Are We Actually Facing Another Ice Age?
Earth Hour is a great idea except that most of the effort is aimed at an extremely minor problem while ignoring the many major environmental problem plaguing us and especially the one overriding menace so very few ever mention.
I do not agree that there is overwhelming evidence that carbon dioxide produced by human use of fossil fuels is bringing about actual global warming that portends any great danger to humanity. Neither do I agree with those who deny any possible negative effect. The factual gulf between these two extreme opinions exists only in the minds of those holding them amplified by the emotionally charged media frenzy and political fervor. In my opinion, “Global Warming,” that has recently been morphed into “Climate Change” by a cabal of financial and political benefactors of this questionable “fact”craze is, at its worst, a very minor problem. This is especially true when comparing it to many other very real problems and menaces facing humanity.
The almost spiritual global warming movement is gaining great numbers of ardent and vocal followers. Many of these are blind disciples who have absolutely no clue about the realities of climate change, the physics of the atmospheric “greenhouse” gases or whether there is even the possibility of many of the claims put forth by the high priests of global warming. This has been driven to virtually universal acceptance as an absolute fact because it serves the political, social, cultural and/or economic agendas of its proponents.
Perhaps it is a present day version of the Piltdown Man hoax foisted off on unsuspecting scientists and the public almost a hundred years ago in 1912. That hoax took forty years to be completely discredited. In 1923 Franz Weidenreich, an anatomist, reported that the skull was a modern human cranium and the jaw of an orangutan whose teeth were filed down. It took scientists thirty years to concede that he was correct. Like most of us, scientists hate to admit error on their part. Many of us cling to dogmatic positions long after an error is discovered and reality has become quite certain. Politicians and religious leaders are particularly so infected. History provides countless examples. Some were extremely damaging like the murder of Huss and the imprisonment of Galileo.
In spite of all this there is one really good thing about the global warming movement. No matter how far it is from reality it certainly has garnered the attention of the public, of the media, of governments, and of influential people. This brings attention to the overwhelming needs of our planet for serious concern, care, and attention. In spite of self-serving politicians and others who are in it for the money or power, some of the money and some of their efforts do have positive results. Fortunately, there are many dedicated people, mostly in the trenches, who are working tirelessly to prevent the destruction of our fragile environment. Tom Friedman writes about some of these people in his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. These people are at their best when they educate the public at all levels how protecting the wild environment makes sense economically as well as aesthetically. How a forest with all its interacting wildlife intact is so much more valuable long term than the short-lived products made from the cutting of that forest. How ocean fisheries can produce protein food sustainably with proper management rather than the uncontrolled slaughter that has destroyed and continues to destroy a valuable but diminishing resource. We can do to the earth what Easter Islanders did to their island home and so destroy ourselves, or we can protect and sustain the valuable wild diversity on our small planet home.
Some practical information about the processes acting on our atmosphere
Here is some physical data no global warming proponent ever acknowledges. First of all, and most important, the term “greenhouse” as applied to atmospheric gases is a gross misnomer. The actual process by which atmospheric gases retain heat energy and therefore cause the temperature of air to rise follows a very complex group of physical laws that are very different from what happens in an actual greenhouse. These laws involve the physical structure of the molecules of the various gases and how they resonate and/or rotate when they absorb infrared radiation or heat. Each molecule both absorbs and emits radiation at different rates for different wavelengths and at different temperatures, yielding varying amounts of absorbed, radiated and retained heat energy. The only way we can measure these effects is to do so collectively using a significant amount of mixtures of various gases. These mixtures include a wide variety of those gases including water vapor. A glance at the data from one of the latest research studies on this phenomenon reports, “Recent improvements in the spectroscopic data for water vapor have significantly increased the near-infrared absorption in models of the Earth's atmosphere.” The full report is available at:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005JD006796.shtml
Another report titled, Water and Global Warming, says, “Water is the main absorber of the sunlight in the atmosphere. The 13 million million (that’s 13 trillion or 13,000,000,000,000!) tons of water in the atmosphere (~0.33% by weight) is responsible for about 70% of all atmospheric absorption of radiation, mainly in the infrared region where water shows strong absorption. It contributes significantly to the greenhouse effect ensuring a warm habitable planet, but operates a negative feedback effect, due to cloud formation reflecting the sunlight away, to attenuate global warming. The water content of the atmosphere varies about 100-fold between the hot and humid tropics and the cold and dry polar ice deserts.” The full article is available at:
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html
There is another article on the effects of CO2 at: http://brneurosci.org/co2.html
Any global warming from the effects of CO2, if indeed it exists or poses any danger at all, is grossly distorted relative to the actual facts at hand. Most of the data used to show global warming are at best statistical and at worst, anecdotal. Both of which provide great opportunities for opinions (and agendas) to mitigate the data we can obtain. We know for certain that addition to the atmosphere of any gas will bring with it that gas’s infrared absorption properties in all their complexities. Actually, all gases in the atmosphere have some “greenhouse” effect. This includes, nitrogen (75.0% - 78.08%), oxygen (20.11% - 20.95%), argon (0.89$ - 0.93%), and carbon dioxide (0.035% - 0.038%). The percentages in parentheses are of air at sea level. Ranges are shown because air also contains a variable amount of water vapor (from 1- 4% ±0.25%) and trace amounts of other gases. Each gas has a complex rate of infrared absorption and emission at various infrared frequencies. Water vapor has from 30 to 90 times the temperature effect of CO2 depending on various conditions
The warmer air becomes, the more water vapor it can hold. Remember the weatherman’s favorite “dew point” predictions? When the temperature lowers to that point, the air can hold no more water vapor so it condenses out as “dew” or rain in the big picture. Using the same rationale as the global warming folks use for CO2, increasing amounts of water vapor would cause a much larger increase in atmospheric temperatures than CO2 resulting in still warmer air and still more water vapor. Shouldn’t this lead to a runaway greenhouse effect driving atmospheric temperatures higher and higher until the oceans boil and all life is extinguished? Obviously this has not happened so something about these assumptions must be wrong for water vapor and CO2 as well.
Another major factor water vapor adds to the mix is the heat of vaporization or condensation of water. Tremendous amounts of the sun’s radiant energy is used to evaporate water all over the earth. All of that energy enters the atmosphere in water vapor. The warmer the ocean or wet land, the more energy goes into the air. When all this water vapor condenses out as rain, that energy is released and the air warms. This is the driving energy that causes the air to move and creates windstorms, tornados and hurricanes. For all practical purposes, the CO2 content of the air has zero effect on the amount of energy that goes into the atmosphere or heats the air when water condenses.
One huge factor that man has affected greatly is the water vapor that green plants give off and particularly dense rain forests. Our continuing decimation of all types of rain forests is removing a huge source of water vapor that formerly entered the air. One example of this effect was used incorrectly as an example of global warming, which it was not. The disappearing snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are not an effect of global warming. Studies have shown that the cutting of the forest around the base of the mountain so reduced the amount of water vapor in the air flowing up the mountain that both the rainfall and snowfall on the higher slopes has been reduced dramatically. This is one correct example of where human activity has interfered with nature. Deforestation worldwide has done far more damage to our environment and effected climate far more than even tripling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could do. It alone could arguably be responsible for any temperature increase over the last hundred years as a reduction in the amount of water vapor would reduce cloud cover resulting in less of the sun’s energy reflected away. Why don’t we do something about that?
Whatever the effect of carbon dioxide, it is so small in comparison as to raise questions about the real amount of the danger it poses Certainly it is not the degree of danger claimed by the high priests of of global warming. I seriously question the validity of the often quoted phrase, “Overwhelming numbers of scientists support the theory that man’s use of fossil fuels is bringing about catastrophic global warming.” In the first place, the worldwide destructive clearing and burning of rain forest results in putting far more net carbon dioxide into the air than all the vehicles in the entire world. Second, shrinking rain forests mean less water vapor is released into the air. This could in turn mean less rain and snow where the air over land is drier. The questions remain, does the evaporation from the oceans increase and make up for this loss, and what effect does the drier air have on cloud cover and the resulting reflection of the sun’s energy away from the earth? Because of all these interacting variables with much larger net effects on global temperatures than CO2 could possibly have, “Overwhelming numbers of scientists” may have no real clue about the degree of effect that CO2 might have on atmospheric temperatures leading to global warming. Obviously it is much smaller than that of water vapor.
To explain why I make this statement I have quoted biologist Edward O. Wilson. A Pulitzer prize winner, Wilson is an experienced and admired biologist and author of numerous books. He may have given us a clue as to why “many scientists” may not be good judges of climate change and of global warming or just how dangerous it is. In his book, The Creation, an Appeal to Save Life on Earth, he speaks about “scientists,” who they really are, and why the “scientific method” works. The following is a revealing quote from the eleventh chapter, Biology Is the Study of Nature. The italics in the quote are my comments.
The quoted section begins:
I will offer now an account of the concept and practice of science and in particular biology, the discipline most immediately relevant to human concerns.
