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Living within a living, loving planet
Archive for April, 2012
Another Global Warming “benefit” bites the dust.
Apr 28th
Climate Change Boosts Then Quickly Stunts Plants, Decade-long Study Shows
“Faster nitrogen turnover stimulated nitrogen losses, likely reducing the effect of warming on plant growth,” Hungate said. “More generally, changes in species, changes in element cycles–these really make a difference. It’s classic systems ecology: the initial responses elicit knock-on effects, which here came back to bite the plants. These ecosystem feedbacks are critical–you can’t figure this out with plants grown in a greenhouse.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-change-plants_NSF.html
Source Paper:
Zhuoting Wu, Paul Dijkstra,George W. Koch,and Bruce A. Hungate, Biogeochemical and ecological feedbacks in grassland responses to warming, Nature Climate Change(2012) doi:10.1038/nclimate1486
Received 01 June 2011 Accepted 08 March 2012 Published online 08 April 2012
Abstract
Plant growth often responds rapidly to experimentally simulated climate change1, 2. Feedbacks can modulate the initial responses3, but these feedbacks are difficult to detect when they operate on long timescales4. We transplanted intact plant–soil mesocosms down an elevation gradient to expose them to a warmer climate and used collectors and interceptors to simulate changes in precipitation. Here, we show that warming initially increased aboveground net primary productivity in four grassland ecosystems, but the response diminished progressively over nine years.
Warming altered the plant community, causing encroachment by species typical of warmer environments and loss of species from the native environment—trends associated with the declining response of plant productivity.
Warming stimulated soil nitrogen turnover, which dampened but did not reverse the temporal decline in the productivity response. Warming also enhanced N losses, which may have weakened the expected biogeochemical feedback where warming stimulates N mineralization and plant growth1, 5, 6.
Our results, describing the responses of four ecosystems to nearly a decade of simulated climate change, indicate that short-term experiments are insufficient to capture the temporal variability and trend of ecosystem responses to environmental change and their modulation through biogeochemical and ecological feedbacks.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1486.html
Has ocean warming decreased? No!
Apr 26th
(Figure 2)
Has ocean warming decreased? No!
http://www.skepticalscience.com/levitus-2012-global-warming-heating-oceans.html
“TheWorldOceanaccounts for approximately 93% of the warming of the earth system that has occurred since 1955. The 700-2000m ocean layer accounted for approximately one-third of the warming of the 0-2000m layer of theWorldOcean.”
“The Meehl model results are exactly what Levitus find is happening. We are in the midst of a hiatus decade where global surface warming has been dampened, the increase of the upper OHC has slowed, but more heat is going into the deeper ocean layers.”
Dr. Pielke had argued based on the 700 meter OHC data that global warming had slowed. Levitus et al. note this leveling off in the upper 700 meters in recent years, but that this recent flattening is much less apparent in the 2000 meter data, meaning that more heat is being stored in the 700-2000 meter layer recently (Figure 2).
“This heating amounts to 136 trillion Joules per second (Watts), which as Glenn Tramblyn noted in a previous post, is the equivalent of more than two Hiroshima “Little Boy” atomic bomb detonations per second, every second over a 55-year period. And Levitus et al. note that this immense ocean heating has not slowed in recent years – more of it has simply gone into the deeper ocean layers.”
A Political Process fit for Purpose
Apr 25th
“The growth of emissions can be slowed, relative to the growth rate of the economy. However, emissions cannot conceivably be stalled or reversed while the economy continues to expand, however great the carbon-saving technologies of the coming years.
If our political processes cannot conceive of a non-growth future, and yet a fundamental rethink of growth is the only honest starting point for the fight against climate change, then those political processes are clearly not fit for purpose.”
Oliver De Schutter at the Guardian. Tuesday 24 April 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/24/climate-change-human-rights-issue?INTCMP=SRCH
There are two points that I would like to make about the quote above.
