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I wish they’d just shut up. I was listening on the radio this morning and some idiot was talking about how eating vegetarian reduces one’s carbon footprint as if such a thing is good or bad. The way that “carbon” is thrown around with such disregard for the fact that carbon is not manufactured out of thin air. It all comes out of the environment and is a part of the environment. Utilizing resources is not bad or good and utilizing less of them does not indicate merit.

Vegetarians and PETA types put on superior airs while completely ignoring all the moles, voles, gophers and innocent insects destroyed to prepare the earth to grow their precious vegetables. They ignore all the diesel fuel burned to plow the fields, harvest the crops and deliver them to the markets. They ignore all the natural gas converted into specialized fertilizers to help those vegetables grow. They ignore all the electrical power consumed to pump the water necessary to grow the vegetables. They are ignorant fools if they believe their precious vegetables have a small "carbon footprint".

"The way that “carbon” is thrown around with such disregard for the fact that carbon is not manufactured out of thin air."

Well, um, yes it is, to be technical. In two ways, actually.

Let's get one thing out of the way, though. The burning of oil and coal does release carbon into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. Lots of it.

But your statement that "carbon is not manufactured out of thin air" is what I want to address. Carbon is extracted from a very thin residue of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by plants in a semi-magical process called photosynthesis. Now to me, that's getting carbon out of thin air.

However, to be again "technical", that isn't what I would call manufacturing it. It's a wonderful change, from rain, and sunlight, and "thin air", into cellulose, and wood fiber, and apple juice, but it's really only chemistry.

The actual "manufacture" of carbon comes about in the upper atmosphere, (the really thin air!), where nitrogen atoms are converted (by neutron capture as a result of high-energy photons) into carbon-14.

Now that is definitely an example of manufacturing carbon out of thin air.

Of course, all that said, that "carbon cycle" that I learned about in elementary school a few decades ago still actually works. I wonder if it ever gets mentioned anymore?