JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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When I first heard of CO2 building up in the atmosphere, I checked. It isn’t. C14 answered that question in 1958.
However the shape shifting promoters came up with things like sequestration and Australian Agricultural Carbon Credits. In England hundreds of ‘tree farms’ as investments. Not chopping things down or harvesting earns cash because it is sequestration. But NASA proved that wrong with satellite measurements. From 1988 to 2014 tree coverage world wide showed forestation, not deforestation. A 14% increase in tree coverage and a 14% increase in CO2. So more CO2 means more trees, not the reverse. Of course in typical fashion NASA called it ‘fertilization’, which is ridiculous. Trees are made from CO2, like all living things. The CSIRO pulled the same stunt when they had to comment on the rapid ocean absorption of bushfire CO2 and a phytoplankton bloom. These geniuses blamed it on Iron ‘fertilization’ from the ash. Anything but admit plants are hungry for CO2.
But one of the ideas was that a mythical ‘surface’ ocean was ‘full’ of CO2. Stuffed. 98% of CO2 is in the ocean as it is extremely soluble, 30x more than O2 and all things breathe O2. And there are 36 papers which agree that CO2 changes completely roughly every ten years. (Table 1 here)
So what limits are there to dissolving CO2? Firstly CO2 gas we see as a solid, dry ice. But with over 5 atmospheres it is a liquid, like water. And that’s only 50 metres in an ocean on average 3500 metres deep. So there’s no real limit to CO2 because largely it’s not a gas in water. Even more dramatic is that unlike oxygen, CO2 dissociates H2O+CO2 becomes HCO3 and H+. Carbonic acid, a very weak acid. But it is also not easily predicted by Henry’s Law of dissolved gases.
This is relevant because the people who argue that fossil fuel CO2 is stuck in the atmosphere are forced to claim that the water is full. But that’s not possible. You can release the gas with a rough surface as with menthos. So here is a fun experiment which shows just how much CO2 gas is in water even at air pressure. This is NOT a chemical reaction, just the rough surface providing a catalytic surface to form the gas instantly.
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