As an old geologist, this was very eyeopening. I learned of the GOE in school but even that was largely thought of as a biological event. The conclusion that life is a geological force is profound and inspiring.
If the isotopic carbon signature in modern plants (and the animals we eat, and the humans that feed on those plants that we grow as food) is the same as that in fossil fuels from the Carboniferous period and the geological periods when fossils contributed to petroleum and natural gas we use as fuel, how much of that isotopic signature in the atmosphere is due to the inedible agricultural biomass that has to composted or burnt each year, all the carbon dioxide we breath out from our consumption of food. and from excreted human wastes, all biodegradable packaging, all the forests we cut down and burn, and all the human bodies cremated or decomposing after burial as our population exponentially rises. to the 8 billion now, that has doubled in my lifetime and doubled in my parents lifetimes. Nobody asks this question or answers it. Me, I am 71 with ~100kg of human flesh, how much agricultural carbon is used to feed me in a year and how much biomass does that plant and animal waste equal over my lifetime? Add to that the fossil fuel contribution for transport, energy use and so on. It is not fossil fuel, or climate at all, it is population growth that is the catastrophe that awaits us. I did not mention clothes. The Climate is a challenge, not a crisis, but our waste disposal is and can be countered by phasing out growth, and keeping population, food production, transport and energy within reasonable confines. get back to a steady 4 billion and we may have a chance.
You raise a good question, but all of the biological processes that you mention involve the recycling of oxygen and carbon from the biosphere. Fossil fuels are sequestered carbon that once was part of the biosphere but have been removed. By extracting carbon from underground, we are essentially taking all the processes that you identify but that happened in the distant past and adding them to the present.
As an old geologist, this was very eyeopening. I learned of the GOE in school but even that was largely thought of as a biological event. The conclusion that life is a geological force is profound and inspiring.
If the isotopic carbon signature in modern plants (and the animals we eat, and the humans that feed on those plants that we grow as food) is the same as that in fossil fuels from the Carboniferous period and the geological periods when fossils contributed to petroleum and natural gas we use as fuel, how much of that isotopic signature in the atmosphere is due to the inedible agricultural biomass that has to composted or burnt each year, all the carbon dioxide we breath out from our consumption of food. and from excreted human wastes, all biodegradable packaging, all the forests we cut down and burn, and all the human bodies cremated or decomposing after burial as our population exponentially rises. to the 8 billion now, that has doubled in my lifetime and doubled in my parents lifetimes. Nobody asks this question or answers it. Me, I am 71 with ~100kg of human flesh, how much agricultural carbon is used to feed me in a year and how much biomass does that plant and animal waste equal over my lifetime? Add to that the fossil fuel contribution for transport, energy use and so on. It is not fossil fuel, or climate at all, it is population growth that is the catastrophe that awaits us. I did not mention clothes. The Climate is a challenge, not a crisis, but our waste disposal is and can be countered by phasing out growth, and keeping population, food production, transport and energy within reasonable confines. get back to a steady 4 billion and we may have a chance.
You raise a good question, but all of the biological processes that you mention involve the recycling of oxygen and carbon from the biosphere. Fossil fuels are sequestered carbon that once was part of the biosphere but have been removed. By extracting carbon from underground, we are essentially taking all the processes that you identify but that happened in the distant past and adding them to the present.