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avocadro t1_isvknwc wrote

Reply to comment by SomberPony in Phantom Forests: Why Ambitious Tree Planting Projects Are Failing by filosoful

> the oceans are in equilibrium with the atmosphere. When carbon is removed by trees, the oceans off gas more CO2.

Doesn't this argument imply that the oceans will off gas more CO2 if we stop burning fossil fuels?

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SomberPony t1_isvr21x wrote

Correct. There's 4 reservoirs of carbon: the lithosphere (rock), the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the biosphere. The lithosphere holds 99.99% of earth's carbon, in the form of carboniferous minerals, including oil and natural gas. When volcanoes erupt or we dig those minerals up and burn them, the carbon is transferred to the atmosphere. Eventually, life and water move carbon out of the atmosphere and eventually transfer it back to the lithosphere. This process is very, very slow.

We are able to dig up and burn hydrocarbons faster than nature can remove them from the atmosphere. So long as there's photosynthesis and liquid water, eventually carbon gets scrubbed out of the atmosphere. We'd be looking at a cooler Venus style planet otherwise.

If we cut off burning mined hydrocarbons today, natural processes would slowly remove them from the atmosphere. However, that would be counteracted by carbon stored in the ocean to be released. This is why I think it would be better to remove carbonic acid in the oceans and let them absorb carbon from the atmosphere than to try and suck it out of the atmosphere.

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