Talk:Carbon dioxide

Conversion of v/v to m/m

I have corrected the conversion of ppm by volume to ppm by mass. The original note claims that this conversion could be performed by multiplying by the ratio of the molecular masses of CO2 and Air. The correct equation multiplies by the ratio of the densities of CO2 and Air. The difference between the density of moist air and the density of dry air is a non-trivial factor, and so volume can not be disregarded. A quick dimensional analysis will confirm that this is the correct method:

(m/m)=(v/v)(m/v)(v/m)

Or to be more explicit: mCO2/mAir = (vCO2/vAir) (vAir/mAir) (mCO2/vCO2)

Taking this approach usually gets you a ppm-m that is about 1.9 times greater than the ppm-v.

https://www.lenntech.com/calculators/ppm/converter-parts-per-million.htm

One of the fundamental factors in the emergence of life. Forms carbon and water in reaction with methane.

One of the fundamental factors in the emergence of life. Forms carbon and water in reaction with methane. Jacek Wasielewski 2A00:F41:707E:9613:0:25:F40:8F01 (talk) 20:34, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

CO2 is not acidic.

This page is protected so I can’t edit it but it contains a basic error. CO2 is not acidic or an acid in itself so to state so is incorrect. It can form an acid when dissolved in water as the H2O and CO2 combine to form Carbonic Acid. (H2 CO3) 2A00:23C8:821D:3801:64C8:80D8:7107:9DBF (talk) 07:38, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Fixed in intro paragraph. Thank you. Dirac66 (talk) 21:10, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Lead rewrite for readability and more relevance to a general audience

Hopefully the community considers it a step forward. It is a WP:BOLD edit. The goals I had were:

• Clarifying how CO₂ acts as a greenhouse gas up front
• Distinguishing between carbon sinks and sequestration
• Trying to create a more readable flow with fewer disconnected sentences
• Tightening up the wording and cutting a few bits that I did not think belonged in the lead Efbrazil (talk) 23:31, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Too many links under See also

Some of the See also links are far too tenuous for the article and need culling. 101.98.39.246 (talk) 20:52, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you. I've removed some but I think there are still too many. Please go ahead and remove more. EMsmile (talk) 11:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

The section "in the oceans" needs work

The section "in the oceans" currently has a lot of quite outdated information on ocean acidification. I plan to remove that and replace it with newer content from the ocean acidification article, an article which has recently been overhauled and updated by me and others. This could be done either by copying sentences across or by using an excerpt from the lead (see WP:excerpt). Since ocean acidification is continually evolving, and getting worse and worse, an excerpt might be better in this case as it means the information only has to be updated in one article, not in several. EMsmile (talk) 11:17, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I've done this work now. I've replaced the existing content (which was mostly outdated with old references) with two excerpts from the ocean acidification article. However, it is not clear to me how much detail we want to provide on the impacts on the calcifying organisms? It's very interesting stuff but maybe it's too much detail for this article? Instead of the excerpts, we could of course also copy the sentences across from ocean acidification - if we feel that the excerpts are too disjointed like this. EMsmile (talk) 21:31, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the section: In Earth's atmosphere

I am planning to do some work on the article carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere and was just looking around to see what links to there. This article links to there and actually has a section called "In Earth's atmosphere". In order to reduce repetition and overlap I'd like to suggest that we synchronise the two articles. Perhaps what would work best is to use an excerpt from carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, and to move/merge the existing text from here to there. Otherwise we'd have to update content in two place which would be tedious. EMsmile (talk) 14:11, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

What do any of the people watching this page think of my proposal from 26 Nov 21? If no objections, I can try to tackle this soon-ish. EMsmile (talk) 11:22, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Good idea in my opinion and I encourage you to go ahead. Not sure what you mean by using an "excerpt" from carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere instead of the present section. Maybe you are thinking of adapting that article's lead for use in this section? In any case, I appreciate the massive effort and skill you have previously put into organizing and improving articles related to climate and the environment. –MadeOfAtoms (talk) 21:09, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

WP:excerpt allow you to transclude the same paragraphs in multiple articles. In this case, I'd be okay with it after the lead section is sufficiently improved with citations from this article.

Currently, the information of this article seems to be of higher quality. The 'in earths atmosphere' lead is not fully cited, and contains outdated information (the 30-40% again).

A complete replacement would reduce the text from 6 to 2 paragraphs. That may be too little in comparison with overview sources? I think the first 5 are valuable. You'll probably want to write at least one more paragraph to better summarise the 'in Earth's atmosphere' article, but making sure there isn't too much overlap with other sections in the current article. A challenge for sure :). Femke (talk) 17:20, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Update: I am coming back to this work now. I am currently reworking carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. Once I'm done with that, I plan to improve this section here, probably by using the excerpt tool from the other article but carefully checking which text block and references are more up to date (the one here or the one there) and then hopefully combining the best content in a clever way. EMsmile (talk) 11:19, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

@Femke: I've now removed the sentence with the 30-40% from the lead of the carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere article (old sentence was "Between 30% and 40% of the CO2 released by humans into the atmosphere dissolves into the oceans"). I plan on reworking that lead and then checking if it becomes suitable to be an excerpt for here. What did you mean with "I think the first 5 are valuable."? (sorry for asking 10 months later). EMsmile (talk) 12:14, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Another update: I've now copied the text from the section "in Earth's atmosphere" to the lead of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. There, I have reworked it a bit (some further editing is still needed). After that, I plan to bring it back here by transcribing it in an excerpt. So it means the end result will be rather similar to how it currently looks (about 4-5 paragraphs long; about 500 words) but in future the content would have to be updated in only one article, not in two: Future updates about CO2 in the atmosphere would be made at carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere and then automatically be shown here. EMsmile (talk) 12:57, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Moved history section to the end

I've moved the history section to the end, as I don't think it needs to be the first thing that readers see, after the lead. I compared this article with other articles on chemical elements and gases: some have the history section first, some have it towards the end. So it seems that there is no "standard" for this. Examples: The article on carbon has history somewhere in the middle. Oxygen has it at the start. Hydrogen has it in the second section, nitrous oxide has history in the fifth section. So there is no clear system. I think when it comes to carbon dioxide, the history section does not need to come first as it will only be of interest to "history buffs". I am assuming that most people come to this article to find out what CO2 is and what is going on with the CO2 in our daily lives now and in the future. EMsmile (talk) 21:41, 9 December 2022 (UTC)