this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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It sequesters the carbon while itβs alive, but youβd need to bury the plant deep underground to remove it from the equation
Or do the exact opposite and launch it into space.
It doesn't have to be removed to that degree to be useful. Simply composting the biomass and then using the compost will create more biomass to create more compost, all the while sequestering carbon in a living system. Life is a good place to store carbon, and this type of life makes oxygen. A greater ratio of oxygen also offsets carbon in a different way, creating more overall atmosphere and lessening the percentage that is carbon dioxide.
Why would I have to bury it?
When plants break down they release CO2. It needs to never decompose to remove carbon dioxide.
How come the same doesn't apply to animals and oxygen?
https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/app/uploads/sites/17/2020/06/carbon-cycle-1024x1024.jpg
The issue is that we have artificially accelerated the return of carbon to the cycle by burning coal and oil.
Because we breathe in O2 and breathe out CO2. The Oxygen is attaching to Carbon and leaving our body with every breath.
This is the opposite of plants, which breathe in CO2 and breathe out O2, storing that Carbon.
That said, I'm sure we also release a lot of CO2 when we decompose. Worst of both worlds, really.
That's what I mean. If mishandling a plant's death is bad for us, then handling an animal's death in the same way should be good for us, right?
Unfortunately not. While animals inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, and plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, both plants and animals release essentially the components upon death and decay, and these components, mostly carbon dioxide, are already overly represented due to fossil fuels consumption.
Considering the Earth has been around for a billion or so years, I can't understand how these two circumstances combined haven't turned Earth into a one gas system by now. I'm not a global warming skeptic, but this part just seems off.
Until we started burning fuels, it balanced itself. What we call fossil fuels is literally the buried carbon of life that came before. The stuff the natural process already dealt with once before. We brought it back, and now it all has to be reprocessed and put back in the ground or deep ocean where we got it or there's no balance in the system and it will take very long times for natural processes to bring it back to normal levels, maybe never.
Imagine a full bath tub with the drain open and the water running., Water is flowing in and out at an even rate, meaning the tub is draining but stays pretty much full. Now imagine somebody took the drain pipe and routed it back into the tub. Now the drain has to deal with that water again, and the new water coming through the tap.