3 ms·

True! But it also returns to the atmosphere when it burns or decays. Turn it into charcoal [1] and you have about 1,000 years of stability. Turn it into a miner

• masklinn 10y ago
  > it also returns to the atmosphere when it burns Don't burn it? > or decays In a healthy forest, a decaying tree is replaced by new growth, and part of the carbon is captured into soils (including high-carbon peaty soils, which is what's under the forests currently being burned for palm in south-east asia), so a growing forest is a large carbon sink and a stable grown forest is at best carbon-neutral, possibly a small sink depending on its composition. > Turn it into a mineral and you have indefinite stability. The lithospheric carbon cycle is still a cycle[0]. Lithospheric carbon gets released by volcanoes and by acidified oceanic water. [0] http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page2.php http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page2....