Living being dependent on carbon source, hence their activities significantly influence carbon cycle.Anybody has statistics of last few decades, please share.
With the development of modern agriculture the conversion of lands for cultivation drove the increase in the greenhouse gas concentrations. This enrichment was occurring at the end of the last ice age when key domesticated animals and plants were developing. The greenhouse gas enrichment which can be traced to land clearing for agriculture was accelerated by the industrial revolution which greatly increased the utilization of fossil fuels. As Kenneth M Towe would suggest all of these can be related to growing human populations. Malthus suggested that human population would lead to a complete depletion of our food base and society would enter a dark age. While this was prophetic indeed kind has not diminished and starved out according to dire alarms but instead has grown and prospered. Our technology has moved from agriculture to industrial and we are now in an information age. The explosion of technology gives hope that many of the issues related to both our agricultural and industrial ages are solvable. In relation to human populations there is information that has socioeconomic development occurs the average family sizes shrink. The burgeoning non fossil fuel development can do much to greatly reduce our carbon foot print and the use of carbon sequestration hold tools for diminishing and reversing global greenhouse gas emission issues. International groups of scientists investigating greenhouse gases are in large agreement that man is the main controller of their current patterns. Much of this current pattern is a unintended consequence of man and this technological development. The technological developments are also potentially available as resolvers of the issues the technologies generated.
Human gives nothing but carbon back to the earth. Breathing, burning of coal, felling of tree that absorb carbon and even after death will yield carbon.
Dear Segun, When farmers manage their fields so the soil organic matter is increased they contribute to giving back to the earth and counteracting greenhouse gases. When people make consumer decisions reducing their carbon foot print this helps. When societies plant treess and promote vegetation all of these are helpful.
Human activities have influence on the global carbon cycle, mainly through deforestation and fossil fuel burning. The magnitude of carbon flow is currently about 9 Gt C/yr. This also includes the CO2 generated in the production of cement, where limestone is burned, liberating CO2.
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/680
The idea that all organic matter is degradable is not the point. Carbon net sequestration is the gain of biomass minus the loss and emissions. We know we can greatly reduce emissions in our energy systems and use but we also need to generate long term carbon. All carbon is not highly degradable much sticks areound for years, decades and millennia. The use of biochar has such a long residue that it can accumulate significantly. representing a greenhouse gas game changer. The use of biomass can be used for renewable energy source replacing needs of fossil fuel. In addition residual long term carbon can result in massive carbon sequestration because of its extreme resistance to decay it can last for millennia. The fact that Amazon Indians created areas of improved black soils up to and 3 meters deep replete with carbon at a rate of over 300,000 kg per ha in areas with less that 10,000 kg per ha is a clear demonstration that the ability to stabilize carbon is our soils is both real and doable and has the potential to address the issues of greenhouse gases with no need for innovative technologies. Biochar can reside without changes for millennia in soils this completely changes the greenhouse gas equation. Indian Black soils are demonstrated in an area of over the expanse of modern day France in the Amazon jungle alone. There is no reason that this approach modernized could be used in all the tillable zones in the global for humanity benefits.
The topic of GDP and CO2 emissions is summarised in the following publication (http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1076315/FULLTEXT01.pdf). You should find this helpful.
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