I'd like you all to consider the entire planet as a chemical reaction
The "reactants" are Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen, Water, and Nitrogen.
The "products" are all the life you see around you on Earth.
Just like a real chemical reaction, the Reactants will combine to form the Products. However, there is also a reverse reaction that takes place, whereby the Products convert back into Reactants. Depending on the relative speed of the "forward reaction" and the "reverse reaction", you will have more or less product at equilibrium.
Did you follow me? Re-read it again if you're confused.
Moving on. This means that the net biomass of life on Earth is set largely by the amount of reactants present in the environment, as well as the relative speed of the forward and reverse reactions.
In most complicated chemical reactions, you have 1 ingredient which is in lower supply than the others that "chokes" the reaction. So for example, let's say you're creating Calcium Phosphate, but you're short on the Phosphate. At equilibrium, you're going to have a bunch of extra Calcium hanging around in solution, but not so much Phosphate (because this is the limiting reactant). There will be a tiny trace amount of Phosphate, because of the reverse reaction, but it will be barely measurable, and certainly in far more limited supply than all that unused Calcium.
Therefore, if we want to see which of the ingredients is choking off the reaction, just look for the one that is in scarce supply.
So which is it? Well 70% of the Earth is water, I doubt that's it. And 70% of the atmosphere is Nitrogen, very doubtful this is correct. Now let's decide between the remaining two, Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide. 20% of th atmosphere is Oxygen, and 0.04% is Carbon Dioxide. Which do you think is the better candidate here?
Once you understand that Carbon is the limiting reactant, ask yourself what would happen if someone came along and dumped a bunch of extra Carbon into the system? Well going back to the example of the calcium phosphate reaction, what would happen if you dumped a bunch more Phosphate in? To answer: more Calcium Phosphate would form, but the amount of Phosphate hanging around in solution would only increase slightly. Because the speed of the reverse reaction has not increased all that much.
Follow all this? I hope so, if not crack open a chemistry textbook.
So if you add more Carbon Dioxide to the system, you will just create a lot more biomass, without increasing the amount of Carbon in the atmosphere all that much. We can see this happening, the earth is greening significantly. Plants grow faster, this leads to more rich and diverse ecosystems.
You might object and say, why is the level of CO2 in the atmosphere increasing? It's probably because this imbalance takes a long time to balance itself out. Sucking the extra CO2 out of the atmosphere and assimilating it into plant and animal life is a slow moving process. But the higher the CO2 levels get, the more quickly and efficiently it is done. This means the CO2 in the atmosphere does not increase eternally, but finds a new equilibrium to match our output.
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