Comments on: amazon drought nearing climate tipping point

amazon drought nearing climate tipping point

stbalbach — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:05:01 -0800

The Amazon rainforest becomes "a desert" after three consecutive years without rain - the trees die. Next year would be the third year of an ongoing drought. The forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon (or about 45 years of stored human emmisions at current rates) - 3/4's of the carbon is released within a year of dieing. The Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction".

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:12:18 -0800

more recent article on the drought which has returned in 2006 (2005 was the first year).

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:20:56 -0800

Brazilian politicians say their country has so many other pressing problems that the destruction is unlikely to be brought under control, unless the world helps. Calculations by Hylton Philipson, a British merchant banker and rainforest campaigner, reckon that doing this would take US$60 billion ($80 billion) a year - less than a third of the cost of the Iraq war. So we're out scrabbling for drops of oil while over in Brazil the whole system is on the verge of going catastrophic? The human race is going to win the ultimate Darwin award, isnt it?

By: furiousthought

furiousthought — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:34:42 -0800

This fills me with dread.

By: shoepal

shoepal — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:49:02 -0800

This fills me with furiousthought.

By: TwelveTwo

TwelveTwo — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 01:08:16 -0800

This fills me with shoepal.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 01:15:23 -0800

Well hopefully these global warming "Skeptics" (read: lunatics) will just fucking die.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 01:31:55 -0800

Oh the Mefites ! I mean come on will all the money the rich will move to colder countries or something., only the poor get the shaft. Ehehe... ...wait a minute ? Global warming ? It's all liberal treehugging bullshit like DDT..I mean the radiated heat will just be dissipated in space ehehe ...wait a minute ? Greenhouse what fucking greenhouse ? C02 will be radiated in space...wait a minute it is NOT radiated ? Well then the phitoplancton will eat that CO2 , and the plants as well ...what ? The Amazon forest is in drought ? Damn Brasilians and their samba, must be their fault ! Stop razing the rainforest ! Damn spoiled brats can't they just live in misery like they did ? ..what ? They took example from my lifestyle ? Look we invested in mass transporation ! Well not really, we had to sell the freedom of car ..you know the oil lobby and all the rest, mass transportations stinks anyway ! Plus now it is too late you must keep people busy hopping on their cars not realizing they're spinning like frigging bees.

By: lundman

lundman — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 01:35:24 -0800

dying?

By: Justinian

Justinian — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 02:48:37 -0800

We is fucked.

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 02:50:12 -0800

ah, that the USG is trying to unload Johnston Island now makes a bit more sense (given that its "Summit Peak" is all of 5m above sea level).

By: psmealey

psmealey — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 03:21:02 -0800

Hm... I can only imagine what they're saying at the Heritage Foundation in coming up with a way to spin this: "Don't trees produce CO2? Wait, isn't CO2 production the cause of global warming? This could be just what we're looking for! This will cause global warning (which really doesn't exist, btw) to subside!"

By: jam_pony

jam_pony — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:04:08 -0800

It's the other way round. Trees (and other photosynthesizing plants) take in C02, and give off 02. We need more green, literally. I just saw another article , BTW which said that the percantage of oxygen in the atmosphere has been declining for centuries. It's under 20% now and when it reaches 15% humans suffocate.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:07:10 -0800

It's under 20% now and when it reaches 15% humans suffocate. What did it used to be? And can we have a footnote? Thanks in advance

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:08:13 -0800

Meanwhile back in the bat....some Foundation for Amelioration of Sinus and Cosinus jam_pony writes "We need more green, literally." "More green ? Dammit the dude has the way to more gubment money ! " But wait weren't we anti gubment ? "Yeah , but not anti gubment money ! "

By: quonsar

quonsar — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:14:54 -0800

fucking ozone layer anyway...

By: lodurr

lodurr — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:17:11 -0800

delmoi: Well hopefully these global warming "Skeptics" (read: lunatics) will just fucking die. Alas, and sad to say, the most likely cause will be one of the myriad consequences of global climate change. Unless, of course, they're rich skeptics. Then they just go to the Biodome.

By: grobstein

grobstein — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:29:28 -0800

What is this going to do to Amazon.com's business model?

