I was reading today that there’s something like 8 gigatons of CO2 in the air, but more than 400 gigatons of biomass on earth (which is mostly plants). Can someone explain how this happens to me?
Edit: My numbers were off. There’s about 10x as much CO2 mass in the atmosphere as there is biomass on Earth
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Your numbers are somewhat off. There are about 3,000 gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere. So there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is biomass. Also there’s quite a lot of CO2 dissolved in the oceans – a bit less than 40,000 gigatons, so an order of magnitude more than in the air. It goes back and forth between oceans and atmosphere (currently it’s mainly going from the atmosphere to the oceans, increasing the water’s acidity).
Plants are constantly taking CO2 from the air to turn into sugar, which is only part of their biomass. There’s no direct correlation between the amount of CO2 in the air and the amount of sugar or biomass in plants.
As an analogy, you make dough using flour. If you have 1 kg of flour in the cupboard and make a dough using 0.7 kg of flour, you’ll have 0.3 kg of flour in the cupboard and 0.7 kg of dough. Is there some sort of problem that you have more flour in the dough than you have in your cupboard? The two values don’t have any direct relation to each other.
Plants are like 95% water. Carbon from the air is the majority of the structure , but plants are just full of juice and stuff.
Because they are two independent categories, there is no biomass represented in the co2 and no co2 in the biomass. There is exchange between the 2 categories but nothing is double counted.
Plants are like 95% water. Carbon from the air is the majority of the structure , but plants are just full of juice and stuff.
Your numbers are somewhat off. There are about 3,000 gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere. So there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is biomass. Also there’s quite a lot of CO2 dissolved in the oceans – a bit less than 40,000 gigatons, so an order of magnitude more than in the air. It goes back and forth between oceans and atmosphere (currently it’s mainly going from the atmosphere to the oceans, increasing the water’s acidity).
Plants are constantly taking CO2 from the air to turn into sugar, which is only part of their biomass. There’s no direct correlation between the amount of CO2 in the air and the amount of sugar or biomass in plants.
As an analogy, you make dough using flour. If you have 1 kg of flour in the cupboard and make a dough using 0.7 kg of flour, you’ll have 0.3 kg of flour in the cupboard and 0.7 kg of dough. Is there some sort of problem that you have more flour in the dough than you have in your cupboard? The two values don’t have any direct relation to each other.
Because they are two independent categories, there is no biomass represented in the co2 and no co2 in the biomass. There is exchange between the 2 categories but nothing is double counted.
So, those numbers may or may not be accurate, but it doesn’t matter because there’s simply no reason they would need to be of comparable magnitude.
The system will be in a more-or-less equilibrium state, with carbon leaving the atmosphere to make biomass, and biomass decaying and emitting CO2 into the air. The amount of biomass and atmospheric CO2 will balance out at a level where the rates in and out are about the same.
(“More-or-less” and “about”, because we’re ignoring the effects of humans burning fossil fuels, and many, many other perturbations. But fundementally, there’s no reason that most of the carbon in the system couldn’t be tied up as biomass. )
So, those numbers may or may not be accurate, but it doesn’t matter because there’s simply no reason they would need to be of comparable magnitude.
The system will be in a more-or-less equilibrium state, with carbon leaving the atmosphere to make biomass, and biomass decaying and emitting CO2 into the air. The amount of biomass and atmospheric CO2 will balance out at a level where the rates in and out are about the same.
(“More-or-less” and “about”, because we’re ignoring the effects of humans burning fossil fuels, and many, many other perturbations. But fundementally, there’s no reason that most of the carbon in the system couldn’t be tied up as biomass. )
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