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Earth Releasing More CO2 Than Originally Thought
grqb writes "A new study out of the UK suggests that terrestrial sinks across the planet are mopping up much less carbon than predicted, on balance, and so the planet may warm at an even faster rate than expected. The study focused on the carbon content in soil at 6000 sites in the UK between 1978 and 2003 and found that the soil released the equivalent of 8% of the UK's total 1990 carbon dioxide emissions. These emissions are more than the entire reduction in emissions the UK has achieved between 1990 and 2002 as part of its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. This would effectively cancel out the UK's recent successes in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and would have wider global implications as well."
Anyone else puzzled at first at how "Earth" is releasing CO2 into space?
I'm buying land in warm, sunny Alaska.
Well... it'll be sunny and warm by the time I retire.
This would effectively cancel out the UK's recent successes in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and would have wider global implications as well.
In this case we have the earth releasing CO2 into the air, something we really don't have the means to stop. Although the net effect might mean the same emissions as before, at least the man made emissions are being reduced, that's what un-natural. If the earth is going to release some CO2, that's something that would have happened anyway. So that's not exactly "cancelling out" the effect.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
Please dont flame me, I am not a chemist or a physicist or any sort of scientist.
But if the alternative is to have most of the world's coastal cities suffer the same fate as New Orleans, why can't we put some thought and money into actively extracting CO2 and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere instead of merely cutting down emissions?
I know that it would take a lot of energy and currently most energy sources add to the pollution problem, but still, is it even possible to somehow filter the crap from the atmosphere? What would it entail?
How is that cancelling out the emissions reductions? Aren't there less CO2 emissions overall because of those reductions? Aren't there fewer man-made emissions?
This would effectively cancel out the UK's recent successes in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and would have wider global implications as well.
This would only be true if the soil would not be releasing CO2 prior to the recent reductions in greenhouse emissions.
Yes, there is a lot of uncertainty concerning the mechanics of CO2 emissions. But that doesn't mean we should stop trying to reduce them each time we find out that we are not the only source of CO2 emissions.
... but I'm not going to hold my breath to save it!
From the article: Kirk and colleagues surveyed soil at 6000 sites, spaced 5 kilometres apart, across England and Wales between 1978 and 2003.
See what happens when you get out and do real research? You find out that the computer simulations accepted previously are all inaccurate as hell! Shocking!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
The plants ought to just love us then!!!
Maybe the Earth wants CO2 to be released, so it is upping the CO2 in soil. Or the Earth wants to kill us by ridding us of precious O2.
There are a number of programs which plant trees ... an easy way to "mop up" CO2 (if you don't cut them down again, and burn them). I wonder what the math would be on a program of "quick, everybody plant a tree!"
Cancel out? Its not like by trying to reduce CO2 in area X, another area Y produced more CO2 in response to reduction in X -- this is not the case, and while knowledge of what produces CO2 is not complete, it is just plain silly to imply that there was no point to even try reducing it!
If it had not been reduced then there would have been MORE of it, not less.
alexc
Join Majestic-12 Distributed Search Engine
I suppose we'd better just adjust our targets so that we're back to hand-plows and starvation, then.
I'm sure that once the Kyoto supporting countries do even better, they'll find out that some other scourge is addding CO2 to the atmosphere and we'll all have to hold our breath for two hours a day to meet targets.
Fuck the bullshit environmental movement.
I'm just now having a skype discussion with a liberal buddy of mine in CA and as i have been telling him for the last 6 years ... WE NEED MORE RESEARCH like this. not some knee jerk reaction like Kyoto which is/was also a knee JERK reaction based questionable research. Dam people i make my decisions based on valid data... ... this planet changes and always will change... either with us or without us... lets see who of you will prevent the next ice age (or blame that one on man also)
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
An article from earlier in the year attests to how land use can affect if it will act as a sink or source. http://www.physorg.com/news3857.html
Another article from the same site shows how studies of the Amazon river basin reveal that carbon emissions from the Amazon river are younger than previous thought http://www.physorg.com/news5471.html
Really what comes about from these articles and others is that we still don't have a complete picture. While it is great press to claim we can simulate the earth and predict things like global warming and cooling we still run into the fact we don't know all the variables. Yes man contributes but how much? Indirect methods are revealed by how land use affected CO2 emissions and absorption.
I do think that what the Earth is doing on its own in regards to CO2 emissions should not be weighed against how well we reduce our own emissions. Granted the changes in the planet may seemingly undo what we accomplish we still improve our ecosystem by reducing OUR effect on it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
CO(sub)2(/sub) is the correct formula.
where I let ( be a substitute for std. notation
But slashdot does not support it.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Obviously the climate change is due to God's anger with various countries allowing gay marriages.
I firmly believe this can be stopped by giving tax cuts to the wealthy.
