Hundreds of millions of cars around the planet are
releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day, causing ocean acidification and global warming.
Famously wet tropical forests, such as those in the Amazon, go up in flames, destroying the world's richest wildlife habitats and
releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide to speed global warming.
Not exact matches
Study co-author Scott Wing, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, adds: «This study gives us the best idea yet
of how quickly this
vast amount of carbon was
released at the beginning
of the global warming event we call the Paleocene - Eocene thermal maximum.
«The
amount of carbon released during this time was
vast — more than 30 times larger than all the fossil fuels burned to date and equivalent to all the current conventional and unconventional fossil fuel reserves we could feasibly ever extract.»
According to the accepted view, the formation
of the Earth
released vast amounts of water vapour and
carbon dioxide, which formed a thick atmosphere and caused strong greenhouse warming at a time when the Sun was 15 to 20 per cent fainter than today.
Starting in 1981, the company delayed the development
of the massive Natuna natural gas field in the South China Sea because
of the
vast amounts of carbon dioxide it believed it would
release.
And what happens if these
vast amount of stored
carbon are
released?
«One major concern about wildfires becoming more frequent in permafrost areas is the potential to put the
vast amounts of carbon stored there at increased risk
of being emitted and further amplify warming,» said Todd Sanford, a climate scientist at Climate Central and lead author
of the group's newly
released report on Alaskan wildfires, by e-mail.
(Washington and Cook 2011: 30 - 31) This is so because, among other things, there are
vast amounts of methane stored in permafrost, methane hydrates on the ocean floor, and
carbon in the forests that could be
released as the world warms.
In the drive to produce more palm oil, for use in food and health products or in biodiesel, more and more forest is chopped down — in the process
releasing vast amounts of stored
carbon in the soil and reducing the
carbon storage potential
of the region, as well as destroying habitat for orangutans and other endangered species.