Carbon Dioxide

 

Plant Growth Experiment With Elevated CO2
https://wordlesstech.com/greenhouse-for-sustainable-farming-on-mars/

We are currently living in a drought. I am not referring to a lack of water, but to a lack of usable carbon for plants. For millions of years, the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has been slowly declining as living material uses the available carbon but then traps it in the dead material as it buried in the ground, locked away from future use. We are all familiar with organic carbon being trapped as coal, oil, and other fossil fuels. However, most carbon is now trapped within Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) or limestone as an inorganic precipitate of Calcium Hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) and Carbon Dioxide or organically as bones, shellfish, coral, and eggshells. We do not hear about limestone because it does not burn. It would be a very energy intensive process to extract that carbon for future use.

This chart shows concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperatures for the last billion years. Note how much the CO2 has reduced, especially during the Carboniferous period. This time period was dominated by massive vascular land plants (conifers), large ancestral insects and a wide variety of fish. Most coal was formed during this time period from various algae and other plant life at a time when there was NOT a certain fungi that we have today which is very adept and breaking down peat and releasing the carbon back. Had this fungi been not introduced at the end of the Carboniferous period, life on earth may have ended forever. Today, the process of coalification occurs only in swamps where the dead plant material remains submerged. 

There was a rebound in life sustaining carbon dioxide into the Jurassic period as the fungi slowly broke down material near the surface and as volcanic activity continues to recycle trapped carbon in limestone and fossil fuels. However, this is a losing battle as organic material is slowly converted into non-combustible CaCO3 and as radioactive decay slows leading to less volcanic activity.  Also, note the poor correlation between Carbon Dioxide levels and global temperatures. 

Currently, we have about 1/5 of the Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere that we had during the Jurassic period, with the resulting smaller plant and animal life. But we Americans are busy. We are removing those trapped fossil fuels and burning them. Not only that, but we are making practical use of those fossil fuels as we burn them in our automobiles, our planes, our power stations and nearly all other modern conveniences that we have today.  

At about 400 ppm, we are in a relative carbon drought. During the last ice age, carbon absorbed into the ice as carbonic acid and dropped the CO2 levels to as low as 170 ppm. This is significant because many entire plant species die off at around 150 ppm. Many greenhouses pump bottled CO2 in to increase plant growth rates and to reduce water usage. Plants with sufficient CO2 will use less water as they do not need to open their stomata or "pores" as much to bring in the CO2, whereby they lose valuable water to transpiration. Before the next ice age comes in approximately 8,000 years (assuming a 26k year cycle), we need to burn more fossil fuels so that our Carbon Dioxide does not become dangerously low again.

Need to add heat to get the CO2 out of Limestone

Maybe in the distant future, when it is no longer practical to hunt for the remaining fossil fuels and we have to resort to using only nuclear energy to power humanity, we may need to use that nuclear energy to convert those massive limestone deposits back into it's respective forms of Lime and Carbon Dioxide so we have the building blocks necessary to sustain life. 

TLDR: Save the environment!

https://www.agrowtronics.com/how-much-co%E2%82%82-do-plants-need/

https://www.britannica.com/science/coal-fossil-fuel/Origin-of-coal

https://www.britannica.com/science/Carboniferous-Period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-based_life

https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html

We appreciate your hard work to make
the world a better place, hippies.