[1]
Fighting against climate change is ridiculous. Just a slight glance at a graphic of temperature variations over a few hundred thousand years reveal that it is always changing. There is no or practically no long period of stability. Over the last million years, at least, we have been going from quick zips of warming squeezed into long periods of increased glaciation and decreased glaciation. Talk about fighting climate change just understandably fuels the skeptics and “deniers.”
I read a lot about the climbing anthropogenic CO2 and steadily rising temperature. The level of CO2 in the air is unquestionably higher than any of the last 4 interglacial periods. Since we as humans had no modern recording and measurement devices, we just don’t know how the CO2 will affect climate. The best we can do is run computer models and simulations. These help us to see into the future but just don’t impress a large segment of our population. Ironically, to make a side step, these same people don’t seem to mind listening to the results of simulations so long as they reveal a story that they agree with.
I’ve said before and continue to claim that we are barking up the wrong tree. Our scientists, driven of course by what governments and multinationals want to hear, focus on why we are still experiencing increasing temperatures, when after around 12,000 years of interglacial warming, compared to the last 4 periods, we should be into a downward dip.
I suggest that we should be concerned and be trying to discover what brought the temperature (and CO2) down in the past. We need to do this as precisely as possible and then when we understand which of the factors discovered are now missing, for instance, millions of trees and immense grasslands and savannah, and then how we can either get around the situation or if not, how we had best prepare for the unknown. Scientists do agree that there are triggers, tipping points, that appear to spearhead the change up and down. I suggest that we have a lot of adequate information about the causes of the upward climb of temperature and emergence into an interglacial period. Whether CO2 climbed first or temperature climbed first is a side issue – important but a mystery that we can live with – while we deal with the known. As I have just said, we spend little time and effort revealing and I argue, explaining to the public that we will most likely skip a whole glacial- interglacial cycle. [An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead?
A. Berger and M. F. Loutre in 23 AUGUST 2002 VOL 297 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org]
Another issue that bothers me is that of our worldview or how we look at our planet. As I’ve tried to suggest and support in my book, Planet as Self, we don’t understand how our planet “works” primarily because we see it as a large and intricate machine. We use the limited views within a pragmatic, physicalist, mindset, with instruments designed to measure machines, to understand a living being. We are IN a planet not on it. We have studied and know that a star, our sun, has a birth and death cycle of increasing heat output on its way to becoming a red giant then a white dwarf and finally a black dwarf. Gaia Theory explains how living beings on the outer skin, so to speak of Gaia, actually work together to counteract this heat increase and maintain Earth’s temperature to the benefit of said life-forms. That’s why we need to work with nature and honour the wisdom inherent in the life of Gaia. After all, we are all first and foremost Earthlings.
[2] Looking again at the quote above, I am extremely pleased to read a critique of the idea of unlimited growth. Out of control growth is known as cancer. Surely it is common sense to agree that a planet with finite resources cannot support unlimited growth. As the author points out, we need to adapt a political (economic) process that is fit for purpose. That purpose being, as a famous American document proposed, the purpose of maintaining a government of the people, by the people and for the people and not just the 1%.
Growing Up, Falling in Love
Apr 20th
Growing Up, Falling in Love
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/growing-up-falling-in-lov_b_1438584.html
“We must fall in love with the Earth — the living, sacred planet, this “dynamic system,” in the words of the Bolivian legislation acknowledging its rights, ‘made up of the undivided community of all living beings, who are all interconnected, interdependent and complementary, sharing a common destiny.’”
This is the future — the only future we have.
Robert Koehler
Syndicated writer
Examining just why we do not love the Earth is a major theme of my book.
