Researchers at the University of Alaska claim to have found that the melting of permafrost in Siberia is causing methane emissions to rise more rapidly than previously expected.
This is grim news as methane is one of the most powerful greenhouse gases and the release of methane from melting permafrost in the northern hemisphere is expected to be one of the most potent positive feedbacks accelerating global warming.
The full report is in Nature magazine.
Doesn’t look good for the long-term profit projections of ski resorts, does it?
Although of course the first manifestations of global warming are what we are starting to see now – hot dry summers where the extra heat in the atmosphere feeds energy into cross-hemispheric weather patterns resulting in more frequent and powerful winter storms, so paradoxically Europe and NZ should see some record snowfalls over the next few years. The weather patterns aren’t so kind for the Oz highlands though – latitude and altitude are agin em.
Fear ye not. Any minute now a Panelbeater Bird will land with the all round good news about the great advantages of a warmer climate and higher Co2 concentrations.
They can get into grass skiing or diversifying into more summery activities, as the aus ski fields are trying to do.
Maybe we’ll see the weather guy on Today reporting from a grassy PBL resort, “and yes, the grass is green here at…”
Oh good. Farting permafrost, that’s all we need.
Thanks for posting on this, Paul. Only today I found this slightly more expansive report.
The surprises are coming thick and fast and it is hard to keep up.
Did you know that parts of Siberia got colder then the North Pole????
Did you know that?
But there are colder parts then THAT the wise men say. And that is in the coldness in the hearts of the leftists on this thread.
People LIVE in Siberia DON’TCHAKNOW?…. People live there.
I met a man who was BORN there.
He was a Jewish man.
And he started a shoe manufacturing business in Melbourne and then went broke after they freed things up and then he was getting it together to start something else.
But the mere fact that he was ALIVE and that his father LIVED and that his grandfather had not been murdered struck me as a minor miracle.
People live there. And I’m given to believe that its a pretty hard life….
And you people from out of a colder place ….. Out of a place inside your persons so much closer to Kelvin…….from out of your hateful permanently frozen-over-black-hearts….BEGRUDGE the Siberians this lucky break???!!!!!
That the early winter mornings might be just that little bit less FREEZING and that the permanent frost might yet be nary so permanent so that after a thousand years something MIGHT ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO GROW IN THE GROUND??????!!!!!
Well thats just a little bit TOO much to ask where you hard-hearted demonic left types are concerned.
You remember how fucked up it was when God would come down and harden pharoahs heart in the face of all these depredations.
Yahweh is taking his heart-hardening act downmarket these days.
“Although of course the first manifestations of global warming are what we are starting to see now – hot dry summers where the extra heat in the atmosphere feeds energy into cross-hemispheric weather patterns resulting in more frequent and powerful winter storms, so paradoxically Europe and NZ should see some record snowfalls over the next few years. The weather patterns aren’t so kind for the Oz highlands though – latitude and altitude are agin em.”
Listen TigTog. Forget about coming out drinking with me until you get that FALSIFIABILITY criterion worked out.
You are right there in fantasyland……….
Here is someone else who thinks like you:
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2006/08/30/global-warming/
Good on you for keeping climate change on the LP agenda Paul. I also note you have had a couple of good letters published in “The Age” here in Melbourne recently. Well done.
Birdy, you are being silly. The melting of the permafrost in Siberia is causing buildings tro be structurally unsound and it is also- believe it or not- damaging the bones and tusks of Woolly Mammoths. One of the very few ways the dirt poor Siberians are able to earn a crust is to collect these Woolly Mammoth remains and sell them to museums and private collectors. The melting of the permafrost is also contributing to the proliferation of mosquito infested swamps and this increases the risk of the spread of mosquito borne disease.
What proportion of the public are engaged in woolly-mamoth collection?
You are talking such idiocy Munn.
How is it HARDER rather then easier to get at the Mamoth remnants?
You are being such an idiot you are making me sick.
What proportion of the buildings are rendered structurally unsound by the warmer weather?
20%?
Any excuse will do for you people Munn.
Is that it then? Is your pretense at thinking about the actual HUMANS who actually LIVE IN SIBERIA over?
Please keep going. I just want to see if you can top yourself with further examples of how much better Siberia is when its colder.
Oh wait on a minute. I missed that one. The Siberians are now in grave danger of being overrun by a plague of mosquitoes. Just like the people in the tropics. What next. Mass death through malaria infection?
Are you mentally challenged Munn?
Come on censor?
