I undeiably refuted argument, that suggests that:
“Increase in CO2 can substantialy reduce O2″ .
Essentially because the whole biosphere does not have enought C to match O2 into CO2 molecules (Can match only 5% of O2, calculated with abgout +/-10% accuracy)

Moreover, I refuted argument:
” 1/2 photosynthesizing plant matter reduction (by byrning) reduces outflow of O2 to the atmosphere by 1/2 ”
Because this naive calculation overlooked 2x to 3x increase in photosynthesis under highger CO2 concentrations.

You did not point to any mistakes or omisisons in my detailed calculations posted above and that suggests that you do not have sufficient insight to debate them. Sadly, over again I find this the problem with environmentalists, that while undereducated, they presume to possess higher knowledge. But even during introdudtion to the scientirfic tenets of the theory they soon betray their inability to follow, let alone counterargument.

Why you might have lost this argument, I appreciate your honesty and willingness to study the subject. The proof seems to be self evident but I would be every glad to present clarification. Please point constructivelly to the specific staements that are unclear to you so that I may elaborate on them.

Return to math. When given a problem one finds that multiple approaches yield the same solution. Good for checking. Hurray! Return to Physics. Good old Feynman pondered that wave hitting all pathways really returns one and only end result.

Lesson to be learned. The solution is about bundling if the general result is to be the same. Something that the market speculators are so experienced in.

All solutions have + and - outcomes. The best that you can do is offset the - of some with the + of others. Rather than concentrating and promoting one less + and more - solution, or one more + and less - solution. Imbalance is a bad game. Equilibrium rocks.

When will politicians and scientists wake up to understand that.

To correct your calculations:

if photosynthesizing plant matter is reduced to 1/2 of the previous amount, then the outflow of O2 to the atmosphere is about 1.2 times what it was before due to increased photosynthesis rate on a 3.5x increase of CO2 partial pressure to 140Pa.

And as for politics, I do not subscribe to the neocnservatism. That is a betrayal of true conservatism and a dangerous way leftward to National Socialim.

The d(O2)net/dt = d(O2)in/dt + d(o2)out/dt only works with 1% of the air, and 5% of atmospheric O2.

BTW, I hoped that you would read my post, understand it, recalculate it and found some real mistake. Please do the effort, I do not mind to be proven wrong as long as your corrections are valid. But at this point, I see no essential flaw in my numbers.

I found that a small correction for mass of Carbon is needed in:
You would need to increase CO2 concentration 35.94 times to 13656ppm to reduce O2 down to 18%, an equivalent to ascending to 800m (2700′) elevation.

Please do understand my argument. The d(O2)net/dt = d(O2)in/dt + d(o2)out/dt only works with 1% of the atmospheric O2. There is not enough unoxigenized Carbon to bond with any more of it above ground, and much less of boron, sulfur, phosphor or other elements. Most abundant elements such as H, Si and Al are already fully oxygenated!

If you burn everything you can (except quite intert N), at least 17% of oxygen will still remain.

Moreover, you 1/2 vegeration argument is wrong. If you consume (burn, rot or eat) 1/2 of photosyntesis matter, you will increase the atmospheric CO2 3.5 times to 1400ppm. at 600ppm most plants photosynthesise between 30% to 200% faster. At 1400pm most plants at least double their growth. THATS why I am saying that thte plants are starving for CO2. They did live on 285ppm in the past, but all the huge deposit of coal and oil come from the house size ferns in Perm and Carbon eras when there was up to 5000ppm of CO2 in the air.

Why we cannot produce such a quantity of biomass nowdayws? It is not lack of water or lack of sunshine, these remain about the same. It is the lack of — CO2 !

RECLAIM THE LOST CARBON BACK OUT OF THE GROUND !

George–Instead of relying on the kindness of strangers perhaps you might reconsider your own reasoning. Anne’s scenario (#8) requires burning of two liters of fuel (oil or ethanol) to produce one liter of ethanol. You (#13) wish to provide “Another way to interpret” this, through producing three liters of ethanol from corn or sugar cane, then selling one of them, and using the other two to produce more ethanol. (Hints: how many liters of fuel will you need to purchase to produce those three liters? After you sell one, how many more liters can be produced from the two liters left? What is the comparison of the initial fuel input to the fuel produced?)

I appreciate your comments, though am somewhat perplexed by their tone (and indeed by the tone of other comments on this blog — I worry that Cosmic Variance is starting to go the way of other blogs in shedding more heat than light). Perhaps, before you comment, you might find it instructive to look at the entire thread of thought. My original comment came from the observation that news stories are not very clear when they say that “it costs more energy to create them [biofuels] than we can get by actually using them”. What exactly does this mean? *Every* fuel requires more energy to create than it releases during use. At face value, all this statement really says is that the efficiency of a fuel is less than 100 percent — which is a trivial statement. If the energy comes from sun, it doesn’t really matter what the efficiency is (at least not for energetics — obviously it makes a difference for land use).

