# We Stop Emitting CO2, Methane, Other Greenhouse Gases Tomorrow - Now What? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 29, 2017, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530 "2017-12-29T17:55:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/41 "2018-06-25T03:23:50Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > What ever are you going on about? Again, this: > [@Ruken](#): > > Let’s all _maybe_ try to remember back to seventh grade Earth Science lessons on the carbon cycle before posting? Again, as it turns out I knew that and the cite did too. You do not get points for trying to make me look as an ignorant to others, because: > [@Ruken](#): > > Carbon dioxide is removed by reactions with weathering silicate rocks. (It is also added by microbial weathering of other kinds of rock.) As pointed before that is not the mechanism that can make our situation better as it usually takes millions of years. So, then the focus of the article was on what the oceans are doing, not rocks that are weathered, and even then they point the reader to what sequestration of CO2 takes place with weathering. Perhaps you think that the article was false for they calling CO2 an essentially inert gas? Well, then you are nitpicking too much: > **[Classification of Gases](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/classifications-gases-d_838.html)** > > Oxidizers vs. inert vs. flammable gases. Of course, that “essential” part is why with some processes CO2 is not inert, and weathering is one of them, but as mentioned already, not an important factor for human time lines for the cited article as NASA points out. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/42 "2018-06-25T05:12:44Z")
Shorter term feedback effects include changes to cloud cover, moisture patterns, ocean currents, and CO2 scrubbing effects like more vegetation, increases in algae blooms, etc. Algae blooms are interesting because they do sequester some percentage of the carbon that enters the ocean food chain and winds up at the bottom of the deep ocean. They could also be stimulated by additional minerals entering the ocean through shoreline erosion as ocean levels riise, creating a negative feedback that increases CO2 absorption when temperatures rise. I’m willing to bet that there are very many feedbacks on many different timescales, both positive and negative, and that we don’t have a good handle on many of them, or even know they exist. We are talking about interactions between many biologcal and non-biological complex systems. A complex system has to be dominated by negative feedbacks or it wouod be unstable. The question is whether the feedbacks will happen in time to do us any good. If a feedback oscillates around a period of 500 years, for our purposes it really does not change anything. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/43 "2018-06-25T07:27:28Z")
You know, one bit of reflection. We’ve figured out how to splice basically any gene into anything else. The math says that algae, which doubles itself in slightly over 24 hours, could feed an entire facility if flash grown in a warehouse sized plant. So as long as we record the genes we need and retain a technologically advanced civilization, we don’t really _need_ most of the planet to stay inhabitable. All the technologically advanced, functional societies could basically move into hundred story buildings near the poles, with all the key infrastructure supplied by far more compact equipment than we need now. Or send robots into the hot zones of the rest of the planet. I’m just saying, it might not be the greatest of existences, but humans could survive even if they drove extinct most of the life on the planet and made most of it too hot to be inhabitable. Of course, all of the billions of people who don’t live in technologically advanced societies? Yeah, death for most of them. In a way the consequences of global warming would be mass starvation and death mostly of people who live in countries which made very little contribution to the problem. (and since the populations of those countries trend young, as individuals they wouldn’t have had anything to do with it) ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/44 "2018-06-25T07:56:13Z")
> [@](#): > > But the transitions between those extremes were long, hundreds of thousands to millions of years, usually. At any one time in those “wild cycles”, it’s likely that the climate would appear fairly stable to any hypothetical humans living then. Some geologic climate excursions were rather rapid, for example [the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum) (55.5 million years ago) when “average global temperatures increased by approximately 6°C (11°F) within about 20,000 years.” I don’t know what theories have been presented to explain PETM. There was a coincident sharp rise in CO[sub]2[/sub] but that may have been cause, effect, or both. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/45 "2018-06-25T09:25:19Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Some geologic climate excursions were rather rapid, for example [the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum) (55.5 million years ago) when “average global temperatures increased by approximately 6°C (11°F) within about 20,000 years.” I don’t know what theories have been presented to explain PETM. There was a coincident sharp rise in CO[sub]2[/sub] but that may have been cause, effect, or both. That’s still far longer than the current rise in temperature is going to be. Longer than the end of the last Ice Age, too. The only changes faster than the current global warming were near instant catastrophic changes like Chicxulub. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/46 "2018-06-25T13:07:41Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Limestone is primarily calcium carbonate. No photochemical reduction required. Calcium carbonate is from the shells of animals … who eat plants … who in turn reduce carbon … ===== Too lazy to multi-quote … here’s the [graph of temperatures more recent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#/media/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png) (last 500,000 years) … there’s places where temperatures rose 10ºC and fell back down again within 20,000 years … I think 2,000 years is a better standard for “rapid natural temperature change” … man-kind is only making this happen forty times as fast … One thing that’s not cyclic is the availability of inexpensive fossil fuels … once burned they are gone forever … there will be a time very soon where energy costs will rise much much faster than temperature … our entire economic system is based on cheap oil, I don’t think we have another 72 years worth … which will be worst: 3ºC higher temps or no more cars/trucks/electricity/plastic/pharms/fertilizer/KY jelly? ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/47 "2018-06-25T13:30:19Z")