I hasten to add I do not mean scientists. Most researchers, including Nobel laureates, are narrow journeymen, with no more interest in the human condition than the usual run of laymen. Scientists are to science what masons are to cathedrals. Catch any one of them outside the workplace, and you would likely find someone leading an ordinary life preoccupied with quotidian tasks and pedestrian thought. Scientists seldom make leaps of imagination. Most, in fact, never truly have an original idea. Instead, they snuffle their way through masses of data and hypotheses (the latter are educated guesses to be tested - global warming?), sometimes excited but most of the time tranquil and easily distracted by corridor gossip and other entertainments. They have to be that way. The successful scientist thinks like a poet, and then only in rare moments of inspiration, if ever, and works like a bookkeeper the rest of the time. It is very hard to have an original thought. So for most of his career, the scientist is satisfied to enter the figures and balance the books.
Scientists are also like prospectors. Original discoveries are the gold and silver of their trade. If important, they can buy collegial prestige, and with it wider fame, royalties, and academic tenure. Scientists by and large are too modest to be prophets, too easily bored to be philosophers, and too trusting to be politicians. Lacking in street smarts, they are also easily fooled by confidence artists and sleight-of-hand tricksters (and global warming promoters?). Never ask a scientist to test the claims of paranormal phenomena. Ask a professional magician.
The power of science comes not from scientists but from its method. The power, and the beauty too of the scientific method is its simplicity. It can be understood by anyone, and practiced with a modest amount of training. Its stature arises from its cumulative nature. It is the product of hundreds of thousands of specialists united by one commonality of the scientific method. Few scientists know more than a small fraction of available scientific knowledge, even within their own disciplines. But no matter: their fellow scientists are continuously testing and adding other parts, and the entire body of scientific knowledge is easily available. The invention of this remarkable engine of testable learning was the one advance in human history that can be called a true quantum leap. But it attained its preeminence relatively late in the geological life span of humanity, and only after human intellect had traveled a long, tortuous path dominated by tribalism and animated by religion.
Let’s try to establish a rough chronology. Millions of years ago there was only animal instinct. Then, probably at the man-ape level, the rudiments of materials culture were added. With still higher intelligence there followed a sense of the supernatural, whereupon demons, ancestral ghosts, and divine spirits peopled the human mind. Without science there had to be religion, in order to explain man’s place in the universe. Born of dreams, its images were enshrined in the culture by shamans and priests. The gods made man. Those that lived in surrounding Nature gave way to gods of sacred mountains, in distant places, and in the heavens. Somewhere amd somehow back in time, these divine humanoids had created the world, and now they governed man. Humans in their evolving self-image, rose above Nature to follow the gods as children and servants. Tribes led unwaveringly by their personal gods were united and strong. They defeated competing tribes and their false gods. They also subdued Nature, erasing most of it in the process. Their destiny, they believed, was not of this world. They thought of themselves as immortal, no less than demigods.
Along the way, commencing in Europe in the seventeenth century, a radical alternative self-image emerged. Art and philosophy began to disentangle themselves from the gods, and science learned to operate with full independence. Step by step, often opposed by the followers of Holy Scripture, science constructed an alternative world view based on a testable and self reliant human image. Doubling in growth every fifteen years during most of the past three and a half centuries, it has looked into the heart of living Nature, finding there a previously vast and autonomous creative force. This image has subsumed religious rivalries and reduced them to intertribal conflict. Science has become the most democratic of all human endeavors. It is neither religion or ideology. It makes no claims beyond what can be sensed in the real world. It generates knowledge in the most productive and unifying manner contrived in history, and it served humanity without obeisance to any particular tribal deity.
End of quote.
There is one certainty about the global warming movement. It has become a “cause celeb” and generated huge amounts of cash, mainly for politicians in the form of numerous, varied and punishing new taxes, cap and trade agreements, and expensive regulations. These taxes and the hundreds of global warming organizations constantly soliciting donations have turned it into a huge, self-perpetuating cash cow for its promoters and benefactors. This will guarantee its continuation long after it is proven untrue or at best, overblown far beyond any real danger.
One menace that is far more dangerous to life on Earth
In this writer's opinion there are numerous other far more dangerous menaces facing humanity than global warming in its worst case scenario. I will briefly mention just one of those, population. Considering our exponentially expanding population and our steadily diminishing resources one would think concern for this would be paramount in the minds of all thinking people. This is certainly the most serious and overriding one of several score of serious menaces we are facing right now. It alone is the driving force of many of our problems and especially those related to the environment and food supplies. Will we continue concentrating our attention on things like global warming and the next American idol or soccer champion while major problems fester and grow with little comment or attention? Like Nero, the West fiddles as the world burns.
The growing shortages and rising prices of food are bringing attention to the fact that something is going drastically wrong. Unfortunately, most reports condemn those involved in the food industry they see as responsible for rising prices. They make no mention of population growth, the very real reason for the shortages bringing about rising prices. The same could be said for many other of our rapidly disappearing resources. It seems politicians and the media are far more interested in using invented menaces as tools to promote their own agendas rather than in finding solutions to real and dangerous ones.
“We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.”
Arnold Toynbee
This real and present danger is a far greater threat to life on Earth than global warming at its worst.
Some time ago I went to my family physician for pains in my knees and back. After the examination and his recommendations I asked a simple question, “Doc! What’s happening to me?” His simple, straightforward answer said it all with great accuracy, “You’re wearing out.” Let me say that is just what the human species is doing to our world, we’re wearing it out and far beyond its ability to heal or repair itself. Deterioration is accelerating and will continue to do so until and unless something stops the insanity that is population growth. Nothing else will work! Nothing! We can cry all we want about disappearing species and growing extinctions, but the fact is simply that human reproductive success and over achievement is leading inexorably to the obliteration of all competing species, and much quicker than we think. Look at what has happened in the last one hundred years as we became more efficient at catching wild food and destroying wild habitat. Life on the earth will not handle another hundred years like the last. The greatest extinction of species since the Permian is not over. It is just beginning!
Maybe the climate change we should be concerned about is global cooling.
Climate is an extremely complex system that we have been studying for a long time up to and including the age of the supercomputer and computer modeling. Still, we have hardly touched the surface as can be attested to by the accuracy of our current weather forecasting. For example, in spite of all our technology, predictions of the frequency, location, and path of any hurricane are fraught with pure conjecture. We can't even hope to predict the intensity of any hurricane season. Witness the 2006 season. It was predicted to be one of the worst ever. Instead it turned out to be one of the mildest, the opposite of the predictions of some of our weather scientists and their supercomputer modeling. How about your local weather forecaster? How often does he miss the mark predicting just a day ahead?
The world's climate system is infinitely more complex than a single hurricane season. It moves in cycles and eddies that run from seconds to millennia. About forty years ago some climate pundits feared we were heading into global cooling and needed to prepare for a drier, cooler time with lower sea levels. According to many scientific studies of past frigid periods we are past due for the onset of the next ice age. Hubert Lamb of the UK Met Office dominated the 1961 UN meeting on global cooling. A founder of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia, he was one of the world's top climate scientists. He warned that people had become complacent about climate at a time when population growth, cold, and drought could seriously damage their food supplies. (The Norse in Greenland perished of starvation after five hundred successful years when the Little Ice Age destroyed their crops.) In historic times the climate has veered from warmer than the present, the Medieval Warm Period, to the much colder conditions of the Little Ice Age from which we may still be emerging. Evidence shows that much of the Sahara and the Middle East held lush vegetation and crop land ten thousand or so years ago while northern Europe and America were covered with up to a mile of ice.
Many scientists and climatologists have been predicting the onset of a new ice age. Based on past climate cycles from warm ages to ice ages and looking at the major factors that influence just how much energy the Earth receives from the sun, the most likely scenario is change to a much colder, ice-age climate, and soon. Anecdotal evidence of climate change that is far more damaging than global warming is being considered by climatologists who are not overwhelmed by the global warming crowd. Indeed, there are several very real happenings that do not support global warming. Many are anecdotal, but the overwhelming evidence paints a very different picture than the one touted by global warming proponents.
I recently visited Alaska and spent a day in Glacier Bay. While there I learned some interesting facts, mostly from a recent publication about the glaciers. Since the mid 1700s Alaskan glaciers have been known to be steadily receding. Early explorers found glacier ice all the way to the mouth of what we now call Glacier Bay. There were maps in the book with lines showing the dates of glacier terminuses from the 1700s to 2007. All the glaciers were shown to have steadily receded until the early 1990's. Since that time all of these glaciers have advanced steadily. In recent years, average global temperatures have dropped. I also learned that arctic sea ice has been increasing rapidly since 2004. Recent tests show arctic ice to be thicker than it has been for many years. I wonder why the media has not made the public aware of these facts? Sure, this is anecdotal, but so is the earlier information about melting arctic ice.
Over the past two winters (2008-2009), anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snow cover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on. Already this winter, December 2008, has seen some of the coldest and most severe winter weather ever recorded.
It is interesting to note here that the onsets of previous climate changes have not been gradual, but quite sudden in relative terms. The native people who live near the mouth of Glacier Bay in Alaska once lived several hundred miles north of their present home. At about the same time, the Norse in Greenland were being wiped out by crop failures from the onset of the Little Ice Age. These Alaskan native legends describe an advancing glacier moving south “as fast as a running dog.” There are tree stumps and other evidence exposed when the glaciers receded to their current terminus showing the glaciers once had receded far beyond their current position during the medieval warm period that ended about a millennium ago.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does show clearly that more powerful factors could now be cooling it.
Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans—and most of the crops and animals we depend on—prefer a temperature closer to 70.
Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.
The truth of the matter is that we are affecting the climate by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. That's about the same kind of truth as the fact that pouring a bucket of water into lake Erie will raise the lake level. That is about the same order of rise that can be attributed to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. The truth is we have very little definitive knowledge of how much effect raising or even doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will have in the long run. Other than using the calculations noted earlier in this article, we certainly are unable to hazard more than an intelligent guess as to what or how much the effect might be. Proponents of global warming neglect mentioning the following factors known to affect climate and the average world temperatures as much or more than any increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide:
1. The wobble of the earth's axis increases or decreases the retention of energy from the sun. (22,000-year cycle)
2. The eccentricity of the earth's orbit increases or decreases the energy we receive from the sun. (12,000-year cycle)
3. The variation of energy output by the sun. (1,400-year cycle)
4. Variations in snow cover—snow reflects heat.
5. Variations in cloud cover—clouds reflect heat.
6. The variation in cosmic rays causes a variation in cloud cover. (no known cycle)
7. Dust and sulphate in the air can absorb or reflect heat.
8. Ocean temperatures and circulation.
9. Volcanic activity (Eruption of Mount Pinatubo brought on several years of cooler temperatures.)
10. Winds—as winds increase, dust from dry farmland and deserts, enters the air. (Gobi desert dust sometimes reaches as far as our west coast.)
It is also important to know that the first three are all very complex variables with many secondary effects on the temperature of the earth. For example: they all effect the power of the “solar wind.” This powerful force effects our planet strongly and varies widely on an almost hourly basis The solar wind is a stream of charged particles or plasma ejected from the upper atmosphere of the sun. It varies widely in its power and occurrence sometimes in very short periods of time—days or even hours. Though the earth is protected from direct exposure to this energy by its magnetic field, some of this energy does reach the surface. The effects it has on our atmosphere and climate is unknown. The noticeable effects include auroras which are relatively harmless and magnetic or EMF disturbances which can have devastating effects on electronic equipment including computers, communication equipment, and navigation systems. These solar “storms” have even disrupted electric transmission shutting down large sections of the power grid. These forces can also strip away portions of our atmosphere forming a “tail” pointing away from the sun in much the same manner as a comet’s tail. It is thought that Mars once had water and an atmosphere similar to earth’s, but it was mostly stripped away by solar wind over millions of years. Though the actual effect on the temperature if earth is unknown, the solar wind could be a major and irregular modifier of atmospheric energy and thus climate.
The rest of the factors are also varying and can be interdependent yielding an extremely complex mix of variables needed to produce any valid computer simulations. The effect of changes in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is probably smaller than any of the other factors. In citing records from ancient ice cores that show the CO2 content of air to be much smaller during previous ice ages, global warming proponents say this is proof that lower CO2 levels cause lower air temperatures and higher CO2 levels bring about higher air temperatures. Actually it is far more likely that temperature variations are the cause of changes in CO2 levels rather than the result.
So you folks that purchased all those carbon credits and donated all that money to various global warming cause organizations can kiss that money good bye. I’m certain it is long gone with nothing to show for its passing. Perhaps when the ice sheets begin advancing you can join a new “global cooling” movement and pay for carbon debits to help warm the planet.
There is a real and present danger that is a far greater threat to life on Earth than global warming at its worst.
Tragically, we do virtually nothing about it as it expands geometrically. Our nearly total denial of the menace of overpopulation is not only grossly foolish, but it makes our efforts to curb global warming at its worst look like child’s play. The worldwide forces of cultures, religions, and raw animal instincts that are bringing billions of excess humans into a world with limited resources are a certain doomsday juggernaught that may already have passed the point of no return—the point of irreparable damage. We are in the midst of the greatest extinction of species since the Permian. The great sink of wildlife in Africa is fast disappearing down growing millions of hungry throats as “bush meat.” Still, the human population there continues to explode, even in the face of abject poverty and disease.
Many once limitless ocean fisheries are rapidly disappearing. The Atlantic cod and salmon fisheries are gone. The Pacific salmon are also going. Alaskan waters are now fished so efficiently and relentlessly this source of protein could be decimated within a decade. Wild food from the ocean could be a thing of the past within a relatively short time. Fish and sea creatures eaten by fish and other sea creatures are part of a cycle that maintains a balance of sea life. Seafood eaten by man causes an imbalance because all of that protein is removed from the oceans completely and forever. Every ounce of protein we remove from the ocean depletes that source and once gone, it will not return.
Corn and soybeans diverted from the food chain for alternate fuels are causing food prices to rise. This is causing great anger in places like Egypt where the price of wheat imported mostly from the US has nearly tripled recently. In other parts of the world, diverse food crops are being replaced by single money crops, mainly for biofuels. In many tropical areas, diverse rain forest is being destroyed to grown oil palms to feed the demand for biodiesel. Everywhere, natural biodiversity is being replaced by row upon row of single plant crops. This results in major loss of diverse plant ecosystems and habitat for countless wild creatures. Add to this the loss of crop land to urbanization, salinization of irrigated lands, soil depletion, and desertification and the view for the future is not pretty. The worst case scenario of greenhouse gases pales in comparison with the results of the best and most conservative estimates of population growth. Also, when crunch time comes it will be a sudden catastrophic collapse, not a slow change. Hell will probably be a fair place in comparison.
Availability of just one simple device could greatly reduce the use of wood for cooking in many parts of the world. A solar stove using a concave mirror to focus sunlight in such a way as to cook food would save tons of wood fuel when and where sunlight is available. I had such a stove years ago. It was small, inexpensive, and worked very well on sunny days when we were camping. It boiled water, cooked vegetables, and broiled meat to perfection. We even used it to bake biscuits. It folded up into the size of a small, thin briefcase. Made of aluminum, it was light and easy to carry. This is just one small item of the thousands of small, effective solutions that could be put to use to help third world people.
An unusual conclusion
After all the research of information about energy and fuels used to write my book, A Convenient Solution, it is this author’s conclusion that there is one best possible solution for practical, affordable energy and its use. I would urge those in power to consider doing whatever is required to make such a system a reality. That total system involves electric vehicles, EV’s and plug in hybrid electric vehicles, PHEV’s powered mostly by electricity from batteries charged from an electric grid supplied by geothermal power.
“GEOENERGY” is the most abundant and widest spread source of energy on the planet, yet it is rarely addressed. It is virtually inexhaustible, economically available, nonpolluting, noncarbon dioxide emitting, and grossly underutilized. A geothermal power plant costs about the same as a coal-fired plant of the same capacity and has a smaller footprint. Once erected, no fuel system is required so maintenance is the only ongoing cost. It is potentially the least costly form of power generation available and certainly has the lowest environmental impact. It is an environmentalist’s dream come true. Its use requires drilling for heat almost exactly like drilling for oil, a well-developed technology. Why so few people ever mention it is a mystery. The development of geothermal energy to replace retiring coal plants and provide the necessary increase in electric generating capacity could be the best way for our future. With technology that is presently just beginning to grow, improvements in cost and performance could easily make it the best and most economical domestic source of electric power. This would satisfy complaints of both the global warming and anti nuclear crowd at least as far as generation of electric power is concerned. On the world stage, GEOENERGY is practical in most areas of the globe. It is especially available in Africa and could be a major factor in curing that continent’s serious ills.
There are as many opinions about global warming and man’s part in it as there are politicians, climatologists, weather scientists, media people and bloggers on the subject. There is a great paucity of good solid scientific facts. Everyone with a political ax to grind, a grant to go after, readers or watchers to excite, an idea or position to sell, or who have just plain anger at something or someone, is getting in on the global warming bandwagon.
There are a few indisputable facts—or as indisputable as any "facts" can be. Remember, "One man’s fact is another man’s opinion and still another’s fantasy." That is because most facts are trumped by beliefs, a very human trait. These "facts" in consideration include:
1. Increasing the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes the atmosphere to hold more heat.
2. Increasing the percentage of moisture in the atmosphere causes the atmosphere to hold more heat.
3. Increasing the percentage of methane in the atmosphere causes the atmosphere to hold more heat.
4. Increasing the percentage of any of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere causes the atmosphere to hold more heat
5. Pouring a bucket of water into the ocean adds to the level of the oceans. How much depends on the size of the bucket and how many buckets are used.
6. Burning any fossil fuel adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
7. All animal life on land or in the seas adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
8. All green plant life on land or in the seas removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
9. Variation in the energy output of the sun affects global temperatures.
10. Variation in the circulation of the oceans affects the distribution of heat in the atmosphere.
11. Variation in galactic cosmic rays affects the amount of cloud cover over mostly tropic ocean water.
12. Variation of cloud cover affects global temperatures as clouds reflect the suns heat energy.
13. There are dozens of demonstrable natural systems that affect global temperatures as much or more than does the greenhouse effect. (The cosmic ray effect on cloud cover is just one)
14. Much of the period between 600 and 1100 CE was warmer than the current century.
15. These are but a few of the countless facts that affect climate and global temperatures.
16. Anecdotal reports of unusual local temperature and moisture conditions are completely useless as an indicator of global warming because of the huge scale of size and time differences between those reports and the global and millennia scales of climate changes.