Large-scale production of bioenergy from forest biomass is neither sustainable nor GHG neutral
Apr 12th
New research from last week 14/2012
Posted on 11 April 2012 by Ari Jokimäki
http://www.skepticalscience.com/new_research_14_2012.html
Large-scale bioenergy from additional harvest of forest biomass is neither sustainable nor greenhouse gas neutral – Schulze et al. (2012)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1757-1707.2012.01169.x/abstract
Abstract: “Owing to the peculiarities of forest net primary production humans would appropriate ca. 60% of the global increment of woody biomass if forest biomass were to produce 20% of current global primary energy supply. We argue that such an increase in biomass harvest would result in younger forests, lower biomass pools, depleted soil nutrient stocks and a loss of other ecosystem functions.
The proposed strategy is likely to miss its main objective, i.e. to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, because it would result in a reduction of biomass pools that may take decades to centuries to be paid back by fossil fuel substitution, if paid back at all.
Eventually, depleted soil fertility will make the production unsustainable and require fertilization, which in turn increases GHG emissions due to N2O emissions.
Hence, large-scale production of bioenergy from forest biomass is neither sustainable nor GHG neutral.”
Citation: Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Christian Körner, Beverly E. Law, Helmut Haberl, Sebastiaan Luyssaert, GCB Bioenergy, DOI: 10.1111/j.1757-1707.2012.01169.x.
This carbon neutral claim has always sounded suspect. Chopping forest causes a loss of water distribution that limits the ability to sustain new growth. The result points to more desertification. Climate change deniers like to reference millions of years ago when the planet sustained far more CO2 in the air.
We must not forget the climatic conditions which preceded this situation. We cannot expect an increase of CO2 now to develop into anything like what happened millions of years ago. Anyway, unless our thinking changes, water supplies left available will be used to sustain humans and not trees.
Bee Friendly Zones
Apr 11th
Copied from theTransitionTownTotnes Newsletter 65 – April 2012
Bee Friendly Zones with Bridgit Strawbridge [‘it isn’t easy being green series] and Phil Chandler author of ‘The Barefoot Beekeeper’ and an internationally recognized exponent of natural beekeeping.
We are really pleased that Brigit Strawbridge from the BBC2 series ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ and a passionate campaigner for all types of bees, will be speaking alongside Totnes’ own Phil Chandler.
Honeybees are vital to our way of life
We’ve all heard about the threat to honey bees from colony collapse disorder but few people realize that Bumble Bees and hundreds of other essential pollinating insects are also under threat from pesticides, declining habitats and the loss of biodiversity in our towns and countryside.
Brigit and Phil will be outlining the problems but also explaining just what we can do, in our own gardens, allotments, streets and communities, to create Bee Friendly Zones. Not to be missed…
Tuesday 17th April.TotnesMethodistChurch. 8pm. £4/£3 conc.
Group decides that CO2 lags Temperature
Apr 9th
4 April 2012
CO2 ‘drove end to last ice age’
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17611404
“Our global temperature looks a lot like the pattern of rising CO2 at the end of the ice age, but the interesting part in particular is that unlike with these Antarctic ice core records, the temperature lags a bit behind the CO2,” said Dr Shakun, who conducted much of the research at Oregon State University but who is now affiliated to Harvard and Columbia universities.
“You put these two points together – the correlation of global temperature and CO2, and the fact that temperature lags behind the CO2 – and it really leaves you thinking that CO2 was the big driver of global warming at the end of the ice age,” he told BBC News.
Sky: I suggest that we look very carefully at this article. The findings are anything but conclusive. The charts showing CO2 and temperature have always shown that they are very closely interwoven. I am suspicious reading the contents of the quote below. “CO2 was the big driver of global warming at the end of the ice age” As Don J. Easterbrook, PhD Emeritus Professor of Geology, Western Washington University. Retired, reminded readers recently,[ http://wattsupwiththat.com/] correlation does not prove cause. When two phenomena move together they are often simply driven by the same phenomenon. We must ask, what drove the driver? What made the CO2 shift? Obviously we ask, What made the temperature shift? There is very little doubt that when in the midst of an ice age, a warming trend strong enough to melt glaciers almost obviously comes from an increase of heat retention from the sun. When the sun’s orbit is more circular and the Earth’s tilt allows the sun’s rays to strike the Earth in the North and South more directly and precession favours warmer summers, [not so effective when the Earth’s orbit is nearly circular] then ice in polar areas will melt. It just so happens that CO2 and temperatures are low during an ice age. It is probable that as insolation increases oceans become warmer and thus expel some of the accumulated CO2 into the air. If the high insolation persists, then you get the combination of insolation and the greenhouse effect working together as positive feedbacks. From the graphs, it appears that these positive feedbacks gain momentum and cause an interglacial period in a couple of thousand years or so. There doesn,t appear to be any other factor than a temperature increase that would cause a rise in CO2. Ice core data may not be precise enough to prove which one occurred first.
