Carbon fate, from fuel to rocks

New version, july 2017

Carbon is an essential element for life on Earth.
It is totally absurd to pretend that emitting it into the atmosphere in the form of CO2 is a dirty, polluting act.

On the site climate-mr-int.ch, I demonstrate that the climate is much less sensitive to it than what is pretended as a dogma since more than thirty years (see here).

Having made this point, I should avoid analysing what happens with CO2, since it has only a minor importance.
Nevertheless, I find it adequate to look, once more, at orders of magnitude.

Thus I have written an essay on the fate of carbon after it will have been extracted from oil, gas or coal reserves.
In summary:

  • CO2 atmospheric concentration correlates extremely well with the accumulated burning of fossil fuels;
  • the more we emit carbon the more the system sequesters it, definitively;
  • currently, about half of what is emitted every year remains in the air, the other half accumulates in the oceans and as land biomass;
  • the whole system churns CO2 in a rather fast way;
  • For each ton of carbon emitted, a wealth of 190 USD is created (constant 2010 $).

Here again some original diagrams are presented, showing for example that a lesser proportion of the emitted carbon remains in the atmosphere when the CO2 increases.

 

carbon fate rev 2017

Merci de compartir cet article
FacebooktwitterlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterlinkedinmail

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.