Atmospheric carbon complexity just got more complex. * But what did you expect? The chemistry of atmospheres is a tough nut to crack because the main components of air 1) are invisible, 2) move under the influence of planetary rotation, density differences, and thermal radiation, 3) temporarily disappear into various "sinks," and 4) incorporate gases and particles from various sources both identifiable and unidentifiable. The reason for the added complexity lies in that last point: The recent discovery that bacteria on the ocean floor play a role in releasing carbon dioxide. Released into the water, the carbon dioxide makes its way to the surface, where it enters the atmosphere.
Here’s a brief primer: The ocean teems with life, much of it microscopic or just barely visible. This life does what the animals that make sea shells do, it incorporates carbon as the minerals calcite or aragonite in its hard parts, what micropaleontologists call tests that are, in fact, just tiny shells. Coccolithophores, which are single-cell algae, make beautiful little plates called coccoliths that break apart when the individual cell dies. Foraminifera, single-celled “animals,” make more robust, but still tiny, shells, visible to the naked eye, and that fall like the coccoliths to the ocean floor. Where the surface water contains abundant nutrients, such as phosphate, the tiny organisms grow, float around as “plankton,” and sink to the floor upon death. In some places, such as the north equatorial Pacific ocean floor, piles of tiny shells are tens to hundreds of meters deep, having accumulated over thousands to millions of years. It’s from carbonate sediments on the ocean floor that the newly discovered bacteria release the carbon now found to enter both seawater and atmosphere. Humans aren’t solely responsible for carbon dioxide buildup though we’ve added more of the gas in the short term than the organisms contributed.
Nevertheless, we now know that there’s yet another source of atmospheric carbon to consider in addition to methane releases from hydrates (ices on the ocean floor) and permafrost and forest soils, volcanic eruptions, and, of course, the anthropogenic emissions caused by burning fossil fuels. Yep, complexity just got more complex because we learned something.
That bacteria play a role in atmospheric composition shouldn’t be a surprise. We do live on a bacterial planet. Heck, you have 39 trillion of the little critters living with your 30 trillion human cells. Bacteria have been found everywhere. They live in hot springs in waters above the boiling point, in deep crustal rock, in the atmosphere, and in and on all surface features and life-forms. In the time before the rise of multicellular life, Earth belonged to the bacteria; it was a bacteria planet, and it seems to still be a bacterial planet. Cyanobacteria appear to have been largely responsible for Earth’s various “oxygenation events” of a couple billion years ago and for exerting control over the planet’s variable carbon dioxide abundance. Having played a key role in atmospheric composition means having played a key role in global temperatures and in the rise of animal life, including you. See; you owe a debt to organisms, but no one expects you to thank a bacterium today. However, you might consider that this new discovery means that complexity befuddles the atmosphere modelers and models and that little surprises add up to noticeable consequences.
Little surprises like the contribution of bacteria to the carbon content of the atmosphere are common. Because we tune ourselves to big events and tend to focus on the large, evident, and sensational rather than on the small and invisible, we interpret the world and life coarsely. Yes, you’ve been obsessed with a deadly virus, a form of semi-life smaller than bacteria, but that’s because the pandemic has had immediate and highly noticeable consequences. Plus, you have been bombarded by newspaper, TV, and online reports by people obsessed with sensationalizing the negative. Keeping you in a state of constant anxiety over big events prevents you from observing the little things, the tiny daily events that add up to a human and societal development. But the little surprises do have effects, usually, as in the case of the discovery of carbon-releasing bacteria, known only after the fact. Those bacteria have been releasing carbon dioxide for as long as there have been piles of tests on the ocean floor, that is, for millions of years.
But what of those other numerous little surprises in your life? What of the discoveries in relationships, that, for examples, you share a philosophical position with a new acquaintance, share an ideal with another, disagree with a friend over some personal or societal event you had not previously discussed, or have a previously unknown common goal with someone you long disdained? Life’s little surprises add up like the gases produced by those tiny bacteria hidden from view on the ocean floor, but always at work.
Sure, we get caught up in the big stuff. We jump to conclusions or onto bandwagons of various kinds, our jumping often controlled by others with a plan of some sort. And in jumping to conclusions or onto bandwagons, we often skip over the effects of the tiny, ineluctable changes that we usually only learn in retrospect.
