a view on the carbon debate

[wrsni]

Yes there is climate change, because that's what the climate does, it changes!

 

Always has and most likely always will.

 

I suppose the real debate is whether mans activities on the planet are influencing the climate to change in a way which it would not otherwise have done and I'm afraid the opportunity for pretty much anyone to make an informed decision on that is long gone.

 

Personally I can't help but think back to "O" level physics, first lesson, most basic law of physics, energy cannot be destroyed or created, only changed in form. So, if we continue to lift all these reserves of stored energy out of the ground and then release their energy in to the atmosphere (i.e. burn fossil fuels), I can't help but wonder is that not related to the increasing amounts of energy being unleashed back out of the atmosphere in the undoubted increased violence of weather systems the world over. Surely that's nothing other than the most basic physics, but I don't get the obsession with carbon.

[nepia]

Confusing statement?

One emits carbon, the other absorbs?

 

 

Fair point but oceans can release as well as absorb CO2. The more they absorb the greater the potential for release, which happens in geological time, not tomorrow or next year.

Currently they're absorbing but their ability to do that is diminishing.

 

That's about the limit of my expertise on the subject so I'm open to education.

[openspaceman]

Fair point but oceans can release as well as absorb CO2. The more they absorb the greater the potential for release, which happens in geological time, not tomorrow or next year.

Currently they're absorbing but their ability to do that is diminishing.

 

The surface waters of the oceans exchange CO2 with the atmosphere, the current equilibrium is such that 45% of the additional CO2 evolved to the atmosphere since industrial times is held in the ocean.

 

The significance is that the oceans have been neutral to slightly alkaline but as CO2 forms carbonic acid in water extra CO2 is pushing the pH toward more acid. This inhibits formation of chalky deposits, things like coral and diatomous creatures that form sediments on the sea bed.

 

Limestone and chalks are a great store of sequestrated carbon from when the earth was quite different from the 10,000 years of benign climate in which current societies have developed.