Talk:Carbon cycle

Questions on Human influence on loss of biodiversity

This section doesn't seem well cited. The link to the Biodiversity loss page doesn't explicitly discuss human influences through human generated carbon in the biosphere. Additional citation is needed to really justify this statement. In addition the statement, "More directly, it often leads to the release of carbon from terrestrial ecosystems into the atmosphere." Should have a direct citation as well.

This section also doesn't seem well balanced, the rest of the Human influence section is much more concise and to the point while the portion on the effects of biodiversity loss seems close to opinion and is written a bit too persuasively. A more more direct rewrite may be needed to maintain an impartial perspective. - Filloa (talk) 23:35, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

The section on human effects on the oceanic carbon cycle is also poorly cited. Reading through the NASA citations at the end of the section is seems that they cover a wide range of the missing citations, but just having a block citation at the end of the section is not sufficient. Additional citations would also strengthen the section. -Filloa (talk) 23:46, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

The statement in the section of human influence could be strengthed by adding more data and covering more current ways of accounting carbon emission. Auddz (talk) 04:31, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

There also appears to be a fact stated at the end of the first paragraph with no citation to support this data. This could be reinforced with an updated citation. Payne266 (talk) 02:56, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Plant respiration

Is plant respiration comprised of only burning and rotting of plant? If not what other processes are involved? Paploof (talk) 22:54, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Redirect Carbon budget

Carbon budget links here. However, both terms are only loosely connected. I had just tried to restore and extend the old article, which is not a redirect. My edit was reverted though, requiring a consensus. Is there a consensus? I would argue that carbon budget is about the total amount of CO2 equivalent emissions the world can afford to remain under, e.g., 2 degrees. Recent research assumes that 900 GtCe remain, which is about 20 years (given that 41 GtCe are emitted annually). Carbon cycle is about the processes described in this article. I cannot see why the former should just be a redirect to the latter, given the fundamental differences between these two concepts. Wouldn't you all agree? I don't know the old discussions, but it seems to me that carbon budget as a concept was not that established several years ago, when it was turned into a redirect. But given the importance of the concept in recent debates it is difficult to argue why this would just be a redirect. 80.71.142.166 (talk) 04:13, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

The article was merged in 2013 after being tagged for merger since 2010 (the discussion is archived here). It wasn't done properly – I have only just added the tags documenting it. It seems that nothing from the article was carried over during the merger; there were concerns about the quality. RockMagnetist (DCO visiting scholar) (talk) 16:23, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

To the extent there is a discussion of carbon budgets in this article, it's in the figures. RockMagnetist (DCO visiting scholar) (talk) 16:43, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Although there are, of course relations between "carbon cycle" and "carbon budget", these topics should still not be confused or even merged in just one article. I would suggest to restore the old Carbon budget article and to develop it. It needs to cover the current academic discussions about this budget. 80.71.142.166 (talk) 07:45, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Looks like Emissions budget covers the topic you're describing, and even mentions "carbon budget" as a synonym. I think Carbon budget should be redirected there instead of here. RockMagnetist (DCO visiting scholar) (talk) 19:55, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I went ahead and made that change. RockMagnetist (DCO visiting scholar) (talk) 05:23, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

What is the net change in annual contribution of photosynthesis?

The figure at the top of the article claims that annual drawdown of atmospheric carbon attributable to photosynthesis has increased by 3 gigatonnes above its preindustrial level of 120 GtC. That's huge: it's three-quarters of the annual accumulation of CO2, namely 4 GtC. (These are the numbers shown in red in the figure.)

The article however says that land use changes have decreased drawdown by photosynthesis.

So how accurate is the +3 GtC drawdown increase in the figure? Is drawdown by photosynthesis increasing or decreasing? And if increasing, how do we know? Vaughan Pratt (talk) 15:05, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Good questions but they run the risk of turning this thread into a general WP:FORUM discussion, which we don't do here. if you click the image thumbnail the image info page will open. There you will find the reference on which this image is based. The reference is this one. Read that, and the various things it cites at the end in its own reference section. When you're done, consider adding your new underestanding to our article if there are places for improvement! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:07, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

New Article on Deep Carbon Cycling

Hello, there is a new article called Deep carbon cycling, which appears to be a direct copy of the existing text in THIS article's "Deep Carbon Cycle" section. Was there a discussion to spin-out that section into a new article? This is not my area of expertise but I find that new article to be unnecessary. It was also created as part of a college project. All comments are welcome. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 14:52, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Wow, good catch. Yeah that seems unnecessary to me too and is concerning that they just copied and pasted over to new article, which was scored for a university class. Jayzlimno (talk) 15:07, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

