Science Forums 2

[maikeru]

Originally Posted by engineerdude

I think you folks are making this way way too complicated.

Look at it this way - if every bit of animal life disappeared, and the plants remained, we would still scrub about the same amount of CO2 from the air. With no animal life, the carbon from the dead plants would just sit in the soil once the plant decayed, and become coal or petroleum or whatever.

Certainly there is life in Antarctica, and in deserts - but that is irrelevant to this thread. My point is that over 97% of all plant life is in the oceans, not on the land - and that the Amazon forest makes up a small percentage of that even smaller percentage of land plant life. Thus, variances in thickness of the Amazon would have a negligible effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.

No, like Freeztar mentioned, the situation is complex. Our knowledge of it is vast and ever growing, because we learn more and more and understand how things interact. This is where the complications of the complicated arise. If you take some time to study biology or ecology, you will see that even simple interactions and processes can lead to very complex results.

If every animal in the world died, so would a great deal of plant species dependent on animals and many types of forest would change, shrink, or disappear. Fruit bats, birds, insects, and countless other species help out plants. This obviously would affect carbon fixation and sequestration rates. Once plants are dead, they'd be decomposed by fungi, bacteria, and protists. Most would probably not become coal, petrol, or whatever. These nutrients are recycled and returned, and in decomposing, CO2 would be released back into the air. Plants aren't little algae floating in the seas or cyanobacteria out there. They are different organisms. Photosynthetic organisms are everywhere, even in the driest or harshest of places, which is why I brought up deserts and Antarctica. And can be abundant in such places. You can't wave a magic wand and make these disappear or subtract them from the equation. They are a part of it.

You've simplified and mischaracterized the entire thing to the point of absurdity and produced absurd conclusions. Reductio ad absurdum. It's a common logical fallacy. Sorry if I have to be blunt. I think the 50/50 figure that NASA gives is more reasonable than a magical 97%, which doesn't jibe at all with the evidence or common sense.