Eye Opener for Climate Alarmists
Paleo climatologists and biologists disagree with the AGW alarmist climatologists who ignore the history of the planet and only take the short term view. It is insane to ignore the entire history of the plant but climate alarmists have an agenda.
CO2 is the basis of all life and has become incredibly scarce, contrary to what climate alarmists claim. The chart below provides perspective going back 600 million years and explains the entire history.
In the early days of life on the planet CO2 was between 3000 and 8000 ppm versus only 400 ppm today. It reached 8000 ppm due to volcanic activity and life proliferated as a result (Cambrian explosion). Life proliferated because CO2 is the beginning of all food chains on the land and in the sea. Then most of the atmospheric CO2 was locked away as fossil fuels during the Carboniferous period and CO2 levels fell to about 400 ppm close to current levels.
But increased volcanic activity during the Triassic and Jurassic periods raised CO2 levels back to 3000 ppm where most current plant species evolved. But there was simultaneously an explosion of sea life with external shells during the Cretaceous period that converted CO2 dissolved in sea water into CO3 (carbonate) to make their shells which formed all the vast beds of limestone, marble, and chalk causing CO2 levels to fall steadily from 3000 ppm to as low as 180 ppm during each of the ice age glaciations that have occurred in the last few million years, dangerously close to extinction levels. Plants starve to death at 150 ppm which would cause the extinction of essentially all life on Earth.
Mankind, by burning fossil fuels, returns some of the CO2 that was locked away during the Carboniferous period but has only been able to raise levels from 280 ppm at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to about 400 ppm today, which is still far lower than the approximately 1500 ppm that plants need for optimum growth (they evolved when levels were in the 1500-3000 ppm range). And there is likely only enough fossil fuels in the ground that can be economically extracted to raise CO2 levels to about 800 ppm. But sea life continues to lock away CO2 as carbonate (CO3 - limestone) at a steady rate and volcanic activity cannot convert the CO3 back to CO2 fast enough because tectonic plate drift is far too slow.
Mankind is slightly delaying extinction of life from lack of CO2 with a very tiny uptick in CO2 levels (uptick from 280 to 400 ppm is too small to even show up in this chart), but at some point in the distant future we will have to bake limestone using nuclear power (mimic what volcanoes do using cement kilns) to release CO2 to keep the planet alive. We need to encourage adding CO2 to the atmosphere, not discourage use of fossil fuel. It is incredibly lucky that mankind became intelligent enough to learn how to burn fossil fuels just in the nick of time to prevent plant CO2 starvation and extinction of all life.