What Might Happen If The Reverse Were True And Sinks Took Up More Co2 Than Sources Released

What would happen if electrodes were reversed in gel electrophoresis?

Short answer - your DNA will go the opposite way and out the gel real quick.

Detailed answer - DNA is negatively charged, and as such, always moves from a negative field to a positive field. The electrodes are designed so that the negative is applied at the "top" of the gel were the DNA is placed into the well. This cause the DNA to migrate down the length of the gel toward the positive end. If you reverse the electrodes, the electric field would be reversed. This would thus cause the DNA to run in the opposite direction. Instead of migrating down the gel and separating based on size, the sample would migrate up and out the "top" of the gel right into the buffer solution, causing you to lose your sample.

What might happen if the reverse were true and sinks took up more CO2 than sources released?

Currently it seems that CO2 sources are out of balance with CO2 sinks. If more CO2 is produced than sinks can remove, CO2 in the atmosphere increases. What might happen if the reverse were true and sinks took up more CO2 than sources released?

Ploughing releases ancient CO2 so why do we continue to plough virgin soils?

That's a good question.

The symbiotic relationship between humans and domesticated crops is a complex one, and it's hard to say who benefits more from the arrangement....

In a sense, *any* farming activity can be viewed as "mining" the soil, to one degree or another.

Nearly all important crops are "annual" plants; over time, they have been adapted and selected to grow best in disturbed soils, in monoculture type operations. I think you'll find that most crops will produce very little in unplowed virgin soils, and wouldn't be able to compete with incidental native plants and weeds.

The modern farming paradigm emphasizes productivity above all else, at the expense of other considerations such as water use, disease resistance, hardiness, year-after-year sustainability, and least of all, soil conservation. Even taste and nutrition content tend to go out the back door......As a result, modern crops have an unusual ability to exhaust the soil.

In my opinion, Americans tend to grow crops the same way they grow their front yards. Cover it all with grass monoculture, then, whenever there is a problem, just throw money, water, and chemicals at it, rather than perhaps considering other options...

I guess what it really comes down to, is do you want your crops to be super productive, or do you want them to be hardy, friendly, and sustainable?

In any case, humans have been farming for thousands of years; what we haven't been doing is burning millions of tons of fossil fuels.

I think it would be a far simpler matter to replace all passenger cars with electric ones, build wind turbines everywhere, and make solar heating standard in homes,(for example) than it would be to overhaul the entire modern farming system....

(Note: technically, only *temperate* soils tend to contain more carbon than do living plants. Generally, in moist, *tropical* regions, organic material decays so quickly that the majority of carbon and nutrients actually are contained in living plants. Of course, if you want to plow in those areas, you have to start slashing and burning first......)

Are there naturally occurring sources of CO2?

don't volcanos produce CO2 ?

I read the atmosphere had like 20 times the amount of CO2 in earths recent past - naturally occurring. I assumed from volcanos.

how does man made CO2 compare to the amount of naturally occurring CO2 ?

Is CO2 increasing as a result of warming?

I think it would be better to say that because of warming it's increasing faster than if it weren't warming. The solubility of gases in water goes down as the water temperature goes up, so if it were just warming and the atmospheric CO2 weren't increasing, then the oceans would be outgassing CO2.

But that's not the only thing that's happening: the atmospheric CO2 is increasing as a result of our emissions, which is causing more CO2 to dissolve. In other words, the increased concentration in the atmosphere is overwhelming the change in solubility due to the temperature increase, so the ocean is acting as a sink, not a source of CO2. As it warms, though, more and more will be staying in the atmosphere, so it will rise more rapidly than it is now--if our emissions don't change.

EDIT: Kano has unfairly criticized Jim's answer based on his own misunderstanding of the science, so let's dig a little deeper into the solubility of CO2 in water and how it varies with temperature and partial pressure of gaseous CO2. Unfortunately due to a transcription error, the previous numbers which I gave are incorrect, but here are some corrected values which show the same thing. The solubility of CO2 in parts per thousand is:

@18 C -> 41.55
@20C -> 39.66

While the concentration [will finish this later]


This is something I see time and time again from the denial crowd (JimZ, Kano, graphicconception, etc.), they don't ever try to estimate the magnitude of the things they're talking about, and as a result they draw erroneous conclusions. This is exactly the same problem with the idea that we're in for another little ice age due to a decrease in solar output--calculations show that to be wrong.

Do trees produce any net oxygen (and absorb a net amount of CO2) over their entire lifetime?

Yes. Photosynthesis life (plants and bacteria) absorb CO2 and emit oxygen, and animals inhale oxygen and exhale amounts of CO2. It is a good symbiotic relationship - they mutually help each other. Trees, plants, and some bacteria metabolize CO2 into energy through photosynthesis.

Place a candle under a fish tank. It soon goes out.
Place a green plant under a fish tank, and in time it dies.
Place the candle and plant under the same fish tank, and both thrive.

There is about 1350 billion tons of CO2 emitted each year and only a fraction stays in the atmosphere because the rest is absorbed. (humans only emit about 30 billion tons each year)

Everyone talks about the rain forests and their importance, and most then think they are absolutely needed for good atmosphere balance. The Taiga Forest is large enough to replenish the entire oxygen requirements for Planet Earth alone. Technically, all other flora and marine life that photosynthesizes could be dormant, and we will have all the oxygen we need from the Taiga Forest. The Rain Forest is used for an emotional response to promote an ideology.

Without the rain forests, there would be a change in weather patterns which would cause problems, but earth would not suffer from its loss.