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Carbon sinks – largely a myth, unfortunately.

Right now, entire countries are buying and selling pollution quotas. The market is worth billions of dollars. Less polluting countries are able to sell their global rights ( if that’s the right phrase ) to another country which is exceeding its agreed pollution target, so that it can avoid fines. A lot of the trade is based on so-called ‘carbon sinks’, in other words large areas of forest, or vegetation which absorb carbon dioxide in vast amounts.

As every schoolchild knows, growing vegetation consumes CO2 and gives out oxygen. Plants more or less build themselves out of this carbon they take up. ( If you burn a piece of wood, it’s immediately obvious how much carbon is tied up in it.) The chemical equation for photosynthesis is

6 CO2 + 6 H2O (ATP & NADPH2 from Light Reactions) > C6H12O6 + 6 O2

So, a quick glance at the left hand side of the equation shows that the plants are using up Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen to build themselves.

Pretty straightforward – except that - when a tree dies and subsequently decays, all the Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen gets returned to the environment again ! In other words, if a mature forest remains the same size, the nett effect it will have on CO2 absorption over the years – is zero.

Even planting a brand new forest may not lock up any carbon. In fact, some analysts calculate that a new plantation releases more CO2 than it absorbs ! ( see http://www.newscientist.com )

A bit like the capitalist system, ‘carbon sinks’ only work if they are in a state of perpetual growth – clearly impossible in the long term. In any case, the areas of forest in most countries are decreasing not increasing. The burning wood seems to have created a smokescreen - behind which we can just make out the shadowy figures of competing scientists and ill-informed politicians. The words ‘monkey’ and ‘business’ spring to mind.

(Note 1 The oxygen generated during the light reactions of photosynthesis actually comes from the water, H2O. The oxygen is discarded as a dangerous by product - luckily for us )

(Note 2 Amazing as it may seem, and despite what you may read in the textbooks, the process of photosynthesis is still not fully understood. Molecular biologists have worked out most of the details, but the crucial bit, i.e. how the light drives the reaction, is unknown. )

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