7. The Carbon Cycle - how it can help our understanding

Natural CO2 emissions as part of a closed ecosystem.
The main product, along with CO2, from the right hand side of the cycle is energy. If we consider ourselves, Homo sapiens, 'being alive' means our bodies are respiring and producing energy. To do this carbohydrates are effectively being burned in a very regulated way. The energy produced keeps the body functioning, acting and moving. That's life. By living we therefore cause CO2 emissions - all six billion of us within the biosphere. The same applies to every other living being in the biosphere. CO2 emissions are therefore an inevitable consequence of life. However the carbon cycle makes good use of the CO2 as we have discussed previously and maintains an equilibrium. It has worked well as a 'closed ecosystem' - an ecosystem that can regulate itself.

Extra-ordinary emissions in an inflating closed ecosystem
The increasing activity of our increasing population is challenging this closed and self regulating equilibrium. Our population is expanding at 200,000 per day; on top of this our increasing activity requires more energy and raw material consumption per capita. Let's take this issue in two parts:

1. A human community with an increasing population can continue to grow as long as it has a food supply and has a means of dealing with its waste. (This is leaving to one side the other biological and sociological needs such as a place to breed, room to function and some form of governance.) Both of the food supply and the waste treatment require complementary communities of organisms living within the ecosystem being sufficiently active to keep the ecosystem in balance. Left to Nature, once these complementary activities fail to keep up the population growth will be restrained by starvation or pollution - both these are tough options and immensely challenging for the leaders of a human community.
   
2. Even a static human community with an increasing activity level consumes more energy and raw materials and produces more waste. In our search for ever greater well-being this is exactly what is happening in the West. Again this only remains sustainable if the complementary communities of other organisms, through the carbon cycle, can become more industrious and keep providing us with the food, raw materials and energy to give us the goods and services we desire, as well as dealing with the waste we are producing.

Faced with these two forces, increasing population and the desire for greater well-being through increased consumption, the highly resourceful human race has spent the last two centuries exploiting non-biological means to generate the energy we need - we have been digging up fossil fuels, which contain carbon from outside today's biosphere. The biosphere therefore is no longer an entirely closed system. There is carbon being introduced with no complementary process for getting it out of the system. It is introduced as dense, tangible and measurable fossil fuels but is converted into an invisible and elusive waste problem - carbon dioxide. The fact that the level of CO2 is rising in the atmosphere is clear evidence that neither we nor nature is coping with this waste stream.

What is the carbon cycle suggesting we can do?

There are four new features on the carbon cycle diagram - three sets of orange dots reflecting where the regulation of carbon consumption could be applied and a green arrow depicting a shift from the biological process to the chemical process.

1. Changing the masses.
   The upper set of orange dots on the biological and chemical processes. These represent each of the 6 billion human carbon emitters, with 200,000 more each day - from people at only subsistence living through to powerful large consumers, such as most of the western world. Pretend you are the Prime Minister. How difficult do you think it would be for you to stop emitting so much? How easy would it be to persuade your children to reduce? How easy would it be to make your friends and neighbours reduce? How easy would it be to make your constituents change their habits? How easy would it be to change the habits of your country? How easy would it be for your close allies to change? How easy would it be for your past and present enemies to go with you on an emissions reduction campaign? And how easy would it be to persuade a subsistence farmer not to have the level of well-being we have in the West? Looked at this way most people would think this approach is nearly impossible and yet this is what the West is attempting to do. I think there is a novel glimmer of hope and I will return to this in a later post.
   
2. Changing the many.
   A set of three orange dots on the chemical process. This represents the big 'institutional' consumers of fossil fuels - the utilities, heavy industry, transport and so on. At least there is a finite number of these, they are organisations, they can be spoken to, they are regulated to some extent. If there were a global need to apply restraint it would easier to achieve using this option. There is currently considerable hope for carbon dioxide capture at these points but I think there are major drawbacks and limitations for this approach but we have been investigating other ways of reducing carbon consumption and CO2 emissions in this area by looking again at the old technologies of wood gas and charcoal production. This will be dealt with in a later post.
   
