RE: Global Carbon Cycle [was RE: Number of carbon atoms in the Earth's biomass]

From: Spike (spike66@comcast.net)
Date: Sun Jul 13 2003 - 14:06:48 MDT

  • Next message: Hal Finney: "Re: A vision"

    Robert Bradbury wrote: "Research has uncovered more complexity than was
    previously appreciated. Researchers are unable to balance all the fluxes
    of the global carbon cycle over the period 1800 to the present, and
    different mathematical models give results that are difficult to
    reconcile."... Robert

    Thanks Robert. When I read this, I marvel
    at the drama in the timing of the rise of
    technology-capable humans. Imagine an Earth
    with no humans but all the other species
    the same as now. (It isn't hard to do.) There
    is a definite carbon sink in the form of forests
    dying and being buried by some means, silt from
    a flood, ash from a nearby volcano, blowing dust,
    etc, resulting in vast coal seams and (by some
    mysterious means) oil fields.

    If one looks at the amount of carbon in the earth's
    atmosphere as a function of time, it is straight
    downhill, is it not? When the earth had a reducing
    atmosphere, there was all that methane and carbon
    dioxide. Plants came, generated oxygen, which broke
    down the methane, steadily depleted the CO2, converting
    it into coal and oil, carbon forms which are out of
    reach of the lifeforms that evolved here. Well, all
    of the lifeforms except humans.

    Without some means of restoring that carbon to the
    biosphere, it would have been curtains for all life
    on this planet. It would have gradually suffocated
    for lack of raw material, perhaps in the next billion
    years, steadily fading away with robust memories,
    like the Civil War soldier's reunion.

    Then at a critical moment in the history of life on
    earth, technologically capable humans came charging
    to the rescue, freeing that carbon and restoring the
    planet to habitability.

    Perhaps this is the fate of life on most habitable
    planets: a carbon sink eventually places the carbon
    out of reach of lifeforms before a technological
    species can evolve and dig it up, restoring the carbon
    and all other life on the planet. Perhaps only one
    planet in a million enjoys such a dramatic rescue.

    Would this not explain the great cosmological radio
    silence?

    spike



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