The instructor reviews in the other article are very useful for this article though Jayzlimno (talk) 15:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I wrote the deep carbon cycle subpage and then received a recommendation to make it a separate wiki page. I would probably write a couple sentences and provide a link to the deep carbon cycle page instead of having the text be the same. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjilrm (talk • contribs) 15:36, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Support new article To be clear.... @Benjilrm: is the primary author at both places. Any attribution issues - if any do exist at all - are for relatively small additions. Thanks Benjilrm for working on it! I agree we should write about deep carbon cycling here in WP:SUMMARY style and cross link the sub page on the specific topic. Well done. It's less clear whether modifications to the text appeared here and were copied to the new article without attribution. That would technically fail to comply with our article-to-article copying rules for attribution, but it is a complicated and way down in the weeds and I woudn't worry about it, personally. We do need to seriously shrink the section here to 3 sentences at most. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:49, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I recommended the split in an email exchange the instructor because it seemed to unbalance this article. I could have explained the sequence of events to split out a daughter article a little better. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:32, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

All good news from everyone. Based on this discussion, I also recommend a brief summary of the topic here, with a note to the interested reader that full coverage is found at the new article. Having almost the exact same text in both places in unnecessary and confusing. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 18:28, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Renaming emissions budget to carbon budget

Global carbon budget is now a redirect to this page. If I type in "global carbon budget" in Google, this seems to be a correct redirect. However, the term carbon budget (without global) is used quite differently as the amount of greenhouse gases we can still emit for a certain temperature goal. This is now covered under the article name emissions budget, but the term carbon budget is more common for this concept. From the perspective of editors here, do you think renaming emissions budget to carbon budget might lead to confusion? See the discussion at Talk:Emissions budget#Rename to carbon budget? Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:00, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

New research by Battle et al. to be considered?

Nature.com writes "The data could mean that the world’s landmasses are taking up 7% more carbon, and the ocean 7% less, than scientists had thought." and in the paper conclusion: "While this adjustment is within the uncertainties on these terms in the global carbon budget, it would nonetheless be an important correction."--LS (talk) 08:05, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

References

I think not. This paper seems to report the existence of questions for more study. See FAQ 21 at Talk:Global warming/FAQ. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:16, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Cowlibob (talk) 18:26, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that the carbon cycle was discovered by Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Priestley, and popularized by Humphry Davy? Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-375-42222-5

Created by Dishita Bhowmik (talk). Self-nominated at 16:43, 17 February 2020 (UTC).

• The target article for this nomination, carbon cycle, is neither new nor recently expanded, so it is ineligible for DYK. It is currently B-class, though, so if you're willing to put in the work to bring it up to good article class you could get a DYK nomination after that is done. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:34, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Improve lead for translation?

@Chidgk1, Epipelagic, Bikesrcool, and Femkemilene: With the recent improvements to the article and the lead, I am thinking this article would be a good one to nominate for the the climate translation project. However, I feel like the natural systems part of the lead is not sufficiently surveying the different parts of the science to balance out the second part which focuses on the human changes. Sadads (talk) 13:38, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

The first line shouldn't include difficult words like pedosphere. NASA's introduction is significantly better: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle. It makes a distinction between the fast and the slow carbon cycle, which is maybe the addition we need to give more info about the natural system part. Femke Nijsse (talk) 14:03, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

For the first sentence how about: The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the world's living things, soil, rocks, water, and air. — unsigned comment by Chidgk1 (talk) 06:14, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure. Optimal lead paragraphs for articles like these can be a challenge. If we are trying to keep things simple then "The carbon cycle is a biogeochemical cycle..." is not necessarily an optimal start. Wikipedia should keep things simple where possible, without dumbing things. The terms experts use should be there, but there can be soft entries into the use of technical terms. Their initial use can be accompanied with clear indications of what the terms mean, and/or the provision of alternative, more populist terms that are simpler to use (though maybe less precise). Getting a balance can be tricky. As a discussion point, the first lead sentence might be something like: The carbon cycle is the manner by which carbon is exchanged between living things, soils, rocks, water and air (the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere). — Epipelagic (talk) 21:27, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Femke Nijsse's comments and the distinction between the fast and slow carbon cycles. A translation would be a little premature right now, since the article itself, as well as the lead, also lacks appropriate acknowledgement of the role of the marine biological pump. This pump is responsible for much of long term carbon sequestration. The article on the pump itself also needs expanding, which I am currently working on. In the interim, I've added a section on the topic, but it is only preliminary and will need reworking. — Epipelagic (talk) 00:47, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Sadads, you said above the science needs "to balance out the second part which focuses on the human changes". That suggests you think half the article should focus on human changes. I think, since this is the main article on the carbon cycle, it should focus on the science. There can be a separate article called something like "Human impact on the carbon cycle" – it is an important topic in its own right. But I see the main article on the carbon cycle as divided into five roughly equal parts: atmospheric, terrestrial, oceanic, geological and historical. The historical section would summarise the movement of carbon from the birth of the planet to the present, with perhaps half its content devoted to the anthropocene. — Epipelagic (talk) 19:52, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Epipelagic: I was more suggesting that we should have at least two well referenced paragraphs of the science framing, and wouldn't object to trimming down the human impacts part of the lead into something a bit more manageable -- I like it as it is now, but it feels a bit voluminous compared to the content in the article.Sadads (talk) 20:47, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Current Topics in Environmental Biology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2022 and 8 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ZahraaJaa (article contribs).