The Carbon Cycle

Is the planet getting hotter?

Now to speak on the role of carbon,

The building block of life.

While climate change is most likely the first thing anyone thinks of in association with carbon, and I will get to that soon dear reader, but carbon must also be celebrated as the backbone of life. All life that we know of is carbon based. In sci-fi and theoretical science there's always been speculation about what life built from other elements like silicon could look like, but everything living (and many things not living) on Earth at least is based on carbon. This is because of physics, as carbon atoms have the ability to form four different stable bonds which makes it ideal for hooking up with many other elements. The strong bond formed is called a "covalent bond" and happens when two elements share an electron; carbon has four extra electrons to do this with. Carbon's unique versatile nature allows it to bond with other elements to create solids, liquids, or gasses of many different kinds, many neccessary for life on Earth.

Like the water & rock cycles, the carbon cycle effects every aspect of this planet. When living things die, they deposit their carbon back into the Earth, then volcanos or humans bring it back to the surface again. When animals exhale carbon dioxide as a biproduct of being alive, plants breathe it in as a critical part of photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is also one of many so called "greenhouse gasses" which act as blankets around the planet working to help keep what heat reaches us from the rest of space here instead of radiating back out into the vaccuum. Its one of the major forces behind climate change in conjunction with other elements like methane, hydrogen, and oxygen.

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