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by mech987987 1145 days ago
Where did you read that the carbon cycle is coming to an end?
1 comments

Paragraph 3 of here [0] probably

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth

TL;DR the sun is expected to continue brightening, and that's likely to cause the end the carbonate-silicate cycle in a few hundred million years, which will mean the end of photosynthesis soon (for geological values of "soon") after that starts to grind to a halt. The end of photosynthesis means the end of large, complex life-forms on earth, permanently, forever, never to return.

This means that the practical end of the Earth, as far as humans are concerned, is on track not for a few billion years from now when the Sun expands—the commonly imagined end of "Earth gets charred/absorbed by the Sun"—but a few hundred million years from now. Maybe sooner for a variety of reasons, but that's likely to be the final lights-out—the upper bound—for everything but some microbes and a few lobsters around deep-sea vents or whatever. Barring some serious intervention by intelligent, technologically-advanced life, anyway.

Personally I think you are underestimating evolution - we can fix carbon in other ways, but I agree life will be dramatically different.
It isn't the poster who's developed this theory. It's a matter of chemistry. It's possible life could persist, but we don't know of chemical processes that would make it possible, so we shouldn't expect that it can.
> we don't know of chemical processes that would make it possible

C4 carbon fixation would already last a lot longer than C3 carbon fixation. Probably some other sources of carbon that can be found.

Er, I don't know of a chemical process that would make it possible. :)