What will we do for Carbon , for life and plant growth?

[Guest]

if these whacked out chrysters were ever to pull this "zero carbon" pipe dream ??????
we need a lot more now than the earth needed a hundred thousand years ago

[6V53]

Buy it from Agrium,just like sulphur.

[blackpowder]

When everyone poor enough back to burning wood I guess.

[TSIPP]

Cost me five grand for a nice wood stove in March, I’ll be nice and toasty when people can’t even buy toilet paper.

[6V53]

I've been burning grain for the last 15 years. 80 bushels a winter. Do the math. Still use some natural gas, but not much.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

First of all, don't lower yourself to Chuck's level or IQ, it is CO2 he is supposed to be paranoid about, not elemental Carbon, even though he gets it wrong every time, and fails to comprehend that they aren't the same thing.
But you bring up a very valid point. Earth has benefited to greatly from these slightly elevated levels of CO2, and eventually, we will have liberated all the easy sources ( burning hydrocarbons, even after we have moved on to more sustainable energy sources, we will likely have to keep burning hydrocarbons just to liberate the CO2), and have no cheap, non energy intensive ways to maintain levels high enough to feed the high population.
There is very little academic work on this topic, yet this should be a much higher priority than figuring out how to eliminate CO2.

Just trying to figure out what level would be ideal from a sustainability point of view ( ie. the energy required to release is and the amount of source rock available), compared to the benefits of ever higher levels, hasn't hardly been considered. Given the logarithmic relationship of temperature with CO2, those benefits peaked out almost 200 ppm ago, so that is irrelevant from here forward, plants continue to be net beneficiaries at many multiples of today's concentration,and it doesn't become even slightly harmful to humans until above 10,000 ppm.

Figuring out what level we should maintain, and how to do it should be our first priority, even before we worry about what energy source is coming next, in fact we may need to design our next energy source around this most important goal.

Regarding winter wheat, CO2 at 968 proves to be optimal, but benefits from levels much higher when compared to our current starvation levels.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26253981 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26253981

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Buy it from Agrium,just like sulphur.

Actually, that is an even bigger issue. Nearly all of the Sulphur we currently use as fertilizer comes from fossil fuels, sour gas and sour oil. As one U of C professor puts it, this is what keeps him up at night, how do we replace this vital nutrient without oil and gas extraction?

In fact it is already an issue. Thanks to the frac'ing revolution, we are no longer pursuing sour formations. Sour gas plants in this area which have been shipping out sulphur for decades are switching over to processing only sweet gas. The local residents certainly aren't complaining, but the residents of planet earth may eventually take exception.

In fact, our grey wooded soils are chronically short of S. Back when flaring and emissions were common from all the sour wells and processing, the deficiency wasn't as noticable. We cleaned up our industry, and now need to add copious amounts of S to grow canola or alfalfa. Our health likely appreciates it though.

[tweety]

Actually, that is an even bigger issue. Nearly all of the Sulphur we currently use as fertilizer comes from fossil fuels, sour gas and sour oil. As one U of C professor puts it, this is what keeps him up at night, how do we replace this vital nutrient without oil and gas extraction?

In fact it is already an issue. Thanks to the frac'ing revolution, we are no longer pursuing sour formations. Sour gas plants in this area which have been shipping out sulphur or decades are switching over to processing only sweet gas. The local residents certainly aren't complaining, by the residents of planet earth may eventually take exception.

What??? We don't have unlimited resources easily accessed for everything our opulent lifestyle requires?

[the big wheel]

Cost me five grand for a nice wood stove in March, I’ll be nice and toasty when people can’t even buy toilet paper.

Exactly what I m doing Toasty and you can always use the bark!!

[AlbertaFarmer5]

What??? We don't have unlimited resources easily accessed for everything our opulent lifestyle requires?

Now here is something we can agree on. Nothing we do is sustainable. No resource extraction, no energy source, no agriculture etc. Yet we devote all of our energies to fighting CO2, while ignoring all the other actual elephants in the room. And in the process, we are finding "solutions" which are less energy dense, require more land area, more resource extraction of finite materials, instead of looking at the big picture.

I have a lot of faith in human ingenuity, but finite is finite no matter how creative we are.