Carbon Dioxide is Forever

Carbon dioxide is a green house gas emitted by energy sources and is responsible for climate change. The use of post modern energy sources to weigh down on climate change is not the solution and emission of the gas is here to stay.

Fossil fuels for example the use of charcoal, coal, oil and natural gas has weighed heavily on green house effect on the earth and eradication of the gas from the atmosphere will take longer than usual as scientists suggest. University of Chicago oceanographer David Archer, in his book, the long thaw, suggests that eradicating Carbon dioxide fro the atmosphere will take a long while as 2% of it cannot be eradicated. He writes that the climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel Carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge, longer than nuclear waste, far longer than the age of human civilization so far.

There has been misleading reports on eradication of climate change from the UN panel of climate experts who from their 1990 report suggested that, Carbon dioxide's lifetime is 50 to 200 years. The reports in 1995 and 2001 revised this down to 5 to 200 years saying the oceans will act as carbon dioxide sinks. The reports had inconsistencies as oceans also release Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere such that manmade emissions keep the carbon dioxide levels elevated throughout the year. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies suggests that effects of carbon dioxide also have big implications for energy policies and climate change problems cannot be solved by slowing down emissions by 20%, 50% or 80%, instead we must identify portions of the fossil fuels that will be left in the ground, or captured upon emission and put back into the ground.

Unlike other green house gasses, carbon dioxide will be reduced by using different approaches, which could be either fast or slow. Majority of Carbon dioxide produced, is soaked up in water. Carbon dioxide gas will be absorbed into deeper oceanic waters and currents will bring up fresh water, continuing the cycle. This process is not effective and may take thousands of years as the oceans do not soak up enough carbon dioxide.

Another process is rock weathering where atmospheric Carbon dioxide reacts with water to form a weak acid that dissolves rocks. This creates minerals such as magnesium carbonate that lock away the carbon dioxide gas. According to  Archer, it might take thousands of years to realize complete bring back of carbon dioxide levels to pre industrial phase making this process the slowest.

The long-term effects of our emissions might seem impossible to get rid of. If you think about all the concerns we have about radioactive wastes produced by nuclear power. The potential impacts from emitting carbon dioxide to the atmosphere are even longer than stated above. But there's still hope for avoiding these long-term effects if technologies that are now on the drawing board can be scaled up affordably. If civilization was able to develop ways of scrubbing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, it is possible that we can reverse the carbon dioxide levels to a minimum.