Questions tagged [co2]

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33 views

How could oxygen levels have ever been higher if there is so little carbon dioxide present?

Assumptions: Essentially all oxygen that's ever been present in the atmosphere originated from oxygenic photosynthesis. The production of an oxygen molecule during photosynthesis leads to the ...
3 votes
1 answer
113 views

Why is dependence of radiation forcing on CO2 concentration logarithmic?

As a newbie on climate science and meteorology I'm trying to understand the almost logarithmic behavior of CO2 concentration on radiation forcing $$F(c) = A \cdot \ln \frac{c}{c_0}$$ and why there is ...
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How can carbon flows be modeled mathematically?

In this video Earth's carbon cycle is investigated with a bit of maths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIOrF0-R33o It is in German, but the idea behind I can describe easily: There are reservoirs of ...
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7 votes
2 answers
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Do the large forests remove CO2 from the atmosphere?

Thomas L. Friedman, the New York Times columnist, wrote yesterday: These intact forests — from those in the Amazon and Congo River basins to ones in Canada, Russia and Ecuador — are the world’s life-...
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Forest Land Remaining Forest Land, Emissions Algorithm

I'm trying to understand how CO2 emissions are calculated in the Land Use category "Forest Land Remaining Forest Land". There are several subcategories, the one with the biggest impact seems ...
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Why Climate Change (CC) or Global Warming (GW) does not take into account the actual heat from human combustion processes? [duplicate]

Are there any papers or calculations of how much we could be warming the atmosphere by these processes?. Please also share any clues to find those numbers if you have. The volume of a car engine ...
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1 vote
2 answers
115 views

What is the current atmospheric concentration of $\small\sf{CO_2}$ in the atmosphere in atm (or bar)?

For some reason, I can only find the answer in ppm and I don’t know how to do this conversion.
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1 vote
2 answers
149 views

Does use of hemp oil for transport fuel produce a net positive CO2e?

A Facebook post containing an image from @TheGretaEffect and actual post can be found here mentions the development of a plane build entirely of hemp products and fueled with hemp oil. I was thinking ...
4 votes
1 answer
237 views

How to measure Air CO2 Cheaply for a School Science Experiment

I'm helping my daughter with a science experiment for school to show the effect of CO2 enrichment on plant growth. We have two small tabletop greenhouses with approximately 10 Liter volume and we're ...
0 votes
0 answers
51 views

Alternative natural explanations for rise in atmospheric CO2? [duplicate]

I am in no way a climate-change skeptic, nor a denier. Motivated by this question and some articles I read online: Are there any known natural processes beside human activities that are able to ...
5 votes
2 answers
397 views

How to explain the remarkable regularity of the increased concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide?

The Keeling curve is very well approximated with an exponential function with an offset $256$ [ppm] $$256+A\cdot e^{\alpha\cdot t}$$ where $A=1.095\cdot10^{-12}$ and $\alpha=0.0161$ ($t$ is in years ...
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3 answers
202 views

Could increased $\ce{CO2}$ levels be a contributing factor why dinosaurs grew so big?

Is it possible that increased CO2 levels during the larger dinosaurs era is a major factor in why dinosaurs grew so big during this period? And extrapolating this question, is it possible that the ...
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1 answer
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Is anthropogenic global warming unavoidable under modern civilisation? [closed]

Which are the reasons to believe that the climate crisis can be solved within our type of civilisation, that is, without putting in jeopardy the important advances of humanity that have been achieved ...
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1 vote
2 answers
179 views

Can we run out of air because of global warming?

Can it be that our air will be unbreathable in a few years due to CO2 emission? I think I may suffer from global warming anxiety and I accuse CO2 for my shortness of breath. Is it rational?
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4 votes
2 answers
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When would the earth run out of carbon dioxide without man made climate change?

One of my friends told me quite seriously that Gaia had evolved humans to burn the fossil fuels and thus stop the earth running out of CO2. Leaving aside the obvious nonsense it did raise an ...
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1 vote
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Calculating carbon sequestration on the percentage of tree cover

What variables are necessary to calculate carbon sequestration on densely population tree cover over a large spatial range? I wish to work on a project that has been proposed to me and my team at work....
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4 votes
1 answer
93 views

Are small reductions in CO2 emissions better than no reductions, in terms of mitigating climate change?

My understanding of climate change is that a large increase in human-caused CO2 emissions is likely to lead to large change in the Earth's climate through a global warming effect. Scientific consensus ...
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6 votes
1 answer
248 views

Do carbon dioxide hydrates exist in nature?

