Keith J
09-01-2004, 10:12 AM
The global carbon cycle is a central issue of the proposed "global warming" hypothesis. This cycle is poorly understood by most and searching for facts returns overwhelming information, the most damning being the missing carbon. This is carbon, released by human activity from fossil fuels, that cannot be accounted for in the carbon cycle. Over half of the carbon released by human activity falls into this catagory. More precisely, out of the 8 billion metric tons of carbon released into the carbon cycle each year, only 3.2 billion tons shows up in atmospheric measurments.
Where does it go? Research should look at the obivious, photosynthesis. The function of plants to use CO2 and water with energy from the sun to make carbohydrates (carbo-carbon, hydrate-water). In making carbohydrates, they give off oxygen.
CO2 + H2O + energy = nCH20 + O2 where n is the polymeric number of the carbohydrate, 6 for the sugar sucrose.
Researchers are blinded because they look to trees which only make 8% of the earth's oxygen, the smallest contributor to the oxygen cycle and similarily, the smallest fraction of carbon dioxide absorption.
Looking for larger numbers, one goes to the next level, grasslands and crops. This is still tiny, a 12% producer of oxygen and similar carbon dioxide absorber. Even combined with the trees, its still tiny compared to the seas.
Yes, 80% of the earth's oxygen comes from the sea. So it stands to reason 80% or so of the carbon cycle is tied to the seas. Occum's razor? Definitely.
The weakness in this assumption is the carbon of the oceans is assumed to be floating in the upper levels of the ocean, in constant flux. For carbon to be sequestered or "stored" in the ocean, it needs to become sediment. Currents and life prevent this, or so it was thought. And if it was forming a sediment, it could be quantified in dredgings of the bottom. But the carbon could not be found, at least in a form recognizable as biogenic.
Ocean scientists have long speculated over another mystery, that being chitin. Chitin is the shells of marine life like shrimp, crabs and the like. Exoskeletons which are complex carbonhydrates. Yes, carbohydrates. Carbohydrates which resist digestion by higher life forms like marine invertabrates, fish and marine mammals. How much missing chitin? 1000 billion metric tons, per year!
The "missing carbon" pales in comparison to "missing chitin" by a factor of 240. 240 times more chitin winds up missing each year that carbon. And chitin contains carbon. A lot of carbon. About 40% by carbon by mass so the missing carbon in chitin is still about 100 times greater than the missing carbon in the atmosphere.
Now where is this chitin going? Bacteria on the ocean floor are degrading this chitin, feeding on it. The scale of the decomposition is only recently demonstrated. Seems like the bacterial have developed a sense of finding chitin and rapidly colonizing the deposit.
[ QUOTE ]
Writing in the Online Early Edition of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" for the week of Dec. 29, 2003, Xibing Li and Saul Roseman reported that they had found a genetic master switch that reacts to the presence of nearby chitin and sets off a biological chain reaction, causing the bacterial feast to begin. Understanding this process is important because 1011 tons of chitin (pronounced "KITE-in") are dumped annually in the oceans, largely by tiny sea animals called copepods, which shed their shells as they grow. "If nothing happened to this debris, we'd be up to our eyeballs in chitin, and the carbon and nitrogen cycle upon which marine life depends would be gone within 50 to 75 years," said Roseman, a professor of biology in the Kreiger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins.
Researchers were puzzled about the disappearance of chitin because little of the material turned up in sediment on the ocean floors. Where did all of the chitin go? Then, about 70 years ago, two microbiologists determined that bacteria were quickly consuming the sinking shells and preserving the ecological balance. Since then, however, several mysteries have remained: How do the bacteria find these undersea meals? How do these microorganisms attach themselves to the chitin? How do they degrade the tough material and turn it into food?
[/ QUOTE ]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-12/jhu-gms122903.php
Ok, so the bacteria are degrading the chitin. This would release the carbon back into the water and ultimately back into the atmosphere, right? Not so fast.
[ QUOTE ]
Studies on cores taken from the sediment and from a deep agar mixed culture of sediment microorganisms have shown that the activity of chitinase is greatest at depths just below the point at which oxygen becomes undetectable (ie. anaerobic).
[/ QUOTE ]http://www.gutbugs.dabsol.co.uk/publish/abs5.htm
The bacteria are anerobic meaning they derive energy without using oxygen and instead of making carbon dioxide, they make methane. Here is where the global warming Luddites enter the self-flagelation stage. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and therefore this is bad. But just like the original Luddites, the GW variety fails to see the big picture, that is the methane never makes it to the surface.
Yes, this methane is locked away in vast expanses of ocean floors as an ice-methane deposit known as clathrates. The earth had about 5,000 gigatons (5 x 10^15 tons) of carbon in the form of conventional fossil fuels, both recoverable and non-recoverable, potential and consumed. The oceans have about twice that in clathrate deposits. 10,000 gigatons of carbon are contained in clathrates. Since clathrates cannot exist in deeper ocean sediments (20 feet below the mudline) due to geothermal heat, their origin is most probably from biological activity.
http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/ees123/clathres.p.gif
More will follow...this is posting from what I know and not my notes...
