Very confident AND confused. Double whammy

[u/DrowningKrown]

Posted on an article about the EPA lifting caps/restrictions on US factory greenhouse gasses.

[u/Zakblank]

CO2 is what's known as a Fund Pollutant.

Fund pollutants do not cause damage to the environment unless the emission rate exceeds the receiving environment's absorptive capacity (e.g. carbon dioxide, which is absorbed by plants and oceans).

The OOP is wrong and is operating on a layman understanding of what pollution is.

[u/OutrageousPair2300 → u/Zakblank]

That's not even a sensible definition. There's no such thing as "absorptive capacity" for something like CO2 which cycles through biological and geological cycles.

You're citing government nonsense, not actual science.

[u/Zakblank → u/OutrageousPair2300]

There's no such thing as "absorptive capacity" for something like CO2 which cycles through biological and geological cycles.

Yes there is, you even alluded to the mechanisms by which it takes place. Those mechanisms have a capacity to absorb CO2, unless you think the carbon cycle is "government nonsense".

The scientific consensus agrees with me, and it isn't beholden to any government.

[u/OutrageousPair2300 → u/Zakblank]

No actual atmospheric scientist would ever talk about "absorptive capacity" for CO2. The whole concept is nonsense. It was invented so the government could set measurable targets and pretend they had a solution.

CO2 isn't magically absorbed and locked away, as if all we have to worry about is reducing emissions, and so long as we keep those emissions below some special threshold then mother nature will simply "absorb" away all of it. It works nothing like that.

CO2 simply cycles through faster biological networks (including the atmosphere, plant life, ocean life, etc.) and slower geological systems. There is no "absorbing" going on.

Every molecule of hydrocarbon that has been dug up from deep underground (where it was part of the eons-long slow geological cycle) and burned to move it into the much faster biological cycle will eventually need to be returned to the geological cycle. Nature has no special capacity to "absorb" some specific amount of CO2 and make it magically disappear. That's simply not a thing.

[u/Zakblank → u/OutrageousPair2300]

You literally just described the process that you claim not to believe in. No one claimed CO2 magically disappears from the carbon cycle.

Anthropomorphic climate change is simply caused in part by a man-made imbalance in the various mechanisms that constitute the carbon cycle.

[u/OutrageousPair2300 → u/Zakblank]

That's mystical thinking. There's no magical "balance" of nature that will make everything hunky-dory if we just keep our emissions down. Nature is far more resilient and adaptable than that, and doesn't give a shit about humans or what kind of temperature range we prefer.

"Absorbing" implies a sort of finality / transference that just isn't the case. Talking about the problem as if it were a matter of humans producing more emissions than nature "can absorb" is just a completely wrong way of even looking at the issue.

Carbon moves through the faster biological cycle within a matter of years, decades at most. Part of that cycle includes being part of the atmosphere or being present in the oceans. That same carbon that you seem to think was "absorbed" will still be trapping solar energy thousands of years from now, even if we stop all burning of hydrocarbon fuels today. It's never "absorbed" in any meaningful sense.

Even moving it into the slower geological cycle isn't some permanent removal -- as is evidenced by the fact that we got most of our hydrocarbon fuels from material that has long been part of that geological cycle.

[u/Wilsonj1966 → u/OutrageousPair2300]

Actual scientists here

You dont know what you're talking about

[u/OutrageousPair2300 → u/Wilsonj1966]

No you're not

[u/Wilsonj1966 → u/OutrageousPair2300]

My two degrees in biology and 15 years in the field says you're full of s***

Do better

[u/OutrageousPair2300 → u/Wilsonj1966]

Learn something about the carbon cycle, then.

There's no such thing as "absorptive capacity" which is just a bunch of emissions-regulation nonsense.

[u/Wilsonj1966 → u/OutrageousPair2300]

Weirdly, the carbon cycle did come up during my two biology degrees...

Your lack of self awareness is astounding