Carbon-Emitting Soil Could Speed Global Warming, Warns 26-Year Study (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quote the Guardian: Warming soil releases more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, suggesting a potentially disastrous feedback mechanism whereby increases in global temperatures will trigger massive new carbon releases in a cycle that may be impossible to break... The 26-year study is one of the biggest of its kind, and is a groundbreaking addition to our scant knowledge of exactly how warming will affect natural systems. Potential feedback loops, or tipping points, have long been suspected to exist by scientists, and there is some evidence for them in the geological record. What appears to happen is that once warming reaches a certain point, these natural biological factors kick in and can lead to a runaway, and potentially unstoppable, increase in warming...

In the Science study, researchers examined plots of soil in the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts, a mixed hardwood forest in the U.S. They experimented by heating some of the plots with underground cables to 5C above normal levels, leaving others as a control. The long-term study revealed that in the first 10 years there was a strong increase in the carbon released from the heated plots, then a period of about seven years when the carbon release abated. But after this second calmer period, which the scientists attribute to the adjustment of the soil microbes to the warmer conditions, the release of carbon resumed its upward path. From 1991, when the experiment began, the plots subjected to 5C warming lost about 17% of the carbon that had been stored in the top 60cm of the soil, where the greatest concentration of organic matter is to be found...
Lead scientist Jerry Melillo, points out that currently 10 billion metric tons of carbon gets released into the atmosphere every year, but "The world's soils contain about 3,500 billion tons of carbon. If a significant amount of that is added to the atmosphere, due to microbial activity, that will accelerate the global warming process. Once this self-reinforcing feedback begins, there is no easy way to turn it off. There is no switch to flip."

Comments

Re:Ecology Always Wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if we find comparable amounts of arable land, increasing CO2 levels causes most plants to produce more sugars and not much else more... so the relative nutrient content of food decreases. You wouldn't need Monsanto to mess with plants or any of the massive processed food industries to overload our diets with sugar, as plants will do that themselves.

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511

Re:So is the situation dire enough to

[blindseer]

You need a lot more than basalt to grow crops.

Did I say that's all was needed? Of course other materials would need to be used. The point is that farmers currently use source of lime that produced a lot of CO2 and we have a means to produce this lime that is CO2 negative. To get this working we need nuclear power, nothing else we currently have will do. That might change in the future but it's nuclear power or this won't work.

Also, nuclear power generation is horrendously expensive - a new plan with decades old but improved design costs 30 billion.

More expensive than finding a new planet? Any argument against nuclear power looks really petty when compared to saving life on Earth. I just proposed a plan to save all life on Earth and all you can come up with is, "it will cost too much". Compared to what? You have a better plan?

We can't use wind power. Those silly windmills made of wood and sheet metal can't power anything more than a small water pump. Oh, you say windmill technology has improved in the last 100 years? IMPOSSIBLE! Because... because I said so. The argument that nuclear power has stood still for the last 50 years is just as logical that wind power has stood still. Why is it that whenever windmills and solar panels are brought up we get, "Yeah, it still sucks now but just wait ten years!" At the same time when nuclear power is brought up we get mentions of the problems of nuclear power from 50 years ago, as if nobody has bothered to improve the technology.

There are hundreds of nuclear power plants operating on Earth right now. We know how to build them to produce power safely, reliably, and cheaply. Any complaints on them should be left in the 1970s when the USA stopped building them until very recently. When people complain about the spent fuel the claim is that the mass is as much as the heaviest element, with the radioactivity of the deadliest element, with a half life of the longest lived element. To make it sound dangerous they have to lie.

It's not "waste", it's fission products that contain some very valuable materials if we'd just get some politicians to take their head out of the 1970s. I guess it makes sense, so many of them got into office in the 1970s. Nuclear power costs go down with economies of scale, kind of like how solar panels get cheaper the more they are made.

Re:Ecology Always Wins

[doug141]

Before denialists complain on economic costs they must recognize...

Stop right there. I think you do not understand denial. Climate deniers deny the very thing you say they must recognize. They refuse to acknowledge the danger. Consider the Fuck That Gator man.

Re:So is the situation dire enough to

[blindseer]

There are hundreds of nuclear power plants operating on Earth right now. We know how to build them to produce power safely, reliably, and cheaply.

You keep saying that, but the evidence runs contrary to your claim.

My claims of nuclear power being safer, more reliable, and cheaper than solar can be proven with a few minutes on Google. Perhaps the point on being cheaper is debatable if one lives in a sunny location like Arizona but not everyone enjoys having that much sun. (Then again, I've talked to people that lived in Arizona and they didn't always "enjoy" that much sun.)

Tell me something, what is the price of solar power at midnight in Michigan? In January? No need to be precise, the nearest cent per kilowatt hour will do.

It's not commercially viable to reprocess nuclear waste any more than it is to produce it in the first place.

It's been done in France for a very long time now. It's failed in the USA since the government banned it for so long and it's real hard to compete with the government facilities that can rely on an endless supply of taxpayers' money to cover up their poor management.