Stopping emissions “tomorrow” is a purely hypothetical discussion, but evidence seems to indicate that we had better do it within this half of the 21st century. [\*\*Climate change is faster and more severe in the Arctic than in most of the rest of the world. The Arctic is warming at a rate of almost twice the global average. \*\*](http://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/arctic/what_we_do/climate/) > [@](#): > > A small temperature shift can have enormous implications. > > Even an increase of 2°C could be too much. A slight shift in temperature, bringing averages above the freezing point, will completely alter the character of the region. > > ``` > As snow and ice melt, the ability of the Arctic to reflect heat back to space is reduced, accelerating the overall rate of global warming. > Some Arctic fisheries will likely disappear. > We are likely to see more forest fires and storm damage to coastal communities in the Arctic. > Glaciers, sea ice and tundra will melt, contributing to global sea level rises. > A warmer Arctic could halt the Gulf Stream, which brings warmer water and weather to north-western Europe. > > ``` > > Read the WWF report on the effects of climate change: Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications Reading this thread shows that the time frame varies from post to post, but they all seem to agree in one respect. The problem is getting worse much faster than any solution could possibly fix it. Clock’s ticking. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/48 "2018-06-25T14:52:10Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Calcium carbonate is from the shells of animals … who eat plants … who in turn reduce carbon … Here you go: [Marine biogenic calcification - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_biogenic_calcification) ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/49 "2018-06-25T18:53:51Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Again, as it turns out I knew that and the cite did too. You do not get points for trying to make me look as an ignorant to others, because: First it was counters. Now it’s points. I have little interest in either. We don’t know what you know, just what you post. And what you posted from that article was incorrect. And if you already “knew that” before posting, however you think that makes you look is on you. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > As pointed before that is not the mechanism that can make our situation better as it usually takes millions of years. So, then the focus of the article was on what the oceans are doing, not rocks that are weathered, and even then they point the reader to what sequestration of CO2 takes place with weathering. Perhaps you think that the article was false for they calling CO2 an essentially inert gas? Well, then you are nitpicking too much: > > [Classification of Gases](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/classifications-gases-d_838.html) > > Of course, that “essential” part is why with some processes CO2 is not inert, and weathering is one of them, but as mentioned already, not an important factor for human time lines for the cited article as NASA points out. IPCC pegs weathering at about a gigaton of CO2 per year. That’s 18% of net land flux without humans. So hardly insignificant, and not something that takes millions of years to add up. What more, it’s expected to accelerate as CO2 levels or temperature rise: [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2008.10.018](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2008.10.018) [https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06505](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06505) [https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1419](https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1419) Enough to save our bacon? Probably not, but I’ll take it. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/50 "2018-06-25T19:36:35Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > First it was counters. Now it’s points. I have little interest in either. We don’t know what you know, just what you post. And what you posted from that article was incorrect. And if you already “knew that” before posting, however you think that makes you look is on you. There is still not much of a clue from you of what was incorrect. Again, it looked just to about what a nitpick can be. Incidentally while you do report about that 18% of net land flux, the fact is that it is more complicated that it was thought, and it may not be as high as that. > **[Mountain erosion may add CO2 to the atmosphere](https://phys.org/news/2018-04-mountain-erosion-co2-atmosphere.html)** > > Scientists have long known that steep mountain ranges can draw carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere—as erosion exposes new rock, it also starts a chemical reaction between minerals on hill slopes and CO2 in the air, "weathering" the rock and... > [@](#): > > Scientists have long known that steep mountain ranges can draw carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere—as erosion exposes new rock, it also starts a chemical reaction between minerals on hill slopes and CO2 in the air, “weathering” the rock and using CO2 to produce carbonate minerals like calcite. > > A new study led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), however, has turned this idea on its head. In paper released on April 12th in the journal Science, the scientists announced that the erosion process can also be a source of new CO2 gas, and can release it back into the atmosphere far faster than it’s being absorbed into newly-exposed rock. > > “This goes against a long-standing hypothesis that more mountains mean more erosion and weathering, which means an added reduction of CO2. It turns out it’s much more complicated than that,” says Jordon Hemingway, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and lead author on the paper. > > The source of this extra CO2 isn’t entirely geological. Instead, it’s the byproduct of tiny microbes in mountain soils that “eat” ancient sources of organic carbon that are trapped in the rock. As the microbes metabolize these minerals, they spew out carbon dioxide. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/51 "2018-06-25T21:25:46Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > There is still not much of a clue from you of what was incorrect. Again, it looked just to about what a nitpick can be. Post 31. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Incidentally Also addressed in post 31. You even quoted the sentence where I mention it!:smack: ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/52 "2018-06-25T22:45:20Z")