By: lodurr

lodurr — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:52:48 -0800

They'll put more emphasis on ebooks.

By: suckerpunch

suckerpunch — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 06:34:25 -0800

The forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon (or about 45 years of stored human emissions at current rates) - three-fourths of the carbon is released within a year of dying. I'm having trouble backing this assertion up. How much carbon is released when you turn into compost? This drought is the worst ever recorded (records going back to 1902). We're in new territory.

By: Pendragon

Pendragon — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 06:52:55 -0800

Then they just go to the Biodome. I hope they like Pauly Shore.

By: bumpkin

bumpkin — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 06:53:24 -0800

Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable This sounds sad. Anyone have some happy news?

By: stilgar

stilgar — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 06:53:51 -0800

Global warming is scary yes, but don' forget Ocean Acidification. We sure will be fucked unless we do something now. Drop everything else and worry about this problem. Wind farms, solar panels, biodiesel, renewable life styles, mass transport, city planning, population control, aggressive charity, the sole reason anyone should be getting up should be to save the human race from its dumb ass self.

By: MotherTucker

MotherTucker — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 07:18:05 -0800

end o'the worldfilter

By: nofundy

nofundy — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 07:24:33 -0800

Is this the liberal apocalypse? Or is it peak oil? Either way, it'll make much better books than Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" pieces of Armageddon crap.

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 07:30:58 -0800

it's hot outside

By: paxton

paxton — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 07:31:51 -0800

What we need is a global sprinkler system so as the polar ice caps melt we can pump the water to areas like the rain forest that need a good watering. Ace Hardware has 10 packs of 50' garden hose on sale for $80, how much do you think we should buy?

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 07:38:35 -0800

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 07:44:03 -0800

We're boned!

By: nickmark

nickmark — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 07:55:04 -0800

Effective yesterday, Cargill has put a moratorium on buying soybeans from newly deforested land.

By: AspectRatio

AspectRatio — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:04:43 -0800

I'm going to run up all my credit cards to their limits, except for one, which I'll leave enough on to buy a gun with which I shall bloweth off my cranium right as the hellfire comes raining from the sky. I think that should happen around... Thursday.

By: empath

empath — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:06:55 -0800

wtf, you can't even buy tofu now? What the hell are you allowed to eat now?

By: Iridic

Iridic — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:13:03 -0800

This time next year, empath, you'll have plenty of dead ocelots all ready for the barbecue.

By: verstegan

verstegan — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:15:22 -0800

There are actually two stories here: (1) the current drought in the Amazon, (2) the results of scientific research on the possible effects of drought in the Amazon. The Independent mixes the two together in a very misleading way, topped up with some scary speculations of its own ('catastrophic consequences .. alarming research .. as early as next year .. spinning out of control .. world becoming uninhabitable ..'). Here, for those who are interested, is a fuller report of the scientific research on which the Independent article is based. It recognises that a long-term drought could have a potentially disastrous impact, but it's also quite reassuring about the forest's ability to survive a drought. ('We have been impressed by the great tolerance that our forest presented in the face of the severe drought we created.') Just for the record -- no, I am not a climate-change denier, I just dislike shoddy journalism, and I can't stand the Independent's scaremongering rhetoric on global warming.

By: keswick

keswick — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:18:44 -0800

By: dseaton

dseaton — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:19:10 -0800

Look, I'm as worried about global warming as anybody out there, and I do absolutely everything I can to reduce my CO2 footprint. But I have to say, this is the kind of alarmist reporting that plays right into the hands of the skeptics. The Amazon is an incredibly complex system, and while it's certainly true that there's a serious drought and it's certainly true that there's some evidence that, if the drought doesn't abate, the consequences could be serious. But the fact is that nobody actually knows what's going to happen, and it's absurd to report something like: "Dr Nepstead expects "mega-fires" rapidly to sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could become desert." It seems very unlikely to me that that's what was said to the reporter; rather, I'd hazard a guess that Dr. Nepstead would have said, "Well, the worst-case scenario is that..." etc. and the reporter just went with that. (And I can tell you, as a scientist who works in a field that seems to draw similar doomsday coverage, this kind of journalistic hyperbole happens all the time.) My point is that articles like this, that make dire assertions without any room for uncertaintly, lead directly to skeptics saying: "These scientists clearly don't know anything. I mean, just they other day they were predicting the demise of the Amazon rain forest, and has that happened? No! Global warming is clearly a myth!" This story would be vastly more persuasive it the angle was that the demise of the rain forest appears to be accelerating rapidly, rather than that the rain forest will become a desert within one year.