I want to walk the Earth and kick ass where needed, like Cain from the TV show Kung-Fu.
indonesia peat burning emits 1/7th of global CO2
i'm surprised this wasn't mentioned as well.
So if you're investing in Global Warming, don't buy real estate -- too uncertain what will happen to it. You might consider wind farming...
The root cause of cancer of laboratory animals has been discovered. It's humans in lab coats.
I think the same might be said of anything else...
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
A way shorter and imho more legible notation would be Latex's: CO_2.
My pastor said so and he's the smartest man I know.
The only people that believe in global warming are educated, and educated people are dumb.
I haven't read a book since 8th grade.
when we'll finally have Florida weather in Canada during wintertime?
Soil released 8%
that is really not all that much.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Everyone hold your breath until CO2 levels return to normal.
What they're worried about is that since the earth is warming up, it can retain less CO2 - in effect magnifying the greenhouse effect.
..........FULL STOP.
When will it stop!
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
When are people going to accept the fact that the Earth goes in cycles? There have been and will be ice ages and warming cycles regardless of what humans do. Here is a report showing that the Earth is giving off more CO^2 that previously expected. So we change the models and get a new estimate on when things will become really dicey. Hopefully by that time we will have established self sustaining colonies in space and on the Moon and other planets. Only by getting humans off the planet will survival be better assured.
The huge volcanoe that will erupt in Utah shortly along with a few other disasters will push us into another ice age quicker than most think.
A concerted effort to achieve relatively cheap routine access to space needs to be initiated. Hopefully the private sector will do what NASA has been unable to do.
Well, the earth is huge. Sure, humans have a huge impact on the earth, but the area we occupy is a small percentage. Volcanos put out large amounts of CO2. The believe that when earth was a complete snowball (entirely covered with ice) it was the volcanos putting CO2 into the atmosphere which warmed the earth again (despite the high reflectivity of the snow/ice).
... have a look at the measurements done in the last 45 years on CO_2 in atmosphere (for example here [Wikipedia Image:CO2-Mauna-Loa.png]) and you will realise that this data cannot be explained with volcanos but can be explained with CO_2 producing engines that burn C_n containing molecules.
volcanos are not that effective as humans are
we (humans) ARE changing the atmosphere - that's a fact!
The rate of increase of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere is easily and accurately measured. We KNOW how fast greenhouse gasses are going into the atmosphere. So the premise that "soils are absorbing less than we thought, so warming will occur faster than we thought" is fatally flawed.
Until 2000 I worked in a climate research lab - not as a scientist; I was a tech. Here's what the actual research (that the article twists) probably found. It is well known that atmospheric CO2 is increasing less rapidly than our models predict, because we don't know what's providing the sink for about half of what we're generating. So it's likely that some British scientists had speculated these soils were part of this "missing sink" (bad pun intended). However now they know they aren't as much of a factor - so the search will go on.
#DeleteChrome
I'm sorry, but just for the sake of argument, can we try not considering ourselves a disease?
I mean even the actual diseases seem to have more self-love than people like you.
Lets get a little more enthusiasm for our species going here, huh?
I wonder if George Bush made the earth release more CO2 by not signing the kyoto protocol...I wonder if making earth release more CO2 by not signing the kyoto protocol cused katrina. anyway bush's fault!
I think it is a safe assumption, however, that unbalancing a natural system (as we are - burning coal and oil is messing with and unbalancing the carbon cycle) can have unpredictable results, and probably isn't wise if we can help it. The sensible course of action is to move toward a minimum footprint option where possible. That doesn't mean giving up technology and going back to living in the trees, that means trying to move forward technologoically toward lower impact systems. We're not talking about giving up our present lifestyle, just working to shift the means of how we achieve it.
Reducing our need for carbon emissions for energy is a sensible option in those areas where it can be replaced with lower impact energy generation systems. Providing some incentive in that direction to encourage a swifter hange makes sense too. Now that doesn't mean I agree with the particulars and mechanics of the Kyoto Treaty, but I that I think the spirit of the idea is a good one. Moving away from an unbalanced unsustainable system as effiiently as possible is surely a sensible option, regardless of whether and to what degree we are effecting climate change. It simply makes sense as an effective form of progress: toward more balanced sustainability.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
When the discussion began about modeling the earth's atmosphere, I politley suggested that using models to decide policy was a bad idea. Particularly because of unknowns such as this one.
What I would like to know is where are all the people who were accusing me of being a toady for Bush?
Why won't you people admit that flawed inputs means flawed models and as a result the predictions are likely inaccurate.
Stop trying to change the world until you know how and what should be changed. And yes, that may mean it gets much worse before it gets better.
