19.2 Pounds of Carbon Dioxide

Every gallon of gasoline you burn in your car removes 12 pounds of Oxygen (O2)from the atmosphere and replaces it with 19.2 pounds of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). The carbon atoms from the gasoline are permanently "injected" into the atmosphere. During your life, you have been personally responsible for adding several TONS of Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere. The Oxygen is gone and the Carbon Dioxide is up there to stay. The CO2 will never leave the atmosphere during your lifetime. This is a fact.

700 - 400 million years ago, one celled plankton grew and died and fell to the bottom of the ocean. The cellulose in the cell wall is make of Carbon. Over time this slow process removed so much Carbon from the atmosphere that the gas content changed dramatically and the Earth climate cooled. Now, we are digging this Carbon up out of the ground (as oil and coal) and re-injecting it back into the atmosphere by burning. When the process is complete, Earth climate will have changed back to the "primordial tropical hot house" it once was. The polar ice caps will be gone and Humans will live in Antarctica because most of the rest of the world the climate will be too hot to be comfortable or to survive.

The relative time scales are difficult to appreciate. Humans have only existed as Humans for 200,000 years. Civilization of cities and towns has only existed for 10,000 years. The Ice Age ended 20,000 years ago. The migration out of Africa began 60,000 years ago. Plankton first appeared 700,000,000 years ago.

copyright (c) 2017

William Schaeffer