Fossil Fuel - CO2 shortage?

Question

Isn't it a good thing that we are burning fossil fuel, freeing CO2 that was trapped in the earth? Otherwise, as time passed, more and more of the CO2 would have been trapped underground, and we would have run out. Ending life as we know it.

I'm starting to believe in the concept of Lovelock’s concept of Gaia. Gaia developed humans to return the CO2 to the atmosphere, where it is required to sustain life.

What do you think?

Answer 1

you are right that the atmosphere needs a certain amount of co2 for life to exist (we do live in a greenhouse affected environment) but it is supposed to be in a balance, we are throwing this balance off and the xtra co2 is building up to make this greenhouse effect more intense. although on the surface this sounds like a good thing (condos on the beach in Antarctica) but this would be catastrophic for about a billion people living along the ocean and in areas that will see a massive change. Some people's environment will become drought and some will be washed away. Either way, the refugee problem will be beyond what anybody can reduce..billions of people on the move or starving and killing each other in places like Africa and Asia.

It is a good thing that a good deal of the co2 is being trapped in trees and vegetation and that this co2 ends up as coal or simply buried by time. You are right that any life on this planet is indeed there to put co2 back into the system for plants to use, but humans are putting a tremendous pressure on the system by putting way more co2 than is needed into the air as well as destroying forests and other habitats around the world at unprecedented levels. What is happening now is the opposite of your theory, the carbon buried in the Earth is there because it was an excess and needs to remain there

Answer 2

i think you need to wait until you take a few more science classes, before you start making those kind of assumptions.

picture a plant, and all plants for that matter, as huge containers that store CO2, and gradually relaease it.
naturally, they let it out after they die and decay in small amount compared to the amount humans are causing them to release by deforestation, farming, etc.
so now picture humans hitting that big glass container and releasing all the CO2 at once rather than allowing it to gradually seep out, because that is what our actions are doing.

Can you breath CO2?? I sure the heck can't, and can't really survive on air with high concentrations of it either!