Then it's a WAR, baby!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Oh please. Spare me yet another gaiatribe. The Earth is a ball of spacegoing rock no more or less significant than any other similarly-sized chunk of cosmic debris. It has value to us because we live upon it, but Earth doesn't need "saving" and even if we set off every single thermonuclear device in our possession simultaneously we couldn't destroy it. And even if we could ... so what? Stop anthropomorphizing planets ... it's just silly. The Earth is not some living organism with an autoimmune system that is trying to eliminate an infection. We inhabit a thin, green paste on the outer surface of our world ... certainly we can render it useless to ourselves, but do you really think the planet gives a flying you-know-what whether there's life on it or not? I bet you believe in the tooth fairy too. Go on, admit it. You do.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Dear Dendrian,
Our secret plan to trick humans into releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere is working. Now us green plants can breath easier and grow larger, eventually displacing those ugly pink and brown humans. Green Power!
Your Friend, Piney Tree
Table-ized A.I.
You know, if you're going to steal your screed from agent Smith, you should do a better job of disguising it.
And really, couldn't you pick a better movie to base your world view on?
Heh, you sound like one of those beurocrats who called for "more studies!" on the effectiveness of the levies as Katrina was bearing down on the city.
Sometimes it's more prudent to act on what you know, rather than wait till you know everything, which is, of course, impossible.
Damage reduction now, is always better than paniced destruction later.
Slashdottings contribute to .023% increase in CO2 emmissions due to increased power consumption.
However, the sedentary nature of its readers cancels out this effect.
We need more research?
How much more will we need to convince you? And what happens if it reaches the conclusion that the time spent researching should have been spent averting the catastrophe?
Burning the fossils of millions of years in just a couple of centuries is a very unbalancing thing to do, and Western civilization's dependence on Middle Eastern oil is not helping world peace either. Whatever stops both is probably a Good Thing, and may just save our collective butts.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
The UK business market continues to decline as burdens from Kyoto compliance make UK's unionized labor even less efficient on a global scale.
More lives will be lost and more suffering will be created than any CO2 emissions can create.
Exactly what Kyoto supporters want. Bring the middle class into the lower class through regulations and taxes rather than uplifting the lower class through opportunity and expansion of the industry base.
We're all gonna die!
*dances a jig*
We're all gonna die!
*laughs, blows kisses to the wind and dances some more*
Hooyah!
--
Good riddance, stupid fucking species that we are.
I can't believe everyone always neglects the most obvious solution (albeit one that takes a few generations)...
HAVE FEWER CHILDREN.
People, the earth does not need 6 BILLION humans on it. We are in no danger of becoming extinct and our gene pool is plenty large. With 4 billion fewer people on the planet, you can count on the level of environmental damage being much lower.
Even neglecting environmental concerns, I don't see how humans continue to have more children than enough to replace themselves. Imagine how crappy a world with 10+ billion humans on it will be.
I go to public school and in my science class we study intelegent design and it proves this is all apart of the christian plan to bring jesus back. everyone who isn't christian is bad.
And exactly what research is this based on? What SCIENCE have you used to draw such a completely arbitrary conclusion?
How do we know that 0.8% isn't significant? Are you basing your opinion on models?
And even worse, you got modded up.
Keep whackin' on that straw man, buddy.
I didn't realize the UK had ratified and began working on their commitments to Kyoto back in 1990, 15 years before it went into force and 7 years before it was written.
Now that I think about it, it would probably make more sense to ratify it before it was written. After all, the only potential effect it could have would be to destroy our economy and thus reduce our ability to respond to climate change using technological means.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Sorry some people are just un-happy campers. They only way they can feel good about themselves is to view the rest of us as a disease. Makes them feel superior because they are so detatched and enlightend.
The best thing you can do for them is to keep they away from sharp objects and up their preferred method of self medication.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
I'm sure the PC crowd will follow up shortly to mod you into oblivion but people will see it anyway.
Most of the accepted rules of punctuation and capitalisation have been around for longer than Global Warming. If he hasn't yet accepted the former, I fear that he won't be convinced by the latter for a long time to come.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
You know, you probably already know about this website, but if not, I think you would appreciate it....
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html
Hope it gives you a laugh!
Cheers,
If you haven't read "Mad Cowboy" I suggest you do. It highlights the dangers of not only eating cows, but of raising them as well. They are a major contributor of methane directly and once you add in the exhaust from hauling their food (16lbs of food per 1lb of cow), the exhaust from hauling them, and the extra emissions from the need to constantly refrigerate beef, you start to understand how inefficient eating beef really is. Instead, the bulk of the pollution controls fall on the consumer in the form of fuel additives, emissions for our cars, and taxes. Another chunk falls on industry. But who has ever heard of a rancher being fined for the emissions that he is responsible for?
