7 ms·
All the while you’re doing that, plant life would be booming, and after a sufficient period of time would capture enough of that CO2 again to make it possible f
by djrogers 6y ago
All the while you’re doing that, plant life would be booming, and after a sufficient period of time would capture enough of that CO2 again to make it possible for non-plant life to once again flourish.
- sbierwagen 6y ago"A sufficient period of time" is underselling it a little. Coal is only formed if wood is buried without rotting first. If we burned all the coal we can find, it would take tens of millions of years to be replaced.
- perl4ever 6y agoI had a vague impression that the processes that produced fossil fuels would probably not renew in due time, because the existing layers have something to do with the inability of microbes to break down lignin long ago. Once the capability evolved, the same process can't repeat even if one waits a long time?
- jacobr1 6y agoThis paper has an interesting take on the history: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2442 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2442