Carbon Sense Coalition explains why Carbon = Life

Hat Tip: NewZeal

Cool site from Australia called the Carbon Sense Coalition (“Carbon Sense”) is "a voluntary group of individuals concerned about the extent to which carbon and carbon dioxide are wrongly vilified in Western societies, particularly in government, the media, and in some business circles.

We aim to restore balance and reason to the carbon debate, and to explain and defend the key role of the carbon group in production of most of our energy for heat, light, and transportation, and all of our food."

Great site - coverage includes:

"Carbon Is Our Key Resource"

"Carbon is the most important resource on earth for all mankind. It is the essence of:

· all food - proteins, fats, carbohydrates, sugars and alcohols
· all hydrocarbon fuels - coal, petroleum and natural gas
· all humus and organic matter in the soils
· all life on land, in the soil, and in the rivers and oceans (apart from strange creatures around volcanic vents in ocean deeps).

Carbon dioxide is a non-toxic, colourless gas that forms a tiny proportion of our atmosphere. Man’s contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide is small and dwarfed by natural emissions from the oceans, volcanoes and from other natural sources such as decaying vegetation, wild animals, insects, termites, bacteria and bush fires."

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"The Greenhouse Effect"

"The sun provides most of the earth’s surface heat, but does not distribute it evenly. The equator gets more heat than the poles, and the heat arrives by day and leaves again by night. The main agents for moving heat around are ocean currents, atmospheric winds and radiation of heat between oceans, land, atmosphere and space.

A real greenhouse has a glass roof that allows the sun’s heat in and prevents most of it from leaving. While the sun is shining, the main greenhouse process is physical - the roof totally prevents heat loss by convection ie the hot air cannot escape. The glass roof also retards the other method of heat loss – radiation of heat into space, but the prevention of convection is the key process in a real greenhouse.

The atmosphere is not a greenhouse – there is no physical roof, so convection (wind) is free to move heat from the surface and the equator to cooler areas and the Upper Atmosphere."

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"The Battle for Carbon"

"Life on earth has always been a battle for carbon. Carbon compounds form the bodies and provide all internal energy for all living things. All life relies on four key atmospheric gases – oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water vapour. All are crucial to life; none is a pollutant in the atmosphere.

Plants extract carbon dioxide and emit oxygen in order to grow; animals extract oxygen and emit carbon dioxide in order to grow. Carbon is stored in the soil, the oceans, the atmosphere, in living bodies of plants and animals, and in dead animal and plant material such as fossil fuels, construction timber, stored food, dead leaves and dead bodies.

Carbon dioxide is the chief agent for recycling carbon resources. Without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the cycle of life would quickly run down - all plants would die, and then all animals would starve."

Worth a look... especially if you are still a "warmist"...