If I remember my chemistry, NaOH sucks CO2 out of the air to produce sodium carbonate, a solid. You basically end up with a chunk of stuff in which CO2 is bound. You'd basically need to expose a bunch of air to a bunch of NaOH, and somehow extract the CO2 to recycle the NaOH. I think there's been a sorta-serious proposal for this sort of thing as a solution, but I can't find any good literature--I mean, I think I found a science fair report, and little else.
Although your theory deserves attention, I'd like to suggest that equal consideration be given to Pastafarianism.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster faith teaches us us directly about the causes of global warming, and how they are directly related to shrinking numbers of pirates in the world.
We can argue about CO2 reduction all day; increasing piracy, however, is something that we can all start immediately. Give pirates a chance!
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Well according to the article, it's only happening in the UK correct.
= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9774264&dopt=Abstract
d f
Good thing North America is a Net Carbon Sink
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
http://www.climatechangedebate.org/pdf/FanPaper.p
And before someone says it's warmer since 1998, no it's not. Thanks the El Nino of 1998 we saw a tremendous spike, and tempreatures are cooler today than then.
welcome our lanky, green-clothed, photo-transpiring overlords, before someone else does.
Does that entitle me to a 'first welcome post'?
So....the Earth is to blame. Take off. Nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
No, I am saying that if we want to reduce CO2 output, a hell of a lot of it can be reduced by curtailing our output, not so much by worrying about the soil.
The soil releases about as much teh the reduction, and is releasing not absorbing due to already record high tempuratures.
a slight reduction in output from people is the same result as a 100% reduction by the soil, but the only way to reduce the C in the soil is to reduce tempurature anyway, and to due that reduce greenhouse gasses.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
"No, I am saying that if we want to reduce CO2 output, a hell of a lot of it can be reduced by curtailing our output, not so much by worrying about the soil."
No you weren't, you said this
" Soil released 8%
that is really not all that much"
Only one thing could be inferred from that, so stop backtracking and admit you threw out an BS opinion.
God, why is it so hard for you people to admit it when you get caught making shit up?
Where do you look when you meet someone?
A blog like any other.
Shhhh... don't mention any sources of global warming (or cooling) that can't be blamed on the following:
... you know)
1) The United States, generally
2) George W. Bush, personally
3) White males
4) Hummers (the vehicles, not the
5) Animal testing
6) Microsoft
7) Republicans
8) Amazon.com's patent portfolio
Good! Now, repeat after me: "All Hail Slashdot Groupthink! Flamebait == My Politics Differ! Troll = Possibly correct, but goes against my preconceived notions!"
I have always wondered why we should put any stock in the long-term predictions of climate models, when we can't even produce accurate weather forecasts beyond about two weeks.
If you toss two coins, it's very difficult to predict how many heads you'll get. On the other hand, if you toss a thousand coins, you can say fairly confidently that you'll get close to 500 heads.
It's the same principle: in many systems, long term effects are much easier to predict that short term effects.
Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina proves to me without a doubt, that the man is a serial killer.
Evidence:
1. Lots of executions in Texas.
2. World Trade Center (somehow it is just too convenient).
3. The b.s. war on terror, and Iraq.
4. Delay of 6 days before allowing any aid in.
I seriously doubt he gives a damn about the planet in any way. I think he would like it if more people died.
So there's nothing we can do we are all doomed by the whack job who runs the US government.
-------------------------------------
Technically, we are beyond survival.
The Earth has been drinking way too much Pepsi.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from 275ppm to about 375ppm since measurements of that gas began more than 100 years ago. Everyone assumes it is due to burning of fossil fuels, but that assumption cannot be proven because Carbon atoms from various sources have not been tagged and followed by any global experiment that I am aware of. All assignments have been based on statistics, and with that science you can prove anything.
u .html
At the equator water vapor is present in the atmosphere at 2,169 times the concentration of CO2 and water vapor has 7 TIMES the greenhouse power that CO2 has. That makes water, effectively, 15,000 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. Most people assume that CO2 is the culprit because of an unproven theory that water vapor amplifies the effects of CO2. Or, maybe it's the other way around. Unproven theories tend to be dynamic.
Other sources of CO2 have increased: the human population has risen from 1 BILLION to 6 BILLION in the last 100 years, and humans exhale CO2 24/7, unlike combustion engines. Most humans on this planet do not own a combustion engine or use one.
The ratio of CO2 produced / O2 consumed is called respiratory quotient (RQ), which depends on type of nutrients being used for energy. According to a study by the USDA [1], an average person's respiration generates approximately 450 liters (roughly 900 grams) of carbon dioxide per day, or about 5.4 Billion tons per day, or 1,971 Billion tons per year. That's about 538 Billion tons of Carbon. By comparison, the USA produces about a little more than 1 Billion tons of coal per year. The World demand for oil last year was 82 Million barrels per day, or around 9.3 Billion tons of oil per year. If I've made a mistake I'm sure someone will correct me, if they use the same source of information: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/petrole
Please do.
If my figures are correct human breath contributes more C02 to the atmosphere than machines do, probably because CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere by plants used as food, as they grow, is more than that created by farmers producing the food plants.
Dr. Alfred Bartlett was the first to state that "Farming is just a way of using land to convert oil into food." It's takes approximately 7 times more energy to put a slice of bread in your mouth than you get by metabolising it.
If CO2 is the cause of gloabl warming, humans appear to be the major source and the Carbon fuels used to feed them the minor source. If we cut back on the use of fossil fuel we condem a BILLION or more people to a death sentence by starvation, and the starving will continue until we replace Carbon with another energy source of equal or better density, or until the final population level can be supported by the new energy source.
Personally, I believe the evidence shows, and long before the "Carbon Tax" became the newest wealth redistribution scheme, that the Sun is responsible for the Earth's mean temperature, even with 6 BILLION people calling Earth home.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
- RustyTaco
I swear to you the the tone and the intent was to point out the obvious, our output dwarfs the soils.
I got the feeling from reading the post I replied to that the implication was this supports the rapid and arguably dramatic climate change was just as likly caused by natural seepage of CO2 as by human outout,
I was pointing out that 8% of 1990 levels of output is not going to have neer as much of an impact as 92% of it (which England still produces) .
The statement was to try and help readers realize that gee, it is less than a tenth of what the people are producing, lets work on small changes there to bring down output.
The article itself paints a more not less dire picture of global warming, and does nothing to even imply it is not caused by humans, maybe I falsly asumed people read it though.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
your science ideals are farcical nerds and geeks, wake up...its too bad that your conditioning has been so thorough, perhaps you will never awaken, but heres trying again: ENMOD Radiation Science and Earthquakes
GLOBAL WARMING IS JUST ONE PART OF A FARCE WHOSE TRUE PURPOSE IS TO SECRETLY DEPLOY ENVIRONMENTAL MODIFICATION SCIENCE TO MELT THE ICE CAPS oil and mineral wealth galore! AND TO TERRORIZE ANY COUNTRY WHO WILL NOT GET IN LINE WITH THE CULT OF DEATH WHICH THE NWO IS.....
Bearden Described The Working of TMTs Tesla Magnifying Transmitters:
They will go through anything. What you do is set up a standing wave through the Earth and the molten core of the Earth begins to feed that wave We are talking Tesla now. When you have that standing wave, you have set up a triode. What you've done is that the molten core of the earth is feeding the energy and its like your signalthat you are putting inis gating the gate of a triode....then what you do is that you change the frequency. If you change the frequency one way dephase it you dump the energy up in the atmosphere beyond the point on the other side of the earth that you focused upon. You start ionising the air, you can change the weather flow patterns Jet streams etcyou can change all thatif you dump it graduallyreal graduallyyou influence the heck out of the weather...its a great weather machine. If you dump it sharply, you don't get a little ionization like that...you will get fireballs and flashes Plasma & Earthquakes that will come down on the surface of the earth...you can cause enormous weather changes over entire regions by playing that thing back and forth....
THIS WAS DEFEATED BY BUSH SO HE AND HIS CHRISTIAN CULT OF DEATH COULD DEPLOY RADIATION TECHNOLOGY ON THE USA TO CONQUER IT FOR THE BANKS OF LONDON ROTHSCHILDISRAEL WHOM THEY ARE LOYAL TO.
from The Space Preservation ACt of 2001
NOTICE THE REFERENCE TO TECTONIC WEAPONS
To preserve the cooperative, peaceful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind by permanently prohibiting the basing of weapons in space by the United States, and to require the President to take action to adopt and implement a world treaty banning spacebased weapons.
This Act may be cited as the Space Preservation Act of 2001
REAFFIRMATION OF POLICY ON THE PRESERVATION OF PEACE IN SPACE.
Congress reaffirms the policy expressed in section 102a of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 42 U.S.C. 2451a, stating that it `is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.'.
SEC. 3. PERMANENT BAN ON BASING OF WEAPONS IN SPACE.
The President shall
1 implement a permanent ban on spacebased weapons of the United States and remove from space any existing spacebased weapons of the United States; and
2 immediately order the permanent termination of research and development, testing, manufacturing, production, and deployment of all spacebased weapons of the United States and their components.
SEC. 4. WORLD AGREEMENT BANNING SPACEBASED WEAPONS.
The President shall direct the United States representatives to the United Nations and other international organizations to immediately work toward negotiating, adopting, and implementing a world agreement banning spacebased weapons.
SEC. 5. REPORT.
The President shall submit to Congress not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, and every 90 days thereafter, a report on
1 the implementation of the permanent ban on spacebased weapons required by section 3; and
2 progress toward negotiating, adopting, and implementing the agreement described in section 4.
