Quote:
Originally Posted by Barrykgerdes
Typically with controversial threads this one has also gone down paths that only create arguments from generally ill informed people.
Does anyone know what carbon dioxide is?
- a colourless ordourless gas that is the result of animals combining hydro carbons and hydrocarbonates with oxygen to create warmth and energy.
Luckily this process is fully reversible with the action of the energy from the sun along with water in the chemistry of vegetables in conjunction of a catalyst called chlorophyl that converts the carbon dioxide back into carbohydrates (and eventually hydrocarbons) and giving off oxygen in the process.
This in my day was called the carbon cycle that governs all life on earth.
A tax on carbon therefore was a tax on ones right to live and breath unmolested.
Maybe over simplification but never the less the basis of life.
Barry
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I absolutely know what Carbon Dioxide is. I also understand the Carbon Cycle in considerable depth. What you have described are respiration and photosynthesis which are only part of the equation. You've left out combustion, decomposition and a range of other things that form important components of the carbon cycle, like Methane CH4 (for the ill informed). You have also not mentioned the carbon sinks, (fossilisation of organics and creation of carbonate rocks, for example), and how they have reduced the amount of carbon in the atmosphere over a few billion years to make the surface habitable, for us at least.
All aspects of the cycle can in deed be reversed but, of course, it takes millions of years to build up significant amounts of fossilised carbon and only a short period to dig it up and release the carbon again. That's the problem...
Get the overall balance stuffed up enough and well we become fossils. One should also understand a bit about the infrared implications of CO2 in the atm... Called Global Warming for the ill informed.
The carbon cycle is irrelevant to some forms of life, bad news to others, particularly some extremeophiles... but, (un)-fortunately, my species, along with most of the others on the earths surface, is not one of them.
I also agree that it is important to be well informed about a topic, though, compared to the real experts, like Abbott and his ilk... I know relatively little.