By: dseaton

dseaton — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:20:21 -0800

See what happens when you don't preview enough? What I should have said is: "what verstegan said."

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:25:24 -0800

Thanks, dseaton. I might actually be able to crawl out from under my desk and get on with my life now. I'll just write a few letters to the Prime Minister and the Environment Minister, etc., first, though.

By: stilgar

stilgar — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:45:33 -0800

Dseaton: I would say that if this was the only story about global warming say in the last ten years, ok lets not worry too much. Taken as whole this is alarming news. Even if its not as bad as the story says, its still bad, and taken with all the other shit thats going on it paints a sad picture. I would say that just to cover all of our bases we should still assume worst case scenario and plan accordingly. Even if we are wrong all we will end up with is a nice clean earth powered by renewable energy.

By: slatternus

slatternus — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:52:41 -0800

It'll be worth living through the end of the world just to know that Exxon shill/Potboiler hack Michael (State of Fear) Chricton will be going down with the rest of us.

By: qvantamon

qvantamon — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:54:19 -0800

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! Seriously, this is a non-issue. If ice caps begin to melt, reducing earth's ability to reflect sun radiation, we can just use nuclear weapons to turn all our deserts into big glass panels to reflect the sunlight. And we can even use the resulting nuclear winter to cool down the planet. Global warming solved.

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:59:11 -0800

The forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon (or about 45 years of stored human emmisions at current rates) - 3/4's of the carbon is released within a year of dieing I haven't read too much on the science of global warming but this strikes me as sloppy pop science. Since when did anyone measure forests by the amount of stored carbon? Doesn't every single organic molecule contain carbon? Hell, this pencil contains carbon. So do diamonds, and benzene and gasoline? If you burn the forest down, doesn't it still store the same amount of carbon in the form of soot and ash as it did in wood and leaves? Shouldn't the proper analysis be to measure the annual level of carbon dioxide - oxygen exchange carried out by the forest on a per acre or hundred acre basis? That way we can then talk about replacing low exchange ratio plants with higher ones, etc.? And how the hell does anyone know how much carbon dioxide is put out by industry vs how much we and the rest of the animal kingdom breathe out???

By: dseaton

dseaton — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:01:31 -0800

stilgar: You've missed the point completely. I agree, we should absolutely be working towards green energy and repairing the damage already done. But shrill, alarmist pieces like this the completely ignore the actual scientific conclusions play directly into the hands of those global warming deniers. So yes, let's do something about this right away, but let's not give the "skeptics" any opportunity to take cheap shots at good science because of lousy reporting.

By: dseaton

dseaton — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:05:11 -0800

d'oh! the completely ignore = that completely ignore (of course)

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:05:35 -0800

Seriously, this is a non-issue. If ice caps begin to melt, reducing earth's ability to reflect sun radiation, we can just use nuclear weapons to turn all our deserts into big glass panels to reflect the sunlight. And we can even use the resulting nuclear winter to cool down the planet. Global warming solved. posted by qvantamon at 11:54 AM EST on July 25 [+fave] [!] Well, if the ice caps melt, would that mean there would be vegetation in places that don't currently have it now? I.e. wouldn't Canada's forests expand into the tundra?

By: Iridic

Iridic — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:24:06 -0800

If you burn the forest down, doesn't it still store the same amount of carbon in the form of soot and ash as it did in wood and leaves? No. Wood is mostly made up of cellulose. When cellulose burns in the presence of oxygen, it produces carbon dioxide and water, with no solid byproducts. Soot and ash are the carbon products made when the non-cellulose parts of wood burn, along with whatever cellulose burned without access to oxygen. You can find the science here.

