Question

23. Describe how burning fossil fuels has created an imbalance in the carbon cycle.

Answer 1

it has released more carbon into the air

Answer 2

I need to elaborate on that haha

Answer 3

The carbon cycle has almost nothing to do with "dead and decaying material." To give an example, when you breath are you dead and decaying? Your ingestion of food and conversion of that food into energy, water, and carbon dioxide is a major part of the carbon cycle. The largest reserve of carbon on the planet (about 99.9%) is in carbonate rocks which were created by living organisms (not dead and decaying material.)

The change in the balance of the carbon cycle has been hypothesized to be caused by burning of fossil fuels only because of the rate of that change. Fossil fuels represent carbon stored by living organisms over geologic history (but actually are only a minor portion of the carbon stored by organisms) and because the rate at which they are burnt and converted into carbon dioxide is much faster than the rate at which living organisms are currently storing carbon, it represents an imbalance in the carbon cycle. It is debatable if this imbalance is not a periodic event over time, but it does represent a change in the balance of the carbon cycle from the period of time immediately preceding the adaptation of fossil fuels. To summarize, if carbon input in the form of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel consumption exceeds the ability of living organisms and other natural processes to remove it and store it in other forms, then the carbon dioxide contained in the atmosphere will rise. That is not really a disruption of the carbon cycle- after all the carbon cycle will continue along just fine even if the various stores of carbon change in size- but it could cause a change in climate.

Answer 4

WOE NOT THAT MUCH!

Answer 5

How that for elaborating.

Answer 6

U took that to the HNL

Answer 7

It's called copying and pasting. M R stop cheating on your tests. Your teachers at connections will be notified immediately.