17. In the 1970s after a series of very cold winters, a significant number of climatologists and other scientists were discussing global cooling and the coming ice age. The media and others reported this extensively to the great concern of the public. Since the winter 0f 2007-08 and its extreme cold and hordes of snowstorms, we're hearing the same kinds of rumbles.
Maybe Chicken Little was right.
All of this is amplified by our fascination with sound bites and short reports and lack of interest in lengthy, serious considerations of those same subjects. Most people simply lack the will or the time to do any in-depth reading or study about this very complex subject. Those who do such reading and study, and even research the subject have widely spread differences of opinion. This is the reason for such a controversy. Into this confusing mix come politicians and "expert" celebrities with huge agendas of their own who capitalize on this by arousing fear and other emotions in the all too gullible public.
With all this dust and smoke obscuring reality, even for those qualified to have a significant opinion, it is no wonder the fire is very hard to find if indeed it even exists. All this "smoke and mirrors" make for much confusion and those who live by emotional appeals make much use of the resulting disarray.
Here are two of the thousands of articles available from the Internet on the subject. They seem a bit more rational than many. Most are emotional diatribes driven by anger at ???
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22218
http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2007/06/weather-channel-backs-global-warming.html
The following has been on my blog, http://hjgulfstream.blogspot.com/ since the date shown. This short section has been added to that blog. ¶ 7:59 AM 0 Comments
I read with interest the words of James Hansen and I do appreciate you sending them to me. It reminds me of an old philosophy of action called, loosely, “tool theory.” It’s been around for a very long time, probably several centuries. Roughly it states that man (that includes both male and female) will try to use the tools he is mentally equipped and trained to use in efforts to solve any problem, say make a chair for example.. A carpenter will use hammers, saws, chisels, wood and nails to solve his problem and build the chair. A plumber, on the other hand, will try to use pipe, fittings, pipe wrenches etc to build a chair. A stonemason might use stone cutting tools to carve his chair out of stone, etc. I’m sure you get the idea.
Well, I think there is an application of another, similar as yet unnamed theory that could apply to certain popular concepts that catch the public’s notice and then take on a life of their own. “global warming,” is one of the newer ones while “civil rights” has been with us for quite a while. There are many others with more or less pizzaz. “Separation of church and state” “weapons of mass destruction” “the war on terror (drugs, poverty, ignorance etc.)” are others. Most will sooner or later take on political relevance which quickly distorts their reality and adds strong emotional fervor which can destroy any rational effort to study the problem or situation objectively and come up with realistic answers. Sometimes this is good–sometimes bad–either depending not on the realities of the situation, but on the political posture of those for and against any proposed solution. Often times the factual realities of the situation become completely obscured by all the rhetoric which seems must be divided into for and against– a black or white rendering of virtually every expressed opinion most of which are actually varying shades of grey. It seems we must take one or the other of two opposing positions– either you are against it or for it.
The current number one on the media hit parade is global warming which includes the opinion that our contribution of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is it’s cause and must be dealt with. In the minds and voices of the media, many politicians, and significant world celebrities, global warming is accepted as a proven fact, a serious danger to humanity, and a serious menace we must deal with. This has been so firmly established in the public’s collective mind by politicians and their media supporters worldwide that any kind of discussion of other possible causes of global warming, is summarily lumped into the, They’re against us and their wrong camp. This happens no matter how well documented by in-depth scientific studies, or supported by good scientific evidence that opinion may be.
It’s rather akin to a very old Chinese concept about proof of theories. They believed and stated, “Look only at data that supports the theory and ignore all data that does not.” This was actually a practice of early Chinese theorists. It may well have been one of the reasons why Chinese science fell by the wayside after a very significant start. The Chinese no longer think that way. I hope we don’t start to.
I read Al Gore’s book and found it filled with hype and emotional appeal, slick photos and charts that struck an emotional response, but much of the science is one sided and thinly supported. To me it seemed more a “Chicken Little” book, long on emotion-stirring depictions and short on objective data. Incidently, some of the “data” in the book, particularly that in graphs, is absolutely impossible and proveably so quite easily. I can see how it would appeal to those who want a simple direct answer and someone or something to blame for a causative factor that might or might not be relevant. James Hansen’s article does some of those same things. Incidently, I do not question their intent to help solve a perceived problem. I do question the technical accuracy of their statements. Are they provable scientific data, or are they skewed to persuade?
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Why We Can't Wait
by James Hansen (I’ve added my comments in bold italics)
There's a huge gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known about global warming by those who need to know: the public and policy-makers. (Amen!) We've had, in the past thirty years, one degree Fahrenheit of global warming. (We actually had the same amount of cooling in a single year, 2007-2008.) But there's another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline due to gases that are already in the atmosphere. And there's another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline because of the energy infrastructure now in place--for example, power plants and vehicles that we're not going to take off the road even if we decide that we're going to address this problem. (His one degree is a very arguable figure that has been estimated at between 0.1 and 1.9 by others in various studies by scientists of varying degrees of expertise and with varying agendas. Greenhouse gasses are but one of several dozen significant factors affecting global climate. Most climatologists place a number of these ahead of atmospheric carbon dioxide as having the most significant effect. For example, water vapor in the atmosphere has between 10,000 and 40,000 times the heat capacity of cabon dioxide at double present levels. Variations in water vapor literally drowns any greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. Day by day changes in atmospheric water vapor are thousands of times greater in greenhouse effect than any change in carbon dioxide we could conceive of. Still there is no doubt about man’s contribution having at least some effect.The question is, how much and is it significant enough to cause alarm. Pouring a cup of water into a fifty acre pond may raise the surface level, but significantly? )
The Energy Department says that we're going to continue to put more and more CO2 in the atmosphere each year—not just additional CO2 but more than we put in the year before. If we do follow that path, even for another ten years, it guarantees that we will have dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet—one without sea ice in the Arctic; with worldwide, repeated coastal tragedies associated with storms and a continuously rising sea level; and with regional disruptions due to freshwater shortages and shifting climatic zones. (These are wildly speculative warnings at best. When he says, “we” is he speaking only of America, or the whole world? If this is a problem it is a global problem and if human generated carbon dioxide is a major cause, we have just been moved into second place. China is now the one nation contributing the most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. India, now in third place, is rapidly overtaking us. This is happening as we reduce our output while they are rapidly increasing theirs. So any real answer must be a global one that will work for and be shared by all nations. One big factor never mentioned is the effect of wholesale destruction of forests on the carbon dioxide balance. The burning to clear the land generates large amounts of CO2, more than all the worlds vehicles combined. Also, the removal of trees takes away one of the most efficient and effective systems to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Why don't we address that problem?)
I've arrived at five recommendations for what should be done to address the problem. If Congress were to follow these recommendations, we could solve the problem. Interestingly, this is not a gloom-and-doom story. In fact, the things we need to do have many other benefits in terms of our economy, our national security, our energy independence and preserving the environment--preserving creation. (My “A Convenient Solution” describes many such scenarios. Some very real and practical ones that can be put in place relatively quickly and with all the possible benefits he describes. These practical solutions address numerous real problems that pose far more dangers than atmospheric CO2.)
First, there should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2. That technology is probably five or ten years away. (Can’t see anyone stopping the construction of coal fired power plants unless we go nuclear which, realistically, we will have to do sooner or later anyway. We have been searching for a practical method to sequester carbon dioxide emissions for years and don’t seem to be any closer to solving this knotty problem now than we were twenty years ago. I have been communicating with the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment who have been trying to find a way to sequester carbon dioxide unsuccessfully for many years.) It will become clear over the next ten years that coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester CO2 are going to have to be bulldozed. (Will China do the same?) That's the only way we can keep CO2 from getting well into the dangerous level, (We really have only wild guesses as to what constitutes a dangerous level, but taking that as a given, it certainly wouldn’t do any harm to prevent further increases.) because our consumption of oil and gas alone will take us close to the dangerous level. And oil and gas are such convenient fuels that they surely will be used. (Who's he referring to? Most users of fossil fuels are located in countries where we can't tell people not to mine or use them) So why build old-technology power plants if you're not going to be able to operate them over their lifetime, which is fifty or seventy-five years? It doesn't make sense. Besides, there's so much potential in efficiency, we don't need new power plants if we take advantage of that. (Amen to potential! However, even with ultimate efficiency, carbon dioxide would still increase. What we really need is safe geothermal or fourth generation nuclear power. They are the only viable answers. France is building many new light water reactor power plants right now. Will we or China have the foresight to do the same? Or even better, develop geothermal power?)
Second, and this is the hard recommendation that no politician seems willing to stand up and say is necessary: The only way we are going to prevent having an amount of CO2 that is far beyond the dangerous level is by putting a price on emissions. (Not so! Far better would be to change over to the practical type of nuclear/geothermal/renewable fuel program I have described. As a result, use of fossil fuels and the associated emissions would disappear. Besides, the price he mentions, in the form of taxes, would mostly find their way into the political pipeline so politicians would be all for them.) In order to avoid economic problems, it had better be a gradually rising price so that the consumer has the option to seek energy sources that reduce his requirement for how much fuel he needs. And that means we should be investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies at the same time. The result would be high-tech, high-paid jobs. And it would be very good for our energy independence, our national security and our balance of payments.
