In a recent study led by the University of Oxford, the traditional view of natural rock weathering as a CO₂ sink has been challenged. Contrary to popular belief, rock weathering can also act as a significant CO₂ source, on par with the emissions from volcanoes.
“A new study led by the University of Oxford has overturned the view that natural rock weathering acts as a CO₂ sink, indicating instead that this can also act as a large CO₂ source, rivalling that of volcanoes.”
Rocks, which contain vast amounts of carbon from ancient plant and animal remains, play a pivotal role in the “geological carbon cycle.” This cycle has been instrumental in regulating Earth’s temperature for over a billion years. One of the primary mechanisms believed to help in this regulation is the absorption of CO₂ during chemical weathering. This process was thought to counterbalance the continuous CO₂ emissions from global volcanic activity.
“Rocks contain an enormous store of carbon in the ancient remains of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago. This means that the “geological carbon cycle” acts as a thermostat that helps to regulate the Earth’s temperature.”
However, this study has unveiled an additional natural process of CO₂ release from rocks, which is as significant as the CO₂ emissions from volcanoes. This revelation underscores the fact that this process has been overlooked in most models of the natural carbon cycle.
“However, for the first time this new study measured an additional natural process of CO₂ release from rocks to the atmosphere, finding that it is as significant as the CO₂ released from volcanoes around the world.”
The process in question occurs when rocks formed on ancient seafloors are pushed back to the Earth’s surface, exposing the organic carbon within them to oxygen. This exposure can lead to a reaction that releases CO₂, suggesting that weathering rocks might be a source of CO₂ rather than the assumed sink.
“The process occurs when rocks that formed on ancient seafloors (where plants and animals were buried in sediments) are pushed back up to Earth’s surface… This means that weathering rocks could be a source of CO₂, rather than the commonly assumed sink.”
To quantify this CO₂ release, the researchers employed a novel method using a tracer element, rhenium. By sampling river water for rhenium levels, they could estimate the CO₂ release from weathering organic carbon in rocks. Their findings identified several regions where weathering was a significant CO₂ source, particularly in mountain ranges like the eastern Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains, and the Andes.
“The global CO₂ release from rock organic carbon weathering was found to be 68 megatons of carbon per year.”
While this release appears to be small compared to estimates of human-induced emissions from fossil fuels, it is comparable to the CO₂ emissions from global volcanic activity. This discovery underscores the need for a more nuanced understanding of Earth’s natural carbon cycle.
In conclusion, understanding these natural fluxes is crucial for predicting our carbon budget.
“While the carbon dioxide release from rock weathering is small compared to present-day human emissions, the improved understanding of these natural fluxes will help us better predict our carbon budget” concluded Dr. Zondervan.
Source: EurekAlert!
Mountain building and plate collisions are now illegal. Exxon knew!
As far as the earth is concerned, the total carbon budget change is net zero.
I noticed the “weasel word” could in there…. IOW… they don’t know for sure. Just goes to show that Mother has more surprises for us.
Will peer reviewers check the provenance of this claim.
And as to replicability, will some sympathetic collaborators offer something like –
While this release
appears tomight be small compared toestimatesour guesses of human-induced emissions from fossil fuels . . .Anthropogenic emissions are a statistically insignificant source of CO2 when compared to natural emissions from the tropical oceans. Rock weathering is a more insignificant source of atmospheric CO2 than other natural emissions.
So rocks might be the new villains responsible for runaway CO2 in the atmosphere?
I wait with bated breath to hear what that doyen of atmospheric physics and geology Greta Thunberg has to say about this.
(Apart from – “how dare they!”)
Someone should tell them to pound sand.
You should stay on subject: they should pound rocks.
Another hole in the models.
They’re nothing but holes – holes all the way down!
Surely the sink happened when the rock was laid down. Any weathering today releases that carbon? Or is that too obvious?
Calcium in some rocks reacts with CO2 to form calcium carbonate.
Obvious point. These emissions have been going on a lot longer than mankind has burnt fossil fuels. Or burnt anything.
So, there must be an equal and opposite unknown sequestration pathway to stop the CO2 having already run away to Venus. And probably an unknown mechanism to keep them in balance.
With at least two unknown fluxes we can safely say we do not know where the atmospheric CO2 is coming from. The mass balance arguments cannot work with unknown, potentially varying, pathways.
The main CO2 sequestration has always been marine calcium carbonate formation from calcareous phytoplankton, not fossil fuels. And the main way of unlocking it is andesic volcanos that heat the limestone and free the CO2. In fact, without andesic volcanos on tectonic plate edges, Earth would die from lack of CO2 (falls below 150ppm) in about 2.5 million years.
This new study isn’t even rounding error compared to those two basic well known geological processes.
“The main CO2 sequestration has always been marine calcium carbonate formation from calcareous phytoplankton, not fossil fuels. And the main way of unlocking it is andesic volcanos that heat the limestone and free the CO2.”
Not quite. The key is acid/base balance. The volcanoes drive off CO₂ and leave basic rock behind. The main sequestration, as the start of the article implies, is reversing this. The basic rock is exposed and reunites with CO₂.
