The Development of Carbon Sinks
Part 1: Practical Understanding
The carbon cycle is the relationship and movement of carbon that among plants, to oceans, to living organisms, and to the atmosphere. Carbon exists in the earth as CO2, and in organisms as sugars or carbohydrates. The carbon cycle works by taking the existing carbon in the atmosphere and taking it in through photosynthesis, animals, oceans, and dead organisms. Animals and humans take in carbon through the plants that they eat and when they exhale, it returns back into the atmosphere. When animals break down the carbohydrates that they acquire from the plants, they release carbon back in the air through respiration. The cycle is essential because without the constant removal of
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The carbon is used in the photosynthesis formula Carbon dioxide (CO2) + Water (H2O) + Energy ➡Glucose (C6H12O6) + Oxygen (O2) to create food such as glucose. Photosynthesis extracts carbon from both land and water plants. The water plants take the carbon dioxide that is found in water whereas the land plants take it from the air. Carbon is a lot easier to collect during the spring and summer seasons because it is the time period where most of the plants are growing and they are able to absorb a lot of carbon and lessen the CO2 concentration. In the winter and autumn seasons the trees in the forest go into hibernation so they are not able to absorb that much carbon and the CO2 concentration increases causing the forests to act less like a carbon sink. What the carbon cycle, carbon sinks, and photosynthesis have in common is that they all require carbon to function correctly. In the carbon cycle, photosynthesis is needed to transport the carbon from the plants into their consumers and back into the atmosphere. Since forests are the largest sources of carbon sinks, there is a lot of photosynthesis going on in the trees and other green plants in the forest causing them to soak up a tremendous amount of carbon …show more content…
The gas-fired power plants and coal-fired power plants are the industries that would be affected the most because they require the most fossil fuels to work but in order for that to happen a lot of green house gases would be emitted into the air. The industries produce electricity that is used to power workplaces, homes, vehicles, etc. The production of electricity is necessary because in the age of technology, many things depend on electricity and without it a lot of progress would not be possible. The gas-fired power plants and coal-fired power plants were sort of bad models in the industry because they consumed too many fossil fuels but with the help of the carbon dioxide capture and sequestration, their industry was still able to produce a lot of their products and keep the level of fossil fuel consumption down. The government is involved in the carbon dioxide capture and sequestration and they are trying to administer as many projects about it as they can in the safest way possible because it is one of the most effective ways to battle the uncontrollable amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The laws and regulation are very effective because as statistics have shown, the more industries try out storing carbon; they were able to reduce the production of greenhouse gases by an extremely high