Quote (guywhosebrother @ May 25 2013 04:39pm)
you mean like sea creatures who use carbon based shells to survive?
or do you mean humans and earth's many other creatures who survive off of eating food made from plants?....
i'm not talking about carbon itself. I'm talking about atmospheric carbon dioxide affecting aerobic organisms. The extra carbon (from CO2) will remain in the fast cycle if it is released from the slow cycle, so an increase in plant biomass results in an increase in primary consumer biomass, which will release carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is also responsible for the acidification of oceans. It just isn't good to have too much of something we actively remove from our bodies.
Quote (AEtheric @ May 25 2013 04:39pm)
Because the carbon didn't fill the air in previous ages on earth. :/
"Various proxy measurements have been used to attempt to determine atmospheric carbon dioxide levels millions of years in the past. These include boron and carbon isotope ratios in certain types of marine sediments, and the number of stomata observed on fossil plant leaves. While these measurements give much less precise estimates of carbon dioxide concentration than ice cores, there is evidence for very high CO2 volume concentrations between 200 and 150 Ma of over 3,000 ppm and between 600 and 400 Ma of over 6,000 ppm."
that was the era of anaerobic photosynthetic organisms, which were releasing oxygen that no organism at the time needed. Eventually carbon dioxide levels dropped and oxygen accumulated.