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["Stephen Sadler" <Docshiva@Docshiva.org>]

Helene, good answer.  It’s not just the amount of things in a closed system; it’s where they are.  If you built a huge wall around North America and filled it with ocean to a depth of half a mile, you’d still have the same amount of H2O – but the placement would have an effect on life on the continent, wouldn’t it? 

We’re also combining the carbon with oxygen.  Even in a small system, recombining elements into different molecules is what organisms do.  If they did it differently, they wouldn’t work.  Take the amount of sodium and chlorine existing in the body as sodium chloride.  Split those into the elements, but keep them in the same body.  They’ll want to recombine with other chemicals immediately, in a way that would literally cause your blood to boil explosively.  Same stuff, same amounts, same system – different results.

 

One more nit to pick; you can call the universe itself a closed system.  By closed we usually mean quite a bit smaller than that.  Even smaller than the earth, which is not a closed system.  We are affected by gravity and solar winds; we gather debris from space, whether as small as subatomic particles, or as large as dust from meteors.  Atmospheric carbon release modifies with the planet’s interaction with the nearest star; it’s an open-system problem.

 

Donna, yes the carbon from those trees goes to those places you mentioned.  In a system where we aren’t adding to atmospheric carbon,  and one where the oceans ability to absorb carbon and moderate the effects of atmospheric carbon, the non-fuel use of trees would be gentle; some carbon would return to the earth, some to the atmosphere.  Eventually bits of atmospheric carbon would be exchanged with oceanic, depending on relative concentrations, as I understand the cycle.  But the oceans have absorbed as much carbon as they can, and newly produced CO2 stays in the atmosphere.  At this point, a 100% reduction in the release of carbon (which is impossible – we need to breathe!)  into the atmosphere would be unlikely to stop strong changes to the climate.  By most models, we need to not only stop fossil fuel burning and rapidly remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

 

Back on topic a bit – we need many many more plants, from forests to gardens. 

 

~ Stephen

 

From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Hélène Dessureault
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 12:43 PM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Weather (Off topic)

 

We are taking carbon buried undergroung (petroleum) and releasing it in the atmosphere. In a closed system, we are disturbing a critical balance. Deforestation does not help the situation either. Human beings don't breath carbon but oxygen.

 

Hélène, zone 3-4

----- Original Message -----

From: william Eggers

To: North American Fruit Explorers

Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 10:52 AM

Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Weather (Off topic)

 

I've always wondered about this CO2 business.  Since the earth is a closed system, it looks like to me that we still have the same amount of carbon that we have always had.  If so, how did we get so much more that we are worring about it?

--- On Sat, 3/28/09, Kieran &/or Donna <holycow@frontiernet.net> wrote:

From: Kieran &/or Donna <holycow@frontiernet.net>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Weather (Off topic)
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Saturday, March 28, 2009, 5:06 PM

Well, I had some interesting thoughts the other day.  We had cut down a 50 year old pine and I was thinking about how they'd used these impossible-to-split virginia pines for making log cabins.  Next day I was walking in the neighboring field and thinking about how it was all once virgin timber and that all the wimpy woodlands surrounding it were huge old trees before the white man came.  Then I wondered, "Where are those trees now?"  All the timber that was cut down not just the first time, but all the times since, where did they go?  Where are the houses, the barns, the fences that were built with them?  Most have rotted away or burnt down, and they are now existing as CO2 and water and some minerals in the soil or most likely in the ocean.  What does THAT do to global temps?  I am only too aware of what it does when you chop down all the trees and have exposed soil or pavement or house roofs.  But the difference between the amount of carbon that was in trees, not to mention what was in the rich organic matter content of the soil... all that must be in the atmosphere now.  Donna  

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