By: Iridic

Iridic — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:37:22 -0800

Sorry, that came out a little too tech-babbly. What I meant to say is that most of a tree--along with most of its accumulated carbon--becomes carbon dioxide and steam when it burns.

By: lodurr

lodurr — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:48:47 -0800

Pastabagel: The tundra is very likely a greenhouse time bomb waiting to go off. Much tundra sequesters large quantities of greenouse gases in permafrost. And for the relatively short period when it's in bloom, tundra is actually a pretty lush environment. There's a good probability that some deserts will flourish, as you point out. There's also a really good probability that much currently flourishing farmland will become radically less productive, leading to mass starvation as the current networks of food production and distribution fail to compensate quickly enough. How quickly can we adjust? Quickly enough to prevent 50 million deaths? 100 million? 200? 400? A billion? Climate science is still in its infancy, and different models get you different results, and some of those results are diametrically opposed. And some results that appear to be diametrically opposed are actually consistent, if you take other factors into consideration. The apparent interaction of global dimming and global warming, for example, appears to be counter-intuitive: As less light hits the surface, the energy is getting absorbed by the atmosphere. So while there's less light for crops, we get a net temperature increase. The unexpected behaviors of complex systems often get used as an excuse to ignore bad news, and discredit findings that researchers have a high degree of confidence in. At such a stage, I think we have to apply the Gorean maxim: If the people who believe that global warming and its related climate changes are real, are wrong, they look silly; if the skeptics are wrong, they look...dead.

By: rinkjustice

rinkjustice — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:03:18 -0800

A few interesting facts I recently read on cnn:

Recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.
Global CO2 levels are way outside what have been historical norms over several hundred thousand years.
All ten of the hottest years on record, globally, have occurred in the last 15 years.
Last summer, all-time heat records were set in both the U.S. West and East.
Global ocean temperatures are far outside of historical norms.
Even after last year's devastating Hurricane Katrina, the subsequent Hurricane Wilma was briefly the most severe hurricane ever recorded.
Last year Japan hit an all-time record for typhoons --10. The previous record was 7.
The largest downpour ever seen occurred last summer in India.
Thirty-five years ago there were an average of 225 days when Alaska's tundra was frozen enough for trucks to drive. Today there are only 75.

I also just today read this in 2 Peter 3:10: "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." Actually, the whole chapter is a "chilling" read. I make no declarations. I merely wish to submit this as food for thought.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:03:23 -0800

Think I'll plant a tree this week.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:04:21 -0800

For those who want some pretty graphs: Global Warming Art

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:08:20 -0800

when [oxygen in the atmosphere] reaches 15% humans suffocate Not for healthy humans at sea level. 15% oxygen at sea level would be the same concentration of oxygen as 20% oxygen at about 7300 feet, and there are plenty of people who live at that altitude or above today without suffocating.

By: beatrice

beatrice — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:48:39 -0800

Since when did anyone measure forests by the amount of stored carbon? Pastabagel, for a good long while. It's called forest biomass. Very standard measure.

By: JackFlash

JackFlash — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:54:33 -0800

Pastabagel, you might be interested in this recent AskMe discussion about carbon and trees. The carbon cycle has a lot of complicated details, but the bottom line is very simple. Plants use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into wood with the by-product of oxygen. When plants decompose or burn, the process is reversed -- oxygen is consumed to convert wood into carbon dioxide and water. To determine rates of carbon transfer you simply measure the change in the amount of wood -- how fast trees grow or decay. There are literally hundreds of scientific studies that have done exactly that -- calculate the tons of carbon per acre absorbed or emitted by forests and other plants. As you pointed out, all living organisms contain carbon and can be considered as temporary storage containers of carbon dioxide. Coal and oil are the buried remains of plants and animals accumulated over millions of years, thereby isolating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Fuel burning reverses the process, taking stored carbon and returning it to the atmosphere. The earth once had much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These buried plants and animals over a period of millions of years created an atmosphere more amenable to humans by removing carbon dioxide. We are now reversing the process.

By: any major dude

any major dude — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:58:57 -0800

This is the effect of putting corporations that only think quarter to quarter in charge of the world environmental policy.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:12:55 -0800

interrobang writes "Think I'll plant a tree this week." Now that's some putting air where one's mouth is going to need some !