You aren’t going to let Munn get away with this incredible horseshit are you. This is just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Siberia is just MASSIVE. They can’t all live off Mammoth bones for fucksakes.
And Siberia is so fucking cold. They are not about to be overun by swarms of mosquitoes?
Steve.
How big did you imagine that Siberia was? Big as Monaco? Big as England? Great Britain? Big as Australia? Big as Canada?
Now tell me what the international trade in Mammoths makes every year?
Birdy, a quick internet search will show you that during the warmer months in Siberia mosquitoes are in plague proportions. In fact, Siberia used to have a significant malaria problem and may well do so again should much of the permafrost melt.
I thought the woolly mammoth reference might see you soil your nest
This article talks about the trade in mammoth remains in Siberia. It is indeed big business for the poor and is vitally important given that the economy in Siberia has collapsed since the fall of the Soviet Union. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1170/is_n3_v25/ai_16919563/pg_1
Yes I did check that out. But I’m constrained on this site never knowing what they’ll let through or not.
And despite what I found out about the mosquitoes you are still being quite mad. Mad as a hatter.
Siberia is by some estimates nearly as large as Australia and by others much larger and nearly as large as Canada. The reason for the descrepancy I guess might be due to its being a region rather then a country and so perhaps without clearly defined borders. I say this because I got one estitmate of 7, 511, 000 square kilometres and another of 2 million more.
And estimates of population start at 25million and go into the 30′s.
The Mosquitoes were already a plague like flies in Western Australia. They were already a plague in 1903 when things were presumable COLDER and they have Malaria as we speak.
So it simply will not do to wish that problem away now by injecting it into the future and blaming it on global warming. They have Malaria now. And what they need is a bit of an easier life and to be able to afford to get out there and start killing the Mosquitoes as soon as the snow melts.
So you were being a total lunatic on all points. The Mammoth trade cannot support any population the size of Canada. The millions of dwellings are not threatened by global warming. The mosquitoes are already there and must be actively killed and the malaria actively stamped out.
And Siberias vast resources will be more easily got at and its vast lands more easily farmed if the ground is not rock hard all year round from being iced over.
The extra CO2 will help reforest the place and it will make the food grow more quickly in what will still be a short growing season in most places.
And your smug foolishness in all this borders between being laughable and sickening.
The Siberian peat bogs are huge.
The significance of this for the planet is hard to guage, but I suspect it goes beyond opening up some new real estate in Siberia.
Great link Brian. A lot of interesting stuff in that one.
Look at this interesting theory:
“…Methane has long been one of the primary culprits in global warming. Methane from herds of livestock extended our current interglacial, and continues to be one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. Even though it breaks down relatively quickly, it breaks down into CO2, another greenhouse gas that is much more difficult to deal with….”
A speculation presented as a fact. Nonetheless a very good speculation. I would put this one in as my default position. But its not just the methane surely. But the burning off of forests everywhere as well. Its amazing how many pertinent ideas are in that one paragraph alone:
1. The development of farming vis a vis livestock …..(and I would say alongside forest clearing) extended our interglacial….
2. But the next part is very odd:”… and CONTINUES to be one of the most harmful greenhouse gases.”
Continues? CONTINUES????? My goodness. Now I’ll buy it that this implies that methane is indeed very powerful. So that your (Brians) concerns about the peat bogs the size of France melting sound fair enough.
But we can never be clear-headed about all this if we don’t be even-minded all the way through. That methane in the past has to be thought of as a fantastic lucky break and were it not for the benevolent accident of HUMAN INTERVENTION into the climate, our civilisation would likely have been wiped out by the ice by now. We may have gotten as far as Athens and then the ice comes down to wipe us out.
3. “… Even though it breaks down relatively quickly, it breaks down into CO2, another greenhouse gas that is much more difficult to deal with….”
So the Methane doesn’t stay around forever. It breaks down to vegetation-growth-promoting-CO2. So what we would expect is a burst of very powerful warming effect but not something that need be plaguing us in 1000 years time if we handle things well.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The worst outcome of all would be a new glaciation. What one is worried about, on the HEATING side of things is not so much any conceivable warming over the next 200 years but what it is that could possibly happen after that.
What could happen after the peat bogs melt? It may be a threat but its also and opportunity.
You see I would propose a “hedgehog” (the hedgehog being a critter with ONE very effective method of dealing with danger) strategy to deal with all of these problems.
