One thing you hear some people say is there is no way puny man could emit enough CO2 to have an impact on something as big as the atmosphere. However, the so-called Oxygen Holocaust AKA the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis was caused by cyanobacteria. They are even more puny (you can fit around 10,000 of them in a human cell) and yet they changed the atmosphere completely. At first the "pollution" they made (ie. oxygen, which is a highly toxic molecule and is never allowed to roam free inside of us) was absorbed by iron in the earth's crust but once that sink was saturated it began to build up. Then it changed life on earth forever and ever and ever......
Recent research has shown that the Great Oxygenation Event triggered an explosive growth in the diversity of minerals on Earth. It is estimated that this event alone was directly responsible for more than 2,500 new minerals of the total of about 4,500 minerals found on Earth.
Additionally the free oxygen reacted with the atmospheric methane, a greenhouse gas, reducing its concentration and thereby triggering the Huronian glaciation, possibly the longest snowball Earth episode.
All of that caused by bacteria so small you could fit thousands of them on the head of a pin.
I know it isn't very scientific but intuitively it makes me think that humans' CO2 production with all of our internal combustion engines, coal and natural gas burning (along with methane production form our beef cattle) just might add up to something. Maybe not, but if it doesn't make a person at least wonder then what will?
Recent research has shown that the Great Oxygenation Event triggered an explosive growth in the diversity of minerals on Earth. It is estimated that this event alone was directly responsible for more than 2,500 new minerals of the total of about 4,500 minerals found on Earth.
Additionally the free oxygen reacted with the atmospheric methane, a greenhouse gas, reducing its concentration and thereby triggering the Huronian glaciation, possibly the longest snowball Earth episode.
All of that caused by bacteria so small you could fit thousands of them on the head of a pin.
I know it isn't very scientific but intuitively it makes me think that humans' CO2 production with all of our internal combustion engines, coal and natural gas burning (along with methane production form our beef cattle) just might add up to something. Maybe not, but if it doesn't make a person at least wonder then what will?
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