@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
in many places, trees are NOT the climax vegetation, grasses are. Even the taiga is mostly a boreal savannah. The oceans account for slightly over 60% of all potential carbon transfer and were losing that because theMethyl clathrates are beginning to exhale and bubble to the surface .
Also,Remember that trees exude CO2 when the light levels are low ( like nightime)
Grasses don't hold the same density of carbon per unit volume as wood and they don't live and grow for decades or even centuries like trees. There are lots of areas in the world that were forests before humans cleared them. Tree canopy provides nesting space for birds, squirrels, etc. that perform ecological functions. The overall ecosystem evolves to channel and process carbon, retain and filter water, process/digest detritus, etc. etc.
Some soils may not support trees but that is not the issue. The issue is deforested land that has been developed and converted into infrastructure and farm land without broader considerations of sustainability ramifications that are now being better understood.
Quote:As far as your discussion of tectonic plates, Im not sure where you want to go with all that.
It's about understanding the planet as an integrated system of machines that perform various functions. Weathering and erosion break down land and wash it downhill where it gradually falls into the ocean. New land has to build up to replace the land that erodes away. Building up land takes energy, just as it does when you put gravel/concrete in a truck and drive it uphill. Volcanoes and other geological processes build land naturally, and it seems that tectonic plate motion involves carbon sediments because diamonds are found in places where plates have slid across one another.
Traditional geology has assumed that all the energy that exists inside the Earth has been there since the Earth formed, but when you see that solar energy is being harvested by the biosphere to 3D print carbon sediments year after year into the ground where they build up and form fossil fuels, it should be clear that those buried/condensed energy forms contribute to geological processes. We can't assume that there's a separation between the energy that powers plate tectonics and new land formation and the energy that builds up and sediments as a result of the biosphere converting sunlight into chemical potential energy. It is only logical that the eventual function of that chemical potential energy is to be converted into gravitational potential energy in the form of new rock and land movements that push land to higher elevations.
We are taking the energy that sustains the land-water topological variation and tapping it for industrial uses that ultimately leave the carbon in the atmosphere where it is building up because we are obstructing the 3D-printing process that converts it into biological sediments and ultimately fossil fuels underground.
We need to support the planet's natural processes in order for them to sustain themselves forever, or at least until the sun turns into a red giant in billions of years. That means changing the way we live and utilize resources so that the larger, longer-term carbon cycle and other cycles aren't obstructed from the slow processes that ensure the distant future will be habitable for all future generations.
Quote:Not really, remember that global tectonics is a phenomenon based on circular geometry of plates moving SIDEWAYS, not up and down.
I'm surprised you haven't thought out what you are saying here. Momentum continues without additional energy-input in the absence of friction, but the moment force is transferred to do work, energy has to be converted from kinetic to potential form and/or lost as waste heat.
In short, what goes up must draw energy away from the fuel that is pushing it up. Nothing can move uphill against gravity without consuming energy and converting it into gravitational potential energy of position/elevation.