But a price on carbon emissions is not enough, which brings us to the third recommendation: We need energy-efficiency standards. That's been proven time and again. The biggest use of energy is in buildings, and the engineers and architects have said that they can readily reduce the energy requirement of new buildings by 50 percent. That goal has been endorsed by the US Conference of Mayors, but you can't do it on a city-by-city basis. You need national standards. The same goes for vehicle efficiency. We haven't had an improvement in vehicle efficiency in twenty-five or thirty years. And our national government is standing in court alongside the automobile manufacturers resisting what the National Research Council has said is readily achievable--a 30 percent improvement in vehicle efficiency, which California and other states want to adopt. (Increased efficiency will just not work in the long run because it only reduces emissions and could prove very costly. If atmospheric CO2 is a problem, stopping net emissions completely is the only viable, long range solution and my systems do just that.)
The fourth recommendation--and this is probably the easiest one--involves the question of ice-sheet stability. The old assumption that it takes thousands or tens of thousands of years for ice sheets to change is clearly wrong. The concern is that it's a very nonlinear process that could accelerate. The west Antarctic ice sheet in particular is very vulnerable. If it collapses, that could yield a sea-level rise of sixteen to nineteen feet, possibly on a time scale as short as a century or two. (This is no recommendation at all, but a description of a possible physical condition and its results. The complete melting of all the ice sheets in the world, arctic or antarctic, that are floating on the ocean will not cause any rise in the ocean level. That is a simple law of high school level physics. Only meltwater from ice in glaciers or that is otherwise supported by land masses will raise sea levels– ice such as that over central Greenland or Antarctica. I am much more concerned about the proven slowing of the gulf stream which is now flowing at less than half of what it did thirty years ago. Should it stop– as scientists believe it did during the so-called, “Little Ice Age,” Europe would experience a drop in temperatures that would bring northern Scandinavian weather to England and much of Europe. At the same time, Greenland would experience a substantial increase in its ice pack.)
The information on ice-sheet stability is so recent that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report does not adequately address it. The IPCC process is necessarily long and drawn out. But this problem with the stability of ice sheets is so critical that it really should be looked at by a panel of our best scientists. Congress should ask the National Academy of Sciences to do a study on this and report its conclusions in very plain language. The National Academy of Sciences was established by Abraham Lincoln for just this sort of purpose, and there's no reason we shouldn't use it that way. (There have been a great many studies of ice, ice flows, glaciers, ice shelves [floating ice fields] and the ice cap on Greenland and Antarctica. Many of these are described in detail in Nigel Calder’s book, “Miraculous Universe.” Why don’t we ask China to conduct such studies. They are now the largest contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide and, unlike the US, they are rapidly increasing their emissions)
The final recommendation concerns how we have gotten into this situation in which there is a gap between what the relevant scientific community understands and what the public and policy-makers know. A fundamental premise of democracy is that the public is informed and that they're honestly informed. There are at least two major ways in which this is not happening. One of them is that the public affairs offices of the science agencies are staffed at the headquarters level by political appointees. While the public affairs workers at the centers are professionals who feel that their job is to translate the science into words the public can understand, unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case for the political appointees at the highest levels. Another matter is Congressional testimony. I don't think the Framers of the Constitution expected that when a government employee--a technical government employee--reports to Congress, his testimony would have to be approved and edited by the White House first. But that is the way it works now. And frankly, I'm afraid it works that way whether it's a Democratic administration or a Republican one. (Politicians and political appointees are much more likely to pursue a course that promotes their political careers than one that properly informs the public. Even the dedicated scientists in federal agencies are certainly more likely to promote results that secure or advance their careers than that inform the public of unpopular results. So is the naked truth ever divulged by these individuals? Show me a person with no position to hold on to or no agenda to adhere to and maybe I would agree that, barring conceptual errors, the real truth could be forthcoming. Every individual has his or her own personal agenda guiding even his scientific findings. Neglecting to mention a negative or a positive factor is a proven technique used to skew results to a desired conclusion.)
These problems are worse now than I've seen in my thirty years in government. But they're not new. I don't know anything in our Constitution that says that the executive branch should filter scientific information going to Congressional committees. (Certainly this politically motivated implication intended to slam the executive branch is not born out by the facts.) Reform of communication practices is needed if our government is to function the way our Founders intended it to work. (How very true and nowhere is the need for such reform so evident as in the pronouncements of the liberal Democrats.)
The global warming problem has brought into focus an overall problem: the pervasive influence of special interests on the functioning of our government and on communications with the public. It seems to me that it will be difficult to solve the global warming problem until we have effective campaign finance reform, so that special interests no longer have such a big influence on policy-makers. (One group's “Special interests” are another group's "concerned citizens." They each mean different things to different people and as far as I can see, virtually all politicians are controlled to some extent by some “special interests” called "concerned citizens" by those who benefit from their efforts. That our federal employees at every level, appointed and elected, are beholden to this group or that is obvious to all but the dimmest lightbulb among us. “Follow the money” may be a good axiom in searching for mischief, but “follow the chain of power and influence” should certainly be another.)
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HoJo's comments
My own opinion: Unlike so many statements I hear repeated like a mantra by so many of those riding the global warming wave, (a movement that has taken on the virtual trappings of a religion) this is not the warmest period on the planet in historical times. For obvious reasons I hold the motives suspect of those who repeat that mantra without ever even acknowledging all of the other plausible causes of climate change, or that it is not now as warm as it was just a thousand years ago.
It is a well established fact that there was a period between about 600 and 1,100 CE that was much warmer than the present. During that time crops and plants were grown in Scandinavia that now only grow in central Europe. Also during the same period, the Norse colonized Greenland, grew crops, raised cattle and sheep and built homes and churches. Then very suddenly, they, their crops and animals disappeared completely– starved to death because the weather suddenly turned much colder. These are historial facts proven by studies of ice cores and seafloor sediment. Greenland today is still unable to support farming of any kind and none of the plants that grew in Scandinavia then are present now. This is all born out by studies of pollen grains in bogs where levels relate directly to the times when the pollen grains drifted through the air. This is quite an accurate and proven technique used for many years to date levels of buried materials.
Another important factor and one that is noticeably absent from Al Gore’s book, is that our measuring techniques have improved exponentially in both accuracy and detail in just the last few decades. All measurements of temperatures and temperature variations before about 1960 are based almost exclusively on indirect measurements and anecdotal evidence. They Are simplistic and questionable compared to the accuracy and in depth information now obtained by satellite and other technologies available in the digital age. Climate, global warming and global cooling (actually, a new ice age is now overdue) are far too complex with far too many variables to yield to our most sophisticated computers. When we are able to predict precisely where a hurricane is going to go and how strong it will become when it is merely a disturbance off the coast of Africa– then we may be able to say whether global warming caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide is a reality with some degree of certainty. Now, no matter how you look at it, to say that the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide is the responsible agent causing global warming in the manner it is being described by so many agenda driven spokespersons is Chicken Little at best.
All that being said, The growing shortage of petroleum based fuels coupled with their expanding use in China, India and other countries with rapidly expanding economies demands another easily transportable fuel system including portable power for trucks, busses , aircraft and personal transport. That a by-product of this system is the reduction or complete removal of carbon dioxide emissions is a bonus that should make virtually everyone happy. ¶ 9:09 PM 0 Comments
Click on http://sequestration.mit.edu/research/survey2006.html to read the latest about the little known or reported techniques for sequestering carbon dioxide so it doesn't get into the atmosphere. Check the bottom of this site for links to more good information on the subject.
Click on http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/survey.html to view the latest report on public attitudes about the environment and environmental action.
Both of these articles will be included in my book a energy and the environment if I get permission to quote them. Incidently, my book title has been changed to SOLUTIONS! I would quote them directly in my blog, but have not yet received permission to do so. ¶ 9:47 PM 0 Comments
By JOHN J. FIALKA
WASHINGTON -- U.S. government scientists Friday said the long-term outlook for global warming may be more dire than suggested by this week's United Nations' report, which they say doesn't fully address the impact of clouds and melting glaciers.
Recent evidence of accelerated melting of glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic ice cap came too late to be included in the report released Thursday by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Glaciers are among the largest sources of fresh water in the world and are contributing to rising ocean levels. Rising sea levels could expose population centers bordering the ocean to more storm damage and could require evacuation in some areas. But the computer models used for the IPCC report based their predictions only on the results of heating of the existing water in the world's oceans, causing the oceans to expand and sea levels to rise, said Tom Delworth, a climate modeler for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government agency in charge of climate science and weather service.
The IPCC report predicts sea levels will rise by between one to two feet over the next 100 years. Mr. Delworth said there remains "much more uncertainty" over how much accelerated melting of glaciers might add to that.
A second area of continuing uncertainty has to do with the impact of clouds on climate change. Warming the ocean sends more water vapor into the air, and the resulting clouds accelerate global warming by trapping more of the sun's heat in the atmosphere and further warm the ocean. Jim Butler, deputy director of NOAA's global monitoring division, called this "a very scary feedback mechanism."
