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Originally Posted by Recusant
Now, back to the point at hand - where is the rest "coming from"?
You haven't dispelled the notion that our activities, which reduce the Earth's capacity to absorb emissions, are to blame for the 'extra' increase in co2 in the atmosphere.
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The ability to absorbed was treated as 0% on my calculations. The only way for higher CO2 increases is for nature to also be releaseing more. We are only produceing so much, so even if nature is absorbing none of that at all, that doesn't explain the increased CO2 (not all of it).
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A forrest is forever renewed with new life. If forrests are damaged or destroyed by humans, they are not typically replaced by a replica (or better) forrest - it is cleared permanently. IF they are replaced at all - it is for 'sustainable' logging. The density of forest (ie life and co2 absorbtion capability) is nothing like the same as it used to be due to continual purging/burning and poisoning. The forests ability to absorb co2 is lessened. There is a particularly potent difference between a rainforrest and a plantation forrest.
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NZWOOD Growth
"Forests with young trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere faster than forests with old trees. As trees become very old they take up carbon dioxide at a slower rate, and the rate at which they release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere through death and decay accelerates."
So it is actually better (in terms of helping nature absorb more CO2) to go through forests and remove old trees and replace them with young trees. In this effect, sustainable logging is actually better than leaving the forest allone.
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Interesting and quite possibly true (reference please). However - what about the previously safely captured co2 and methane (and whatever else) in the ice and permafrost, which is released as it melts. Also, regardless of the ice melt, the ocean still has a limit to what is can safely absorb before it begins to damage life and even become uninhabitable. This is part of the "difficult to predict the impacts of" feedback loops of climate change.
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Umm, for a reference all I really have is just
chemstry. Ice is really poor at holding gases in it. The CO2 and CH4 in permafrost is not actually in the ice, but in organic compounds sealed by the ice.
Yes, the ocean has a limit, but as the newly melted ice flows into it, this new water (which is currently free of dissolved CO2) acts like reinforcements for the ocean and this new water is able to pick up some slack.
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We increase enough co2, and lots else kicks in to amplify our stuff-up many times over.
We know it to be the case with permafrost, we know it to be the case with water vapour.
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Okay, what are some of the "kicks"?
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This is old, well-established science.
Google Search
The ocean will keep soaking up co2 (to a point - and not enough to offset our emissions if we don't adjust). The cost will be catastrophic for the oceans however as acidification kills just about everything.
Wiki
We know that the ocean won't be able to keep up - because we know how much co2 it took last time to destroy a huge swathe of ocean via acidification.
I think people look at history and say "yeah, it happened before and life went on". But things took tens of thousands of years to stabilise - and at great biological cost.
Ocean Acidification
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Wikimedia Error
The problem with the models is that many models have placed "guesstimate" ppm levels for CO2, and many of these are pretty laughable. The one that you posted (ppm 517 by 2070) would require an increase rate of 2.3 ppm per year (well beyond what we are doing and what the math shows we can do), some others, like
this one, use 560 ppm by 2050, thats a 4.5 ppm per year increase.
Yes, as the oceans fill up, their rate of fill up slows down. If I had some actual numbers (ppms and dates, down to the day), I'd probably be able to do a rough calculation as to what the ocean's natural limit is with some simple Diff EQs.