El Nino Fires A Key Source Of Greenhouse Gases

core plexus writes "Science Daily has an interesting article suggesting that El Nino-related fires may be a significant source of 'Greenhouse Gases.' By combining satellite data and measurements of atmospheric gases, they have quantified for the first time the amount of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, emitted by these fires. In addition, the scientists determined that almost all of the increased levels of methane measured during 1997 and 1998 can be attributed to the worldwide fires at the time, underscoring the impact El Nino has on methane emissions."

Comments

Dammit!

[GypC]

There has to be some way that it is George W. Bush's fault...

More evidence on the pile

[Spamalamadingdong]

I recall reading some years ago that the forest/peat fires in Indonesia (which created a pall of smoke over much of the region and reduced visibility to a few feet over wide areas) dumped more CO2 into the atmosphere than all of the vehicles of Britain in the same year. Here's a paper which cites estimates of 0.6 to 3.5 gigatons from the 1994-5 fires and a similar figure for 1997-8.

Just goes to show that Kyoto isn't the solution, because it ignores emissions by "developing countries" regardless of origin.

funding

[Anonymous Coward]

This research was made possible by a grant from GM, Chrysler, and Ford.

I'd like to see you support those assertions

[Tau Zero]

Things like Kyoto are just as foolish as Maos plan to have kids kill butterflies (or whatever it was).... incompetant ideas applied by people ignorant of basic science.

That's the conventional Republican wisdom in the USA, but the basic physics tells you that the basis of Kyoto is rock-solid absent solid evidence to contradict this chain of reasoning:

1. Carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur hexaflouride and such are transparent to most solar radiation, but absorbent across various bands of thermal wavelengths.
2. Due to this absorbency, increasing the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere will tend to trap heat which currently radiates to space.
3. To restore the balance between solar flux and radiative cooling, the temperature of the Earth will have to increase on the average.
4. If we desire to ameliorate these changes, we have to reduce the rate at which greenhouse gases are put into the atmosphere.

You can say that we don't know enough about the various feedback loops inherent in the system, such as the influence of clouds, to be able to quantify their effects. The thing you don't seem to grasp is that the basic physics places the burden of proof on the people claiming the absence of detrimental effects.

(And you make these implicit claims in a post with obvious errors of grammar and spelling. The irony is thick.)

Reality is the environmental quality in an area is directly proportional to the economic development in an area.

Reality is that the environmental quality in places like the Tongass National Forest is quite high, except where it has been developed (clearcut). The environmental quality in cities and the like tends to be higher where the standard of living (and thus the demand and ability to pay for pollution-control technology) is higher, but your blanket statement is trivially false.

Thus, the best way-- the only way-- to a cleaner environment is unregulated economic development.

No regulations? You mean, let dirty plants dump pesticide byproducts and heavy metals into the rivers and lakes that other people use for drinking water? I believe they tried that in the Soviet Bloc, and it didn't work very well at all; they are still trying to recover from the damage.

A basic lack of understanding of economics is behind most environmental solutions (as well as the war on poverty, etc.) and thus they actually cause the problem to be worse, not better.

Is that so? Tell me, did the regulations against the burning of coal in London after the Killer Fog cause the problem to get worse? How about the motor-vehicle pollution controls in California; did they make the Los Angeles smog worse? Or the ban on phosphates in detergents; did it make the eutrophication problem in Lake Erie worse?

I like people like you. You make it so easy to convince readers that you are wrong.

And for the record, I have nothing against corporations. Corporations are just like individuals, creatures looking for their own benefit. The way to keep them from doing harm is to prevent them from creating harm to others without having to pay for it; if everyone has to pay, the way to maxmize profit is to minimize such expenses and the problem solves itself. We get problems such as smog, algae-choked lakes and empty aquifers when people are permitted to take or dump without having to respect the limits of the resource they're using (whether the ability to create or the ability to absorb) and pay a market price for it.

The thing you have to argue against is the huge success which the Montreal Protocol has had in controlling stratospheric halogens; the polar ozone holes are already showing signs of recovery as the concentration of CFCs comes down. I agree with you that the demand of many watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) that any GHG control regime be turned into a welfare program for dysfuncti