Each mole of Carbon weighs 12 Grams.
So, in a Gallon of gasoline, or 4 Liters, which is a little more than
a Gallon, there is about 4000 grams, and, minus the hydrogen in
gasoline, about 305 moles of carbon. When the carbon combines in
combustion with Oxygen it makes 305 moles of Carbon Dioxide. Each
mole of CO2 is now air, and it's volume has now expanded greatly, at
22.4 liters per mole, to 6832 liters of air per gallon of gasoline.
On earth, that is not an enormous amount, but considering the moles
of carbon burned in human activity, it matters. It adds up to however
many grams of carbon we burn, divided by 12, and then multiplied by
22.4, to find out how many liters of CO2 we are putting into our
Atmosphere. Albeit, that half gets re-absorbed into earth's
ecosystem, the other half stays in the atmosphere for many decades
There are several factors that lead
this accumulation of CO2 to add egregious amounts of heat to the
planet. These correlations are very simple, any politician saying
otherwise knows perfectly well he is lying. For one thing CO2 is
fairly heavy, weighing a third more than Oxygen molecules. This means
that it is settling through the porous atmosphere, but at the same
time being buoyed by the jostling. A simple analogy is shaking
together a bunch of small pebbles and sand together with larger
pebbles in a jar. The larger pebbles migrate to the top of the Jar.
Similarly, the carbon gets jostled upwards, and then settles
downward, causing the bouncing molecule to vibrate in a manner that
makes it amenable to absorbing a frequency of light. If the frequency
of light that it was absorbing was coming was just from space, it
would cool the planet, because only half the radiation would be
bounced down, and half back out to space. However, most of the
radiation it absorbs is coming from the planet, because it absorbs
infra-red radiation that is closely related to the black-body
radiation, or the ambient temperature, that earth is mostly giving
off. The CO2 absorbs this earth radiation, at ratios that are
whatever concentration of CO2 that is in the atmosphere, and then
reflects about half this radiation back to the ground, where it is
registered as heat, causing the heat to gradually, but steadily,
accumulate. This heat radiation would naturally flow back out to
space if the CO2 molecules were not there. The warmer air allows
more water to be absorbed into the air as the dew point climbs. Water
also has the effect of absorbing infra-red radiation. Of course, we
are near the end of the rope, since a methane release would cause a
runaway heat event, that would cause a huge mass extinction. Don't
worry though, the jelly-fish might make it. Pineapples, probably not.
All of this has been known for over a
hundred years.
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