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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."
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.
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
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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.
is it even possible to somehow filter the crap from the atmosphere? What would it entail?
I'd guess starting to plant more rain forrest insted of cutting it down would help some.
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...
Developing new green technologies that support, rather than diminish the biosphere's sustainability ought to be a driving priority for all industiral societies. For you to sit there and say "fuck the environment" just because certain agencies are reluctant to diminish their profit margin... that, my friend, is bullshit.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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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!
This is the kind of model the GP is talking about. It's internal state is some information about the climate, and the test is to see if it can update its state consistenly only given initial condition. You can test it for various things. It generates data, it doesn't merely predict. No stock model exists that can do this for even a few days accurately. To be able to do this, the model should have a fairly complete internal state that mimics economy: distribution of wealth for individuals, institutions, nations. A good grasp of the psychology that these actors have, and it should be the case that the economy is non-chaotically deterministic. This last point is probably untrue. You don't see real models for the stocks market but merely pattern recognizers, smart interpolators. There is no theory that says that patterns necessarily repeat, thus you see the overfitting behaviour of such 'models'.