Change Your World Week Fall 2021 (Archived)

Carbon is the foundation for life on this planet, without it life would not exist. The amount of carbon on the planet does not change, it get recycled over and over again. The carbon cycle takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere back to the oceans, animals, plants and land, then back to the atmosphere again. Humans have been pulling carbon from the ground since the industrial revolution and putting it into the atmosphere at alarming rates, rates never seen before that we can see. The increased carbon emissions are having consequences that are being clearly seen with increased global temperatures, increasing and intensified weather patterns, warmer elevating waters and drought conditions with more frequent fires. 

NOAA climate.gov based data from Luthi, et al., 2008 via NOAA NCEI paleoclimatology program. This graph shows the carbon dioxide fluctuation over the last 800,000 years, as shown the carbon level is at it's highest now!

Phytoplankton play a major role in the carbon cycle. Phytoplankton, like the plants on earth have chlorophyll and take in sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen. Phytoplankton also are primary producers in the oceans, they are the foundation of the oceans food web and in turn feed everything in the ocean. 

This diagram shows the prediction of primary producers in the warmer more acidic oceans. The diatom is larger and has a fall rate of approximately 100 meters/day.  The warmer and more acidic oceans will favor nanophytoplankton with an approximate fall rate of 3 meters/day. This will mean less carbon falling tot he bottom of the oceans for long term sequestering.

As co2 and temperature rise in the oceans, you can see the Diatoms shell becomes deformed and brittle. This will lead to less effective photosynthesis and potentially less carbon sequestering.

There are still some who are skeptical about climate change and if humans increasing carbon emissions are having global effects. The case that there is a natural carbon cycle and that all the algorithms and models are flawed is a legitimate claim. Christopher Monckton , who was a special adviser to Margaret Thatcher 1982-86 is co-author in a peer reviewed scientific journals that claimed 97% of scientific consensus about climate change was false and that the international panel on climate change (IPCC) models are one third to one half higher in the next 100 to one million years than should be. There is so many details and variables that go into calculations and models that no one could ever get everything right. There does appear to be far more data that supports the increasing carbon having negative effects than positive ones. 

The carbon cycle is a vital part of life on this planet. The carbon cycle does fluctuate, but since the industrial revolution the carbon has spiked. The new world we live in is based on pulling carbon from the ground and making products we use today including transportation fuels, heating, electrical generation, plastics, fertilizers and solvents. This will have long term effects since the earth cannot pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere faster than we are putting it in. Many governments and companies are trying to go carbon neutral by the end of the century. The oil industries and manufactures of goods will want to continue down this path. Some thing has to change before it's too late an the effects cannot be reversed.

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Oil

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/oceans

https://www.tutor2u.net/geography/reference/carbon-cycle-land-oceans-and-atmosphere

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Phytoplankton

https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/basic-page/global-phytoplankton-distribution

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16370118/

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2005GL023653

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/global-maps/MY1DMM_CHLORA

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/carbon-cycle.html

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095927316305448#f0005

https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx