Vida Enigmática

CORRECT ANSWER: well, assuming he hasn’t been assassinated yet, January, 20th, 2017.

And now that I’ve got you here with my keyword spamming trickery, I’ll spend the rest of this post talking about carbon dioxide with respect to climate change — and how it’s the volume that counts.

I know half of you are interested to know “when donald drumpf is going to be president” (for the right reasons). And half of you are interested to know “when donald trump is going to be president” (for the wrong reasons)¹.

Yes. That’s right. This blog partly makes up or all the climate change deniers. And it’s precisely YOU I’m targeting here.

So. I’ve noticed that people always talk of gas emissions in terms of mass, which severely understates the quantity…

Exactly how much space does 1 tonne of CO₂ gas occupy? You only need to look at molar volumes of gases:

People talk of gas emissions in terms of mass, which understates the quantity…  But exactly how much space does 1 tonne of CO₂ gas occupy? You only need to look at molar volumes of gases:

1 tonne = 1 million grams.
44g of CO₂ = 1 mole = 24.5L of gas (at 25ºC and standard atmospheric pressure)
Therefore, just 1 tonne of CO₂ gas occupies 557 thousand litres. (= 22.7 kmoles or 557 m³)

Taking the figure above, annual global CO₂ emission at 7910 million metric tons (7,910,000,000), multiply that by the volume occupied by one tonne (557,000), and we come up with 4.4 thousand trillion litres of CO₂ gas produced every year.

We spew 4,400,000,000,000,000 litres of CO₂ into the Earth’s atmosphere every single year.

We do not live in an infinite space, not in area, nor in volume. Yes, gravity sucks back all those CO₂ molecules to planet earth. So I take the thickness of the atmosphere, from wikipedia:

I think we as people have forgotten the following important factoids:

50% of the atmosphere by mass is below 5.6 km altitude (18,000 ft).
75% of the atmosphere’s mass is within 11 km of the planetary surface.
90% of the atmosphere is below 16 km (52,000 ft).
99.99997% of the atmosphere is below 100 km (62 mi; 330,000 ft).

And the Earth’s total surface area from another source:

The total area of the Earth is approximately 510 million square kilometres.

My ultra quick calculation of volume of Earth’s atmosphere, up to 100km (yes let’s include all of it) = 51 trillion trillion cubic metres or 51,000 trillion trillion litres. That includes the atmosphere, the stratosphere, the troposphere, the mesosphere -yes, the entire fucking quota.

It appears some people claim that we can produce that much CO₂ gas, 4.4 thousand trillion litres every single year, and it no way affects the limited volume of ‘our own’ atmosphere (51,000 trillion trillion litres)! That’s equivalent to an increase of 86 parts per billion CO₂ gas every single year.

A few points:

1. Of course, much of these emmissions are recycled into oxygen by trees and plants during photosynthesis. But while we continue to cut those down that won’t help us with our CO₂ problem!!
2. The upper atmosphere, the stratosphere, is extremely low pressure & doesn’t actually “hold” much gas.
3. CO₂ is 1.5 times denser than air.
4. Using other estimates of the mass of the Earth’s atmosphere (5 quadrillion metric tonnes) used in the above calculation results in an increase in CO₂ concentration of 1.6ppm per year!
5. The world’s oceans can also dissolve some  CO₂, acting like a large reservoir. But here again, there is a limit to how much seawater can take.

Do I even need to elucidate my calculations further? People claim that our  CO₂ production has no affect on our precious environment, not even cumulatively! And as an ex-research scientist, that mode of thinking enrages me.

As far as I’m concerned, anyone who thinks that our way of life doesn’t affect the environment (climate included) is an idiot. Sorry, but some people still continue believe that we can spew as much CO₂ into the air as we want and it will have no long-term effect on the Earth’s climate. 

You only need to look at exactly how much CO₂ is produced by man:

Since 1751 roughly 315 billion tons of carbon have been released to the atmosphere from the consumption of fossil fuels and cement production. Half of these emissions have occurred since the mid 1970s. The 2004 global fossil-fuel CO₂ emission estimate, 7910 million metric tons of carbon, represents an all-time high and a 5.4% increase from 2003.