Friday, January 13, 2006
More new thinking on climate change
I've been taken to task for ridiculing those in favor of climate gender justice, and for linking to studies suggesting that the sun might be a factor in global warming.
Well now it seems that a legitimate study has linked green house gas emissions in considerable quantity to.... plants.
But in a study published in Nature, a team led by Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany, found that living plants, as well as dried leaves and grass, emitted methane in the presence of air.
Nor is this gas just a piffling amount.
The researchers roughly estimate the world's living vegetation emits between 62 million and 236 million tonnes of methane a year, and plant litter adds one to seven million tonnes.
This would be equivalent to between 10 and 30 per cent of all annual global emissions of methane.
The evidence comes from a series of carefully controlled experiments in the lab and in the field, in which gas chromatography and sensors to monitor carbon-13 isotopes detected and measured methane flows from the vegetation.
The paper's earliest impact could be political, for it attacks one of Kyoto's conceptual cores.
Under the protocol's notoriously complex rulebook, industrialised signatories that plant forests can offset the supposed benefit against their national quotas of Co2.
"We now have the spectre that new forests might increase greenhouse warming through methane emissions rather than decrease it by being sinks for Co2," Lowe said ruefully.
Now, for the benefit of our humorless readers I will not now joke about cutting down the rainforest, but in the face of reports like this (not even considering those linked to above) does anyone really think that we know anything at all about global warming?
Don't argue that I am now sanctioning air pollution, which I am not. But the nattering nabobs who claim they know the answers, which of course involve billions of dollars and radical changes to everyone's life, should maybe take a step back and reconsider their prescription.
5 Comments:
By 
Counter Trey, at
Fri Jan 13, 11:46:00 PM:
Good Job, Villain.
I also liked the research published a few weeks back that pointed out that 50-million years ago the world warmed considerably more than it did in the 20th century. Since no one really knows shiite from sunni on the subject, there is no need to get hysterical and propose that all humans stop breathing.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Jan 14, 07:52:00 AM:
But look, there's one tiny problem with the argument that "hey, the world has these sharp warming and cooling spikes naturally." Whether the cause is natural or human, if the temperature goes up and the ice on Greenland and Arctic islands melts, there is some level of confidence that two bad things happen. First, sea levels rise. Second, the north Atlantic salt conveyer shuts down, at least temporarily, the Gulf stream stops or slows as a result, and Europe freezes. So the conservatives who argue that dramatic climate change is normal don't make me happy at all. Why? Because virtually all human settlement has occurred since the last allegedly dramatic change in climate. Like, we have a lot of people living a couple of feet above sea level, and we have a lot of crops growing in places that may see their growing cycles shorten too much.
That's why I believe that while we should not shut down our economy with Kyoto-like solutions, we should be working diligently to deal with the consequences of climate change. We should be coming up with theoretical plans for relocating people -- in low lying areas. We should be engineering crops that can grow in short, cold growing cycles, or significantly drier and wetter climates (admittingly, humbly, that we do not know how this is going to turn out). We should be considering ocean engineering solutions (there are people who believe that if the salt conveyer stopped, you could open it up by blowing a hole in the Central American isthmas -- if France and Russia have to choose between freezing to death and dropping a series of well-placed nukes on Panama, we know what choice they will make).
Conservatives like to rag on attempts to slow global warming, but if it can happen "naturally" shouldn't we be planning now to cope with it?
By Charlottesvillain, at
Sat Jan 14, 10:55:00 AM:
I agree with everything you say (although I am disappointed you left out taking measures to assure gender justice in the aftermath).
This just reinforces the argument that all the yammering about Kyoto and global warming being Bush's fault is more than frivolous. It is destructive. It focuses people on solutions that don't exist, distracting them from taking measures that might be worthwhile in the aftermath of a real change in climate. I don't see it as a conservative/liberal debate. I see it as a debate between thinking pragmatists and the unrealists who somehow have gotten it into their heads that climate will be influenced for the better if we throw everyone out of work and shut down industry.
By 
, at
Sat Jan 14, 12:04:00 PM:
"[I]f the temperature goes up and the ice on Greenland and Arctic islands melts, there is some level of confidence that two bad things happen. First, sea levels rise.
Well, no, there isn't. I believe that most of the Greenland ice cap is essentially floating; if it melted, it would not raise sea levels. The non-floating ice in the Arctic is utterly insignificant in volume compared to the ocean.
If the East Antarctic ice melted (the West Antarctic ice cap is also floating), that would cause a non-trivial rise in sea levels.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Jan 14, 12:57:00 PM:
Akatsukamki --
While no expert, I believe you are incorrect. Greenland's ice is not floating, it is on Greenland. If it melts, sea levels will go up (setting everything else equal). Same for ice on Antarctica, or other Arctic islands.
I agree that the melting of floating ice won't raise sea levels.
