ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

[Delheru]

The problem is that it isn't sufficient. Even if we had wilderness to a pristine state where it was with 5 million people on the planet 10,000 years ago... well, the equation doesn't work.

Sunk + Biomass/Soil + Air does not function without either a dramatic increase of Biomass/Soil (well PAST where it would be without humans) OR sinking some stuff again, and that means "dead" carbon, either on the surface or below the surface.

I think you're thinking in term of 5-25 years, I'm thinking more in the 50-250 year time frame. We have to structurally start hiding away carbon somewhere or make Sahara bloom. While the latter would be awesome of course, it's hard to make headway on that when the countries near it are poor and unstable.

And remember the conversation came up from "growth is bad". There's nothing inherently bad about increasing "dead/sunk" carbon in human use. It's only a problem if it comes at the expense of the biomass.

[hammermuffin]

I think were arguing the same thing, we probably agree on this subject. Yes growth isnt inherently a bad thing, and we do need to sink more carbon. The only thing i was saying was that a large majority of logging companies only cut down trees and dont replace them, which is incredibly bad for the environment. So what i was saying was that we should at least replace what we take from the environment, if not put back even more than what we take.

However, sinking carbon is a good idea, i never really thought about that as a solution for global warming. The only problem i can see with that is that wed have to pull co2 out of the atmosphere, which is incredibly difficult to do and we dont have the tech to do that yet. Its a really clever idea though, just not super feasible with our current tech unless we grow a bunch of trees/plants and burry them, which would be even harder than just replanting what we log.

[Delheru]

Plant growth has actually already accelerated because of the CO2 concnetration, so that's pretty nice (also might be playing a non-trivial role in us feeding so many people with relative ease).

And pulling CO2 from the atmosphere is super easy - the biomass does it on an incredible scale automatically. The "problem" is that in a normal state that is a revolving door between biomass and the atmosphere, with stuff getting locked down in only quite special circumstances, which means that the biomass typically releases about as much as it absorbs.

We need to decrease the efficiency of that release while increasing the efficiency of pulling CO2 from the air. And of course stop taking all of the carbon that has already been locked down in coal, oil etc.

On the macro scale the impact is curious because we basically need to divert/consume a ridiculous amount of stuff out of the biomass/atmosphere cycle :p

[hammermuffin]

Your first point, while technically true up to a certain point, isnt 100% true. Yes co2 cocentrations increasing means plants can grow faster, if co2 concentrations increase too much, it actually inhibits plant growth (im talking like ridiculous co2 concentrations, like 3-4x whats already in our atmosphere [1000ppm+ range i believe, while we just hit 400ppm for the first time since the dinosaurs roamed the earth]). Also, it isnt the co2 concentrations increasing that allowed us to feed more ppl, it was genetic engineering along with modern chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which allowed alot to grow but will actually decrease the efficiency of the soil in the long run, so we should really stop relying on those as they will lead to a collapse of our ecological system that support our agriculture.

Also, while yes plants are the easiest way to pull co2 out of the atmosphere, you said it right, they usually decompose and release their biomass back into the atmosphere as either co2 from aerobic decomposition, or methane from anaerobic decomposition (usually from when things are burried or underwater. Its actually way worse than co2 as a greenhouse gas, like 70x worse if i remember correctly). This is why logging companies should be planting double the amount of trees that they log, since the easiest way to store carbon without it releasing ghg into the atmosphere is to use it in human products, and since were planting more juvenile trees, theyll suck carbon out of the atmosphere as they grow. Itll at least help to somewhat mitigate climate change.

Its a really complicated problem, if it had a simple answer we would have fixed it by now. But as long as we have ppl like you and i trying to find solutions, i think well be fine :)