levels of light/sun.
There is no way to give anyone a one sentence explanation of how to properly and best care for a potted plant or tree, and yet that is all many people want, or are capable of remembering.
The reason why some people are considered to have a “green thumb” is because some people either intuitively or by experience understand many things that less aware or observant people simply never think about.
Few commercially grown and sold plants are grown under full sun conditions, and those that are typically acclimated to lower light levels before being shipped for sale. Plants are grown either in shade houses, under 30-90% shade clothe, or in greenhouses which have the roof painted or whitewashed to diffuse the light and lower light levels.
Most people do plenty wrong with their plants.
But depending on the plant, and the type of potting medium and the conditions, it may not be possible to overwater a well grown plant…the potting mix will not hold an excess of water.
Not enough light, letting dry out between waterings, not adding enough water to saturate the root zone, applying fertilizer to a plant which is not thriving…all are at least as common a mistake as water too often.
In my years of growing and selling plants, most people neglected them, and most gave insufficient light.
Also, many people considered a plant to be dying or dead if it was simply adapting itself to it’s new conditions by shedding some leaves or stretching internodally.
Eric
I suspect there was a good deal of tongue in your cheeks when you wrote this article. But, for now, I will assume that you were actually serious. It seems that, although you are acknowledging that CO2 is good for plant life (and hence for animal life too), you have bought into the “CO2-causes-warming” concept.
After following posts and discussions at WUWT for a few years now, I’ve come to the conclusion that the answer to the question – how much warming does CO2 cause? is somewhere between “none at all” and “not enough to worry about”, which is basically the spectrum of healthy sceptical opinions. As opposed to “a hell of a lot and we’re all going to die” which is the warmist answer.
Before embarking on a scheme like the one you’re suggesting, perhaps it would be a good idea to actually measure the greenhouse effect of CO2. I refuse to believe that it’s impossible to do laboratory experiments to accurately simulate how the atmosphere responds to incoming and outgoing IR in actual, real-world P-T-X atmospheric conditions. If experimental petrology labs can reproduce temperature-pressure conditions in the Earth’s mantle, if people can build equipment to measure the neutrino flux, if people can make a differential GPS system that can measure locations with milliimetre accuracy, surely an atmospheric lab is not beyond human capabilities.
The fact that nobody seems to have done those experiments despite the torrent of taxpayer money flowing into the Climate Industry suggests that either (a) they don’t want to do the experiment in case the results will not be to their liking, or (b) even worse – they’ve been done and the results were not to their liking. There is a third possibility, that those experiments would be hard work – you’d need a team of chemists and physicists, and engineers to design equipment and technicians to build it and run it, space to put it in – gosh it’s getting to look like real science!! – it’s SO much easier to play with computer simulations (“models”) where you control the process by specifying the greenhouse effects of CO2 that you want, so the “model” will generate the output you need to sustain the concept that “CO2 is bad and we’re all going to die”.
The other experiments that desperately need to get done are simply to precisely quantify the partition of CO2 between atmosphere and sea water, and how it varies with temperature, salinity, seawater composition etc. It’s not enough to quote Henry’s Law and make a guess at the constant. CO2 in sea water is not just a gas dissolved in a liquid, it’s present mostly as the bicarbonate ion as part of a complex, buffered ionic solution. These experiments should be dead easy and cheap to do – it’s almost incomprehensible that they’ve not been done. Never mind that the air-water system (probably) never reaches equilibrium – if we knew what the equilibrium conditions are, it should be possible to determine the direction in which the system will respond to changing conditions.
Without experimentally-derived parameters to guide you, your proposal is really arm-waving that’s more appropriate to Climate Science than science. That said, here’s a potential objection: if you add all that lime to the ocean, aren’t you feeding carbonate-shelled organisms and building future limestone? Whereas calcium is the dominant cation in most river waters, it’s a relatively minor component of seawater because it is constantly being removed in seafloor sediments, and of course it takes carbonate with it..
Here’s another objection, a practical one from one who actually works in the mining sector: you need some pretty big mines (even if you call them quarries) to get all that limestone. Have you tried to get a permit to put a mine into production lately? Good luck.
I thought his comments re-warming were of the, it can’t hurt variety.
That is, the primary purpose of increasing CO2 was to green the planet. If it also raised the temperature a few tenths of a degree, that would be good also.
With CO2 as a “pollutant” think of all the red tape you would have to go through to get permits to build lime kilns plus “not in my backyard”.
Burn the coral reefs? Coral makes good cement. If the coral was farmed at scale the production of CO2 would be sustainable. We don’t want to run out of limestone! We can use solar PV to accelerate the accretion of ocean CO2 and put it back into the atmosphere maintaining it at an artificially high, beneficial level.
The kilns could even be solar, operating only in the daytime. The coral doesn’t care. The Sahara Forest would be a major CO2 loss so the scale might have to be larger than initially expected.
We would want to be insane to start taking CO2 out of the oceans, that’s crazy talk 😀
I have the same suspicions about CO2 in the atmosphere. They continually run models that don’t work but never question the underlying assumption! Ridiculous! Give the lead end of this issue to the physicians.
Bah! Physicists!
I like it. When can we start? 🙂
Sounds like a good job for a solar furnace.
(Oh the irony)
He said that greenhouses keep CO2 levels around 1000ppm. Because that’s what makes the plants happy, not because it keeps them warm.