And that would be REFORESTATION. Not a restriction of agriculture, industry, mining and so forth. But for the final outcome to look like from the air that all these vital activities are carved out of a sea of forest. Hopefully by then also we would have a way of getting biofuels from cellulose since attempting to get it from cash crops is so stupid you need a subsidy to do it.
The extra carbon dioxide in the air and the opening up of all this extra land everywhere gives us the potential for sinking massive amounts of carbon into extra plant growth. And its not just Siberia. With enough capital investment along with the extra CO2 it will likely be possible to bring life to massive territories that are currently wastelands. Like the Nullabor and the Sahara. And later on perhaps even the Antarctic.
In fact reforestation is going on RIGHTNOW with the help of that extra CO2 in the air. This is happening now and surely its a pro-nature sort of thing.
Another factor might be construction materials in the distant future. If we look into the topic of VERY HARD MATERIALS…. If we look into this we find that nearly all of them amount to carbon. And one day we may well have biillions of tons of carbon imbedded in our buildings.
Capitalism gives us any number of ways to deal with what in some ways is the extremely fortunate happenstance of high CO2 levels that will be in the air these next few centuries.
But to my mind if there is one thing that could overwhelm capitalism and civilisation itself it would be a new glaciation.
Bird, you’ve said a few things I actually agree with.
You may well be right that methane (eg from rice paddies) saved us in the past from glaciaition.
I also agree that the big question is what is going to be happening in 200 years time or so. The big point about the story, IMHO, is not just that it’s happening but that it is happening possibly 5 times faster than previously thought. Scientist seem to be getting surprised quite frequently lately with the speed and intensity of what is happening. The big worry is how all these things interact with each other and whether they put in motion effects that run out of control in the longer term.
You can reforest away as far as I’m concerned, and it seems that land use is going to be a critical issue.
On building materials, here’s a quote from Lovelock:
To make much difference you’d need an awful lot of serpentine, but the beauty is that you don’t need to capture the CO2 and transport it, you just set up shop wherever the rock is.
Birdy, you seem to assume a straight forward link between plant growth and carbon dioxide levels. Obviously you know very little about plants and haven’t done much reading on this topic. Note this link to coverage of a scientific paper that involves actual empirical research and clearly contradicts your simplistic assumption http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021206075233.htm
I have also read that scientists have implicated increased CO2 emissions with changes in the composition of plants in forests to the detriment of current ecosystems and with the promotion of less nutritous, tougher, fibrous plant growth.
None of this is surprising to a keen gardener such as myself. For instance, NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) are the key macronutrients plants need for growth and vigour. However this doesn’t mean that dropping bags of NPK on a forest from the back of a plane will necessarily make everything grow quicker and bigger. In real life, things are not that simple. Only a fool would think otherwise.
Finally, if Putin thought global warming would benefit Siberia in the manner you suggest, there is no way he would’ve signed the Kyoto Treaty. And yes, I do realise Siberia is massive. I don’t even have to consult my plastic K-Mart globe to know that.
No its YOU that know very little about plants.
Because its well-known that plants grow more quickly with extra CO2. And most plants grow better the more you have right up until 1000ppm to 1500ppm.
Now lets not have any LYING now Munn. I don’t think thats too much to ask. And how about you pick up the quality of your arguments. Because they have been surpassingly stupid so far.
You’re just laughable Munn. You must have spent a bit of time looking for that post and you must have tendentiously ignored all the other information you got showing the absolutly universally known commercial-growing FACT that CO2 improves yields.
Here are some more standard links. But using your tendentious ‘method’ of finding out what you want to believe you could probably prove that the moon is made of green cheese.
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/3368.html
http://www.maximumyield.com/article254.htm
http://escholarship.bc.edu/dissertations/AAI1411120/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2006/20060
Ha Ha. Notice that you had to go back to 2002 to try this JIVE on.
FROM YOUR OWN LINK:
“The prevailing view among scientists is that global climate change may prove beneficial to many farmers and foresters at least in the short term. The logic is straightforward: Plants need atmospheric carbon dioxide to produce food, and by emitting more CO2 into the air, our cars and factories create new sources of plant nutrition that will cause some crops and trees to grow bigger and faster. ”
Well that says it all. And it remains the known fact of the matter.
“Finally, if Putin thought global warming would benefit Siberia in the manner you suggest, there is no way he would’ve signed the Kyoto Treaty. And yes, I do realise Siberia is massive. I don’t even have to consult my plastic K-Mart globe to know that.”