By: tomplus2

tomplus2 — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:22:16 -0800

South America is a MESS! Zoom out and pan around. It boggles my mind.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:30:21 -0800

Pastabagel, you have good questions, and answers are readily available. This is probably the best single-page article on global warming (contributed to by experts in the field it is trusthworthy). One key concept to keep in mind is that carbon takes many forms (trees, gas in the atmosphere, etc..) and it cycles back and forth between those forms - but the total net amount in the atmosphere generally remained stable. However with burning of fossil fuels in the industrial revolution, we introduced new carbon into the atmosphere that was not there before.

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:39:17 -0800

Thanks for the info, everyone. Now another question - why not replace undeveloped marshes with sugarcane fields, assuming that sugarcane actually contains sugar which has way more carbon than cellulose. Wouldn't this be a more effieicnt use of those areas? And to spin it another way, how many of what kind of tree would one have to plant in a .25 acre backyard to compensate for their industrial CO2 contribution? IS there ad additional benefit to planting more vegetaion in denser areas, or spreading it out?

By: hank

hank — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:00:25 -0800

You should buy rural land and leave it alone or plant longlived trees on it; you'll hold more carbon in the soil as it develops than even in the trees; as long as the trees aren't harvested and hauled away, they continue to sink more carbon even after they die and are turned into other plants and animals. "... The average American family needs to plant 30 trees to offset the CO2 produced by their daily energy use. " http://www.americanforests.org/campaigns/ikea/ikea.php > "sugarcane actually contains sugar" -- true. > " which has way more carbon than cellulose" -- false. http://www.visionlearning.com/library/module_viewer.php?mid=61

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:08:48 -0800

assuming that sugarcane actually contains sugar which has way more carbon than cellulose Sugar and cellulose are pretty nearly the same % carbon--in fact, cellulose is a polysaccharaide, meaning it's just a bunch of sugar units stuck together. hank: How to make a link

By: lodurr

lodurr — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:09:42 -0800

pastabagel: I can't point you to links, but my short gut reaction would be that for sugarcane, even if it did bind more carbon, you'd have to plant a shitload of it to make a difference. Enough that you're radically destabilizing the biome in which you're fostering cane growth. Which leads to the next question: It depends on who you ask. Some trees grow faster than others, some process more CO2, etc. There's an open argument about whether grasslands or trees are "better". And the trees in a healthy forest are part of a large system that is essentially a large organism. Start messing with the balance of species, and you destablise the system. That's one of the things that's going on in the Amazon right now. Or, for that matter, in any eastern marsh that's been taken over by Purple Loostrife.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:09:47 -0800

Oops, polysaccharide.

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:42:26 -0800

Very interesting, thank you all. IT sounds like it's best to plant some trees and let the forest gorw into whatever it will naturally. On the subject of climate change, do long term global warming models account for astronomical effects such as precession and tilt (discussed here)? The Earth's spin wobbles, causing a slow 2.4° change in the tilt of the axis (obliquity). This precession of the axis follows a cycle of approximately 40,000 years. When the tilt increases to 24.5 degrees, the winters become colder and summers are warmer than at 22.1 degrees, when with less tilt the winters are milder and summers are cooler. Presently the Earth is tilted at 23.44 degrees from its orbital plane.Cooler summers are suspected of encouraging the start of an ice age due to their melting less of the previous winter's ice and snow.

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:58:41 -0800

oops, I meant 'discussed here'

By: ninjew

ninjew — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:11:53 -0800

The Indonesian earthquake reportedly has altered that tilt - read here. So I wonder how that is affecting global climates if at all.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:13:01 -0800

"For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod." - Isa 28:27 Just something to think about while eating carmels.

