Carbon Dioxide – My Two Cents Worth

TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS – TWO CENTS.

Take a lump of coal and put it down in your back yard, and then watch as it changes into Carbon Dioxide. Don’t watch for too long though, because it’s never going to happen. It needs to undergo a process for it to change.

So, let’s look at that process.

BASIC SCIENCE 101.

Carbon is the 6th element in the periodic table. What that means is that it has 6 protons, and more importantly, 6 electrons revolving around it. Those electrons revolve in a series of shells. The first shell contains 2 electrons, and the second shell contains 4 electrons. That first shell can only ever contain 2 electrons and is full. That second shell can only ever contain 8 electrons, and it then becomes full, and every atom in that periodic table of elements that comes after that has a third and then a fourth, and then more shells of electrons revolving around the nucleus in those ever expanding shells. As each shell becomes full, then the atom becomes stable, hence Helium (the second element, with a number of 2) is stable. (An inert gas). The same applies for Neon, (the tenth element) which has 2 electrons in that first shell, and then 8 in the second shell, so it is also stable, and also an inert gas, and so on.

Carbon exists as, well, Carbon, a hard compound, for want of a better word, and coal is basically compressed Carbon, as are diamonds, the most compressed form of Carbon.

Oxygen is the 8th element hence 6 electrons in it’s outer shell. For its second shell to fill and then become stable, it needs 2 electrons, and, surprise surprise, Carbon has 4 electrons in its outer shell. So, if 2 atoms of Oxygen (O2) join up with 1 atom of Carbon, the resultant compound then becomes stable. Each of the two Oxygen atoms now has its quota of 8 electrons in their outer shell, and the Carbon atom, sharing those electrons as well, also sits there fat dumb and happy because now it also has 8 electrons in its outer shell, as they all comfortably share those rotating electrons whizzing around at amazing speed. So Carbon Dioxide, CO2, one atom of Carbon and 2 atoms of Oxygen now thinks to itself ….. ‘Hey, I’m stable.’

Also, from this it now becomes evident that if 1 atom of Carbon joins with 2 atoms of oxygen, the resultant, CO2 is three times heavier than the original Carbon, hence that other thing I also post on so often, that being how one ton of coal burned forming 2.86 times its own weight in CO2, no matter how much is burned. 2.86 because the coal has other things in it as well as just the Carbon.

However, to undergo that change it has to go through a process.

From the dawn of time, either when God created the Universe, or that fraction of a microsecond after ‘The Big Bang’, whichever of those things you believe, there have been a certain number of Carbon atoms on and around Earth, and the same for Oxygen, in fact the same for any atom. Whatever was there then is still there now. They just join up with other atoms after a process. You cannot create atoms and you cannot destroy them. All you can do is move them around to form other things.

So, with CO2, there has always been the same amount since that dawn of time, either as Carbon, as Oxygen, or as CO2, or as Carbon and Oxygen with other atoms in other substances.

In fact, those CO2 levels currently in the Atmosphere surrounding the Planet are at levels lower than at nearly all of time since that dawn of time. In fact, during the last major ice age, those levels of CO2 were 12 times higher than they are today, which sort of shoots global warming all to hell, considering that ice age lasted 10,000 years and more.

THE PROCESS.

Every green thing on the Planet that grows has to have CO2 to actually survive. As the Sun rises in the morning, the light from the Sun ’switches on’ every green thing. They take the CO2 out of the air, and then give off Oxygen. All the Carbon in that CO2 is then ’sequestered’ in that living thing. That is the plant’s process, to take the Carbon from the CO2 and keep it, and then give off the Oxygen part of it. That is the plants process of conversion.

Over the Millennia, those green things, forests, jungles, everything, have broken down into swamps, and then compressed even further into oil, and even more compressed into coal, and even more compressed into diamonds. All the Carbon that was ever in all of those green things remained sequestered inside, from tree, to swamp, to oil, to coal.

Each human body also has a set amount of Carbon in it as well. You eat fruit and vegetables, which is broken down in your stomach, and the Carbon sequestered in that fruit and vegetables enters your bloodstream, raising the levels of Carbon in your body. You breathe in Oxygen which is absorbed through the linings of the lungs into your bloodstream. The reverse occurs with the excess Carbon in your body. It is absorbed in the reverse direction out of the blood and into your lungs, and as you breathe out, it joins with the excess Oxygen and now becomes CO2. That is the human body’s process.

The process when it is related to Coal fired power generation is somewhat similar. The coal is dug out of the ground, crushed and then burned in high temperature furnaces. That process of burning requires oxygen, as does all fires. Because the Carbon is not destroyed, it combines with the Oxygen to form CO2. The heat generated from the burning of the coal boils water to steam to drive the turbine which then drives the generator. So, as coal is burned it forms CO2. The process, heat, then produces the electricity, as detailed.

MIND BOGGLING SCIENCE.

The overall emission of CO2 from the surface of the Planet each year amounts to 50 Billion tons. 50,000,000,000 tons. This is a huge amount, and the amount concentrated on when it is used to scare you with all this Global Warming Climate Change thing. When put like that, because the numbers are so huge, it’s easy to imagine it as being a pretty big problem.

For perspective, The overall CO2 content in the Atmosphere is only 0.0385% of the total Atmosphere, and that is what those 385 parts per million breaks down to. This is a positively minute amount, but the bigger numbers are always those quoted, because they make it sound just so huge. That 50 Billion tons emitted each year from the Planet adds 2 parts per million each and every year, or 0.0002% to the overall total content.

Now, read back over those last 2 paragraphs. See how the Science is being used to baffle you completely, because it’s just so hard to visualise, either the huge amount or most especially, the tiny percentages quoted.

That’s what makes it so difficult to try and explain.

So then, lets make it simple.

Place Ten thousand Dollars ($10,000) on a table, and ask the person watching you that, if that $10,000 was the whole content of the Atmosphere, how much is the CO2 of that total atmospheric content in dollars.

The answer is $3.85. That’s three dollars and eighty five cents.

Then explain how much we add to that total of ten thousand dollars every year with that 50 Billion tons of CO2 we add, each and every year.

The answer is two cents. Read that again. Two cents.

Ten thousand dollars. Two cents.

You do the math.

See, it really is just about the money.

Well, that’s my two cents worth anyway.