Anne then suggests that this statement might be interpreted, in effect, as “it costs more energy IN THE FORM OF LIQUID FUEL to create biofuels than we can get by actually using them”. That is a stronger statement than the original, as I was trying to get across in the post that prompted your remark about the kindness of strangers.

All I am really asking for is a detailed accounting of the energetics of biofuel production.

George

Just consider equilibrium: d(O2)net/dt = d(O2)in/dt + d(o2)out/dt [where the loss, "out", is negative to begin with, so we can add it to the first term at right.] Note that CO2 concentration or changes don’t appear directly in the equation. Look, we could be burning boron compounds and not even making more CO2, but their burning would still pull O2 from the atmosphere (and it would have nothing to do with how much boron oxides are in the atmosphere to begin with!)

Also, I don’t think plants are “starving” on the current 420 or so ppm, after all they were used to about 285 ppm for millennia and did well enough!

As for conservatives, well I can respect notions of e.g. adhering strictly to the constitution. But first, beliefs like that are no logical reason to doubt or be careless about atmospheric science. Second, what about the recent tendency of “conservative” administrations to wage war without declaration from Congress, overrule state laws by federal decree, extra-legal detentions, all that pork and indulgence of special tax breaks against the whole “simple and flat” tax idea, etc?

…the highest detriment to increase in rate of fotosynthesis (of both food and biofulels) is the ridiculously small partial pressure of CO2 plant food ( ~38 Pa!) that the currently slow growing plants learned to starve on.

If we can increase atmospheric CO2 over 1000ppm, we will dramatically increase produce of both food and biofuels. But until we mine or drill all the necessary Carbon and throw it into circulation, biofuels will likely be a net energy loss.

…the highest detriment to increase in rate of fotosynthesis (of both food and biofulels) is the ridiculously small partial pressure of CO2 plant food (

I would vouch to “support” your arguments with some numbers. Namely atmospheric O2 concentration (19%) is 500times the CO2 concentration (0.038%). You would need to increase CO2 concentration 30.48 times to 11578ppm to reduce O2 down to 18%, an equivalent to ascending to 800m (2700′) elevation. Unfortunately, the current biosphere barely contains enough carbon to facilitate such increase. You would have to kill and burn 93% of all living matter, and do that quickly. Because the oceans, which already contain 50times atmospheric CO2 and still are just about half full will have your CO2 increase for lunch.
So when we look at the numbers, that ‘dredfull’ O2 depletion isn’t even an argument.

Talking about lunch, I hope you realize that no matter what form you eat your carbohydrates, they are mostly last year’s CO2. And unless you continually sequestering them in surplus tissue, with each exhalation you ‘pulute’ our air with 4.9% - that is 49000ppm(!) - concentrated CO2 gas.

If you really get so agitated by undereducated conservatives (as much as me), please take due care to edify yourself to the point that you can make some of these basic calculations for yourself and do not have to rely on others explaining them to you. Because otherwise you might be easiliy duped - as you probably are - into believing even nonsences such as impeding Global Warming Catastrophe and caused by - of all gases - by manmade CO2!

Irony aside, what I seriously propose is to get as much carbon as possible from the fosil fuels and facilitate aerial distribution via CO2 (BURN IT!). That’s because the highest detriment to increase in rate of fotosynthesis (of both food and biofulels) is the ridiculously small partial pressure of CO2 plant food (

First, the equilibrium between solid plant storage and the atmosphere tilts towards the atmosphere, and more CO2 appears in the latter (that would happen even *if we didn’t* drag more up out of the ground.)

The second thing that goes wrong is, less O2 is produced by the remaining plant mass. It could take a long time, but if we destroy too many plants then our O2 concentration will start going down. People and animals can adapt of course (it will be like adding so many feet of elevation to your location), but it reduces total habitability and the productivity of the biosphere.

I really get irked when people who aren’t well versed in the relevant science make blowhard, defamatory remarks about how awful environmentalists etc are. It just fits in with the whole right-wing know-nothing radio and faux news culture, doesn’t it?

BTW I am OK with nuclear as long as its done competently and we get a good handle on how to deal with the radioactive byproducts (assuming we can.)

delver23

The truth is, trees throughtou the world produce energy at 1000x faster pace than the menkind is able to consume from all fosil sources. But the environmentalists insist that it should be wasted by rotting rather than harvested by logging and farming.

And the trees could produce the energy at a faster rate, if they had more food in the air than the current 1/2500 CO2 contents currently available. But the enviromnmentalist will not alow you to double the CO2 levels.

Of course, you could keep the trees starving for CO2 food and rotting in waste as the environmentalists wish, and use the energy in the cleanest and leanest, original nuclear form, but only try to build a new nucelear plant and the environmentalists will shoot you.

In the retrospect, the environmentalists are the worst enemies of the mankind and all of its environment.

Also, you want to build something like that fairly near Yellowstone, not in it. That would spoil the national park.