There is a lot of limestone, and also a lot of its ingredients. Actual formation rempves acidic CO₂, but leaves the acidity behind, so it is self-limiting. Sequestering CO₂ that way requires a lot of base, and the only one available on that scale is the basic igneous rock like olivine.
The process described in this article is analogous to slow burning of coal.
That “left behind acidity” in the deep oceans forms bicarbonate and is neutralized. Runaway acidification is liberal/progreesive climate lie #5436.
What can neutralise it?
chemistry?
Yes. Nick Stokes should qualify that remark.
It is partly neutralised when it enters the ocean because the ocean is slightly basic.
Interesting, but much too limited a study to produce actual net results. For example, doing geology in the Mesozoic Neuquen Basin of Argentina, it was easy to spot areas with fossilized dinosaur bones. The bones gave up calcium (lime, or CaO) in exchange for incoming silica, and the expelled CaO combined with CO2, to form calcite (maybe aragonite?): CaCO3. The calcite cemented area was erosion resistant and was easy to spot from a distance. This is a similar process to the caliche-cementation of alluvium. What’s the net result, weathering fixing or releasing CO2? I’ll see your exposed carbon debris with some dinosaur bones.
If you ask me, “silicate rock weathering as CO2 sink” was always a dubious concept that got caught up in the climate change madness and attempts to delineate the “carbon cycle” as a way of “explaining” palaeoclimate changes as driven solely by atmospheric CO2 content.
I submit that any sane geologist would agree that CO2 is likely go both ways in areas of different geology, different topography and different climate.
The underlying paper contains no new field observations, and no new data. The use of rhenium as a proxy for organic carbon is a good idea, but it would help if they could actually show rhenium being released into drainage by weathering of sediments with organic carbon. And compare it with rhenium being released from other rhenium-enriched rocks such as peridotite, serpentinite, Cu-Mo porphyry deposits etc. But that’s the way science is done these days. Sigh…
Trust a geologist to bring science into the discussion!
How is it possible that a natural measureable activity can have 2 theories about what occurs that are 180 degrees apart … this isn’t science this is nonsense …
some may say it’s a paradox
Billions of tons of shell rain down into the ocean depths, carrying CO2 with it. Plate tectonics carries this into the mantle. Some is compacted into limestone. Some is reduce by iron into methane.
Limestone is fossilized CO2. When reduced by iron, limestone plus water plus heat plus pressure yield methane and quicklime.
https://electroverse.info/how-co2-starvation-caused-earths-greatest-extinction-almost-ending-life-on-earth/
CO2 needs mass producing and releasing into our bereft atmosphere – anyone calling for CO2 reductions doesn’t realise they are advocating mass loss of life, including their own as plants & crops etc die, oxygen levels reduce and cellular life forms including humans starve and slowly asphyxiate
Where have these people been, which planet are they from.
Not an especially UK (England)phenomenon but some of the best examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limestone_pavement
Preamble: England is sitting on a humongous lump of Limestone – see it at its best as Chalk and the White Cliffs of Dover
England has enormous ice sheets several times in the last few 100’s thousands of years and they exposed large areas of that rock
They also crunched lots of it up and dispersed through the topsoil of what is now some of best farmland soil anywhere.
Soils everywhre contain limestone Calcium is a very common element in Earth’s crust. e.g Italian marble.
As per the Limestone Pavement, rain (being a solution of CO₂ Carbonic Acid) dissolves the exposed limestone rock, leaving the pattern that looks very like man-made paving stones/flags.
When it does, CO₂ is released by the reaction.
Rainwater dissolves all rocks – if it didn’t there would be no life on this Earth at all. None. Zilch. Nada. Nil.
Limestone dissolves very easily compared most other rocks
Consequences:
Rain falls almost everywhere, everywhere contains Limestone (Marble or Chalk) all rain is acidic so everywhere releases CO₂ whenever it rains.
What this does is produce ‘water-soluble Calcium’ which plants use some of.
They enjoy the Magnesium which is also released that much more tho = to make Chlorophyll
That has been happening since (not quite) forever – The World Did Not End
Modern Times:
Farmers and Ammonium nitrate
Nitrate works by stimulating the soil bacteria – Nitrogen is their Limiting Nutrient
What happens is that the bacteria use the nitrate to hugely accelerate their consumption of the Glucose sugar that all plants exude from their roots – exactly to nurture and feed the bacteria
The bacteria turn that sugar into a myriad of different organic acids..
e.g. Acetic, Propanoic, Butyric, Citric, Lactic etc etc etc
Compared to Carbonic Acid, these are very strong acids and they ‘eat’ Limestone voraciously.
This produces vastly more water soluble Calcium than the plants could ever need or use but especially for the farmer, the strong acids release all the other micro-nutrients that the plants need.
BUT and especially for Climate – the process produces immense amounts of CO₂. It is in fact just as well that the GHGE is utter shyte.
Yes the plants do need some Nitrogen but only very modest amounts. Most of what the farmers use goes to the bacteria so as to release the micro nutrients and THAT is how Nitrate fertiliser works.
