
We are all leaving a Carbon Footprint.
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The Human Role
In addition to the natural fluxes of carbon through the Earth system, anthropogenic
(human) activities, particularly fossil fuel burning and deforestation, are
also releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When we mine coal and extract
oil from the Earth’s crust, and then burn these fossil fuels for transportation,
heating, cooking, electricity, and manufacturing, we are effectively moving
carbon more rapidly into the atmosphere than is being removed naturally through
the sedimentation of carbon, ultimately causing atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations to increase. Also, by clearing forests to support agriculture,
we are transferring carbon from living biomass into the atmosphere (dry wood
is about 50 percent carbon). The result is that humans are adding ever-increasing
amounts of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Because of this, atmospheric
carbon dioxide concentrations are higher today than they have been over the
last half-million years or longer.