But, so far, the supercomputers the agency uses to model the effect on the earth's climate -- which were also used for the IPCC report -- aren't detailed or fast enough to predict how much clouds are accelerating the problem. Mr. Delworth said computer models divide the earth's oceans and atmosphere into four million boxes, each about 150 square miles, and that these boxes are too large to model the effects of clouds.
"We could use computers that are one million times faster than they are today and still not be satisfied," Mr. Delworth said.
Further complicating the issue are layers of haze containing pollutants from human activity. Such pollutants, including sulfates, soot, dust and nitrates, tend to make the atmosphere brighter, reflecting more of the sun's heat back into space. The IPCC has found that the net effect of the added pollution is to cool the atmosphere.
A.R. Ravishankara, an atmospheric chemist for NOAA, said this raises a problem for governments attempting to clean the air by removing pollutants. "If you take away this cooling effect, then the heating effect would be exacerbated. It's a highly complex problem."
Write to John J. Fialka at john.fialka@wsj.com
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Ancient Global Warming Flipped Ocean Circulation, May Do So Again Jan 5, 2006
SAN DIEGO, California (ENS) --> For the first time, evidence that global warming triggered a reversal in the circulation of deep ocean patterns around the world has been uncovered by scientists affiliated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. While the changes they describe occurred 55 million years ago, the scientists say today's conditions are similar and could have similar drastic effects on ocean circulation. In today's issue of the journal "Nature," scientists Fl via Nunes and Richard Norris describe how they examined a four to seven degree warming period that occurred some 55 million years ago during the closing stages of the Paleocene and the beginning of the Eocene eras.
"The Earth is a system that can change very rapidly," said Nunes. "Fifty-five million years ago, when the Earth was in a period of global warmth, ocean currents rapidly changed direction and this change did not reverse to original conditions for about 20,000 years."
The global warming of 55 million years ago, known as the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), emerged in less than 5,000 years, an instant of geological time. Modern carbon dioxide input to the Earth's atmosphere from fossil fuel sources is approaching the same levels estimated for the PETM period, say the scientists, which raises concerns about future climate and changes in ocean circulation.
They say the Paleocene/Eocene example suggests that changes produced by human activities may have lasting effects not only on global climate, but on deep ocean circulation. Fossil records show that the global warming at the time of the PETM created changes ranging from a mass extinction of deep sea bottom dwelling marine life to migrations of terrestrial mammal species, as warm conditions may have opened travel routes frozen over when climates were colder. This time period is when scientists find the earliest evidence of horses and primates in North America and Europe.
Nunes and Norris base their findings on the chemical makeup of microscopic sea creatures that lived 55 million years ago. The scientists analyzed carbon isotopes, or chemical signatures, from the shells of the one-celled animals called foraminifera, or "forams," that exist in vast numbers in a variety of marine environments.
"A tiny shell from a sea creature living millions of years ago can tell us so much about past ocean conditions," said Nunes. "We know approximately what the temperature was at the bottom of the ocean. We also have a measure of the nutrient content of the water the creature lived in. And, when we have information from several locations, we can infer the direction of ocean currents."
In the study, the scientists looked at a foram named Nuttalides truempyi from 14 sites around the world in deep-sea sediment cores retrieved via the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, for which Joint Oceanographic Institutions, Inc., manages the U.S. component.
Chemicals from the foram's shells were used as nutrient "tracers" to reconstruct changes in deep ocean circulation through the ancient time period. Nutrient levels tell the researchers how long a sample has been near or isolated from the sea surface, giving them a way to track the age and path of deep sea water. Nunes and Norris found that deep ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere abruptly stopped the conveyor belt-like process known as "overturning," in which cold and salty water in the depths exchanges with warm water on the surface. Even as it was shutting down in the south, overturning appars to have became active in the Northern Hemisphere. The researchers believe this shift drove unusually warm water into the deep sea, likely releasing stores of methane gas that led to further global warming and a massive die-off of deep sea marine life.
"Overturning is very sensitive to surface ocean temperatures and surface ocean salinity," said Norris, a professor of paleobiology in the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps. "The case described in this paper may be one of our best examples of global warming triggered by the massive release of greenhouse gases and therefore it gives us a perspective on what the long term impact is likely to be of today's greenhouse warming that humans are causing."
Overturning is a fundamental component of the global climate conditions we know today, said Bil Haq, program director in the National Science Foundation's division of ocean sciences, which funded the research. Haq says overturning in the modern North Atlantic Ocean is a primary means of drawing heat into the far north Atlantic and keeping temperatures in Europe relatively warmer than conditions in Canada. Today, deep water generation does not occur in the Pacific Ocean because of the large amount of freshwater input from the polar regions, which prevents North Pacific waters from becoming dense enough to sink to more than intermediate depths. But in the Paleocene/Eocene, deep-water formation was possible in the Pacific because of global warming, the researchers say, adding that the Atlantic Ocean also could have been a significant generator of deep waters during this period.
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Warming climate will slow ocean circulation Feb 4, 2006
Later this century, rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere will slow the ocean currents that bring warm waters to the North Atlantic, thereby affecting that region's climate, computer simulations suggest. When the waters of the Gulf Stream and other warm currents of the North Atlantic reach an area just south of Greenland, they cool, become denser, and sink. That, in turn, pulls more surface water northward, says Thomas L. Delworth, a climate scientist at Princeton University. The rate of this so-called thermohaline circulation depends on the temperature and salinity of the surface waters. The warmer and fresher those North Atlantic surface waters are, compared with underlying layers, the more buoyant they are and the slower the circulation becomes.
Using a new computer model, Delworth and his colleague Keith W. Dixon simulated various scenarios for ocean circulation in the North Atlantic from now until 2100. They calibrated the model using weather and ocean-circulation data gathered since 1860. Throughout the 20th century, rising concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide warmed the atmosphere and ocean surface, but not enough to slow the thermohaline circulation. That's because large amounts of air pollutants known as aerosols have scattered sunlight back into space and counteracted the greenhouse effect somewhat, says Delworth. In the remaining years of the 21st century, however, growing concentrations of greenhouse gases will begin to overwhelm the cooling effect of aerosols, Delworth and Dixon suggest. By the year 2040, thermohaline circulation could carry only 80 percent as much warm water to the North Atlantic as it does now. The researchers report their findings in the Jan. 28 Geophysical Research Letters.--S.P.
SEA CHANGE IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN? Apr 26, 2004
By John Carey
One worry about global warming is that the increased concentration of greenhouse gases will upset earth's balance and bring changes in ocean circulation. In an extreme case, scientists say, the flow of warm currents up the Atlantic Ocean to Europe might be shut down. That would cause temperatures to plunge in Western Europe. Such a shift may be unlikely, but anxious researchers have been keeping a keen watch for any variations in ocean flow, using satellites and instruments moored out in the sea. Now, they are starting to spot some potentially worrisome changes. In the Apr. 15 online issue of Science, a NASA-University of Washington team reports that the counterclockwise circulation of surface water in the North Atlantic has become markedly weaker since the early 1990s. "These observations of rapid climate changes over one decade may merit some concern," the authors write. But they also caution that it's not yet clear if the shift in circulation is the result of man-made global warming or part of a natural cycle.
THE GULF STREAM:
PART 3 OF 3: The North Atlantic: hot spot for ice ages
Warm waters linked to glacial eras - By Anthony R. Wood Jan 19, 2006
In this understated harbor village of tight streets and Cape Cod houses, the North Atlantic stirs gentle breezes in summer and tempers New England's harsh winter cold. And yet, only a geologic blip ago, this was a frigid and forbidding place, encased in a mile-thick sheet of ice. Massive ice sheets have advanced and retreated repeatedly over aeons, at a glacial pace. But what researchers have discovered recently is that climate can change in a hurry. Their findings have led to an ultimate irony: In the debate over global warming, one of the hottest issues is ice.
The planet's temperature has warmed robustly in the last 20 years, with 2005 being the second-warmest year on record, and the Arctic polar cap is disappearing. The same melting that has raised concerns about rising sea levels has prompted counterintuitive scenarios that it could produce a fresh and disastrous big chill. Few foresee an imminent glacial outbreak, and some serious scientists insist that one is all but impossible, but ice-core records show clear evidence that rapid coolings and warmings have happened. And that was long before humans started burning the fossil fuels blamed for at least some of the modern warming.
Today, while the debate rages over how much humans are to blame for the planet's indisputable warming, scientists are still trying to figure out what conspired to bring on the flash-frozen ice ages. But a long and tortuous trail of evidence leads to a surprising suspect at the heart of the conspiracy: the Gulf Stream. Logically, it would be an unlikely culprit. It is hundreds of miles from the southern extent of the last ice sheet, and it covers only about 0.2 percent of the world's ocean surface. Yet the mighty stream is a critical piece of something much larger: the North Atlantic current system that moves warmth out of the tropics toward the North Pole and sends cold water back toward the equator, the so- called conveyor belt. It is estimated that the Gulf Stream transports about 20 percent of the heat moved by the oceans. If the Gulf Stream were to slow down or take a more southerly route, the change would disrupt the whole system, the North Atlantic would cool off. Europe and eastern North America might turn colder as the rest of the world heated up. Scientists think that's what happened the last time ice invaded Europe and the United States.