3. Changing the few.
   An orange dot on the arrow depicting fossil fuel extraction from the subterranean. There are definitely a finite number of coal mines, oil-fields and gas rigs, run by a small number of energy companies and these are large and visible sites. Yes, they are powerful now, but for how long? Yes, their interests need to be respected. If you were Secretary General of the UN, with an urgent mandate to reduce emissions, where would you start - at 1,2 or 3?


4. Making the most of our emissions.
   The green arrow depicting a shift from the biological process to the chemical process. At first sight this may appear counter-intuitive - you would probably consider me mad to suggest that you should burn your compost heap rather than let it moulder away. However this choice needs looking at carefully in the context of the diagram. A well managed compost heap takes biomass and produces mulch, carbon dioxide and heat. The heat is not made use of, other than to accelerate composting, so your mulch has caused CO2 emissions. If that same biomass was naturally dried and then effectively incinerated or processed into fuel, then mankind debatably would gain more benefit from your compost.
   There are considerable efforts going into processing biomass, specifically grown for bio-fuel.
   There is less but very interesting research into how to process large scale agricultural waste biomass into fuel.
   There are also valuable initiatives to rid landfill sites of biomass. In a landfill site biomass does not produce usable compost but produces methane which is a greenhouse gas of fifty times more power than CO2.

To summarise the argument, thus far, we will return to the Framework Diagram from post 4.

The biosphere
Life on earth takes place in a delicate and isolated ecosystem called the biosphere which relies entirely upon the unique chemistry of carbon. This biosphere is no more than a film on a tiny planet and extremely delicate. It is in constant movement and supports various cyclical processes which are highly balanced and interrelated.
The carbon cycle and the energy cycle
The carbon cycle is life's provider and the framework puts a renewed understanding of the carbon cycle at its very centre. Mankind needs sources of energy to exist and to be well (well-being) In its recent proliferation and increased activity levels it has found carbon-bearing fuel outside the biosphere to meet its energy needs. In burning these fuels the carbon cycle is no longer in balance. This is leading to the biosphere increasing in overall temperature due to the greenhouse effect. By understanding the carbon cycle it is possible to evaluate which measures are likely to be the most efficacious.
Economics and Politics, Philosophy and Moral Values
The ownership of energy production bestows enormous power on the few - however this situation can be seen as potentially our saviour. The framework finally recognises that all this energy fuelled activity is dedicated to what we really want - our desires and aspirations and what we are prepared to sacrifice.

The next two posts look at some secondary threats to the carbon cycle involving oceanography, climate science and demographics. That will then complete the initial analysis and from this a framework for effective action will be proposed which will draw upon, in part, the findings we discovered along the way.

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6. The Carbon Cycle - revolutionary industry

The picture so far....
describes the biological aspects of the carbon cycle. To recap, on the right hand side of the cycle, respiration in living cells releases the energy locked up in the carbon based molecules in a regulated and measured way. One byproduct is generally CO2, in turn produced in modest, measured quantities. There is a corresponding powerful chemical process which uses carbon and generates heat and carbon dioxide. In nature it generally takes place in an uncontrolled and fairly destructive fashion in the form of forest and heathland fires. If their scale is large enough they do have a short term impact on the atmosphere both from the smoke they cause and also the CO2 they generate. The counterbalancing forces do allow balance to return eventually. However, it is Man's continuing use of fire on a massive scale which is having a lasting and worrying effect on the biosphere. This takes two main forms: deliberate deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. Both are important but it is the latter which is of greatest relevance to this stage in our investigation of the delicate biosphere which relies on a well-balanced carbon cycle.

