How It All Ends: Mechanics of GCC (pt 2 of 3)

Date: Mon Jan 04 2021 ; Tags: Climate Change

****OOOPS! (4/4/08) Commentors guffpot and DavidSChandler caught a couple errors I made during my RedBull-fueled exposition. guffpot correctly pointed out that I compared 200 years vs. 300 million years incorrectly. Those two numbers are apples and oranges, because the carbon we transfer from the ground to the air in 200 years was not stored over a period of 300 million years--it was stored FOR 300 million years, and but was actively sequestered over a time period probably much shorter. Really, it would be more proper to compare the 200 years it's taking us to transfer from the ground to the air to the time period it took to transfer it from the air to the ground. If anyone can find a credible figure for that, please message me directly, and I'll include it here.

DavidSChandler caught that I was off by a factor of 100 in my scale model comparison of 200 years to 300 million years. If my line on the board is 200 years, then 300 million years ago would be about 10 miles--not 1000 miles--to the left. Turns out I forgot to convert from cm to m in my quick calculation. My bad. It's especially ironic because I'm constantly warning my students against making that same exact mistake! Ha! The joke's on me. I guess it just goes to show you--you can always be wrong. . .******