> CO2 is CO2, regardless of whether it came from a new plant or a fossilized plant. There is a carbon cycle above ground, what we did is inject more and more c

> CO2 is CO2, regardless of whether it came from a new plant or a fossilized plant. There is a carbon cycle above ground, what we did is inject more and more carbon back into it that had been removed from it by slow natural processes over long periods of time long ago. No. The problem we have is that we added all that carbon that was long ago buried deep back into the above ground carbon cycle. If we had only ever used carbon that already is in the above ground cycle we would not have a problem, we would not have increased atmospheric CO2 by much even if we temporarily - and it would always be just that - turned some more carbon lying around above ground into CO2. By using buried carbon we increased the amounts of carbon in the above ground cycle by a gigantic amount. In addition we burnet most of it directly too, but just that it is above ground, available to various processes including natural ones, would have increased CO2 even if we had not burnt it right away. (disregarding that buried carbon does not only come from buried plants for this sentence) The problem is not that forests burn, it's that ancient long-buried forests burn.