Not how you were told in Primary School.
But the torrent of bacterially created acid releases far too much of all the other micro-nutrients and having been made water-soluble – are readily washed away.
THAT is the heart of Soil Erosion and is why:
Ammonium Nitrate is in fact= Very Bad Stuff Indeed.
Human Health Effects:
esp Calcium. Because the plants growing in fields fertilised with Ammonium Nitrate are effectivly swimming in a sea of water soluble Calcium, they soak a lot of it up whether they need it or not and, in due course, we come along and eat a considerable amount of that plant material.
We are told and encouraged to do so – it is ‘healthy‘ after all.
And when we do, we ingest huuuuge amounts of Calcium = Calcium that many of us don’t actually need.
We get plenty elsewhere esp if we consume almost any amount of ‘Dairy’
Where that Calcium finishes up is in reforming (in conjunction with Cholesterol) something very similar to Limestone – inside our arteries.
Thus: There’s one for the Data Miners out there = correlate the (agricultural) consumption of Ammonium Nitrate with the rise of Heart Attacks & Cardio-Vascular Disease
You’re gonna get a very good match
Much as I hate to disagree with you, Peta, chalk and limestone are, despite containing calcium, not quite the same thing and react differently to water with a ph value of less than 7. Limestone is dissolved by it, chalk not (or at least not to anything like the same extent).
Evidence for this is the difference in topography between areas where the overlying rock is limestone (White Peak, Mendip Hills, for example – Karst topography, in other words) and the chalk downlands of southern England which exhibit rather different topographical characteristics. Chalk also has the advantage of holding water like a sponge, which is why we have no reservoirs in north Hertfordshire – domestic water is pumped out of aquifers in the chalk.
The end of the Little Ice Age around 1850(pre-industrial) is what is often used as the baseline, but the Earth was. and is still is, in a cold interglacial period that alternates with very cold glacial periods. In 1850 the life expectancy was only 27 years. Is that what the iPCC really wants to go back to?
Even today This recent study shows that the cold weather we have every year causes about 4.6 million deaths a year globally mainly through increased strokes and heart attacks, compared with about 500,000 deaths a year from hot weather. We can’t easily protect our lungs from the cold air in the winter and that causes our blood vessels to constrict causing blood pressure to increase leading to heart attacks and strokes.
‘Global, regional and national burden of mortality associated with nonoptimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
We should be glad it is warming up with more CO2 to support plants of all kinds and farmers as well. The cost of $200 trillion, estimated by Bloomberg, is much more than families can afford. There is only $40 trillion in the world today counting physical money, checking and savings accounts
A brilliant viewpoint courtesy Ralph Gardner
Don’t forget the environmental agenda behind the IPCC policies is reducing the world’s population!
Therefore, by getting the world to reduce its energy output from fossil fuels it hopes to create economic decline and reduced food production, then survival panic. Thus, achieving its goal to save us from ourselves. Logical maybe but moral, no way. Of course, they will be there to guide the remainder to the promised land of socialist nirvana, thus also achieving world government.
Thanks, but the real credit goes to the researchers that found the data.
Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?
” …. “geological carbon cycle” acts as a thermostat that helps to regulate the Earth’s temperature.”
Link to proof, please.
No?
Thought not.
Science is settled?
Seriously? Tax dollars paid for this stupidity? Yet again? Stupid c*nts are going to stupid c*nt. It is all they have. No attachment to reality.
reality has been canceled
Joseph Heller had right!
The important thing is that CO2 fell 90% over the last 160 million years, all the way down to deep semi-starvation levels during recent glaciations (below 200ppm). Since CO2 is the beginning of the food chain for all life on earth, this means there has been a drastic reduction in the planet’s biomass. Life has been disappearing.
Only in the last 70 years has humanity started releasing enough trapped CO2 to pull the planet back from the starvation-danger brink, and more would be better still.
Does the slight warming effect from increasing CO2 create an offsetting harm that should make us want to stop re-fertilizing the biosphere? No.
The pre-industrial inter-glacial level CO2 was about 280ppm. Since then it has gone up about 50% (to about 420ppm). This 50% increase should have a temperature forcing effect of about a half a degree centigrade.
That is a tiny increase in global temperature, and any modest increase in temperature is clearly beneficial. It is cold that is the killer, and the next glaciation is due any millennium now.
For the small warming effect from CO2 to possibly do more harm than good, it would have to get multiplied up several times by water vapor feedback effects, but that would imply an unstable climate, and we know earth’s climate is very stable, indicating that feedbacks are small or negative (dampening rather than amplifying temperature forcings).
In this case CO2 is beneficial both for its fertilization effects and for its slight warming effect. The natural trend has been in the bad direction for a very long time, but lucky for us, the planet has stores of trapped CO2 that we can release and in the process gain energy to support prosperity and technological advance.
Mankind seems to have come along just at the right time to save our planet’s biosphere, if only we can stop our psychotic eco-freaks from killing mankind.
India and China are prioritizing growth and building hundreds of coal-fired power plants, probably most of the other developing countries are prioritizing growth as well.