“Right off the bat, a most surprising conclusion in this paper is that the authors claim that correlation proves cause. Simply showing that CO2 correlates with anything surely doesn’t prove that CO2 was the cause. It’s the same kind of mindset involved with the oft-heard claim that if we have had global warming while CO2 was rising that proves the cause was the rise in CO2.” Don J. Easterbrook, Phd
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Who Cares?
Apr 2nd
Drought fears for Midlands and south-west England
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17571709
“Farmers in East Anglia are unlikely to be allowed to draw water from the ground or rivers to irrigate crops. Some are reporting crop reductions of between 20-50%, in vegetables like onions and carrots.
Extra capacity is being found in other areas of the country.
Environment Agency water resources head Trevor Bishop told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the situation was becoming more serious.
‘If we see a continuation of dry weather, which is now very likely, these conditions will probably extend further westward over the next couple of months.’”
I suggest we reconsider taking on the responsibility of “feeding the world.” I repeat, we do not have the problem of lack of food or lack of growing areas where food is needed. The problem is largely twofold. [1] Too many people live where they have “eaten out their environment” [2] Exploitation by the wealthy who own large tracts of land and grow food for export to enable the well to do to gobble out of season fruit and vegetables. Surely if we plough up marginal land here to feed them there, then they will continue to make more and more children until we all be in the same boat.
A few questions. Where will the water come to increase global food? Where will the water come from to water the millions of trees needed to reduce CO2 to stabilize the climate so droughts can be reduced? Now that food has become a global commodity in a global market, can we expect the food sector to favour reducing demand by backing efforts to restrain population growth? Of course not. Except for China, when have you read about a government encouraging the limitation of population growth? I suggest that most governments are now driven by the business attitudes that favour more people. They would wouldn’t they?
Regulators are interesting devices. Voltage regulators, for instance keep a constant voltage level to a voltage output. Regulators are vital to the function of a diesel engine driving a generator because when the regulation fails, the engine “runs away” and explodes.
Perhaps a corporate structure lacks a “regulator.” Is there a corporate concept of “enough profit?” Do corporate executives ever make “enough”?
Can you imagine this statement being made by a corporate executive to the board? “Well, we need to decrease our output and consider that we have made enough profit this year. Our procurement policy is overdriving supply to the detriment of both the organisations and dependent environment.” Sound familiar? Of course not.
I’m just rereading a letter sent to the government of Slovenia from James Hansen, one of my heroes. Read it here if you will.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120330_SlovenianPresident.pdf
“The most basic matter is not one of economics, however. It is a matter of morality – a matter of intergenerational justice. As with the earlier great moral issue of slavery, an injustice done by one race of humans to another, so the injustice of one generation to all those to come must stir the public’s conscience to the point of action.”
Intergenerational justice. I often consider starting my memoirs so that my grandchildren might know who I was and what I thought. Why? Well, I know very little about my Grandfather McCain and I often wonder now what he thought about things. Who was he really?
However, will my grandchildren ask, “Was our welfare important enough to you that you cared enough to speak out during your life against the wanton destruction of our way of life?
You could see clearly what was happening and how things would turn out when we were too young to either realise it or speak out. Did you lift a finger on our behalf?”