Czo2

1.What is the current CO2 concentration in parts per million (ppm)? Throughout most of the past 425,000 years the concentration of CO2 has ranged between 180 and 280 parts per million (ppm).

1. Is this higher or lower than the highs over the past 450,000 years? Higher

2. From what 3 sources do humans add CO2 to the atmosphere? For most of the history of the earth, significant amounts of carbon remained locked up in the subsurface in coal and oil and gas deposits. Since the start of the industrial age, however, humans have harvested and burned these deposits for energy, releasing the carbon compounds that were stored in the coal, oil, and gas deposits back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and other gases. Most directly by breathing. Your body works on the concept of gaining energy from oxidizing organic material (food) with oxygen from the atmosphere, whereby CO2 is created and energy is released. In that way every single person on earth pumps several hundred grams of CO2 into the atmosphere every day. Here the issue is burning fossil fuels to produce energy for a huge number of purposes (heating, industry, transportation, electrical energy, etc.). Unless countermeasures are in place everytime that fossil organic material is oxidized (burnt) the products end up as CO2 and other harmful gasses (SO2, NO3 ...) in the atmosphere.

3. What 2 sources take CO2 out of the atmosphere? Carbon is released to the atmosphere from what are called "carbon sources" and stored in plants, animals, rocks, and water in what are called "carbon sinks." This process occurs in a number of steps. In the first step, through photosynthesis (the process by which plants capture the sun's energy and use it to grow), plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and release oxygen. The carbon dioxide is converted into carbon compounds that make up the body of the plant, which are stored in both the aboveground parts of the plants...