Note:
*https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/04/deep-sea-bacteria-caught-releasing-carbon-into-atmosphere/ Accessed 13 April 2021 from E&T (Engineering and Technology)
Here’s a brief primer: The ocean teems with life, much of it microscopic or just barely visible. This life does what the animals that make sea shells do, it incorporates carbon as the minerals calcite or aragonite in its hard parts, what micropaleontologists call tests that are, in fact, just tiny shells. Coccolithophores, which are single-cell algae, make beautiful little plates called coccoliths that break apart when the individual cell dies. Foraminifera, single-celled “animals,” make more robust, but still tiny, shells, visible to the naked eye, and that fall like the coccoliths to the ocean floor. Where the surface water contains abundant nutrients, such as phosphate, the tiny organisms grow, float around as “plankton,” and sink to the floor upon death. In some places, such as the north equatorial Pacific ocean floor, piles of tiny shells are tens to hundreds of meters deep, having accumulated over thousands to millions of years. It’s from carbonate sediments on the ocean floor that the newly discovered bacteria release the carbon now found to enter both seawater and atmosphere. Humans aren’t solely responsible for carbon dioxide buildup though we’ve added more of the gas in the short term than the organisms contributed.
Nevertheless, we now know that there’s yet another source of atmospheric carbon to consider in addition to methane releases from hydrates (ices on the ocean floor) and permafrost and forest soils, volcanic eruptions, and, of course, the anthropogenic emissions caused by burning fossil fuels. Yep, complexity just got more complex because we learned something.
That bacteria play a role in atmospheric composition shouldn’t be a surprise. We do live on a bacterial planet. Heck, you have 39 trillion of the little critters living with your 30 trillion human cells. Bacteria have been found everywhere. They live in hot springs in waters above the boiling point, in deep crustal rock, in the atmosphere, and in and on all surface features and life-forms. In the time before the rise of multicellular life, Earth belonged to the bacteria; it was a bacteria planet, and it seems to still be a bacterial planet. Cyanobacteria appear to have been largely responsible for Earth’s various “oxygenation events” of a couple billion years ago and for exerting control over the planet’s variable carbon dioxide abundance. Having played a key role in atmospheric composition means having played a key role in global temperatures and in the rise of animal life, including you. See; you owe a debt to organisms, but no one expects you to thank a bacterium today. However, you might consider that this new discovery means that complexity befuddles the atmosphere modelers and models and that little surprises add up to noticeable consequences.
Little surprises like the contribution of bacteria to the carbon content of the atmosphere are common. Because we tune ourselves to big events and tend to focus on the large, evident, and sensational rather than on the small and invisible, we interpret the world and life coarsely. Yes, you’ve been obsessed with a deadly virus, a form of semi-life smaller than bacteria, but that’s because the pandemic has had immediate and highly noticeable consequences. Plus, you have been bombarded by newspaper, TV, and online reports by people obsessed with sensationalizing the negative. Keeping you in a state of constant anxiety over big events prevents you from observing the little things, the tiny daily events that add up to a human and societal development. But the little surprises do have effects, usually, as in the case of the discovery of carbon-releasing bacteria, known only after the fact. Those bacteria have been releasing carbon dioxide for as long as there have been piles of tests on the ocean floor, that is, for millions of years.
But what of those other numerous little surprises in your life? What of the discoveries in relationships, that, for examples, you share a philosophical position with a new acquaintance, share an ideal with another, disagree with a friend over some personal or societal event you had not previously discussed, or have a previously unknown common goal with someone you long disdained? Life’s little surprises add up like the gases produced by those tiny bacteria hidden from view on the ocean floor, but always at work.
Sure, we get caught up in the big stuff. We jump to conclusions or onto bandwagons of various kinds, our jumping often controlled by others with a plan of some sort. And in jumping to conclusions or onto bandwagons, we often skip over the effects of the tiny, ineluctable changes that we usually only learn in retrospect.
Note:
*https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/04/deep-sea-bacteria-caught-releasing-carbon-into-atmosphere/ Accessed 13 April 2021 from E&T (Engineering and Technology)
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