Craig Haynie wrote:
The problem, (if there is a problem, and I'm not sure there is), occurs
when carbon, which has been stored deep within the earth for eons, is now
pulled from the ground and emitted into the environment, causing an
increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Correct.
And, the only way to stop it, is to stop pulling carbon from the ground.
It doesn't help to slow down the process, or reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from cars.
Whoa there. That does not follow. If you slow down the process by reducing
emissions now, you buy time. You keep the problem from rapidly growing
worse. Presumably in the next 20 or 30 years we will develop something like
large-scale wind energy, cold fusion or hot fusion to fix the problem.
As long as carbon is pulled from places where it has not been a part of
the environment, into the environment, there will be a gradual increase in
CO2 in the atmosphere.
True, but the less you pull from underground, the better.
By the same token, the only way to reverse the problem is to put the carbon
back underground. Growing trees alone will not fix the problem. To be
exact, it will work for a while and then stall. Reforestation of barren
land will sequester carbon for about 30 years while the forest is growing.
After that, if you leave the forest as is, old trees will die off and new
trees will grow, but the total amount of sequestered carbon will not
change. The only way to decrease atmospheric carbon by biological methods
is to bury the old dead trees deep underground. See my book, "Cold Fusion
in the Future," chapter 9.
Of course if you let the forests grow unattended for hundreds of millions
of years, eventually many dead trees will be buried naturally, forming new
coal mines. But I think it would be better to accelerate the process and
take steps to reverse all CO2 emissions within 200 or 300 years. If serious
global warming sets in before that, it should be fixed with some drastic
intervention, such as spreading gigantic Mylar sunshades over large
sections of the earth. I do not favor of letting nature take its course!
- Jed
