In Perspective - Carbon Dioxide - Part 1

Last month, one of the big topics was carbon dioxide. Both the international meeting in Copenhagen and the hacking and theft of documents from the University of Anglica both brought the innocuous gas to the news forefront. And while the news was about four words from the stolen documents, after much ballyhoos, the evidence of climate change was proven to be accurate. So I thought that a couple of articles about carbon dioxide are worth a conversation.

Carbon dioxide was discovered and studied as early as the 1750's. It actually takes to oxygen molecules bonding with one carbon molecule to make up carbon dioxide. This is important because for every molecule of carbon, two molecules of oxygen need to be removed from the atmosphere to make up CO2. Since only 20 percent of the atmosphere is oxygen, the conversion of carbon and oxygen into CO2 is important. The link between CO2 and what is called the greenhouse effect was discovered in 1824 and was proven to be a real occurrence in the 1940's. The effect is demonstrated in other areas of our solar system. Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has a similar temperature to Venus, that is twice the distance from the sun as Mercury. The reason for the equivalent temperature is that Venus has a thick atmosphere, of what we call, greenhouse gasses.

Here on earth water vapor is the largest greenhouse gas. I am sure that most have noticed that when the humidity is high the temperature feels much warmer. Water vapor holds heat because of its density. CO2 is also dense. It is denser than the normal atmosphere and can hold more heat. What is odd is that as the temperature increases the air can also hold more water vapor. This is why scientists are predicting an increase in rainfall and flooding. The increase in temperature also increases the amount of evaporation (adding to the increase in rainfall) which is why scientists are predicting more drought.

One of the issues is the natural occurrence of CO2. The truth is CO2 does occur naturally. It comes from volcanoes as well as forest fires and the decomposition of bio-materials. It also comes from the exhaling of people and animals and this makes up the natural balance that has occurred over thousands of years. Most of this CO2 is quite constant, but volcanoes have varied the output over the centuries. Volcanoes also throw off ash which has proven to block the sunlight when the output is excessive. This occurred during the year of no summer in the early 1800's.

What has changed is the removal of large areas of trees, which are a natural carbon sink, and the amount of carbon fuels that are being burned in a variety of ways. 28,431,741,000 tons of carbon dioxide are dumped into the atmosphere every year and the U.S. is responsible for 1/5 of that total. With China and the European Union, these three make up more than 50% of the CO2 output. The other 200 countries make up the other 45% of the output. To put the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere in perspective, the Empire State Building weighs 365,000 tons and the amount of CO2 would be like 78,000 pulverized Empire State buildings into the atmosphere each year. Saying that there is not a relation between humans and climate change has not really looked at the numbers.

Remember, the carbon to oxygen ratio, two to one.