Word: carbonation
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Since the start of the industrial revolution, mankind has been burning fossil fuel (coal, oil, etc.) and adding its carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. In 50 years or so this process, says Director Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, may have a violent effect on the earth's climate...
Tons of CO2. The temperature of the earth's surface depends largely on two minor constituents of the atmosphere: water vapor and carbon dioxide. They are transparent to the short-wave energy (light and near infrared) that comes from the sun, but opaque to most of the long-wave heat radiation that tries to return to space. This "greenhouse effect" traps heat and makes the earth's surface considerably warmer than it would be if the atmosphere had no water vapor or carbon dioxide in it. An increase in either constituent would make it warmer still. Warm eras...
...present the atmosphere contains 2.35 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, existing in equilibrium with living plants and sea water (which tends to dissolve it). Up to 1860, man's fires added only about 500 million tons per year, and the atmosphere had no trouble in getting rid of this small amount. But each year more furnaces and engines poured CO2 into the atmosphere. In 1900, the amount was 3 billion tons. By 1950, it was 9 billion tons. By 2010, if present trends continue, 47 billion tons of carbon dioxide will enter the air each year...
This will be only 2% of the total carbon dioxide, but if it is more than can be dissolved by the oceans or absorbed by plants or minerals, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to increase. The greenhouse effect will be intensified. Some scientists believe that this is the cause of recent warming of the earth's climate. Dr. Revelle has his doubts...
Biologist Bonner took a hard, imaginative look at the world's future food supply. He points out that if all the carbon produced on earth by land plants (16 billion tons a year) were in edible form, it would feed 46 times the present human population; the carbon from cultivated lands alone is ten times as much as is needed. A large part of it is inedible stems, leaves, etc., and another large part is wasted by domestic animals or consumed by insects and other pests, but Dr. Bonner believes that with effort more of it could be made...