Do CO2 hydrates exist in nature? If so, how much carbon could they contain?
3 votes
0 answers
242 views

How to convert CO2 emission from gC/m2/day to Tonnes?

I have an ODIAC Global CO2 emission dataset. The dataset is provided in netCDF (.nc) format and the resolution of the dataset is 1x1 degree. The unit of the dataset is gC/m2/day. I need to convert it ...
1 vote
1 answer
148 views

How to convert mol m-2 s-1 CO2 emission to Megaton day-1 (MtCO2 per day)?

I am working on the global CO2 emission using a model dataset. The model provides the CO2 emission in mol m-2 s-1. How to convert mol m-2 s-1 CO2 emission to Megaton day-1 (Mt per day)? Regards
4 votes
2 answers
166 views

Are wetlands effective against climate change?

In the region where I live, there is a trend that conservation organizations are advocating the conservation and re-valuation of wetlands. Aside from boosting biodiversity and providing other ...
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5 votes
1 answer
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How is causality between past CO$_2$ levels and fossilized plant pores proxies established?

According to Mann and Kump (2015), Geologic proxies are characteristics of sedimentary rocks that we can use to infer ancient environmental conditions. Climate scientists study proxies because there ...
3 votes
1 answer
83 views

Why don't we store carbon by storing used plastics under ground?

Some types of used plastics are very stable. They also contain a significant amount of carbon. An example is polyethylene (PE). When waste is collected for recycling, not every plastic part can be ...
5 votes
0 answers
223 views

Can the absorbtion of infrared around the 650 wavenumber in water be a substantial cause of converting that spectrum range into other spectra?

CO2 absorbs around the 15 microns wavelenght or wavenumber 650, and radiates in the same but also a somewhat wider range. However, the top layer of the oceans seem to also convert that spectrum range. ...
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4 votes
5 answers
1k views

How hot the earth will be if we have 20% CO2 in the atmosphere instead of ~0.04? and how cold would it be if doesn't have any CO2?

I know Earth once had this amount in the past, but if we got the former atmosphere with around 20% of CO2, how much the temperature will rise? assuming the atmosphere is still dominated by 78% ...
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7 votes
2 answers
153 views

Why is Belgium (and Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Norway) still above consumption CO2 levels per capita of 1990? While many others did go down

"Consumption-based emissions reflect the consumption and lifestyle choices of a country’s citizens." Via this article https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 I see that Belgium's ...
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1 vote
1 answer
50 views

What potential geoengineering technologies could help a country "achieve its Paris (agreement) targets"?

CNN's China to expand weather modification program to cover area larger than India ends with the following sentence: "While China has not yet shown signs of 'unilaterally' deploying ...
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1 vote
0 answers
35 views

How would I compare (CO$_2$-eq) kg$^{−1}$ with metric tons?

I'm doing a project and looking at one of my scholarly resources, it says that The carbon footprint per kilogram protein of plant-based substitutes was found in the range of 6–17 carbon dioxide ...
1 vote
0 answers
51 views

What is the carbon footprint of Spacex's plan for earth-to-earth transport plan compared to commercial aviation?

According to many articles around the web as well as the SpaceX official website (https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/earth/index.html), Elon Musk plans to replace intercontinental flights with ...
2 votes
4 answers
197 views

Review of calculation of CO$_2$ contribution to warming

In a Swedish Facebook group for "climate change skeptics" Erik Larsen has shared his calculation of how big part of temperature change can be attributed to human emissions of carbon dioxide. ...
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1 vote
0 answers
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CO2 probe measuring at temperatures up to 150 °C [closed]

I'm looking for a $CO_2$ measuring probe (analog current output, digital out: RS232/485 - probe will be connected and transferring real time data to the data logger) that would operate up to 150 °C (...
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3 votes
1 answer
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Is CO2 in the Pacific Ocean depleted or enriched in Carbon-13 compared to the Atlantic, and why?

Due to thermohaline circulation, the Pacific water is more 'aged' so there is a higher amount of total dissolved inorganic carbon (e.g. CO2) in the deep Pacific when compared to the Atlantic. However, ...
4 votes
1 answer
325 views

Do trees capture more CO2 during a fast growth stage?

I understand that trees capture CO2 from the air and use that carbon to grow. As trees reach mature height, do they begin to capture less CO2 as they would only need carbon for "maintenance" as ...
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-2 votes
2 answers
519 views

How has the increase in global CO2 been attributed to an anthropogenic cause?

