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Recycling Carbon

Recycling Carbon

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 All known life on Earth is carbon based. Today, though, when we hear about carbon, it’s usually in terms of emissions. Or the idea of capturing and storing those emissions. What you may not have heard is that Earth has been emitting and storing carbon for millions of years, cycling it between sky, sea, soil, and rock. Deep in the geologic past, atmospheric carbon dioxide was 10 times higher than today. Then ancient ocean life began to use it. Early marine organisms used CO2 dissolved in seawater for photosynthesis, forming the base of the food chain. Other organisms used it to build their exoskeletons and shells. When they died, their carbon-rich remains sank to the seafloor and were buried. Very slowly, carbon was being stored within the earth. Millions of years later, plants evolved and dramatically changed the carbon balance. They began to turn huge volumes of atmospheric carbon into organic carbon like carbohydrates and cellulose. Some organic carbon goes back into the atmosphere or the soil. Some gets buried and becomes part of sedimentary layers and, with enough pressure and time, can be cooked into hydrocarbons—fossil fuels. Today, the burning of fossil fuels is moving ancient carbon stored in the earth back into the atmosphere. Researchers are studying different ways to sequester that CO2, and we’ll talk about that on a future EarthDate.
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