return to the topic?? are you mad??! After I so rigorously gave the bellows a good old pumping and started the flaming Perhaps it is time to blow on the embers.....

John, I work in the Oil industry for the time off! If i wasn't doing what i was doing someone else would be.

Those who know me well will also know i'm certainly not PRO fossil fuels! In fact, quite the opposite.

However I am mindful that the reality of most situations most normally lies at the exact center of the extremes.

I'm not at all 'arguing' one way or the other i am just stating 'stuff'

It is true that plants grow (and therefore convert C02 back to carbon and O2) faster and 'better' when in an atmosphere of elevated C02. So provided we actually allow the planet to turn itself green, and stop cutting stuff down then we'll be ok.

Lets face it, if for every tonne of fossil fuel burnt we allowed a additional ton of plant life to grow we would be carbon neutral.

Lets face it, we're not gaining or loosing any carbon. We're just moving it about the place and we're getting panicy about releasing all this long term stored stuff up into the atmosphere all of a sudden (rightly so). Its is ultimately only returning it to the normal carbon cycle from which is came.

Carbon recovery and storage (the latest big thing) is an eons old concept, and tree's and plants have been doing it since the dawn of life itself.

I don't feel inclined to re-research the actual figures but if you weighed all the carbon on the planet, the quantity locked up in fossil fuels is a very small percentage. Releasing all of this fuel all in one go could be instantly (within growing time) be counteracted by growing that many billion tonns of extra forest.

Personally my view is that we need to focus our priority on regaining balance by returning the planet to a state of forestation and worry less (less not none) about the fossilized carbon we're returning to where it came.

One very important aspect of this is the TYPE of plants that we cover the surface of the planet with. As the human population increases a important aspect is that land needs to be allocated to food production. Lets remember that we ourselves are pretty good devices at storing carbon too.

There is a massive amount of work being done to investigate ways of making crops grown 'better' which in actual fact means making crops more efficient at converting C02 into food / per unit area. Genetic modification of crops is the next big thing (well its already happening) in restoring balance in our carbon cycle. To make 'space' on the planet for us maybe we should aim to genetically modify plant to become more efficient at balancing things.

Also with regards to self regulation, are you aware that the co2 effiency of plants increases with temperature? So if we get global warming, the plants become more efficient at growing and remove more C02 - i.e. a self regulatory process.

My belief is that the large scale deforestation of the planet (and lets not forget the man made effect of increased desertification which is very very hard to reverse through the mis-managed use of land- which includes the growing of crops, rapeseed included) plays a much bigger part in the argument than the burning of fossil fuels in terms of the long term future (and past!).

I believe that once the land is pushed beyond a certain critical limit of deforestation, leading to reduced fertile soils the process will be pretty much irrecoverable. Perhaps we should be learning more from mars.

Lets not forget also that C02 is not (by a long way) the only contributing factor to the green house effect.

Doug is right - Provided we don't push it too far, it will find balance as it has done time and time before. If mankind will be part of the balance equation is another question entirely.

Don't forget, throughout geological time there have been episodes of very high CO2, with percentages up to 17% and even higher. And nothing to do with man, as we were yet to evolve...
Nature/the planet regained the balance by sinking carbon into long term storage, coal/oil/gas is one such store. Other carbon sinks are the sea, the home of lots of CO2 long term and also rock...

Every time there has been high CO2 in the atmosphere there has been massive deposition of limestone, a rock that is quite important to us as cavers.
High CO2 = limestone deposition by algae and corals, higher temperatures also encourage algae and coral growth so it's a double whammy

Todays high CO2 emissions are tomorrows new limestone, bring it on...

Better and better ....

Not only does more CO2 bring about equilbrium, not only is it fated to entropy, but we also get CAVES to play in.

Conservationists and politicians who are proponents of enviromental taxes should be re-employed within the fossil fuel industry so the rest of us can have a good time

JohnNicholson wrote:
I've found that my Clearview solid fuel stove runs very well on discarded hydraulic fluid filters from excavators. Saves the energy in crushing them

BeardedDragon wrote:
This depends on if you mean the legal ones, or the unofficial illegal ones! The Welsh Coal Mines website is a good reference for at least the legal ones....