The document summarizes a student group project on fossil fuels and the carbon cycle. The group hypothesized that burning fossil fuels releases an unnatural amount of carbon into the carbon cycle, perturbing the global balance. They designed an experiment using a greenhouse to model how increased CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels impacts the carbon cycle compared to a control environment. Research showed fossil fuel combustion is the main source of excess CO2 release into the atmosphere. The conclusions were that anthropogenic CO2 emissions will dominate the carbon cycle in the 21st century and climate change is occurring due to human intervention in the carbon cycle through fossil fuel use.

1. Fossil Fuels and The
Carbon Cycle
By Team 3:
Alexa Elliott, Victoria Garrett, & James Hammond
By: Alexa
Elliott

2. Question and Hypothesis
• Why does CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels represent a substantial
perturbation to the global carbon cycle?
• We hypothesize that the release of CO2 during the burning of fossil fuels
releases an unnatural and excessive amount of carbon into Earth’s carbon
cycle, which causes the global carbon cycle to become perturbed and
unbalanced.
• We hypothesize this because the way in which humans burn fossil fuels is
not something that would be naturally occurring in Earth’s carbon cycle.
Humans have only recently begun to use fossil fuels, and the rate at which
humans have been consuming and burning these fossil fuels has increased
exponentially since the birth of the industry.
By: Alexa Elliott

3. The Experiment
• Create and observe multiple environments within a greenhouse to imitate the carbon cycle
• Manipulate one environment to mimic CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels
• Leave one environment alone to mimic no change in the carbon cycle due to lack of CO2 emissions from
burning fossil fuels
Text By: Alexa Elliott
Graphic by: James Hammond

4. Introduction to Research
• Experimentation and scientific
research show that since
humans began burning fossil
fuels the balance of the carbon
cycle is changing in a way that
has never been known to
happen before
• There have been direct links
between the burning of fossil
fuels and the greenhouse effect
Text By: Alexa Elliott
Table by: James Hammond

5. Research
Combustion of fossil fuel is the
main source of excessive CO2
release.
The graph below shows the
Release of CO2 since 1900:
So there is more
CO2;
why is this a
problem? The more CO2 (along with other green house gasses)
present in the
atmosphere, the more infrared
heat that gets trapped.
The Imbalance of CO2 means that there is more CO2
being released(mostly by combustion of fossil fuels) then
there is being absorbed by oceans and plant life. The
result is a substantial perturbation to the global carbon
cycle
By: James
Hammond

6. Conclusion
The climate is changing. It was bound to happen, whether humans intervened or not. The Earth has gone
through so many climate changes over its 4.5 billion years of life that it's enough to make your head spin or
melt, or get eroded by corrosive elements in the atmosphere, depending on what geological era you lived
through. If we stop using fuels that release carbon, the climate will very slowly return to its cooler state.
Interestingly, many of the previous climate changes on the planet were caused by mega-volcanoes that
released gases and carbon that strongly resemble what we're releasing from our factories and vehicles today.
Very crudely, you might say one industrial revolution equals one mega-volcano.
In conclusion, anthropogenic CO2 emissions are virtually certain to be the dominant factor determining CO2
concentrations throughout the 21st century. The importance of anthropogenic emissions is underlined by the
expectation that the proportion of emissions taken up by both ocean and land will decline at high atmospheric
CO2 concentrations. There is considerable uncertainty in projections of future CO2 concentration, because of
uncertainty about the effects of climate change on the processes determining ocean and land uptake of CO2.
These uncertainties do not negate the main finding that anthropogenic emissions will be the main control.
By: Victoria
Garrett

7. Sources
• G.D. Farquhar, M.J.R. Fasham, M.L. Goulden, M.
Heimann, V.J. Jaramillo, H.S. Kheshgi, C. Le
QuÈrÈ, R.J. Scholes, D.W.R. Wallace. "The Carbon
Cycle and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide." Grida.
N.p., n.d. Web.
• "Greenhouse Gases." A Students Guide to Global
Climate Change. EPA, 12 Oct. 2012. Web. 12 Apr.
2013.
• Kump, Lee R., James F. Kasting, and Robert G.
Crane. The Earth System. San Francisco: Prentice
Hall, 2010. Print.
• "Unit 2: Atmosphere." The Habitable Planet Unit 2.
N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2013.
By: Victoria
Garrett