The question is: Could it happen again? In 1992, Richard Alley was in central Greenland, examining ice cores, when he saw something he could not believe. He and his colleagues were looking at the layers that told them about Greenland's temperature year by year, going back millennia. But instead of a gradual change, they saw radical shifts in the layers representing the climate 12,000 years ago. The temperatures had plunged and risen suddenly. He saw a swing of 15 degrees in a matter of 10, or no more than 30, years.
"This was a flipped switch, not a slowly turned dial," he recalls. "Something really dramatic had happened."
This made the Little Ice Age look like a snow flurry. Alley had come across a phenomenon described in 1985 by Wallace Broecker, a chemical oceanographer and paleontologist with Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Observatory. Broecker called it the Younger Dryas period, for an Arctic shrub that mysteriously appeared throughout Europe. But whereas Broecker drew upon a variety of research sources, Alley was looking at direct physical evidence. The science of climate change was itself changing. Until the 1950s, climate was viewed as essentially a stable system, said Spencer Weart, head of the history center for the American Institute of Physics. That view was stood on its head when researchers saw evidence that big swings could occur in just a couple of millennia. By 1980, scientists came across further clues that such changes could happen in a few centuries. Broecker tightened the possible time frame in 1985 by publishing a paper on the Younger Dryas era. In the process, he indicted the North Atlantic and gave global warming an icon. The article, which appeared in the journal Natural History, posited that tundra conditions overspread Europe as the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic heat-transport system broke down. Europe turned arctic.
That the North Atlantic would be so important underscores the complexity of oceanic circulation. The Pacific is triple its size, yet the Atlantic, Broecker explains, does a better job of moving heat northward than the wind- driven currents of the Pacific. And the mighty stream is the engine driving it. Critical ingredient A critical ingredient in the recipe for climate change is one of the most plentiful substances on the planet: salt. The key to keeping the conveyor belt in motion is the sinking action of the water. Salt adds weight to water, so the more saline it is, the better it sinks; the better it sinks, the faster the conveyor moves. Why is the Atlantic saltier than the Pacific? In part, said Broecker, it's because more fresh water from rain and snow drains into the Pacific than into the Atlantic. The differences are subtle but important. Every quart of ocean water has between 1.1 and 1.2 ounces of salt. Add a mere 0.03 ounces of salt to the water, and there is the same sinking effect as cooling the water by several degrees, by Broecker's calculation.
This is why any buildup of freshwater is so troubling: It could dilute the ocean subtly but critically. In the case of the Younger Dryas era, Broecker theorized that a mighty pulse of freshwater from melting glaciers stopped the sinking action. Freshwater accumulated in the far North Atlantic, and it froze. The conveyor suddenly slowed, interrupting the northward flow of warm water and warm air. The Gulf Stream couldn't do its job. What Alley found in his Greenland ice cores was that such a cosmic change could happen suddenly. In Weart's view, it marked a sea change in scientific opinion. "The whole notion of rapid climate change was very hard for science to accept," he said. "The guys who said there could be rapid climate change had to drag the rest of the climate community kicking and screaming." The chances of a shutdown of the conveyor are remote, if not out of the question. But any significant changes in the oceanic circulation would likely have major, and wholly unpredictable, effects on climate. At the peak of the Little Ice Age, the Gulf Stream did not shut itself down. Researchers think, however, that it slowed down, or maybe wandered from its usual trek. If that happened again, they don't want to be caught by surprise.
Today, concerns about the state of the ocean run so deep that an unprecedented international effort is under way from the Straits of Florida to Greenland to track changes in the flow of the North Atlantic. So far, at least two new studies suggest that concerns about the freshwater buildup in the North Atlantic are warranted. Satellite data have detected a slowing of the circulation from Ireland to Labrador, according to a research team led by NASA's Sirpa Hakkinen. The team said that if the slowing continues, it might lead to large-scale ocean and, eventually, climate changes.
In a second study, 1,500 miles to the south, a group of British scientists reported in December 2005 a 30 percent slowdown in the movement of Atlantic deepwater. Hakkinen and Henry J. Bryden, the head of the British team, cautioned that their results weren't conclusive. Bryden looked at measurements taken at five intervals from 1957 to 2004. Hakkinen said it was impossible to predict whether the slowing in the so-called North Atlantic gyre would continue or was part of a natural cycle. Herein is a basic problem of oceanic research: the period of record is minuscule. Carl Wunsch, an oceanographer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said researchers are just beginning to build a baseline to track the movements of the North Atlantic conveyor. Right now, they have little basis for comparison. Climate evidently obeys the first rule of weather, only on a grander scale: What might happen is almost always more interesting than what is happening. If anything, however, the uncertainty makes it even more important to find out what the conveyor belt is up to. For the volatility of climate is inarguable. "These scenarios are conceivable," Wunsch said, "and we sure as hell want to know what's going on out there." ¶ 8:32 PM 0 Comments
To so describe this book, which contains page after page of condemnation of the United States, capitalism, and the Bush administration, is at the very least, naive. I have read the book and yes, it does contain some true scientific basis for conclusions about the damage humanity is doing to our environment, but many of the conclusions are politically, rather than scientifically motivated. I have already expressed several opinions earlier in this blog which you can read merely by scrolling down through the various postings. Most importantly, I believe “An Unmentionable Menace! !” to be a far more inclusive and impending danger than global warming can ever be. Global warming is but one small symptom of a whole series of things happening to our planet that portend great danger for humanity and indeed all life on the planet in the immediate future. Most of these dangers are completely ignored because they are far more “inconvenient” and politically unpopular, particularly with the left, than global warming.
Several interesting facts can be gleaned from Al’s book. The graph on pages 30 and 31 and the explanation on page 32 clearly indicates that massive increases in vegetation (in the form of forests) could reverse the upward climb of atmospheric carbon dioxide. With a huge percentage of the earth’s forests already turned into agricultural wasteland, primarily in the tropics, it is quite possible that deforestation and desertification has been the major factor in causing increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. There is virtually no doubt about this. Unfortunately, those pushing for stricter governmental controls on emissions will completely ignore this major component cause of global warming since responsibility for this falls mostly on the third world. It is also interesting to note that there are only two major nations who have shown increases in forest since 1970. Those two are: Japan and the United States with the US showing the largest increase. This is not mentioned by those who seem to want to blame the US for all the world’s problems including global warming. The truth of the matter is that the US has expended more practical effort to slow global warming and curb CO2 emissions than any other large nation.
One glaring example of manipulation of data and grossly misleading information is shown on the graph of 1000 years of Northern Hemisphere Temperatures. All points before 1850 are based on completely different kinds of data than that after 1850 as evidenced by the sharp peaks and valleys after 1850. Also, since about 1930, there are data shown both above and below the zero line (both red and blue) at the same time. This is an absolute impossibility and calls the accuracy of the entire graph into question. Other graphs I have seen in Scientific American and evidence from the Viking’s 500 year colonization of Greenland indicate that the climate in the northern Atlantic during the period from before 1000 AD until the mid-fourteen hundreds was probably even warmer than it is today. Northern Europe in particular was considerably warmer and supported more southern plants and animals during this period even than today. The Norse colonized two Greenland fjord systems in 984 and held this remote outpost of civilization for almost five hundred years before the onset of the “little ice-age” brought about their demise. They built a cathedral and churches, wrote in Latin and Old Norse, wielded iron tools, raised and stored large quantities of hay, herded farm animals, followed European fashions in clothing–and finally starved to death and vanished.
The “little ice-age” brought about massive crop failures and much starvation in northern Europe as southern plants and animals retreated southward under the onslaught of continuing fiercely cold winters that continued until the mid 1800s. Scientists believe this phenomena was caused by the cessation of flow of the gulf stream in the Atlantic. It is interesting to note that scientists monitoring the Gulf Stream have noted it has slowed to about half it’s normal rate in recent years and that, should it cease to flow, Europe could be in for another “deep freeze.”
In the 1970s scientists expressed the same concern and issued warnings about global cooling and the onset of another ice-age. Information about this including dire warnings if we didn’t do something about it were written in many of the same publications that now warn of global warming. The graph on pages 66 & 67 shows clearly the sudden reversal in CO2 concentration at the end of each ice age coinciding with the melting of the glaciers and sudden rise in temperatures worldwide. Whatever part man’s activities have in this scenario, use of fossil fuels may in fact pale in comparison to the destruction of forests that so efficiently remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Pages 221 through 231 clearly indicate this problem. How this data can possibly be used to support use of fossil fuels as virtually the only cause of the rise in CO2 and global warming is beyond my understanding. There is no question but that destruction of forests worldwide is a major factor in both CO2 increases and global warming. Unfortunately, since that part of the problem falls clearly on third world nations and not the U.S. it is never mentioned.
