CO – The Gas Of Life

What percentage is CO in the atmosphere?

Approximately 0.04 percent

It is a naturally occurring chemical compound that is present in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide exists in the Earth's atmosphere at a concentration of approximately 0.04 percent (400 parts per million) by volume.

Water vapour can vary from 0 to 4% and is the dominant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere.

Of all of the CO emitted into the atmosphere, what percentage is produced by humans?

Depending on the estimates anywhere from 3.6% to 5% is produced by humans.

What produces the most CO?

Main sources of carbon dioxide emissions

• 87 percent of all human-produced carbon dioxide emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil. ...
• The largest human source of carbon dioxide emissions is from the combustion of fossil fuels.

What are the biggest contributors to global warming?

Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions.

Agriculture/food production produces carbon dioxide through what is known as a biogenic carbon cycle.

What is a biogenic carbon cycle?

The biogenic carbon cycle centers on the ability of plants to absorb and sequester carbon. Plants have the unique ability to remove carbon dioxide (CO) from the atmosphere and deposit that carbon into plant leaves, roots, and stems while oxygen is released back into the atmosphere.

What are the 4 methods of carbon cycling?

What are the 4 steps of the carbon cycle?

• Carbon enters the atmosphere as CO.
• CO is absorbed by autotrophs such as green plants.
• Animals consume plants, thereby, incorporating carbon into their system.
• Animals and plants die, their bodies decompose and carbon is reabsorbed back into the atmosphere.

Why is carbon cycling important in agriculture?

Agriculture's Role in the Carbon Cycle

Carbon is critical to soil function and productivity, and a main component of and contributor to healthy soil conditions. Soil management plays a critical role in whether the carbon remains in the soil or is released to the atmosphere.

Soil carbon provides a source of nutrients through mineralisation, helps to aggregate soil particles (structure) to provide resilience to physical degradation, increases microbial activity, increases water storage and availability to plants, and protects soil from erosion.

What's the most important cycle?

One of the most important cycles on earth, the carbon cycle is the process through which the organisms of the biosphere recycle and reuse carbon and produce oxygen in that process.

How does carbon capture work in agriculture?

So, how does carbon sequestration in agriculture work? The answer lies in the soil. As crops photosynthesize to produce their food, they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and create the oxygen we need to breathe. Through this chemical process, carbon is sequestered in the soil.

How are humans impacting the carbon cycle?

The impact of humankind on the carbon cycle stems mainly from the release of CO2 to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning.

What is Carbon Sequestration?

Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing, securing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There are two main types of carbon sequestration: biological and geological.

Biological Carbon Sequestration

Biological carbon sequestration is the storage of carbon dioxide in vegetation such as grasslands or forests, as well as in soils and oceans.

Soil

Carbon is sequestered in soil by plants through photosynthesis and can be stored as soil organic carbon (SOC).

Forests

About 25 percent of global carbon emissions are captured by plant-rich landscapes such as forests, grasslands and pastures. When leaves and branches fall off plants or when plants die, the carbon stored either releases into the atmosphere or is transferred into the soil. Wildfires and human activities like deforestation can contribute to the diminishment of forests as a carbon sink.

Pastures

While forests are commonly credited as important carbon sinks, they are rapidly becoming more carbon sources due to rising temperatures and impact of drought and wildfires in recent years. Pastures are more reliable than forests in today’s world mainly because they don’t get hit as hard as forests by droughts and wildfires.

Unlike trees, pastures sequester most of their carbon underground. When they burn, the carbon stays fixed in the roots and soil instead of in leaves and woody biomass. Forests have the ability to store more carbon, but in unstable conditions due to climate change, pastures stand more resilient.

We like to eat and we want to breathe clean air and be confident that our planet will be left in acceptable – or even good – shape for our children, for their children and for many generations after them and to do this we need to better understand the role of agriculture in nourishing our world, while also focusing attention on cleaner air and a healthy climate.

When we talk about the GHG emissions of livestock or the carbon footprint of meat, methane is often at the heart of the matter. Ruminant animals such as cows emit methane. As far as global warming potential, methane is a powerful GHG, with about 28 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a period of 100 years.

But methane doesn’t hang around for a century; it’s a short-lived GHG. In about a decade’s time, it’s converted to water vapour and carbon dioxide, which is part of the cycle whereby plants take CO out of the atmosphere and convert it into feed via photosynthesis. Animals eat the non-human edible vegetation and upcycle it to meat and dairy products that provide efficient sources of protein and other essential nutrients to humans. It’s a cyclical process, also referred to as the biogenic carbon cycle, that’s been around as long as life itself.

Given the advances that food producers have made in agricultural processes, today we are producing as much food as we did 50 years ago from far smaller numbers of animals and contributing less methane to the environment as a result.

On the other hand, our voracious appetite for fossil fuels has resulted in an enormous glut of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. According to the GHG inventory, CO accounted for 82 percent of GHGs in 2017, with industry, transportation and electricity contributing nearly 80 percent of the total. It’s so much more emissions than oceans, rainforests and plants can absorb, by conservative accounts, it will hang over the planet for a thousand years.

It is a fact that there is a distinct possibility that life could come close to extinguishing itself, due to a shortage of CO, which is essential for life on Earth.

The IPCC in 2007 stated that:

“we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

CO is the “Gas of Life” the most important building block for all life on Earth. All life is carbon-based, including our own. Surely the carbon cycle and its central role in the creation of life should be taught to our children rather than the demonization of CO, that “carbon” is a “pollutant” that threatens the continuation of life.

We know for a fact that CO is essential for life and that it must be at a certain level in the atmosphere for the survival of plants, which are the primary food for all the other species alive today. Should we not encourage our citizens, students, teachers, politicians, scientists, and other leaders to celebrate CO as the giver of life that it is?

It is a proven fact that plants, including trees and all our food crops, are capable of growing much faster at higher levels of CO than present in the atmosphere today. Even at the today’s concentration of 400 ppm plants are relatively starved for nutrition. The optimum level of CO for plant growth is about 5 times higher, 2000 ppm, yet the alarmists warn it is already too high. They must be challenged every day by every person who knows the truth in this matter. CO is the giver of life and we should celebrate CO rather than denigrate it as is the fashion today.

We may be witnessing the “Greening of the Earth” as higher levels of CO, promote increased growth of plants around the world, which has been confirmed by scientists with CSIRO in Australia, in Germany, and in North America.

If CO levels in the atmosphere were to fall to below a minimum of 150 ppm the survival of plants will be threatened and if plants die all the animals, insects, and other invertebrates that depend on the plants for their survival will also die.

How long will it be at the present level of CO depletion until most or all of life on Earth is threatened with extinction by lack of CO in the atmosphere?

Climate change activists say that food production is destroying the planet but in fact the food producers rely on the land to make a living and the vast majority use best practical options to ensure that they maintain or improve the land they use for their food production operations.

It is now a well-established practice for them to put back native species of plants and trees where possible and to increase biodiversity by making ponds and lakes where wetland plants, insects, and waterfowl can become established.

Yes there will always be a small number of food producers who believe they can ignore the rules and the food production industry in general supports these bad apples being removed from the industry for the benefit of all citizens and the environment.

The food producers believe that land should be used for food production in a sustainable manner and that we get the food security that is required to ensure our populations survival.

In conclusion I believe that we need to remember that carbon dioxide is the gas of life, indeed the backbone of life on Earth rather than the devil that it is being portrayed as by many environmental commentators.

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