Michael Faraday Quotes

I remember, as a boy of 17 years of age, this was a fascinating thing for me: how we human beings breathe out carbon dioxide into the air, the leaves of plants pick this carbon dioxide up, and the plant gives off oxygen, which we can breathe in and keep our life going.

Now air is the cause and spirit of every life and motion in the world, be it in flesh or in any of the vegetables; all whatever is hath its life from the air, and nothing whatsoever that moveth and is in this world can subsist without air.

We have an atmosphere that is roughly 21% oxygen. The rest of it is largely nitrogen. There's just enough carbon dioxide (CO2) to drive photosynthesis. That has been, throughout the history of our species, pretty stable. Until recently.

The trees must breathe so I can breathe.

Every fish fertilizes the water in a way that generates the plankton that ultimately leads back into the food chain, but also yields oxygen, grabs carbon - it's a part of what makes the ocean function and what makes the planet function.

The simplest way to remove carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, is to grow plants - preferably trees, since they tie up more of the gas in cellulose, meaning it will not return to the air within a season or two. Plants build themselves out of air and water, taking only a tiny fraction of their mass from the soil.

As a result of the carbon-dioxide enrichment of the Earth's atmosphere, plants are now growing faster. Furthermore, global warming lengthens the growing season and increases net rainfall.

...the life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical conditions of the planet. The oxygen in today's atmosphere is almost entirely the result of photosynthetic living, which had its start with the appearance of blue-green algae among the microorganisms.

What a marvelous cooperative arrangement - plants and animals each inhaling each other's exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away.

Carbon dioxide is....being portrayed as a pollutant; in fact, it makes things grow, and it is not toxic to humans.

What a difference that extra 120 ppm has made for plants, and for animals and humans that depend on them. The more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the more it is absorbed by plants of every description - - and the faster and better they grow, even under adverse conditions like limited water, extremely hot air temperatures, or infestations of insects, weeds and other pests. As trees, grasses, algae and crops grow more rapidly and become healthier and more robust, animals and humans enjoy better nutrition on a planet that is greener and greener.

Every seed is awakened, and all animal life.

Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community, economy or nation is derived from the photosynthetic process - green plants growing on regenerating soil.

Organisms in the ocean provide over 40 percent of the oxygen we breathe, and they're the major sink for capturing all the carbon dioxide we constantly release into the atmosphere.

Breath does, in fact, connect us all in a very literal way. Take a breath now. And as you breathe, think about what is in your breath. There perhaps is the CO2 from the person sitting next-door to you.

You will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with you. It will return to the soil, and there a plant may take it up again in time, sending it once more on a cycle of plant and animal life.

Use plants to bring life.

…trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in the flaming heat is released the flaming heat of the Sun which was bound in to convert the air into tree. And in the ash is the small remnant of the part which did not come from air, that came from the solid earth, instead.

In the last 680 million years of the four and a half billion that this planet has existed, life has been determined by two principal forces: the warmth and the diffused energy of the sunlight coming through our atmosphere, and water. Those are the primordial forces of life - sunlight and water.

Trees are great. Don't get me started about how clever they are, how oxygen-generous, how time-formed in inner cyclic circles, how they provide homes for myriad creatures, how - back when this country was covered in forests - the word for sky was an Old English word that meant 'tops of trees.'

Ventilation is needed to ensure we get air disbursed throughout the Station. Air stagnates without flow, so it is essential to have good ventilation so one doesn't end up in a bubble of CO2 by accident and then not be able to breathe.

Putting aside for the moment the question of whether human industrial CO2 emissions are having an effect on climate, it is quite clear that they are raising atmospheric CO2 levels. As a result, they are having a strong and markedly positive effect on plant growth worldwide. There is no doubt about this.

When the yields of biofuels per hectare are known, one can easily calculate how much of the energy of the sunlight is stored in the biofuels.

No human civilization could ever sever our dependence on photosynthesis.

I appreciate and love blue-green algae.