Same back to you, that is not showing that it was incorrect, I showed that: it was not omitted in the cite, I showed that CO2 is an inert gas except in some conditions for the long carbon cycle; and in reality, even when taken into account, the weathering of the rocks will not be enough to save our bacon, even if you take it. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/53 "2018-06-25T23:36:23Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I showed that: it was not omitted in the cite What is “it”? I never wrote about anything being omitted. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/54 "2018-06-25T23:56:10Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > What is “it”? I never wrote about anything being omitted. So, we are back again about what was incorrect. Give it up, it is you the one that is insisting that it was incorrect when in reality weathering of the rocks was not the focus of the article and in any case **they did talk about the carbon cycle** and also pointed the reader to what weathering can do for capturing CO2. Not enough, and recent studies point that it could be a neutral factor if not a positive one. (Here we should remember that “positive” in this issue is not a good thing, it means an increase in a factor that leads to more warming in the future). ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2018, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/55 "2018-06-26T01:03:29Z")
Let’s try this again. The quote from the article: > [@](#): > > CO2 is essentially chemically inert in the atmosphere and is only removed by biological uptake and by dissolving into the ocean. Biological uptake (with the exception of fossil fuel formation) is carbon neutral: Every tree that grows will eventually die and decompose, thereby releasing CO2. (Yes, there are maybe some gains to be made from reforestation but they are probably minor compared to fossil fuel releases). We’ll do this once sentence at a time: > [@](#): > > CO2 is essentially chemically inert in the atmosphere and is only removed by biological uptake and by dissolving into the ocean. “CO2…is only removed [from the atmosphere] by biological uptake and by dissolving into the ocean.” This is not true, because CO2 is removed from the atmosphere by other mechanisms. And the next sentence: > [@](#): > > Biological uptake (with the exception of fossil fuel formation) is carbon neutral: Every tree that grows will eventually die and decompose, thereby releasing CO2. (Yes, there are maybe some gains to be made from reforestation but they are probably minor compared to fossil fuel releases). Yes, the net flux is much smaller than the flux in either direction, but biological uptake is not carbon neutral. Plenty of it gets buried and stays buried. They acknowledge that some carbon that undergoes biological uptake becomes fossil fuels, but not all buried carbon becomes fossil fuels. Shale, limestone, etc. show that carbon uptake is not carbon neutral. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2018, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/56 "2018-06-26T01:50:54Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Let’s try this again. The quote from the article: > We’ll do this once sentence at a time: > “CO2…is only removed [from the atmosphere] by biological uptake and by dissolving into the ocean.” > This is not true, because CO2 is removed from the atmosphere by other mechanisms. I think you are missing, again and again, that I already told you that it was not mention in the article, but that the article linked to the full explanation that included weathering. > [@Ruken](#): > > And the next sentence: Yes, the net flux is much smaller than the flux in either direction, but biological uptake is not carbon neutral. Plenty of it gets buried and stays buried. They acknowledge that some carbon that undergoes biological uptake becomes fossil fuels, but not all buried carbon becomes fossil fuels. Shale, limestone, etc. show that carbon uptake is not carbon neutral. And that shows that you are ignoring now what was reported more recently, and yes, not mentioned in the article because not all science articles have to report about all and the kitchen sink. 🙂 What is important to notice is that what you see as inaccurate is just really an article missing an item that was not seen as important for the subject at hand, that subject of course was the time-line for the “final” amount of extra CO2 that remains in the atmosphere will stay, and the most likely answer is still hundreds of years. And that is because the calculation reported does take weathering of rocks into account. [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/) > [@](#): > > Chemistry regulates this dance between ocean, land, and atmosphere. If carbon dioxide rises in the atmosphere because of an increase in volcanic activity, for example, temperatures rise, leading to more rain, which dissolves more rock, creating more ions that will eventually deposit more carbon on the ocean floor. **It takes a few hundred thousand years to rebalance the slow carbon cycle through chemical weathering.