SEC. 6. NON SPACEBASED WEAPONS ACTIVITIES.
Nothing in this Act may be construed as prohibiting the use of funds for
1 space exploration;
2 space research and development;
3 testing, manufacturing, or production that is not related to spacebased weapons or systems; or
Light Happens.
oh, then it's ok. i didn't read the "earth releasing" as literarly as it can be, because it would be really funny to assume earth actively releasing CO_2 to get rid of humans. ;-)
on your question "can we destroy earth?" i think we must specify what we mean by "destroy".
destroy astronomically/geologically i think this we can answer with a clear "no", because not even all weapons of this world would really harm the crust of this planet seriously.
to make it more interesting, i would exchange the question with "can we destroy life?". and here it gets tricky ... theoretically, we "can" do such a stupid thing, but not without hurting the principle of the selfish lifeforms wanting to survive. everybody of us - even the species humans as such wants to survive. it would be really interesting from the biological point of view (i study mol. bio) to investigate if the humans evolved even further to do not respect this dogma of life any longer. can we act that suicidal? ----
in hope of good times to follow bad times caused by climate change caused by too much emissions of by-products of civilisation - have a nice day!
ok, but what if after 20 years it would be too late to do anything against the change? what would your children say when they ask you? the studies in the 70s were the beginning of the understanding of the meteorological chemistry. nowadays, we know much more and the models are much more accurate regarding things.
Dirty farts?
Earth: No, must have been Sirius....
all it is is a con. if you look at the data of the weather reports and over all health of the planet over the past 100 years not only will you see that there is no such thing as global warming but also that we are improving the over all health of the earth. compared to 100 years ago. greenpeace and all thoughs so called save the earth people are being manipulated by old white guys that wanted to get rich of peoples fears. donations to these places range in the multi millions to billions each year. if you want to make a quick buck just go around saying your collecting donations to help out with global warming and i garuntee youll get a few hundred dollars from the sheep that follow anything that gets posted to the news. instead of reading the facts themselves and having their own opinions.
Considering
this , it is even possible that we are releasing less Carbon than expected and Earth is actually getting COLDER!
hooray for sensationalistic science and the new Ice age! =D
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
As a matter of fact ... it did! I appreciate the lift (I've been home from work with the flu the past few days and I needed a good laugh.)
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I wasn't really suggesting that the system without us is particularly stable or balanced, just that tipping or pushing it can have unpredictable results. In fact if it were some stable or balanced system then the tipping would have predictable results. It is precisely because the whole things is a wobbly mess that our actions upon it are so unpredictable.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Does it matter if the pirates are gay?
Want to cut down on excess CO2? I know a few women that should be shot. They are large producers of CO2...babbling on all the time.
By reducing the population by two thirds, you roughly reduce human happiness by two thirds. I don't think this is a good solution at all.
We should be targeting the largest human population that our technology can sustain, which is even now six billion or more and will only increase with time.
Your "solution" reminds me of the dictator's solution to all crime - just imprison everyone!
First your carbon ignorance:
... the sooty particulates we've added to the atmosphere from burning all that coal / oil / gas make great nuclei for the formation of water droplets in the atmosphere.
... then burning the 4.65billion tons of carbon that are in that 9.3billion tons of oil gives you about:
... making the west fat. Why don't you share a little of it? Scared to feed hungry muslims? Scared to feed the blacks of Africa? Are you trying to keep them repressed so that you can live fat? Think about it.
In fact, the Carbon released by the industrial revolution has been tagged.
The ratio of C14 and c13 isotopes compared to c12 is much less in carbon from coal and oil than it is in the biosphere. Hopefully you are aware that this isotope shift is also what makes carbon dating possible. Oil and Coal are very old, and therefore have much less of those isotopes.
A shift in the isotope ratios in atmospheric carbon over time would be a strong indicator that we have released the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel sources. Of course I suppose you think its just a coincidence that the large jump in carbon dioxide over the last 200 years has happened at the same time as the industrial revolution over the last 200 years.
Do some research, Im sure someone must have looked into the isotope ratio question. If I could think of it, then no doubt many scientists have already tested it.
Now for your water vapour ignorance:
Has water vapour been increasing or decreasing? We know carbon dioxide has been increasing and that it is a strong greenhouse gas. We know other greenhouse gases such as methane have been increasing tremendously due to agriculture. I suspect water vapour has also been increasing
Whether it is directly from our carbon dioxide emissions is irrelevant, it may just be another side affect of how we've placed back into the environment a large part of the carbon that was sequestered away a billion years ago. If we've caused an increase in water vapour than it only makes it more our fault for global warming. Carbon dioxide is not the only problem, just an easy one to track.
Now to correct your ignorant math:
900 grams carbon dioxide per person
is 5.4million tons per day (not billion), or 1971million tons per year (about 2billion tons per year, not the 1971billion you've stated).