How has the increase in global CO2 been attributed to an anthropogenic cause? It would seem to me that this could be definitively determined on the basis of placing gas spectrometers on the exhausts ...
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6 votes
1 answer
3k views

The effect of CO2 concentration on the pH of the ocean

I'm confused about how increased $\ce{CO2}$ concentration in the atmosphere affects the pH of the ocean. The increase in $\ce{CO2}$ concentration means the pH of the ocean will decrease (by several ...
user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
99 views

Why are $\small\sf{CH_4}$ and $\small\sf{CO_2}$ levels coupled during the Pleistocene?

CH4 and CO2 levels show correlation throughout the Pleistocene: Source: trustyetverify.wordpress.com What are the reasons of this coupling?
user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
243 views

How much heat was released from the 2019-2020 Australian bush fires?

How much heat was released from the 2019-2020 Australian bush fires? And is that likely to have a measurable impact on global atmospheric heat content? Maybe as a secondary question: How much impact ...
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5 votes
3 answers
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Are Ice Ages Affected by the Freezing Out of CO2 in Antarctica?

The freezing point of carbon dioxide is -78.5 $\small\mathsf{^o}$C. Occasionally this low is exceeded in Antarctica, and small quantities of CO2 are frozen out, but are returned soon after to the ...
1 vote
0 answers
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About climate sensitivity of carbon dioxide: today compared with PETM

Due to IPCC the climate sensitivity of CO₂ very likely is 3.0 ± 1.5 ℃ for each doubling of the concentration of atmospheric CO₂. Counting on earlier global warming using the Arrhenius formula [ΔT=λ·...
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1 vote
2 answers
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Trends in atmospheric CO2

I plotted the atmospheric CO2-concentrations to see trends and wondered especially about the phase around 1600 in the plot which I find very interesting. Etienne Godin already told me some facts in ...
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CO2 behaviour in atmosphere

I have a doubts about how $\small\mathsf{CO_2}$ absorbs an re-emits infra red (IR) radiation. Let's imagine an only-$\small\mathsf{CO_2}$ atmosphere. In this case, a large amount of 15 $\small\mathsf{...
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3 votes
1 answer
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Reference units for CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and meaning of a slight downward tendancy during the 1600

I discovered here a set of yearly historical atmospherical CO2-concentrations from year 0 - 2014. Since they haven't mentioned which measure they used, I'm not sure whether it is right to talk about ...
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1 vote
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Which Farm Crops Are Most Efficient at Reducing Local CO2?

The presence of nearby rainforest is known to measurably deplete the local atmospheric $\small\mathsf{CO_2}$ content, but how much would $\small\mathsf{CO_2}$-hungry crops reduce local $\small\mathsf{...
1 vote
0 answers
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Natural air-CO2 deviations in the troposphere

I'm working on a room air quality management algorithm, and many sensors seem to respond with $\small\mathsf{CO_2}$ measurements of as little as 200 ppm. Obviously a sensor giving off this value will ...
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3 votes
1 answer
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In the 800 kyr $\ce{CO_2}$ record, how detectable would a short-term peak be?

It is stated in https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html that the temporal uncertainty for the glacier $\small\mathsf{CO_2}$ records is less than $\small\mathsf{5~\%}$ at any given ...
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2 votes
5 answers
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Why is smoke considered a factor of global cooling when analyzing nuclear winter scenarios, but arent when analyzing global warming scenarios?

In many articles on the internet (I'll cite a couple for the sake of the question), smoke from the fires (composed mainly of $\small\mathsf{CO_2}$ and CO) following a nuclear war would cool the ...
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0 votes
1 answer
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Will carbon tax be applicable to other emissions? [closed]

Will Carbon tax be applied to other emissions or only carbon emissions like Carbon dioxide & Carbon monoxide ? Can non-warming pollutant emissions like Chaff(Chemtrail) also be taxed under the ...
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CO2 reduction by depopulation

Population reduction is not envisaged as a practical (never mind humane) solution to CO2 emission reduction as far as I can tell. I stumbled however on a paper discussing the estimated effects of such ...
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3 votes
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Cooling effect from the oceans in global warming

The ocean soaks up about 90 percent of the heat of climate change, because of ocean heating. When using the formula of Svante Arrhenius to calculate forcing due to atmospheric $CO_2$ $\Delta F=\alpha\...
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7 votes
3 answers
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Has the present rise of CO2 ppm been proved to be caused by human activity?

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen roughly from 300 to 400ppm over the last 60 years. What are the reliable calculations showing that such a rise has been caused by human activity? I am ...