Re: Off Topic: NMD/Environment was: (Re: Ada and the NMD)

[James Rogers <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> That seems to be a misunderstanding of how living organisms work. If there's
> a CO2-rich environment, plants will flourish and make Oxygen until they
> start poisoning themselves back with their own excriment. Then we'll have an
> Oxygen-rich environment which will be good for some other life form (The
> SUV?) that makes CO2.
> 
> Living organisms on this planet adapt to the conditions around them. What
> may be bad for one creature is good for another. You can't stop life. You
> can't kill this planet. It *will* adapt.

If you are interested in where the CO2 is on Earth, download the paper
at http://www.sfu.ca/chemcai/pdf/c3carb.pdf
(requires Adobe Acrobat reader).

Note that plants do take in a large amount of CO2, but act only as a
temporary reservoir. On the other hand, you may also note that most
of the CO2 in on Earth (Atmosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere) is
contained by the oceans.

Contrary to an assertion previously made on this subject, CO2 solubility
in water (fresh and seawater) increases with increased temperature.
In fact, CO2 follows Henry's law very well up to a partial pressure of
5 atm. Henry's law is summarized as P(i) = X(i)KT. This is interpreted
as:

"The mole fraction X(i) of a species "i" that dissolves in a solvent
 at a temperature T is proportional to the partial pressure P(i)."

This relationship indicates that the oceans will dissolve more CO2
as the partial pressure of CO2 increases in the atmosphere. 
It would appear that Henry's law predicts a lower mole fraction of
CO2 in water as the temperature increases. In fact this does not
happen because K is not a constant. K actually decreases as T
increases. The overall result is that solubility in water increases
as the water temperature increases.

This does not imply that the oceans can rapidly dissolve all excess
CO2 in the atmosphere. It does, however debunk the concept that 
increased atmospheric temperatures will trigger a release of
dissolved CO2 in the oceans.

Regarding the reforestation of North America. Although the forests in
North America are regenerating, they are not regenerating fast enough
to replace the desctruction of tropical forests. I believe the loss
of tropical forests may be more important to climate balance than CO2
production. This is one of the flaws I see in the Kyoto treaty.
It exempted the countries destroying tropical forests.

Atmospheric CO2 dumping does need to be controlled and even reduced.
There are a number of well known chemical processes that can be used
to scrub exhausts from contained combustion sources. At the same time
we need to stop the destruction of forests. Forest product are still
important in the world economy. Forest management techniques are
also well known. The Swiss, for instance, have practiced sound
forest management techniques for hundreds of years. 

Jim Rogers
Colorado Springs, Colorado USA