Carbon is an essential component of air, water, and of all living things, as well as a component of many minerals. It’s like the Earth has a “Carbon Economy” - but when an economy becomes unbalanced..... health and life are in peril. Welcome to our Carbon Sequestration blog. It is a work in progress, each post a continuously updated chapter of the eventual "Carbon Sequestration Workbook". The goal of the book is to explain in simple terms, the how and why of the carbon cycle, what climate change and global warming are, and what ordinary people can do to slow down the process, to minimize the suffering of our children and grandchildren as they adapt to changes that we now know are inevitable. We’ve traveled all across glaciated North America over the past half century, describing and illustrating ecological communities to document conditions in anticipation of ecological change. The poem that follows, was written by Fred 30 years ago on Haida Gwaii, as a response to ...
CHAPTER 1: Mechanisms of Global Warming – how methane and carbon dioxide keep infrared heat in the atmosphere – how plants absorb carbon - percentage of global climate change to greenhouse and solar irradiance. Before deciding what to do about climate change, it’s important to understand the physics and biology that are involved. While the consequences are complex, both basic mechanisms are simple: Carbon dioxide and methane are transparent to visible light, but opaque to the infrared radiation light becomes when it’s re-radiated from the surface of the Earth, so when they are at higher concentrations they trap more of the sunlight’s energy in the atmosphere and warm it up. Plants obtain the energy they need to grow, and the substance of their bodies, by absorbing carbon dioxide and entraining energy from sunlight in carbon compounds, initially sugars, by photosynthesis, which releases oxygen. When their bodies are eaten or burned the carbon the photosynthesis has “fixed”...