On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:53:42 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Don Foreman" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:59:02 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:



Don, that wasn't the question I addressed. Once again, there are two
questions: whether human respiration adds CO2 to the atmosphere (no), and
whether burning fossil fuels adds CO2 to the atmosphere (yes).

Are we agreed on this?

No. Both processes immediately add CO2 to the atmosphere.

We aren't talking about "immediately." We're talking about spans of time
shorter than a human life, as I've said repeatedly and to which you haven't
objected until now, in your search for some justification to extend your
pedantic argument. d8-)

Meanwhile,
photosynthesis consumes CO2 from the atmosphere. If the rate of
photosynthesis consumption matches the rate of natural production,
then there is no net change in atmospheric concentration. There may
be seasonal variance, but the volume of the atmosphere would make that
unmeasurable.

I'm not sure if seasonal variation *is* unmeasurable, but it's irrelevant to
the point, anyway. The subject, to remind you, was human respiration, and we
expell CO2 from what we eat.


The only time constant here is the rate of concentration
change, which is proportional to the net increase of atmospheric CO2
per unit time divided by the total atmospheric volume.

No, that wasn't the question. That's a larger question, but my responses
are
true, regardless of what you may want to speculate about what happens to
that CO2 after it's in the atmosphere.

I didn't speculate about that at all. To which CO2 do you refer: that
which was added by burning fossil fuel, or that which you insist
wasn't added because it came from respiration? I didn't and don't
differentiate.

Then you have muddled the issue until it's no longer comprehensible, because
the the CO2 that comes from respiration is 100% from short-term
sequestration, and the CO2 that comes from burning fossil fuels is 100% from
multi-million-year sequestration. So you can distinguish the two, as you
well know, and would focus on, if you didn't have too much time on your
hands and weren't engaging in obfuscatory pedantry. d8-)





CO2 from animal respiration doesn't magically migrate to trees while
CO2 from fossil fuel combustion goes directly to greenhouse. It may
be politically expedient to represent things that way, but that isn't
what happens.

It doesn't matter which CO2 goes where.

My point. Thank you.

But what does your "point" mean in relation to the original question?


The question is whether the CO2
emitted by humans comes from a short-term sequestration -- whether that
CO2
we exhale was in the atmosphere a few minutes, months, or possibly a few
years ago, and we've just put it back where it was -- and whether the CO2
emitted by burning fossil fuels comes from sequestration effected millions
of years ago. The answer to both is yes.

No, it isn't. The term of sequestration is irrelevant.

Now you're being foolish. Go find something useful to do with yourself.
Maybe you have a rifle barrel that needs lapping.

snip

Let's say that I released x grams of CO2 from fossil fuel today while
driving on errands. Most of the trip was along tree-lined streets.
The trees glommed at least some of that fossil-fuel carbon and bound
it up with photosynthesis for a while. That fossil carbon just entered
your cycle! Meanwhile, Gunner exales in Taft where there ain't no
trees. That CO2 goes to atmosphere, at least for the moment and
possibly forever.

At this moment there is a certain amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and
a certain amount bound up in vegetation. What happens if we reduce
the amount of vegetation simply by eating it or letting it rot without
replanting or allowing it to propagate. The carbon that is in today's
vegetation will soon be released back to atmosphere -- and it will
then have nowhere to go. Therefore, atmospheric concentration must
increase. Your cycle model assumes constant global vegetative mass.

If we increase the total amount of global vegetative mass, then we
would always have more carbon bound up in that mass even though every
particular bit of that mass will eventually decay. That carbon would
come from the atmosphere. Fossil combustion releases carbon, increased
vegetation sequesters it for as long as the total vegetative
photsynthesizing mass remains constant. Not any particular bush or
tree but the total mass.


That's why a continuous interactive process model is more accurate.
CO2 is being added and subtracted all of the time. It's useful to
understand what's really going on because we can only find solutions
if we understand the problem and the processes.