The Industrial Economy
The quite extraordinary arising of the industrial economy over the last two centuries in the West and its spread to the East represents the biggest threat to the balance. In very general terms it would be true to say that the nineteenth century played host to the coal-fired industrial revolution and the twentieth supplemented coal with oil and natural gas. The inconceivably large amounts of CO2this produces, in comparison to the small regulated quantities needed to sustain biological life is pushing the carbon cycle out of balance - hence the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is not only rising but accelerating - this indicates that natural counterbalancing mechanisms are not working. The challenge for the 21st century is to bring control to the increasing CO2 levels and deal with the consequences of this increase in CO2 from our past and current actions and lifestyles.

Returning to the diagram, the additional arrow on the right hand side represents these new man-made chemical combustion processes which use fossil fuels to generate the goods, services and energy we demand. It also can include the energy required to fire the conversion of limestone to quicklime to make cement for the construction industry and its by product, carbon dioxide. The key point about the diagram is that there is no complementary arrow on the left hand side.

All the biosphere has to counteract these increased emissions are two factors of limited effectiveness.

1. The first of these is increased activity on the left hand side of the cycle. It has been shown in the USA (Duke Forest Experiment) that plants can grow more quickly in the presence of higher concentrations of CO2 and thereby 'fix' more carbon. However this does not remain fixed for all that long and is likely to end up being decomposed or digested by other organisms in the biosphere. For example a conifer tree in a remote forest may grow for fifty years locking much of the carbon it fixes. However it will die and fall to the ground where it will be digested as food by insects, fungi and microorganisms which will expel the carbon as CO2 and methane.
2. The second is natural sequestration enabled by organisms using carbon to produce skeletons containing calcium carbonate. Most typically this will be marine organisms with exoskeletons or shells. For example a mollusc builds a large shell over its lifespan and despite eventually dying or getting eaten the shell will remain chemically intact and will sink to the sea bed with its load of carbon. The carbon therein effectively has been removed from the biosphere - this is sequestration.

The next post looks more closely at the implications of digging up fossil fuels from the subterranean layer.

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5. The Carbon Cycle - the three spheres

Three spheres....
This diagram is split into three sections: the subterranean, the biosphere and the atmosphere. At this stage in the explanation, we can ignore the subterranean but we will return to it. The atmosphere extends 50 miles above the earth's surface - travellers beyond that limit are described by NASA as officially astronauts! The biosphere is minute in comparison and extends about 100 metres into the atmosphere and a few metres down into the subterranean. It is like a thin film spread across the surface of the earth and is immensely complex and extremely delicate. It is in constant movement supporting life from the scale of a single celled organism to a complex creature with 30 trillion cells, immeasurable numbers of which colonise this thin space. A curious 'world order' has kept this inconceivably complex layer of life reasonably harmonious.

The role of carbon....
Absolutely intrinsic to life is the element carbon - it provides the structure and energy for virtually every living thing. For life to exist in this particular place in the universe it is the only element in the periodic table capable of doing the job.

The role of the carbon cycle....
The diagram is describing the equilibrium between atmospheric carbon dioxide and 'fixed carbon' in the biosphere - these two forms of carbon are in constant exchange. The cycle turns anticlockwise. As living beings, and occupiers of the biosphere we, along with virtually every other form of life, emit CO2 every time we breathe - this is depicted on the right handside of the diagram. CO2 remains in the atmosphere until plant life ensnares it during the process of photosynthesis, which with the aid of sunlight, chlorophyll and water, turns it into energy-rich carbohydrate and pure oxygen. The oxygen is returned to the atmosphere and the carbohydrate enters the food chain to support virtually all living beings. This is depicted by the left hand side of the diagram. As stated in an earlier post, the carbon cycle is life's provider. Not only does it provide us all with nutriment it also restore the oxygen consumed in respiration to the atmosphere - within certain limits it maintains an equilibrium. In other words if one side of the cycle produces more CO2, then the other side will be induced to work harder to restore the balance. There are also large 'sinks' by which any ups and downs on either side of the cycle will be smoothed out - in much the same way a set of shock absorbers dampen the springiness of a car's springs.

