Are there variations in Carbon Dioxide?

Question

I was arguing with someone over global warming and they said something about how "biological CO2" is absorbed by the plants and oceans. I was not aware that there was a distinction between "biological" and "artificial" CO2. I always thought CO2 was CO2, because it is always the same elemental composition. I'm aware that plants take in CO2 to make oxygen (this includes phytoplankton). Perhaps other gases are released into the air from burning fossil fuels, but as far as I'm concerned, CO2 is the main "culprit of global warming." I don't necessarily believe that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are the sole case, or even a significant accelerator, of global warming. However, I need to be able to provide a well researched counter argument against any of his claims and, well, any help counts.

Answer 1

some organic chemicals have "spin", either right or left... in vitamin supplements, for instance, this spin is significant; the same "dose" will be much more effective in your body if it's natural source, because the synthetic version has a mix of the synthetic "spin" version of the chemical, which your body doesn't recognize at all even though it's the same group of chemicals, so your body doesn't absorb whatever percentage of the vitamin that has the wrong spin.

CO2, however, is a linear compound, O=C=O, and while the electrons are moving around constantly, and one end may seem more negative than the other, the more negative end is always trading back and forth, so CO2 gas is always just CO2 gas... no spin or anything else to show whether its source was natural or artificial...

Answer 2

In that muddle of words, I think you are basically right. "Biological CO2" as a category can only mean that part of the CO2 that circulates within reach of biological processes. Obviously, CO2 in the upper atmosphere does not participate - whether there is suffient mixing to bring it down is another matter. High altitude gas might have a global warming effect separate from lower level. CO2 at ground level is used by land plants, but is also directly absorbed by water and kept in solution and used by water plants. More in the water makes the water higher in Ph (more acid.)

Answer 3

There really isn't a difference. There is a CO2 cycle that relates how the gas passes from one state to another. I would venture to guess that your other person made this distinction, if for a reason, because the biological source was most likely to be absorbed by plants and oceans, while industrial CO2 would be most like to stay in the atmosphere.

Answer 4

No, CO2 is CO2, obviously. CO2 from biological sources however, cannot upset the balance of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because ultimately, to produce 'n' molecules of CO2 from say, combustion of a tree, the tree had to first contain 'n' atoms of carbon. In order to get 'n' atoms of carbon, it had to take in and photosynthesis 'n' molecules of CO2. Trees of course, also produce CO2 by respiration during the hours of darkness, but again the same principle applies: You can't get more CO2 out of it than you put in.
Looking at it in the long term, this is equally true of human industrial processes involving combustion of coal and oil; these are, after all, ultimately derived from trees and plankton respectively. The difference is that they were deposited in the ground over a period of millions of years, but are now being burned at a vastly greater rate than they are being deposited. This has the potential to create a CO2 excess in the atmosphere over what is, geologically speaking, the short term.

Answer 5

CO2 is CO2, for practically all purposes. There is a difference with different isotopes of carbon and oxygen.

On the other hand, "artificial" CO2 is produced in different places and at different concentrations from "biological" CO2. Thus, the CO2 levels in Los Angeles, for example, are different from the CO2 levels in the Congo, and the winds are different, so they get mixed into the upper atmosphere in different ways.