Ever wondered how something as little as a molecule of C02 can change the world? But more is different: CO2 turned Venus into a overheated hostile planet and without greenhouse gases Earth would be a snowball.
This post collects - without any special order - amounts, years and references and provides the facts needed to see the complete picture. Updates will happen when ever new information is available.
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2005 7.85 billion tons |
of carbon passed into the atmosphere | Global Carbon Project |
|
2005 379.1 ppm |
Quantities of CO2 were measured at 379.1 parts per million (ppm) for 2005, up 0.53 per cent from 377.1 ppm in 2004, WMO said in its latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin | UN News Centre |
|
1750 280 ppm |
The CO2 concentration has risen from about 280 ppm in the year 1750 to about ~380 ppm today. | Postdam Institute |
|
2006 50,000 tons |
UK traffic lights emit about 50,000 tonnes of CO2 per year through energy use. | BBC Magazine Monitor |
|
2006 400 litre |
Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles. | CBBC News Round |
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>1751 315 billion tons |
Since 1751 roughly 321 billion tons of carbon have been released to the atmosphere from the consumption of fossil fuels and cement production. Half of these emissions have occurred since the mid 1970s. The 2004 global fossil-fuel CO2 emission estimate, 7910 million metric tons of carbon, represents an all-time high and a 5.4% increase from 2003 | Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center |
| 1.98 g/L | gaseous CO2 has a density of 1.98 gram per litre | Wikipedia |
| 3,000 giga tons | The mass of the Earth atmosphere is 5.14×10E18 kg, so the total mass of atmospheric carbon dioxide is 3.0×10E15 kg (3,000 gigatonnes) | Wikipedia |
| 145-255 mill. tons | According to the best estimates, volcanoes release about 145-255 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. | Wikipedia |
|
1997 2.93 tons |
Marland’s estimate of the average absorption of a U.S. commercial forest is 0.8 tons of carbon/hectare/year. By converting this number into the units mentioned above, this equals 2.93 tons of CO2 /hectare/year, or 1.19 tons of CO2/acre/year. | Jerry Hannan |
| 1 ton |
One ton = 1000kg One cubic meter = 1000liters One mole CO2 = 44.0g One ton contains 22730 moles of CO2 One mole is 24.47L Volume of one ton CO2 = 22730moles × 24.47L/mole = 556200L = 556.2m³ One ton of CO2 occupies 556.2qm of volume. |
International Carbon Bank and Exchange |
|
2007 8.7 mill. tons |
Because the California wildfires occurred just as the study was about to be published, the researchers calculated how much carbon dioxide was likely to come from the devastating blazes Oct. 19-26. It’s a lot: 8.7 million tons. | MSNBC / AP |
| 322 mill. tons | On average, wildfires in the United States each year pump 322 million tons of carbon dioxide. That’s about 5 percent of what the country emits by burning fossil fuels, such as gasoline and coal, according to the new research published online Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Carbon Balance and Management. | Weather.com / AP |
| 3,000 giga tons | The Greenland ice sheet could melt completely and irreversibly if 3,000 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere, according to scientists. | Nature.com |
| 475 giga tons | Next, remember atmospheric CO2 includes two oxygen atoms, and weighs 3.7x the carbon feedstock. So if there are 70 gigatons of carbon in the Amazon, for example, burning the remaining Amazonian carbon will release 2.7x that many gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere (ref. Amazon Ecology Project). So far, tropical deforestation alone has resulted in the release of about 475 gigatons of CO2 into our atmosphere. | Ecoworld.com |
|
2008 6 giga tons |
Human activity generates six gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year, while the Earth can recycle only three gigatonnes. The rest accumulates each year in the atmosphere, thus reinforcing the greenhouse effect. Remember to save energy! | EEA |
|
2050 20 giga tons |
As a result of the above mentioned findings, there seems to be a consensus among the leading developed countries that the temperature increase caused by global warming must not exceed 2° C (3.6° F). For example the European Union (EU) has committed itself to this threshold already in 2005. To reach this target the annual global CO2 emissions have to be reduced from about 28 Gigatons in 2006 to 20 Gigatons of CO2 by the year 2050 and to 10 Gigatons of CO2 by the year 2100 according to IPCC | Time for Change |
