Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

Miles
Lv 4
Miles asked in EnvironmentGlobal Warming · 7 years ago

What is the connection with CO2 and aging rock?

I heard just in passing in a lecture that as rock ages it takes in CO2. This was mentioned as one of the off sets of volcanos. Would appreciate any info.

Update:

As I watched the responses to the argument that volcanos were producing more carbon dioxide than humans, I was surprised to learn that the rocks were in fact taking back the CO2 produced quite naturally.

Very good link from Crash

5 Answers

Relevance
  • 7 years ago

    Calcium carbonate and carbon from dead sea life are carbon sinks. But operate on a time scale of millions of years. Humans are burning up fossil fuels in a matter of centuries. Scientists were well aware of this six decades ago, e.g. four or five decades before the nearly all of YA anti-science deniers here had ever heard the word "global warming" or read a bad copy of a distorted misconstruction of the Marshall Institute's fossil fuel industry funded pseudo science.

    Roger Revelle and Hans E. Suess "Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 during the Past Decades," Tellus IX, pp. 18-27 (1957): “Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment...Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in the sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle#Geologic...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limestone

    https://www.skepticalscience.com/weathering.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Marshall_In...

    http://www.sharonlbegley.com/global-warming-denier...

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/the-gr...

  • 7 years ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering#Dissoluti... explains a large part of what's going on.

    Basically, certain rocks will chemically react with carbon dioxide, or with carbonic acid (that forms when water mixes with carbon dioxide), in such a way that the carbon dioxide is "used up"--either the carbon, or the entire carbon dioxide molecule, is chemically bound to the rock. Obviously, this is more likely to happen with "new" rocks, such as newly cooled lava, than with rocks that have been on the surface for a while, since older rocks will have already had time to react with atmospheric CO2, and any given rock can only "age" so much.

    Source(s): Please check out my open questions.
  • 7 years ago

    That's it! We'll just get some old rocks and throw them in our yard. That definitely will solve the AGW crises. Al Gore is already thinking of collecting old rocks for CARBON CREDITS.

    Actually it really does. Especially in limestone. In Kentucky the Bourbon is made with limestone water. It has special qualities, thanks to CO2 in part.

  • How do you think about the answers? You can sign in to vote the answer.
  • 7 years ago

    I never heard of aging rock absorbing CO2. I know that as limestoine forms it takes up CO2, but when it erodes it releases it again.

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.