A Hidden Loop In the Carbon Cycle Discovered 310
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."
So, deserts are good? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this mean that scientists now think that we don't have enough deserts?
I'm all for global warming (it is cold up here in canada), but I'm pretty sure we've got enough desolate landspace...
Not just a joke (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've heard one theory (no citation, sorry) that as the solar system moves in alignment with the acretian? disk of the Milky Way this affects solar sunspot activity. That would affect global climate. The thought was changes in space radiation hitting the sun affects it's activity, much as radiation is believed to cause lighting in storms. It's a theory, and sounds plausible. There just is no evidence as yet as to whether this is true and how much it would affect global climate.. The Sun has been quiet lately? There is clearly a LOT of things that we are not taking into account yet.
Sooo... (Score:2, Interesting)
Is this why all the oil is in the middle east?
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:5, Interesting)
CAFE is just another bureaucratic boondoggle, though it does have the merit that those who can afford larger cars subsidize the purchase of econoboxes.
Re:PDF (Score:3, Interesting)
Not everyone is surfing the interweb on their dual core pentium with 3 gigs of memory. That is where the problem is.
I'm not using it at the moment, but my palm running linux sucks when I hit a large PDF. My 486 laptop that I use to interface with the car computer which also allows me to surf the internet isn't very happy with them either. Of course with that, I could also just VNC to the car computer but then it would reguire me to install a desktop and I'm still not sure it would be "stable".
I'm sure there are people with a lot difference configs that aren't quite as old as mine that have issues with large PDFs that cold just as well be served by an HTML page or Pages.
But back on topic, the 35% seems to be more then the amount we are shooting for reductions in with tools like Kyoto and such. Now I know that this isn't a new source that would replace Kyoto but it does show that either the Current models are wrong in some way (perhaps insignificantly), we have another unaccounted for source of Co2 and GHGs, or that the Co2 isn't the source of the heat or the problem. Or it could be a combination of those or something I haven't thought about. Either way, we are owed an explaination on this and how the models are accurate without this knowledge seeing how the KEY factors in global warming is how Humans are producing all this Co2 that will kill the world even though the so called fix only removes about .005 of the problem gas.
Re:Not the whole story (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a thought but perhaps this new discovery is connected to the "missing methane"?
Re:Not just a joke (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not just a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, pump as much steam as you like into the atmosphere and all it will do is fall out as rain/dew somewhere else.
Re:Not the whole story (Score:4, Interesting)
The most pessimistic estimates of the (winter) 2007 IPCC report had the summer Artic being "ice free" by around 2050, GHG "alarmists" at the same time were saying ~2030, now 2015 is looking not unreasonable. Last years melt was so dramatic that large shipping companies have been seriously contemplating the feasiblity of opening new shipping routes across the pole. Meanwhile a considerable number of scientists are still looking behind the couch for the missing methane.
Re:Not just a joke (Score:3, Interesting)
Methane matters. The 100-year potential is 25 times higher than CO2. The shorter timeframe potentials are higher, and the long timeframe potentials are smaller. In the grand scheme of things, the 100 year potential is a reasonable one to use because it's looking at enough of the future to matter, but not so long as to look beyond what humans can effect in a (relatively) short time.
This isn't the media twisting figures. the 100-year GWP is almost always the one used by the media. The green groups will try and use a shorter one when they're attacking a methane emitter (i.e. landfill), or a longer term one when they're discussing something like sulfur hexafloride.
Re:Not the whole story (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:At what point does ythis break down? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a matter of rewriting the CAFE law. It's not like SUV-as-light-truck is some fundamental constant in the universe.
Except:
If you can figure out a way for fuel taxes to overcome those two problems, that'd be excellent. I'm not exactly a CAFE fan myself. It may be the answer is a hybrid (pun lightly intended) of raising CAFE and increasing gas taxes.
Re:Not the whole story (Score:4, Interesting)
Well yes, it's the middle of winter down here.
Aside from that the Antartic is pretty much behaving as expected ( more snow up high, more melt around the edges ). The one place that is changing rapidly is the Antartic pennisula where temp rises have been three times the global average because of a phenomena known as polar amplification. Polar amplification has been forecast by the models since the 90's.
Even if you think we are not facing serious changes to our climate that could descimate global food production, surely a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels would go a long way to solving some of the other problems you mention. Personally I would like to see all pollution cleaned up but that's not going to happen in my lifetime.
Re:Not the whole story (Score:3, Interesting)
Melting permafrost will be a huge swamp for decades/centuries. Here in Australia the SE is getting drier and the NW is getting wetter, however the soil in the SE breadbasket takes centuries to create. This is not to say that there won't be any good surprises, perhaps removing the Artic ice will lead to an explosion of phytoplankton that will suck up some C02 and feed a lot of fish.
"It's kind of weird that such rampant warming can cause frost in Florida and snow in Iraq."
Looking at the globe in thermodynamic terms the rise in temprature stirs up the atmosphere a bit more, raising the Earths temp by a few degrees takes an enourmous amount of energy. Models predict more extreme weather events but the jury is still out on an observable trend.
Anecdotally here in Australia we have had similar frosts kill our fruit whilst experiencing heat waves, drought and a cyclone that wiped out our entire bannana crop, I've seen news reports of snow falling on bushfires about a half dozen times over the last couple of summers. The year before last the fire season came 2 months early and was the worst I have seen in my 50yrs. The drought is said to be the worst in at lest 600yrs in a country that's dry at the best of times. The Murray-Darling basin no longer flows into the sea and has been that way for 6yrs now, one good harvest in the last 10yrs, other harvests have been down ~50%, we are 4th largest grain producer, every capitail city is on water rationing ( something that Californians may have to suck up soon, we have found that a 10% drop in rainfall translates to a 30% drop in run-off to storage ).
However all we can say with any certainty is that AGW is compounding existing land use problems and they will likely get worse before they get better.
The grape thing has a grain of truth to it, there was a warm period during medieval times but this has now far surpassed it. AFAIK nobody has a good eplaination for the ME warm period but I hear there are wineries in England that grow their own grapes.