Pages 240 through 245 likewise are not indications of the effects of atmospheric CO2, but of our diversion of rivers which creates desert like conditions in many areas, adding to local warming. The direct actions of mankind, not global warming, is responsible for these tragedies. Likewise, the melting snows of Kilimanjaro are not cause by global warming as indicated on pages 42 through 45, but by the devastating cutting of forests which produced the airborne moisture that once fed the snows on the mountain. In 2004 the British science journal Nature noted this as a fact. In 2004 this was confirmed by major studies reported in the International Journal of Climatology and the Journal of Geophysical Research. They showed that the loss of snow was not caused by global warming, but by the aforementioned deforestation. Mr Gore’s implications were precisely the opposite of the truth.
The Kyoto treaty adhered to by all nations would be an economic disaster for the U.S. and would do virtually nothing to even slow global warming. As environmentalist Peter Roderick states, “I think everybody agrees that Kyoto is really, really hopeless in terms of delivering what the planet needs.” Add to this the statement of former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado, “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing–in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
One thing Al got almost right is expressed on pages 214 through 220 – the population explosion. I think the grossly optimistic line of blue on the graph on page 217 shows an unwarranted turn to the right around 2050. I see no indication the population will level off at that number except for massive starvation, murder and mayhem all over the world. Sadly, this may turn out to be the case. A glance through the earlier parts of this blog deals with this in depth. Again, this is not an effect, but a part of the cause of global warming.
Yes this book and probably the movie contains facts which point to problems facing humanity. Unfortunately, distortions and political hype are what the left wing socialists and their cohorts in Hollywood and the media will concentrate on with scare tactics to gain political control and promote their own anti-capitalist, anti-Bush, anti-America agendas.
The following quote sums it up quite fairly, “Improving the environment requires engineering, scientific and economic competence and involvement. The idea that a return to sustenance, communal living is a corrective measure is pure nonsense. Improvement in the natural environment, improved food production and improved quality of life for humans occur only where there is capitalism and the use of synthetic chemicals. In the USA forests have increased by 140 million acres since 1920 with accompanying increases in bird and animal life, and a decrease in soil erosion. (Not to mention the removal of huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.) Third World nations (primarily in Africa, Asia and South America) destroy forests only because they lack alternative fuel sources.” (And because of excess population, corrupt socialist dictatorships and self-serving leaders.) ________________________________________________________
The Benefits of Trees
Trees provide a multitude of benefits. Unfortunately, much of the general public is not well informed on this topic. By increasing awareness of the benefits relating to trees, we can all utilize current scientific evidence to help resolve many challenging issues and improve the livability of our cities. Proper tree care and sound forest management programs are crucial to the health, longevity, and sustainability of our urban forests. The care of trees is a wise investment in our future.
A listing of the benefits, in no particular order, would include at least the following:
Air Temperature and Energy Consumption
Trees cool air temperature and help to offset the "heat island" effect of hardscapes by providing shade and by transpiration (the release of water vapor into the air). By properly selecting and planting trees, yearly energy savings can exceed 40%. Three mature shade trees placed strategically around a house can cut air conditioning bills by 10% to 50%.
A single large tree can release up to 400 gallons of water into the atmosphere each day. Water from roots is drawn up to the leaves where it evaporates. The conversion from water to gas absorbs huge amounts of heat, cooling hot city air.
Dallas area neighborhoods with mature trees can be up to 11 degrees cooler than neighborhoods without trees. A one-degree rise in temperature equals a 2% increase in peak electricity consumption.
One simulation found that planting 500,000 trees in the Tucson area would lower the "heat island" effect by 3 degrees and lower overall cooling costs by up to 25%.
Cities are 5 to 9 degrees warmer than rural areas and 3% to 8% of summer electric use goes to compensate for this urban "heat island" effect.
The National Arbor Day Foundation calculates that 100 million additional mature trees in U.S. cities would reduce the "heat island" effect and save $2 billion annually.
Air Quality
Trees produce oxygen and store carbon dioxide (just the opposite of humans), which helps to clean and restore our air. The American Forests organization’s studies foresee the value of the urban forest to U.S. cities to be $10 billion by storing carbon dioxide, cleaning particulate matter, and generating oxygen for urban spaces.
One acre of trees produces enough oxygen for 18 people every day.
One acre of trees absorbs the carbon dioxide produced by driving an automobile 26,000 miles.
A fully-grown Sycamore tree can transform 26 pounds of carbon dioxide into life-giving oxygen every year.
Large trees remove 60 to 70 times more pollutants than small trees. Only a small portion of the Dallas area tree population exceeds 24 inches in diameter.
For every ton of wood an urban forest grows, it removes 1.47 tons of carbon dioxide and replaces it with 1.07 tons of oxygen.
A typical tree removes 25 to 45 pounds of carbon from the air each year.
A study of Atlanta’s urban forest showed that intense urban development and subsequent removal of large urban forest areas increased the "heat island" effect. This raised the levels of isoprene emissions, increasing the natural formation of harmful ozone.
An EPA study in Chicago showed that the 23.2% of canopy cover in the Lincoln Park neighborhood adjacent to downtown annually filters 43.9 tons of particulate matter, 14 tons of carbon dioxide, and 12.4 tons of nitrogen oxides, giving the urban forest an estimated pollution abatement value of $625,000 per year.
Water/Soil
Planting trees along streams, wetlands, and lakes, helps control storm water runoff, removes soil sediment, reduces flood damage, and increases water quality, by reducing the pollution of the water runoff by as much as 80%.
Healthy, vegetated stream buffer zones reduce the total suspended solids phosphorus, nitrogen and heavy metal transfer between urban areas and streams by 55% to 99%.
Numerous studies show that trees along streams increase fish populations.
The urban forest reduces erosion. One square mile of forestland produces 50 tons of erosion sediment. In contrast, farmland produces 1,000 to 50,000 tons, and land prepared for construction produces 25,000 to 50,000 tons of sediment per year.
Tree canopy, in one study, reduced surface runoff from a one-inch rain over a 12 hour period by 17%.
In natural watersheds with trees and vegetation, 5% to 15% of stream flow is delivered as surface storm water runoff. In highly developed areas, over 50% of stream flow is delivered as surface storm water runoff.
Animal Habitat
Trees attract wildlife to an area by supporting habitat and creating biodiversity.
Trees provide food and shelter for wildlife.
Economics, Health, and Psychological and Social Behavior
Trees offer unlimited climbing challenges and good physical activity opportunities such as tree swings and tree houses.
Numerous trees and plants have proven useful in phytoremediation or removal of toxic materials from soils.
Trees can become living witnesses to our history and evidence of our cultures. Without a cultural history, people are rootless. Preserving historical trees offers lingering evidence to remind people of what they once were, who they are, what they are, and where they are. Trees feed our sense of history and purpose.
Studies across the nation show that residential home prices increase from 3% to 20% due to the presence of trees, depending on the type of trees, scarcity of treed lots, and the maturity of existing trees.
One widely reported study showed that viewing trees through a window during surgery recovery cut the average recovery time by almost one whole day compared to patients with a view of a blank wall.
People turn to the urban forest, preserved by humans as parks, wilderness, or wildlife refuges, for something they cannot get in a built environment. The quality of human life depends on an ecologically sustainable and aesthetically pleasing physical environment. The surge of interest in conserving open spaces from people motivated by ecological and aesthetic concerns is growing.
Trees curtail health care costs by facilitating positive emotional, intellectual, and social experiences.
Environmental stress may involve psychological emotions such as frustration, anger, fear and coping responses; plus associated physiological responses that use energy and contribute to fatigue. Many who live or commute in urban or blighted areas experience environmental stress. Trees in urban setting have a restorative effect that releases the tensions of modern life. Evidence demonstrating the therapeutic value of natural settings has emerged in physiological and psychological studies. The cost of environmental stress in terms of work-days lost and medical care is likely to be substantially greater than the cost of providing and maintaining trees, parks, and urban forestry programs.
Trees are a source of food for humans, i.e. Pecans, Walnuts, Almonds, etc. On a large scale, trees require less fertilizer and keep the soil healthier than most crops.
Aesthetics
Trees can screen objectionable views, offer privacy, reduce glare and light reflection, offer a sound barrier (acoustical control), and help guide wind direction and speed.
Trees offer aesthetic functions such as creating a background, framing a view, complementing architecture, and bringing natural elements into urban surroundings.
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Here are links to sites with much accurate information.
Http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/AC805E/ac805e0s.htm
26. Trading forest carbon to promote the adoption of reduced impact logging
Joyotee Smith and Grahame Applegate*
* Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Jl. CIFOR, Situ Gede, Sindang Barang, Bogor Barat 16680, Indonesia, Tel. +62 (251) 622 622. Fax +62 (251) 622 100, E- mail: e.smith@cgiar.org and href="mailto:g.applegate@cgiar.org">g.applegate@cgiar.org
http://cordis.europa.eu/euroabstracts/en/october01/feature01.htm
"Europe has the best-equipped network for measuring carbon dioxide in the world."
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/products/Table_of_contents_land_use%20(Canadell_Zhou_Noble2003)/Alexandrov_yc0109.pdf
Net Biome production of managed forests in Japan.
http://www.the-tree.org.uk/TreeTalk/News/newsarchive.htm
Bits of information about trees and their benefits.
http://secure.britannica.com/ebi/article-9310969
Britannica article about deforestation.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html
FAQ Global changes
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen01/gen01491.htm
Ask a Scientist (Argonne National Lab) ¶ 3:46 PM 0 Comments
