You hear about so many Million tons of CO2 per year, does this make the atmosphere ‘heavier’? Does it float away or is it just a negligible amount?

Question

You hear about so many Million tons of CO2 per year, does this make the atmosphere ‘heavier’? Does it float away or is it just a negligible amount?

In: 9

Answer 1

So to make a CO2 you need an oxygen molecule (O2). You take away an O2 and bring back a CO2. Which means that the whole mixture is indeed getting heavier but the extra weight is not the whole weight of CO2, only the C.

Now let’s see the ratios.
Currently, in every 1 million molecules in the air there’s 210 thousand oxygen (almost the whole rest is nitrogen).
So we have around 210000 vs 420.
To make a little more CO2, you take away from the oxygen. So to go to 421 from 420 of CO2 you will get 209999 oxygen. In the meantime you still have over 780000 units of nitrogen not affected.
As you see, the extra carbon weight in the whole mixture is indeed negligible.

But then what is the problem with CO2 you might ask, if it’s so few in the air? The problem is that before the industrial era, the amount of CO2 was about 300 parts per million. Now its 420, which is 140% of 300. That’s a huge extra. CO2 is so efficient green house gas that roughly all the job of keeping our climate at the warmth where it used to be, was done by this 300 ppm. And now we have 140% more.