How can you compare 2billion tons per year of human exhaled carbon dioxide with 9.3billion tons per year of oil? It's Apples and oranges! You need to find out how much carbon dioxide is produced by burning 9.3billion tons of oil per year.
Assuming that oil consists of 50% carbon (a wild guess on my part, by weight the percentage is probably much higher)
18.6BILLION TONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE! TEN TIMES WHAT HUMANS EXHALE.
And of course that doesnt account for all the coal and natural gas the world burns, which could easily double my carbon dioxide estimate as many poor countries burn far more coal than the US does.
And now about the rest of your ignorance:
Dr. Alfred Bartlett may have been speaking of the SOLAR energy consumed by a growing plant, you have not distinguished the energy input from the environment from the fuels burned by the farmer.
Starvation is caused by government corruption and greed. There has been an excess of food in the world for decades
'wealth redistribution scheme'. Indeed, spreading the wealth around so that all people can live at a respectable level is evil! Let them starve while we grow fat in contradiction to your previous paragraph!
go back to school DUMBASS, preferable one where the curriculum has not been set by George Bush or by Religion. The real problem with global warming is how you've let yourself be mislead.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Hey Dumbasses!
... we better not bother cutting emissions because theres other things we dont understand! run in fear! hide hide! ... its better to go ahead blind and ensure that what we are doing damages the world we have to live in!
The emission of CO2 from soil has in fact NOT eliminated the benefit of the UK cutting their emissions.
The soil did not start emitting CO2 in 1990. It has been emitting CO2 all along.
The UK has still in fact reduced its overall emissions from industrial sources by the same amount, they just weren't aware of how big the rest of the CO2 pie was.
What a piece o crap article
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
pls mod parent down, calculations are utter bs
900g x 6 x 10^9 = 5,4 MILLION tons, not billions
Yup, that settles it, if they agree, with that scientific survey, I'm going with that.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
Put a tax on volcano emissions?
It's sad and sick when your average random slashdotter has more common fucking sense than the UK (and global) enviromental science establishment.
Can I get a "hooray" for bad science?
I thought the the Rockies had more to do with Europe being warm.
Ratio of carbon to hydrogen in liquid fuels is about 1:2. The ratio in coal is about 0.6:1. Since carbon weighs 12 and hydrogen weighs 1 we get 12/14 of liquid fuel is carbon by weight and (0.6*12)/(0.6*12+1) of coal is carbon by weight.
CO2 has an atomic weight of 44 so we get one tonne of oil * 44/14 makes 3.1428 tonnes of CO2. This is almost pi tonnes I guess. In addtion we get 18/14 = 1.2857 tonnes of water.
---------------
Now what needs to be recognized is that CO2 levels during the Ordovician were 13x to 19x higher than now and the earth cooled by about an average of 22C. This demonstrates that the CO2 levels at over 5000 PPM are not enough to warm the planet out of an ice age. In fact CO2 levels of 5000++ PPM are not enough to KEEP the planet from going into an ice age. When we go into an ice age we lose large amounts of water vapour and thus it is much easier to keep the planet out of an ice age than to lift it from an ice age.
Water vapour in the tropics literally is 80,000 PPM and it really is many times more powerful as a green house gas than CO2. Water vapour levels over a ice sheet are practically zero.
So CO2 is being given a bad name by people who know very little and do bad science.
About all an increase in CO2 will render on the planet is the ability for plants to grow a little faster. If course there are biologists such as David Suzuki who have suggested the increase in CO2 will overwhelm the ability of the plant life on the earth to absorb it.
How stupid. He must have done at least some plant physiology in his undergraduate years and if so he will know that standard green house practice is to increase CO2 levels to increase growth rates.
The truth is that photosynthesis evolved about 3 billion years ago and at that time the CO2 levels were about 20% of the atmosphere. 20% is about 200,000 PPM
First, I would say that the total effect is marginal, which is why I used the word "roughly". Two people are approximately twice as happy as one. Maybe this rough linearity breaks down in the extremes (being the only person is pretty boring, being a person in a place crowded to the point of starvation is obviously bad), but I do not think we are anywhere near either end.
There is, of course, arguments as to why adding an additional person slightly decreases everyone else's happiness (competition for space and resources). However, I doubt the costs to others offset the gain of the new person. On the other hand, one can argue that an additional person increases other people's happiness by producing new products, new information, new technology new entertainment, etc. My best estimation is that these two effects either roughly cancel, or the latter wins (at least in the first world). Most people produce more than they consume.
Either way, I would argue the net effect is small, and that six billion people are roughly three times as happy as two billion people.
