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A Hidden Loop In the Carbon Cycle Discovered
Googlesaysmysiteisdangerousanditisn't! writes "A recent article in Science says that researchers in China and the US have found massive carbon uptake in the world's deserts. The effects of this are huge. 35% of the Earth's land surface is desert, and the uptake equates to 5.2 billion tons of carbon sequestered each year. This is more than half of the carbon released by humans. In these 'dry oceans,' the grains of sand allow the carbon dioxide to enter and react with alkaline soil to become carbonates. Another scientist suspects that biotic desert crusts, alkaline soils, and increased precipitation may be driving the uptake."
The solution is obviously to cut down more trees and make more deserts, right?
so the MVP is not Kobe...but Gobi?
(or the sahara if u'r in africa)
You'd think that exactly what you're looking for wouldn't be right in front of you until you find it is.
Now, where the Hell are my keys...
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
"Each year, the Rainforest is responsible for over three thousand deaths from accidents, attacks or illnesses." - Rainforest Schmainforest and now forests are rotting and giving off greenhouse gases. We must act to stop these forests from further encroaching upon our Earth-friendly deserts, it is time we cleaned them up.
If it gets too hot in the USA, guess where we're going to move to. That's right, and we're bringing our army too. Don't be wishing for global warming until you've thought the whole thing through.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Yeah, lets replace a one dangerous but naturally occurring substance (oil) and replace it with man-made and potentially even more hazardous material (lead acid batteries).
Makes sense to me.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If the climate change is actually a natural process then the attempt to control it has become our first great terraforming project. How convenient that we're trying this on the only planet we have and not some spare planet that wouldn't matter if it went awry.
And if the rapid climate change is not a natural process then we have already not just attempted but are in the middle of an effective terraforming project where the only definition of 'success' must be some form of 'not at all like what we had before'. That sounds much worse to me than your what-if.
The environmental people are either saying:
1) our climate is changing, lets make it like it's always been before
-or-
2) we've changed our climate to something different and unknown, lets change it back again.
Either way sound better to me that living in a completely unknown new climate. If our previous climate was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for us.
Usually this would be where someone makes a sarcastic comment about you liberating the polar bears...but if you could just kill Celine first then I swear we really would welcome you as liberators.
I was trying to be funny, but obviously failing
... but most of it goes back into the atmosphere when the lawn is cut.
That really depends on what the homeowner does with the grass after it is cut. If it goes in a land fill most of the carbon probably stays underground. If if goes into a compost heap then more of the carbon goes back into the atmosphere.
Although I personally think laws waste a lot of resources (especially in LA where I live).
I guess the spell checker can't protect me from every kind of typo. Fortunately that sentence is still accurate. That could have been embarrassing.
...because we've already taken her off your hands and stuffed her into one of our desert hell-holes.
Holy shit. Deserts sequester Carbon and awful musicians?! Excuse me, the local bands in my city suck. I'm off to chop down a few trees...
You've obviously never been in the same room as me! :)
Lets not forget that the tree will ultimately die, and either or burn. Both give off lots of CO2. I think the net amount released is just about equal to the amount sequestered in the tree's life time.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
may God strike me down before I hit submit.
Damn it! Can't I guy wake up and have a cup of coffee before having to go to work? Screw it, I'll just get the Flying Spaghetti Monster to do it for me...
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Our "alleged" influence is actually FACT. We HAVE increased the CO2 levels beyond by our own actions, we are continuing to increase them at record paces, and we KNOW the earth is warmed by it. The exact areas where CO2 is absorbed or not is actually irrelevant to the fact that we are causing an issue.
We were not giving off this CO2 200 years ago. The environment does constantly balance itself, but only after hundreds of years. Are you saying that it's OK for the oceans to rise 12 feet before mother nature self corrects, of that it's OK that half of the cities in the world will be swept clean by the next glacial advance?
Whether we know what the impact is or not, or what the environment does or not, we know what our emissions are, and we should control them, as they are not part of the basic process of this planet.
We know well enough about this process without being able to account for each molecule's interaction individually. There's a TON of science backing up what we know today. All we've discovered is a minor, and relatively unimportant detail in the process. That detail might lead us to new ways to sequester CO2, but it does NOT change the fact that we MUST reduce our output, or offset that output.
All of this of course is completely independent of the market and resource factors that also drive actions like CAFE. The engine makers are not sufficiently self regulating, so we need to do it for them. If they comply, noone pays extra. Taxing gas makes everyone pay extra, and further penalizes the lower class as they can't typically just swap out their cars for more efficient ones, especially under increaed burdens of higher taxes.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I'd rather plant cactus.....no need to water and it'll keep all you hooligans OFF MY LAWN!
Layne
Meanwhile a considerable number of scientists are still looking behind the couch for the missing methane.
It's not behind the couch, it's in the gaps between the cushions. Man, everything falls between those cushions, frikkin' everything ...