** So, I can see why that [del]kitchen sink[/del] sink was not mentioned directly in that article. So, what we are more likely to see, in human timeline terms, is what we can get from the fast carbon cycle. > [@](#): > > However, the slow carbon cycle also contains a slightly faster component: the ocean. At the surface, where air meets water, carbon dioxide gas dissolves in and ventilates out of the ocean in a steady exchange with the atmosphere. Once in the ocean, carbon dioxide gas reacts with water molecules to release hydrogen, making the ocean more acidic. The hydrogen reacts with carbonate from rock weathering to produce bicarbonate ions. > > Before the industrial age, the ocean vented carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in balance with the carbon the ocean received during rock weathering. However, since carbon concentrations in the atmosphere have increased, the ocean now takes more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases. Over millennia, the ocean will absorb up to 85 percent of the extra carbon people have put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, but the process is slow because it is tied to the movement of water from the ocean’s surface to its depths. > > In the meantime, winds, currents, and temperature control the rate at which the ocean takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. (See The Ocean’s Carbon Balance on the Earth Observatory.) It is likely that changes in ocean temperatures and currents helped remove carbon from and then restore carbon to the atmosphere over the few thousand years in which the ice ages began and ended. It is important to notice here that while the issue will remain with us for that long the point remains: we need to stop treating the atmosphere as a sewer to avoid worse scenarios that are bound to last longer. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2018, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/57 "2018-06-26T02:23:29Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I’m willing to bet that there are very many feedbacks on many different timescales, both positive and negative, and that we don’t have a good handle on many of them, or even know they exist. We are talking about interactions between many biologcal and non-biological complex systems. That’s a bit misleading. The estimation of equilibrium climate sensitivity is essentially the study of feedbacks, and we do have a fairly good handle on all the major ones and a fairly confident estimate of climate sensitivity within admittedly a broad range. It would be very surprising indeed if there were major feedbacks that we didn’t know about in view of the extensive paleoclimate studies that have been done. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > A complex system has to be dominated by negative feedbacks or it wouod be unstable. The question is whether the feedbacks will happen in time to do us any good. If a feedback oscillates around a period of 500 years, for our purposes it really does not change anything. That’s not necessarily true, and indeed climate feedbacks are predominantly positive and over the long term would become even more strongly positive if we lose most of the polar ice cover. That would be a far more likely scenario than some mysterious negative feedback if we continue on the present trajectory, and it’s been estimated that this “slow feedback” would more than double climate sensitivity. You’re technically correct about the need for negative feedbacks to dominate for the system to be stable, but the climate system has an intrinsic negative feedback, namely the fact that the earth’s outgoing IR blackbody radiation increases with temperature. Water vapor, for example, is a powerful positive feedback that is a fairly direct function of temperature in the troposphere, and one might wonder why it doesn’t create runaway climate change (more WV = higher temperature = more WV in an endless cycle). It’s because, fortunately, the radiative flux to space for each degree of temperature rise is approximately twice as much as the flux reduction due to water vapor, so rising temperature drives water vapor feedback in a stable fashion. The point I want to make is that it’s a mistake to think that there are negative feedbacks lurking in the system that are going to save us. If anything, positive feedbacks may become stronger. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2018, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/58 "2018-06-26T02:44:06Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I think you are missing, again and again, that I already told you that it was not mention in the article, but that the article linked to the full explanation that included weathering. > > And that shows that you are ignoring now what was reported more recently, and yes, not mentioned in the article because not all science articles have to report about all and the kitchen sink. 🙂 Do you think those sentences I quoted are correct? Yes or no? Here they are again: > [@](#): > > CO2 is essentially chemically inert in the atmosphere and is only removed by biological uptake and by dissolving into the ocean. Biological uptake (with the exception of fossil fuel formation) is carbon neutral: Every tree that grows will eventually die and decompose, thereby releasing CO2. (Yes, there are maybe some gains to be made from reforestation but they are probably minor compared to fossil fuel releases). ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2018, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/59 "2018-06-26T04:27:33Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Do you think those sentences I quoted are correct? Yes or no? > > Here they are again: Again, based on what they clarified in the links and cites, yes. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2018, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530/60 "2018-06-26T07:12:16Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Calcium carbonate is from the shells of animals … who eat plants … who in turn reduce carbon … You think molluscs, algae, corals, etc. secrete their calcareous bits _from the food they eat_? As Ruken’s link showed (but am repeating here for those who don’t read links) they secrete shells from the [dissolved CO[sub]2[/sub]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_inorganic_carbon)in the water (which, through purely chemical, not biological, means, is in the form of bicarbonate ions) Also, by far the largest fraction of carbonate comes from [plants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_biogenic_calcification#Coccolithophores), _not_ animals. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-stop-emitting-co2-methane-other-greenhouse-gases-tomorrow-now-what/805530.md?page=4)