By: paulsc

paulsc — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:53:18 -0800

The death of a huge forested area, and it's quick procession to an equally large desert in a matter of only a few years would be remarkable. Most organizations that work to mitigate climate change focus on the problem of the advance of existing deserts, such as the well known problems in sub-Saharan Africa. Deserts advance observably, but slowly, by standards of human activity. Only recently have poorly understood phenomenon such as global dimming been implicated as major causes for the changes in rainfall patterns driving the growth of desert in Africa. If the Amazon basin were actually to suffer the widespread death of the rainforest suggested by this FPP, it is still beyond our ability to predict the final results for all the biomass there. Some of it might go up in smoke and fire, some of it might be washed down the Amazon and its tributaries, decaying and becoming fertilizer on its way to the sea, and still other parts of it might give rise to parts of the current rainforest undergoing ecological progression to temperate forest or grass savannah. It's an interesting FPP, but until more is known, the actions to be taken by humanity don't seem as clear cut as we'd like. Even if we stop all activity now, there's no guarantee the current drought will end, and nobody suggests that all development in the Amazon will stop, or even slow. And for all we know, this has happened in the past, and the Amazon rainforest burned slowly, and regenerated slowly, maybe even many times. We live short lives, we think small thoughts. We should be kinder to Mother Earth, but we are not her only children, her only enemies, or her only lovers.

By: Mental Wimp

Mental Wimp — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 14:53:05 -0800

global dimming The IQ of the world is going down?

By: dhartung

dhartung — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 14:53:18 -0800

I also just today read this in 2 Peter 3:10 rinkjustice, that's a completely alarmist reading of the science.

By: crowman

crowman — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 16:20:39 -0800

We need massive desalinization plants to draw water from the rising sea and pipe to it the Amazon. And LA. And any number of other places in need of fresh water. Could this possibly work?

By: dawiz

dawiz — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 18:14:12 -0800

Massive desalinization plants would require massive resources and energy. And we're back to square one.

By: dseaton

dseaton — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 18:37:36 -0800

pastabagel: I'm not sure of the answer to your question, one assumes that, since sunlight is ultimately the driver of the system, someone has given some thought to these issues. But the link between sunspots, the solar constant, and global climate has been acknowledged for a long time. Read about the Maunder Minimum and Little Ice Age.

By: crowman

crowman — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 19:05:18 -0800

Massive desalinization plants would require massive resources and energy. And we're back to square one. We could use nuclear energy if need be, in the shorter term. If we don't, square one may be ten feet under water. The bigger problem is the sheer volume of water we're talking about. The ocean surface is far larger than the land above sea level. But maybe it could work for a while?? Could we turn the world's deserts into inland seas? How many new problems would it create? Sure is quite a pickle. Wonder how many plants could have been built with the money spent on the Iraq war...

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 19:34:47 -0800

do long term global warming models account for astronomical effects such as precession and tilt Yes. Human influence on climate dwarfs it though.

By: stilgar

stilgar — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 19:37:52 -0800

Just to let you guys know one of the reasons that natural bioms store more carbon is because they are not mono-cultures (like a sugar cane field) the actual bacteria in the ground and the fact that a lot of bio-mass is trapped in a marsh and buried (which later becomes coal/oil/gas) is a great way to store carbon.

By: dseaton

dseaton — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:30:52 -0800

Yes. Human influence on climate dwarfs it though. Reference please? The only energy input in the system is sunlight; very small changes in energy input in such systems can have cascading, catastrophic consequences. I'd believe that over the last century or so human influence has been the dominant term in the equation, but in the long term, almost certainly not.

By: fshgrl

fshgrl — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 22:27:25 -0800

Pastabagel: drying out marshes causes very well understood soil changes which (of course) release stored carbon. And also cause subsidence- up to 30' in as many years in some places. Meaning that eventually they flood and then you lose the land entirely or you spend huge amounts of money on pumping the water out.

By: jono

jono — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 23:10:56 -0800

I would say that just to cover all of our bases we should still assume worst case scenario and plan accordingly. stilgar 1% doctrine anyone? ...is this not as important/relevant? Immediate action, I say. A preemptive strike.

By: nofundy

nofundy — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 07:29:39 -0800

A preemptive strike it is then. And anyone who disagrees is a coward and a traitor. Let's fight global warming there so we don't have to fight it here!

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 08:23:36 -0800

If you burn the forest down, doesn't it still store the same amount of carbon in the form of soot and ash as it did in wood and leaves? No. When you BURN things you react them with Oxygen. The Carbon-Oxygen reaction is CO2. CO2 is a gas. The unburnt forest is not a gas.