The physical effect of CO2 in the atmosphere....
Unlike nitrogen and oxygen there is relatively little CO2 in the atmosphere - only every 2500th particle in the air is a CO2 molecule, and yet it has a major effect on our existence. Without it the planet would be uninhabitably cold, and in overdose it would be impossibly hot, like Venus. It has greenhouse gas properties which allow light radiation through from the sun but absorbs and retains the 'warm' infrared radiation from the earth's surface.
When I was born in the 1950's there were even fewer CO2 molecules - about one in every 3300 particles. In the last 50 years the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 30% and this is having many different types of impact on the biosphere. Unlike the carbon cycle most of these impacts do not have compensating counterbalances, and so the situation is tending to run out of control. The delicate biosphere is getting disrupted and could soon be beyond any possibility of self repair.

The next post will examine what is causing this rise in CO2.

(The chemists will have spotted a deliberate mistake on the slide - CxHy is not the generic formula for a carbohydrate. but bear with me, you'll see why I used it on the next post) Read more!

4. First view of my climate change framework

Going to the answer....
I was intending to get to this much later on in the series of posts. After reflecting on the initial comments where I keep promising more posts but not giving much away, I think I'm in danger of frustrating you patient readers. So here it is.

Future Posts....
I'm intending to take this down to one more level of detail over the next few weeks.

Intended way of working....
If you subscribe you will be automatically notified of each post. By the time you read the notification the original post may well have been adapted in response to early comments so do go to the site itself. By clicking on the title of each post (or its link in the table of contents on the right hand side of the home page) it will appear on a separate page with any comments flowing from underneath the main body of the post.

Your comments....
are invaluable to me at this stage - I'm simply testing out something, which I have introduced to others in private and public meetings, and may be helpful to Mankind. What I do know for certain is that it will be wrong, but with your help it may improve sufficiently to be of use. It would be most helpful to the writer and other contributors if you placed your comments under the most relevant post.

The Framework Diagram....

1. A delicate and isolated ecosystem....
   Before looking at the square, please consider the first picture on this blog, of the earth, viewed from space on the last ever Apollo Mission. It shows that in cosmological terms our earth is minute. Most life takes place on the surface of this minute orb and extends a few 100s of metres above and below its surface. This biosphere is no more than a film on a tiny planet and extremely delicate. It is in constant movement and supports various cyclical processes which are highly balanced and interrelated.
2. The carbon cycle is life's provider....
   The framework is centred on a renewed understanding of the carbon cycle, which many met at GCSE or O-level sciences. Organisms on the photosynthesis side of the carbon cycle consume CO2 and in so doing provide the living world with most of its nutriment. The living world, in turn, consumes that nutriment, during respiration, and returns the CO2 into the atmosphere. As I will demonstrate in my next, more detailed post, mankind, in its recent proliferation of the earth's surface has found carbon-bearing fuel outside the biosphere to meet its energy needs. In burning these fuels the carbon cycle is no longer in balance. This is leading to the biosphere increasing in overall temperature due to the greenhouse effect.
3. Man needs energy to survive....
   The framework acknowledges that mankind needs sources of energy to exist, but recognises that Mankind might well be profligate in their use. Using carbon bearing fossil fuels is already disrupting the balance in the biosphere upon which life depends.
4. The ownership of energy production bestows enormous power on the few....
   The framework recognises that energy production is part of very powerful economic and political system which is difficult to influence. This enormous power however is recognised by many potentially our saviour.
5. What do we really want and what is the wise thing to do...?
   The framework recognises finally that all this energy fuelled activity is dedicated to what we really want - our desires and aspirations. What those are? Whether they are sustainable? Whether they should be sustainable? are all fundamental philosophical questions for us all. These large questions can appear daunting and too big to handle, but can be made highly practical. It is only then that members of Mankind - that's you and me, can make a difference.

The next post therefore will be on the carbon cycle, the very centre of ther framework....

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