I strongly believe that it is important for us to replace ourselves with children who are productive, and unfortunately, while the population is growing, the growth is concentrated among the least productive people. We need to find ways to discourage population growth in places that cannot sustain it, while doing the opposite in the first world, which is already tetering on the edge of population decline.
FYI
Concrete production accounts for almost 10% of man made co2 production.
{ Pillar candles great for when the power fails and you cant see the keyboard..
Furthermore, when they errupt, the effect is clearly a cooling one. For instance, Pinatubo is considered to have reduced the global temperature by a fraction of a degree. Other volcanos had an even more powerful impact. When Thera errupted ~3600 years ago (modern day the island of Santorini, and it's only a caldera left), the Californian sempervirens trees registered a significant decrease in temperature.
The Raven
Exactly what Kyoto supporters want. Bring the middle class into the lower class through regulations and taxes rather than uplifting the lower class through opportunity and expansion of the industry base.
To my knowledge, George W. Bush doesn't support Kyoto.
Interestingly at the EPA they have a tool for calculating a rough estimate of household emission - the average total estimate they say is 60,000 pounds for two people.
A few things are a little odd, like when you plug in the avergae percentages on the left for a few things they do not equal the averge amount generated on the right - but still interesting and a good guide to show you how you can help reduce emissions. An interesting artifact is that this thing claims that by turning up the heat by fie degrees more in the summer than you would otherwise it only saves something like 100 pounds of C02. So from that standpoint you could just set the thermostat to whatever you like, if you didn't mind the cost.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not so long ago - 2001 or 02 maybe there were massive fires across the Asian and African rainforests (remember the killer smog in Indo). There is an animation in NASA's "World Wind" software, which demonstrates this.
This was after the (dodgy to the benefit of industry IMHO) Kyoto calculations were done. What I dont get is why it took so long for the scientists and beaurocrats to realise their calculations needed to be adjusted.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
The headline for this posting (Earth Releases More CO2 ...) illustrates why discussions about the theory of global warming are often so wrong-headed and confused. The reported data is about CO2 emissions in the UK, not Earth in toto. With a few words, these results are scaled-up to the whole planet!
Consider evidence the North American continent (and that includes a lot of guilty emitters) is on balance a carbon sink, based on data that's way more justifiable than most global temperature trend studies. Why? In part, in the States, we've been reforesting. In a generation, the USA will have as many trees as when the Pilgrims arrived.
Yes, I don't think smog is good. I don't think diesel fumes that give urban children asthma are good. But the environment qua religion and what's become the faith-based doctrine of global warming will seriously bias and waste resources dealing with the problems we can solve.
Not bad at all,
.... Roughly 10 times more just from burning oil, without even considering the enormous amount of coal and natural gas that is also burned each year.
... but in the mean time you are only hurting your own future and your children's future by ignoring the THOUSANDS of scientists around the world who have compiled the compelling evidence that global warming is happening, and is in step with our CO2 emissions.
my GUESS of 4 tons of CO2 from 1 ton of oil was surprisingly close to your calculation. A pure guess only about 25% different from your calculation. In other words, my numbers are basically right when compared with the meaningless crap in the parent message that did not even consider the fact that 1 ton of oil produces more than 1 ton of CO2.
I absolutely proved my point that we produce far more CO2 by burning fossil fuels than from the total amount exhaled by humans.
Now as for bad science
GET A CLUE YOU STUPID FUCK.
The output of energy from the sun has increased over time. Solar energy output was about 20% less in the ordovician than it is today.
If it wasn't for the massive amount of CO2 in the atmosphere at the time and the resulting greenhouse effect, an ice age would be the least of the problems, average surface temperatures would be closer to -40.
You may not have noticed, but the earth no longer needs the help, its warm enough!
CO2 contributes to about 25% of the greenhouse effect, no where near as much as water vapour, but still very significant. We have increased CO2 by 50% in 200 years yet you can sit there saying it has no meaningful effect.
You have failed to consider that by adding CO2 to the atmosphere, the resulting increase in temperature adds more water vapour to the atmosphere with it's even more powerful greenhouse effect.
You also have not considered that the amounts of greenhouse gases may not be extreme over geologic time, but that the RATE of CHANGE is unprecedented! Life has not had time to adapt.
Already many species of birds have had their life cycles disturbed, reacting to the earlier spring temperatures before their food sources are available. Already many plant species have started flowering out of synch with the insects / animals that pollenate them.
If you can actually do some real science, without the slanted / biased information to show that CO2 is meaningless, then please do so
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
...sorry, but the Earth HATES being anthropomorphosized.
Um, yeah... Utah is pretty barren. But Yellowstone National Park borders Montana and Wyoming... NOT Utah. Unless it's a very small corner, I guess it's possible. But no, the Yellowstone Super-caldera is primarily in Wyoming. And yet, Cheney hasn't found a way for Halliburton to profit from it!!
Jho
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.