Can Carbon Dioxide Be A Good Thing? - Science Video

Science Daily ^ | June 1, 2007 | North American Carbon Program

[hermgem]

We need to seriously consider taxing newsprint.
These Newspaper people are fully aware that millions of trees are felled every year to supply material for newspapers.
Trees and plants need CO2 for growth and therefore should not be destroyed to make paper.
A tax of 33% of the papers price needs to serve as carbon offset, encouraging users to cut down on paper usage and switch to wireless information.
As Nancy Pelosi proclaimed: I need to save the planet.
Let's make a beginning for the good of all.

[randog]

Thanks for the news, I learned this in the third grade, fifty years ago!

Same here. I think we finally figured out why Global Warming^® has so many believers--they don't teach basic biology in schools anymore.

[Old Professer]

Don’t forget that the released oxygen comes from the water the roots take up, not from the CO2.

[GingisK]

...discerned and confirmed the unforeseen advantages of rising carbon dioxide levels...

Like warming/cooling cycles, many of us caught those lectures from our fourth grade teachers. Have all of the "leaders" of the world gone daft?

[NellieMae]

Yeah really! This has been bugging me ever since they started all of this stuff about carbon dioxide. If I can remember learning this in elementary school why can’t all of those so-called environmentalists figure this out?

[SuziQ]

About 100 cell phone and aircraft towers dotting the North American landscape are providing a network to measure CO2 in the atmosphere. Physicists tracking the data have found an unexpected benefit of rising carbon dioxide levels. Dr. Denning says it's unusual. "Stuff is growing faster than it's dying, which is weird," he says.

Doesn't say much for Dr. Denning. I'm not a scientist, and I could have told him that! CO2 is what plants THRIVE on!

[3niner]

That is about as correct as your spelling of professor.

[Old Professer]

Actually, it is so; there is a detailed explanation in Life and Energy by Issac Asimov PHD ISBN:0-380-00942-0 Avon Books.

A brief explanation from Yahoo answers states:

What exactly converts CO2 to O2 in plants during photosynthesis?

by ecolink Member since:
December 26, 2006
Total points:
59526 (Level 7)

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
“CO2 isn’t converted to O2, but photosynthesis does take in carbon dioxide to use as a raw material and it does give off oxygen gas as a waste product. The oxygen given off does not come from carbon dioxide. The oxygen comes from splitting water molecules. Photosynthesis keeps the hydrogen ions and the hydrogens’ electrons. The oxygen diffuses out.”

[Old Professer]

If you really want to get confused, it is also well known that the entire process of uptake of H2O is dependent on free oxygen in the water or soil the roots live.

[3niner]

Photosynthesis uses energy from photons to convert a CO2 molecule and two water molecules into, a link in a carbohydrate chain (CH2O), a water molecule, and an oxygen gas molecule.

The water is cracked in the process, but it is also recombined, with the net result that one water molecule remains, and the other is combined with the carbon atom from the CO2 molecule, to become part of a carbohydrate.

Thus, one water molecule remains a water molecule, the other becomes part of a carbohydrate, the CO2 molecule is cracked so that the carbon becomes part of the carbohydrate and the O2 is released as gas.

What you are talking about are intermediate steps. Photosynthesis won't work without these intermediate steps, but to the world outside the plant, the net effect is that CO2 is split, the carbon retained, and the O2 released.

[Old Professer]

Click on this link and magnify three times for best viewing:

http://books.google.com/books?id=gOUmxGLOpaQC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=ruben+and+kamen+o18&source=bl&ots=OqsBa_RPXu&sig=Pzhh4fCj4PYJGf9TwyNqt7tAJSU&hl=en&ei=cJbLSdDkC42stgfsyOjLCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

[3niner]

You are fixated on which oxygen atom is which, while I am concerned with net changes.

You are saying that one water molecule loses its oxygen atom and replaces it with a (normally identical) oxygen atom from the CO2 molecule, while the other loses its oxygen atom then combines with the remaining CO from the CO2 molecule to become part of a carbohydrate, thus the O2 comes from the water.

I am saying that the final result of the reaction is that one water molecule is still a water molecule, the other gets combined with the carbon atom from the CO2 molecule to form part of a carbohydrate, and an O2 molecule replaces the CO2 molecule from the air.

One could argue that half of the released oxygen comes from water, while the CO2 retains one of its oxygen atoms, but you can't argue that the other water molecule contributes anything, since the oxygen atom it gives up is replaced with another (to no net effect, unless you care whether it's O14 or O16.

[Old Professer]

Did you bother to read rhe text?

That discovery received an award; science is the business of certainty, not odds.

[jcon40]

WOW Karl......I think I was drinking too much wine the night of my post. I do know better as I owned a propane company for many years.

You did cause me to do some further investigation along the lines of my gaseous thinking that night. I found some interesting reading on the subject at this site

http://www.heptune.com/farts.html