OregonStream
Member
- Jan 6, 2010
- 56
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"Just"? That's the problem. Carbon sequestered over millions of years released in less than two centuries. How long would it otherwise take to "recycle" back into the atmosphere from deep geologic deposits?See, this is part of the problem. Half the people arguing about this issue don't even understand the basic underlying science of the carbon cycle. If we think back to our school biology, the CO2 in human breath is carbon NEUTRAL. It's produced from the oxidation of carbohydrate, which is ultimately derived from plants, which absorb atmospheric CO2 in the production of that carbohydrate. So no net change. Fossil CO2 is generated, in quantities that surpass natural uptake, from hydrocarbons that have been sequestered over geologic timescales. And nobody I know supports a return to the horse & buggy days (another straw man). What they do support is maximizing efficiency and transitioning away from fossil carbon fuels.Actually, we are breathing the CO2 out of our bodies. Should we stop breathing?...
Guess what. Those similarly are just recycled. The time scale is just longer.
It is not surpassing natural uptake. It is natural uptake. It is just earth produced carbon that has been here all along. It is time to let our children know that they are supposed to be here and they are supposed to advance civilization and that includes technology.
Enough of the fear mongering for greed already.
Cadmium, uranium, and mercury are all Earth elements. Does that mean we want significantly higher concentrations in water and air? And burning fossil fuels and emitting CO2 at high rates is certainly not "uptake" from the atmospheric perspective. The uptake that is occurring is currently able to prevent about half of those emissions from accumulating in the atmosphere. The rest is therefore "surpassing natural uptake". The greed is in risking future prosperity for the sake of preserving large fossil-fueled profits based partly on externalized costs, when there are ways to transition that needn't preclude advancement.
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