Below you see the Amazon river mouth where a plume of mud up to 300km large injects a tremendous amount of sediment per hour into the ocean. Daily it’s about 1.3m tonne of which roughly 10% is carbon. To all those who claim that mature forests do not sequester carbon, and to all those who believe that story at face value, it is advisable to step away from thinking in static concepts like ‘storage’. It’s about balanced flow.

What do you think? That soil layers will perpetually build up with carbon? That rotten leaves will evaporate? That trees will perpetually grow thicker and larger? As explained in ‘Physical Geography — Great Systems and Global Environments’ from Kaufmann and Marsh, The planet functions not in binary setups but in cycles which means that everything is in flow. Carbon is a cycle. It flows and for a reason.

During rainy seasons a tremendous amount of soil carbon gets washed away into river systems to end up feeding the oceans where it is a building block for algae and other organisms. Too much of this in the ocean contributes to ocean acidification, which is problematic for shell animals and basically all vertebrae based life forms. That means there is a strong reason to avoid or reduce erosion. With every forest logged, the top layer becomes more prone to be washed away.

The current climate scene is still rife with a singular focus of the type ‘how much C does a tree store?’, ‘how many years to get a tonne of C into the soil?’, etc.. Any equally singular reply to such a question diverts the attention away from the cycle thinking. Whatever you do, it affects a larger cycle that has tolerances and tipping points. Cycles need balance. The right questions would be more like ‘how many tonnes of C can a certain cycle hold onto during throughput?’, ‘will a certain intervention increase or decrease the capacity or effectiveness or pace of a cycle?’.

Historically this cycle is in balance with a fair degree of tolerances. However, when a tipping point is reached in one part of the cycle, it affects the full cycle by building up queues of excess. This “carbon queue” problem in the atmosphere — where there’s an excess of carbon dioxide (CO₂) due to emissions outpacing the absorption capacity of natural sinks — has significant implications for various steps of the carbon cycle and the broader environment.

1. Increased Atmospheric CO₂ and Global Warming

The most direct effect of the carbon queue is the enhancement of the greenhouse effect, leading to global warming and climate change. Higher atmospheric CO₂ levels trap more heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, raising global temperatures.

2. Ocean Acidification

As oceans absorb more CO₂ from the atmosphere (acting as a carbon sink), the water becomes more acidic. This acidification can harm marine life, particularly organisms with calcium carbonate shells or skeletons, like corals, shellfish, and some plankton species. Ocean acidification can disrupt marine ecosystems and food webs, affecting fish stocks and other aquatic resources humans depend on.

3. Changes in Plant Growth

Increased CO₂ levels can initially stimulate plant growth through a process known as CO₂ fertilization. However, this effect is limited by other factors such as nutrient availability, water, and temperature. Moreover, the overall impact of climate change, including extreme weather events and habitat shifts, can negate these benefits and stress ecosystems, affecting biodiversity and the resilience of natural habitats. Think of the nitrogen problem throughout the European farming landscape.

4. Feedback Loops

The carbon queue can trigger feedback loops that further exacerbate climate change. For example, warming temperatures can lead to the thawing of permafrost, releasing trapped methane (a potent greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere. Similarly, higher temperatures and changing precipitation patterns can increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires, releasing more CO₂.

5. Disruption of Carbon Sinks

The effectiveness of natural carbon sinks, such as forests and oceans, can be compromised. For forests, higher temperatures, increased pest outbreaks, and wildfires can reduce their capacity to absorb CO₂. For oceans, besides acidification, increased surface temperatures reduce the solubility of CO₂ and can affect oceanic circulation patterns, impacting the deep ocean’s ability to sequester carbon.

6. Impacts on Agriculture and Food Security

Climate change, driven by the excess atmospheric CO₂, can affect agricultural productivity through changes in rainfall patterns, more frequent extreme weather events, and increased susceptibility of crops to disease and pests. This can threaten food security and livelihoods, particularly in vulnerable regions.

Full system capacity affected by backlog in just one part of the cycle

The excess of carbon in the atmosphere doesn’t just create a backlog in one step of the carbon cycle; it disrupts the entire system. This disruption leads to significant environmental changes, affecting biodiversity, climate patterns, and human societies. Mitigating the carbon queue problem requires global efforts to reduce CO₂ emissions, enhance natural carbon sinks, and adapt to the changes already underway.

Nature is core Planetary Infrastructure and to understand its value, also from a financial point of view, we must overlook individual components and see how much any given component contributes or disturbs the balance of the broader cycle. Yes, that makes things a bit more complex than the carbon story, but our planet is more than a billion years in the make and it makes sense that we cannot grasp the essence of it in just a singular carbon credit.

Nature is critical infrastructure and operates like a large machine parks where soil and plant life are machines and where animals from apex predator to microscopic organism are the workforce.

Carbon Cycle and Operations Management: An Analogy

The analogy between the throughput of the carbon cycle and operations management provides a framework for understanding how bottlenecks and inefficiencies impact a system’s overall capacity. In operations management, throughput is defined by the rate at which a system produces its output, heavily influenced by its slowest process. Similarly, the carbon cycle’s capacity to recycle carbon through the Earth’s reservoirs can be limited by the least efficient step.

Key Concepts in Operations Management:

• Throughput: The amount of material passing through a system, measured as capacity per time (e.g., products per hour).
• Bottlenecks: A stage that limits overall throughput due to lower capacity, setting the maximum output rate for the entire system.
• Capacity x Time: The total potential production volume within a given timeframe, determined by the system’s capacity.

Carbon Cycle Throughput Analysis:

The carbon cycle includes processes like photosynthesis, ocean absorption, respiration and decomposition, and geological sequestration. Each has a distinct “capacity x time” for processing carbon, with factors like deforestation and ocean temperature affecting these capacities. A bottleneck, such as reduced photosynthesis due to deforestation, decreases the carbon cycle’s overall capacity, leading to an accumulation of CO₂. It also means that the full system storage capacity decreases.

The “Carbon Queue” Problem:

The current bottleneck in the carbon cycle is primarily the result of emissions outpacing the absorption capacity of natural sinks, leading to an excess of atmospheric CO₂. This imbalance is not due to a decrease in the atmosphere’s absorption capacity but rather to the slower rate at which natural sinks can absorb the excess CO₂. Factors contributing to this include the saturation of natural sinks, reduction in carbon sinks due to deforestation, and feedback loops from climate change.

Implications for the Carbon Cycle and Environment:

• Increased Atmospheric CO₂: Enhances the greenhouse effect, leading to global warming.
• Ocean Acidification: Harms marine ecosystems by disrupting the water’s pH balance.
• Feedback Loops: Warming temperatures can release more greenhouse gases from permafrost and increase wildfire frequency.
• Disruption of Carbon Sinks: Affects forests’ and oceans’ capacity to absorb CO₂.
• Agriculture and Food Security: Climate change impacts crop productivity and food availability.

Conclusion:

The analogy between carbon cycles and operations management highlights the importance of balanced management of the capacities of various carbon cycle processes to maintain Earth’s climate balance. The “carbon queue” problem illustrates how an imbalance in one step can disrupt the entire cycle, leading to significant environmental and climatic changes. Addressing this requires reducing emissions, holding on to our existing natural carbon sinks, and adapting to ongoing changes, akin to resolving bottlenecks in operations management to improve system throughput.

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