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> CO2 levels will go down as we put less in the air What? You are saying that if your are cooking meat on a skillet and turn the fire down from 3 to 1, or even
by Yizahi 3y ago
> CO2 levels will go down as we put less in the air
What? You are saying that if your are cooking meat on a skillet and turn the fire down from 3 to 1, or even to 0, then your meat temperature would start actively decreasing below the ambient temperature and freeze on it's own? Because that's what you are saying, literally.
I'm not against measuring emission rates, that's an important metric. I'm against making any far reaching assumptions based ONLY on the emission rates estimates. Because that's like cooking meat inside an opaque black box by measuring torque forces applied to the regulator over time. It loosely corresponds to the result, but the meat would be charred most likely, due to big amount of conversions and estimations. On the other hand measuring meat temperature with a thermometer inserted directly into it would give us a precision result.
- darkwater 3y ago> What? You are saying that if your are cooking meat on a skillet and turn the fire down from 3 to 1, or even to 0, then your meat temperature would start actively decreasing below the ambient temperature and freeze on it's own? Because that's what you are saying, literally. Considering that nature provides carbon traps and that the Earth is ultimately in the void of the space, you cooking meat is a kitchen with opened windows and freezing weather outside, and you turn down the climate that was set to full throttle.
- tsimionescu 3y agoI believe they are claiming that various processes break down or passively absorb CO2 in the air, so if emissions stopped by some magic, CO2 levels would not be steady but decreasing, even without other interventions.
- Yizahi 3y agoI have no proper knowledge about natural carbon sinks, their capacity and remaining capabilities. But from the amateur point of view I think there are 3 main possibilities - vegetation, ocean and permafrost. Permafrost won't help because first the planet need to cool down a lot and start general cooling trend. And we will be heating up the atmosphere due to existing gasses. So it's a dead end. Vegetation is a linear carbon sink. Because microbes decompose dead vegetation and release gasses back in the atmosphere, the most of the captured carbon in vegetation must be in the actual alive plants. And number of alive plants scales linearly with the area we humans leave for them. Since humanity is increasing in numbers and each human demands more and more land to be used, I highly doubt that we can spare a lot of arable land for a NEW vegetation. So that's also dead end. And at last oceans. I have no idea what is the capture mechanism of an ocean and how much carbon on it's own it can capture permanently. Maybe yes, maybe no. But considering that a) we are acidifying oceans, b) overfishing them, c) raise sea levels, d) heat up oceans - all this together would probably hamper natural carbon capture capabilities of an ocean. So maybe this is possible. But I haven't heard a lot about such possibility from scientists, and I doubt it's a solution for our problem. Until some research will be done at least.
- tsimionescu 3y agoHere are some numbers from the Guardian, mostly citing IPCC reports as far as I can tell: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhou... Overall the OP's assertion seems to be only technically ture - it seems that CO2 is indeed absorbed, but only on a scale of decades to centuries essentially.
- jasmer 3y ago"Because that's what you are saying, literally." You're having trouble with the meaning of word 'literally', but also analogies, and climate. The earth has various mechanisms for absorbing CO2 over time.
- rsync 3y ago“I’m literally never going to stop misusing this word”