Where does it go? Research should look at the obivious, photosynthesis. The function of plants to use CO2 and water with energy from the sun to make carbohydrates (carbo-carbon, hydrate-water). In making carbohydrates, they give off oxygen.
CO2 + H2O + energy = nCH20 + O2 where n is the polymeric number of the carbohydrate, 6 for the sugar sucrose.
Researchers are blinded because they look to trees which only make 8% of the earth's oxygen, the smallest contributor to the oxygen cycle and similarily, the smallest fraction of carbon dioxide absorption.
Looking for larger numbers, one goes to the next level, grasslands and crops. This is still tiny, a 12% producer of oxygen and similar carbon dioxide absorber. Even combined with the trees, its still tiny compared to the seas.
Yes, 80% of the earth's oxygen comes from the sea. So it stands to reason 80% or so of the carbon cycle is tied to the seas. Occum's razor? Definitely.
The weakness in this assumption is the carbon of the oceans is assumed to be floating in the upper levels of the ocean, in constant flux. For carbon to be sequestered or "stored" in the ocean, it needs to become sediment. Currents and life prevent this, or so it was thought. And if it was forming a sediment, it could be quantified in dredgings of the bottom. But the carbon could not be found, at least in a form recognizable as biogenic.
Ocean scientists have long speculated over another mystery, that being chitin. Chitin is the shells of marine life like shrimp, crabs and the like. Exoskeletons which are complex carbonhydrates. Yes, carbohydrates. Carbohydrates which resist digestion by higher life forms like marine invertabrates, fish and marine mammals. How much missing chitin? 1000 billion metric tons, per year!
The "missing carbon" pales in comparison to "missing chitin" by a factor of 240. 240 times more chitin winds up missing each year that carbon. And chitin contains carbon. A lot of carbon. About 40% by carbon by mass so the missing carbon in chitin is still about 100 times greater than the missing carbon in the atmosphere.
Now where is this chitin going? Bacteria on the ocean floor are degrading this chitin, feeding on it. The scale of the decomposition is only recently demonstrated. Seems like the bacterial have developed a sense of finding chitin and rapidly colonizing the deposit.
[ QUOTE ]
Writing in the Online Early Edition of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" for the week of Dec. 29, 2003, Xibing Li and Saul Roseman reported that they had found a genetic master switch that reacts to the presence of nearby chitin and sets off a biological chain reaction, causing the bacterial feast to begin. Understanding this process is important because 1011 tons of chitin (pronounced "KITE-in") are dumped annually in the oceans, largely by tiny sea animals called copepods, which shed their shells as they grow. "If nothing happened to this debris, we'd be up to our eyeballs in chitin, and the carbon and nitrogen cycle upon which marine life depends would be gone within 50 to 75 years," said Roseman, a professor of biology in the Kreiger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins.
Researchers were puzzled about the disappearance of chitin because little of the material turned up in sediment on the ocean floors. Where did all of the chitin go? Then, about 70 years ago, two microbiologists determined that bacteria were quickly consuming the sinking shells and preserving the ecological balance. Since then, however, several mysteries have remained: How do the bacteria find these undersea meals? How do these microorganisms attach themselves to the chitin? How do they degrade the tough material and turn it into food?
[/ QUOTE ]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-12/jhu-gms122903.php
Ok, so the bacteria are degrading the chitin. This would release the carbon back into the water and ultimately back into the atmosphere, right? Not so fast.
[ QUOTE ]
Studies on cores taken from the sediment and from a deep agar mixed culture of sediment microorganisms have shown that the activity of chitinase is greatest at depths just below the point at which oxygen becomes undetectable (ie. anaerobic).
[/ QUOTE ]http://www.gutbugs.dabsol.co.uk/publish/abs5.htm
The bacteria are anerobic meaning they derive energy without using oxygen and instead of making carbon dioxide, they make methane. Here is where the global warming Luddites enter the self-flagelation stage. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and therefore this is bad. But just like the original Luddites, the GW variety fails to see the big picture, that is the methane never makes it to the surface.
Yes, this methane is locked away in vast expanses of ocean floors as an ice-methane deposit known as clathrates. The earth had about 5,000 gigatons (5 x 10^15 tons) of carbon in the form of conventional fossil fuels, both recoverable and non-recoverable, potential and consumed. The oceans have about twice that in clathrate deposits. 10,000 gigatons of carbon are contained in clathrates. Since clathrates cannot exist in deeper ocean sediments (20 feet below the mudline) due to geothermal heat, their origin is most probably from biological activity.
http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/ees123/clathres.p.gif
More will follow...this is posting from what I know and not my notes...