Scientist Discovers Fundamental Nutrient of Life
In a stunning scientific breakthrough, a Swiss scientist has discovered that atmospheric carbon dioxide is the fundamental nutrient of carbon-based lifeforms. Without CO2 in the air, all life on Planet Earth would perish says Jean Senebier, botanist and also a Swiss pastor.
Senebier has clearly shown, in fundamental experiments which other scientists have replicated, that green plants, in the presence of sunlight, take up CO2 and expel oxygen, and that this process (termed photosynthesis) is the chemical source of plant growth.
Without atmospheric carbon dioxide, animals (including human beings) would have nothing to eat and no oxygen to breathe. We would all be dead!
Much like Mr. Senebier, who passed away in 1845.
Fortunately for Science (and to the benefit of semi-intelligent carbon-based lifeforms) Mr. Senebier’s findings were confirmed by Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure, a Swiss chemist and student of plant physiology. From the Wikipedia [here]:
Saussure showed that the increase in mass of the plant as it grows could not be due only to uptake of CO2, but also to the uptake of water. Thus the basic reaction by which photosynthesis is used to produce food (such as glucose) was outlined.
Tragically as well as coincidentally, Saussure also passed away in 1845.
Tragic, because modern semi-intelligent carbon-based lifeforms now believe that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a poison and a pollutant, when in fact if not for CO2, all carbon-based lifeforms would also be dead.
Yes, fellow carbon-based lifeforms, CO2 has been determined to be a pollutant by the US Supreme Court, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Sierra Club. From Time Online [here]:
Environmentalists Win Big EPA Ruling
By Bryan Walsh, Time, Nov. 13, 2008
That’s why a decision issued on Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Environmental Appeals Board is so important. Responding to a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club over a new coal plant being build on American Indian reservation land in Utah, the board ruled that the EPA has no valid reason to refuse to regulate the CO2 emissions that come from new coal-powered plants. The decision pointed to a May 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court that recognized CO2, the main cause of climate change, is indeed a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act and therefore needs to be regulated by the EPA.
Now, thanks to those geniuses, $billions are being spent to “scrub” the atmosphere of the fundamental nutrient of Life. From Scientific Blogging [here]:
Carbon Dioxide ‘Scrubber’ Takes Greenhouse Gases Right Out Of The Air
By News Staff, September 29th 2008
In research conducted at the University of Calgary, climate change scientist David Keith and a team of researchers showed it is possible to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, using a relatively simple machine that can capture the trace amount of CO2 present in the air at any place on the planet. …
Keith and his team’s research this summer, which included an outdoor test of their capture tower in McMahon Stadium in Calgary as a dramatic setting, was featured in an episode of Discovery Channel’s new “Project Earth” series on television.
And yet, without atmospheric CO2, Dr. Keith, his team, the University of Calgary, and the Discovery Channel would all cease to exist.
That’s because all animals (including human beings) depend utterly on plant sugars at the base of all food chains, and plants require CO2 to make plant sugars. All animals (including human beings and even fish) also require oxygen to chemically metabolize plant sugars, and atmospheric oxygen also comes from photosynthesis, the very process discovered by Jean Senebier which absolutely and unequivocally requires atmospheric CO2.
But, because of the untimely demises of Mr. Senebier and Mr. Saussure 164 years ago, currently living semi-intelligent carbon-based lifeforms such as the US Supreme Court, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Sierra Club, The US Congress, the POTUS, the University of Calgary, etc. have determined that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a poison and a pollutant and must be scrubbed away.
As my friend John says, we live in interesting times.
The times are similar to the Dark Ages in that semi-intelligent carbon-based lifeforms have descended into barking stupidity and superstition.
Some of us have, anyway. Most foresters (not all) are still mindful of Mr. Senebier’s discovery. We cling to the old belief that photosynthesis is a good thing, and that CO2 is fundamental to the growing of trees, which is central to the practice and profession of forestry. For some foresters, anyway.
Others are deeply engaged in burning forests to the ground, thereby chemically converting plant sugars back into atmospheric CO2, which is a good thing in some respects since other semi-intelligent carbon-based lifeforms are busy scrubbing it away. Some people are engaged in scrubbing and others are engaged in burning, and hopefully they balance each other out.
Hopefully in the sense that Life depends on atmospheric CO2.
Interestingly, taxpayers support both the scrubbers and the burners, which might be seen as an enormous waste of tax dollars in both endeavors. Taxpayers also support the US Supreme Court, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Sierra Club (yes sir), The US Congress, the POTUS, the University of Calgary, etc. which also might be seen by some observers (not to mention the taxpayers) as an enormous waste of tax dollars.
Taxpayers might as well heave their tax dollars into burn barrels and set them on fire, which would increase atmospheric CO2, the fundamental nutrient of Life, without the funds getting drained off by semi-intelligent carbon-based lifeforms straight out of the Dark Ages.
Especially so these days since dollars are hardly worth the paper they are printed on due to the largess of the US Government, which is shoveling dollars at wealthy bankers as fast as they can be printed, or even faster.