| 3500 giga tonnes | The world’s coal reserves hold some 3500 gigatonnes of carbon, compared to the atmosphere currently holding around 800 gigatonnes (600 gigatonnes before the industrial revolution). | ClimateArk.org |
| 150 bill. tonnes | Objection: According to the IPCC, 150 billion tonnes of carbon go into the atmosphere from natural processes every year. This is almost 30 times the amount of carbon humans emit. What difference can we make? | GristMill.org |
| 1 giga ton | One gigaton is equivalent to 273 coal-fired electric generation plants with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). | Reason.com |
|
2002 330 million metric tons |
A new NOAA study, appearing in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how a prolonged drought in North America in 2002 cut the continent’s natural uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) in half, leaving more than 360 million tons (330 million metric tons) more of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere. The amount not absorbed that year is equivalent to annual emissions from more than 200 million U.S. automobiles. | ESRL |
| 300 tons | Recent measurements at Mammoth Mountain indicate that the total rate of CO2 gas emission is close to 300 tons per day. | USGS |
| 500 milli grams | For websites that are not audited, MoveNeutral offsets, on average, 500 milligrams of carbon dioxide emissions per page view. | MoveNeutral.com |
| 0.1 gram of carbon | Here are some numbers, taken from books on exercise physiology. Fat, protein, and sugar all contain about 0.1 gram of carbon per food calorie consumed. So if you digest 2,000 calories of food (a typical daily diet for adults) then you take in about 200 grams of carbon. At rest, each breath exhales about 0.5 liter of air containing about 1 percent carbon, for about five milligrams per breath. After a day at 12 breaths per minute, you get rid of about 120 grams of carbon. Thats less than you ate, so youll gain weight. | Technology Review |
One Response to “Magnitudes of Carbon Dioxide”
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December 17th, 2009 at 20:54
[…] Originally Posted by parejkoj Robert: do you have an analysis of the scale of algae farming that is required to keep us below 500 ppmv by 2100? An algae farm covering what area of the ocean is required to replace one wedge of emission? What is the environmental impact of such an area, in terms of eutrophication, disruption of the food web, etc.? I’d like to know the actual numbers here.
Parejkoj, I’ve discussed this at Patent to Reverse Global Warming Here is a rough response with figures calculated again now. Please advise any errors detected. For assessment of magnitudes, assume oceanic algae could potentially produce one tonne of oil per hectare per day, fixing about one tonne of CO2, a yield above current algae methods.
I believe this and even higher yields will become possible with economies of scale and development of optimal methods for producing algae from CO2 that could otherwise be buried by carbon capture and storage. Divide this yield projection by ten for a starting baseline.
380 ppmv CO2 is about 3000 gigatonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. We are adding 40 gigatonnes per year including CO2 equivalents, slated to increase to 70 gigatonnes in twenty years under Business As Usual, or to return to 40 GT net emissions under ambitious Copenhagen methods.
At one tonne CO2 per hectare per day, or 365 t/ha/year, fixing a gigatonne of CO2 per year requires three million hectares, or 30,000 square kilometres. Equalling the Business As Usual emission projection of 70 GT would require two million square kilometres of algae. Total ocean size is 500 million square km, so two million square km is 0.4% of the world ocean.
At present, as a NASA paper cited in my linked thread above explains, ten percent (50 million sq. km) of the ocean is classed as desert, with low surface chlorophyll. Locating algae farms in these regions would produce the equivalent of upwelling of rich cold currents, expanding fishery productivity.
Initial sites for technology development are shallow warm seas in politically stable locations, such as the US Gulf Coast and Australia’s North West Shelf. An initial step to assess the potential is to test polymer waterbag proposals, as seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TEJp6UZaDI In the Gulf of Mexico and Northern Australia, it is likely that this method could provide local ocean cooling with high protection against hurricanes and coral bleaching.
The method I have proposed is either a closed system which converts ocean nutrients into fuel or an open system which converts nutrient into algae for fish food. A closed system could fairly rapidly remove the nutrient from the dead zone near the mouth of the Mississippi River and convert it into diesel and fertilizer. […]