Meanwhile, despite the human comedy, Life goes on — thanks to the presence of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
by bear bait
by YPmule
Recently read a news story about a phosphate mine they want to enlarge - so they can make fertilizer. This same company has a lot of cows. To me it would make a lot more sense to use the manure to fertilize the crops than to tear up more land to dig up phosphate. Then again, I’m not a scientist, but my garden sure grows good!
There are many plant nutrients: phosphorus, potassium, nitrogen, calcium for instance. But those are needed in trace amounts only, and most plants do not grow in fertilized gardens.
All green plants, no matter where they grow, absolutely require carbon dioxide (and water) for photosynthesis. CO2 and H2O are fundamental to the process of converting solar energy to plant stuff.
Without CO2 the fundamental process of Life stops cold.
Many greenhouse managers pump in CO2 to spur plant growth. Plants respond to added CO2 by growing faster. Typically, 1,000 parts per million is the target concentration of CO2 in greenhouse air.
Otherwise the regular concentration of CO2 (~380 ppm) in the atmosphere is at the marginal lower limit for plant growth. Below ~200 ppm plants die or grow very poorly.
When plants don’t grow, no oxygen is produced and there is nothing for animals to breathe (or eat, for that matter).
The chemical equation for photosynthesis is:
CO2 + H20 (in sunlight) -> sugar + O2
You can see how CO2 is necessary for all that we eat and breathe.
Sadly, eco’s want to take forests and burn them, then bury the burned carcasses to “enrich the soils” of forests that surely don’t need enrichment. This process is known as “bio-char” and some misguided people hail it as a world-saver, because it sequesters carbon and locks it up underground, while adding nutrients to the soils.
This circular ill-logic only impacts our forest environments even more than doing nothing and letting them burn. To implement bio-char on a large enough scale (even if the soils needed enrichment), the scope of the ground disturbance would surely go against the Endangered Species Act, as applied to salmon spawning grounds.
Sure, go ahead and bring bio-char to depleted agricultural soils of the Midwest but, leave the western carbon sequestration to thinning projects which result in durable wood products that are locked up for many decades.
In my real life as a farm manager, I deal with the balancing act of cost vs. return as I try to keep the business that employs me upright in a stormy economic time. I attempt to achieve more output with less input. In that light, I have been attending classes and seminars and reading about soil science, about the biology below ground.
The epiphany in that area for me is that modern agriculture is essentially a process of hydroponically growing plants suspended in water surrounded by soil, and the plant nutrients come from surplus bomb making materials like ammonia nitrates, phosphorus, and potassium by way of potash. Modern agriculture is a giant exercise in hydroponic farming and disposing of surplus bomb making materials, all at the expense of soil biology, which is our underground plant, animal, bacterial and fungal communities, all based on the carbon atom, all part of organic chemistry. The soil is a primary carbon sink WHEN IT IS HEALTHY AND ALL THE PLAYERS ARE PRESENT AS THEY WERE BEFORE AGRICULTURE FIRST DEPLETED THOSE ELEMENTS, AND BEFORE ARTIFICIAL FERTILITY WAS ADDED.
The soil when healthy (as in under a heritage forest) is a huge carbon sink. Every single living thing in the soil is composed of carbon. The roots of trees, shrubs and other plants, the fungus among us, the bacteria, the little critters and wigglies, all are carbon atom sources.
And then we allow wildfire to run rampant, unfought, uncontrolled, by plan and purpose, and we remove much of the source of living roots by incineration or scorching death, and we heat the soil below the levels where carbon based life goes to gas and ash. TONS OF CARBON ARE LOST BELOW GROUND, much once living in a symbiotic relationship with the plants above ground. Further, if you look at the size of the carbon using factory that is now gone, removed for centuries or more, you might barely begin to realize the scope of the loss.
And if you do, you are more enlightened, smarter, and more pragmatic than government or environmental NGOs. They believe unobstructed wildfire is a good thing. They are patently wrong. They fail to understand what humans tenss of centuries ago understood. The First Residents knew that controlling fire was to control their destiny and to provide for their survival. As a country, today, we don’t understand the risk to our survival, and we don’t understand the value of carbon in the atmosphere to mitigate that most pernicious poison on the planet, oxygen.
So I continue to plot a course of soil recovery and better plant health, reduced dependence on chemicals and pesticides (I am now down to one chemical caterpillar spray in addition to Bt). I am actively working to be sustainable, to have an active and abundant colony of diverse species underground. The more healthy I can make the soil, the less I have to fight pests which are designed to attack the weak. And all the while I am actively adding carbon to the soil, and taking it from the atmosphere. The more biology in the soil, the more carbon in the soil. It is very simplistic in its own way. I need CO2 to grow my crops and to grow the biology in my soil.
It is possible to scrub sulfur out of the stacks to lessen acid rain, even though ALL rain is acid. The blueberry barrens of Maine are acidic soils, and the blueberry is one of the few native food plants of North America in worldwide use. The wild blueberry is cultivated the same way it has been for millennia: harvested and burned to fruit again in alternating years. The ash most likely neutralizes some acid while the burning removes spent and dead wood, leaves, and pests. Blueberries are a major segment of Oregon’s agricultural sector, yet traditional blueberry management would be (will be soon) hounded out of business in Oregon.