This is just LAUGHABLE….. HO HO. That’s right. Pardon me. I forgot. Politicians are ALWAYS fantastic scientists. Russian leaders are only motivated by pure goodness, and KGB types always do the right thing.
I don’t think its too much to ask Munn, that you actually put up some sort of case…. For example if the heating that we might expect to get from all that methane coming from the peat bogs turned out to be a forever thing then I’d be concerned as well.
Bird
This ‘nature corridors’ idea you have been touting all over the web is certainly an intriguing idea. But who is going to have the incentive to develop these corridors? Who pays for it? Perhaps you should develop this on your blog.
But here is the irony – this nature corridors idea might end up putting you on the same side as Paul Norton and Steve Munn in terms of policy. One way of encouraging such nature corridors is through an international emissions trading scheme. Nature corridors are of course carbon sinks. A country or rather companies in a country, such as BHP in Australia could turn a profit by investing in nature corridors and arbitraging this through an international trading scheme.
With a bit of goodwill these things might come about over the next 200 years and the incentive is only a sort of mild negative one.
You see for the time being we have to pay land value tax anyhow. And it might be that when you assessed that land value tax that part of the land that you had that was locked into a corridor that would allow the critters to migrate in a curved path could simply be set at zero.
Thats a very weak incentive I know. But small insipid forces working over many decades can have a strong effect.
I’m going on the basis here only that for the forseeable future we will still need to raise some taxes.
Carbon sinks would be OK but for two things. You are giveing the revenue away. Presumably you need so much revenue to run a defense force and so forth. And the other thing is that a trading system is going to discourage coal use. Which we sure don’t want to do at least for the next 50 years.
To some extent the planet is greening on its own. Greening as we speak and partly due to all this extra CO2. And its only the very long run I’d be concerned about on the heating side.
So this tiny tax-break incentive working minute in minute out for two centuries straight could change things at minimal cost.
But the most important thing is to have a sort of international banning everywhere on height restrictions on buildings. Because that will take out a lot of pressure for lateral development. And also getting infrastructure user-pays and eventually privatised, perhaps with caveats, for the very same reason.
You do all you can without violating libertarian principles and hold the other stuff in reserve for when its clear that its some sort of unambiguous emergency.
I think we have hundreds of years yet for this particular ‘emergency’ so I don’t yet think that we need to go beyond what I suggest here.
But the good news is that if it really DOES get out of hand we can just fund nearly EVERYTHING through carbon-tax and carbon-tax offsets and the problem would be solved in a single century. Its not time for that yet.
Yes, Jason, it is hardly a small government approach. There also seems to me that there is an ‘environmental refugee’ problem which is likely to be more challenging than anything we’ve had to face so far. Think of tens of millions of Bangladeshis taking off for northern Canada or Siberia.
Steve, following your link, there is another article supporting what you say about elevated CO2 and plant growth.
Same publication. And the experiments were done with nitrogen-depleted soils??????
Truly bizzare. And no details.
The fact of CO2 improving plant growth has to be one of the most empirically and commercially tested facts out there.
Even if these guys are right and CO2 was a nitrogen-depleting-villain it would be just a matter of planting lupins and then rotating the other plants back in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupin
Decades ago I can remember going out to the forestry and they’d plant lupins in the sandy soil prior to planting the pine seedlings.
But the study is a clear joke and a fraud since these guys MERELY ASSUMED that the CO2 would deplete the soil rather then LET THEIR SIX YEAR EXPERIMENT PROVE IT FOR THEM.
So right away they are working on dubious and likely false premises.
Find a study where they don’t rig it by depleting the soil first.
Their begginning unproved assumption that the extra CO2 will reduce nitrogen in the soil is not only arbitrary…. It might be the opposite of the case. And the fact that they didn’t FIND this but simply rigged the soil to be low-nitrogen actually tends to support the idea that CO2 WON’T do this.
From my third link above:
“This research examines how elevated carbon dioxide levels influence soil carbon and nitrogen accumulation. My research shows that carbon dioxide enrichment has increased the rate of soil carbon accumulation by 30% and soil nitrogen by 130% compared to accumulation under ambient CO2 levels. I observed these increases after 3.5 years of Free-Air-CO2-Enrichment (FACE). These results suggest that CO2 fertilization may transfer enough carbon from the atmosphere to the soil to significantly slow the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
Lets go over that again to highlight the relevant part:
“My research shows that carbon dioxide enrichment has increased the rate of soil carbon accumulation by 30% AND SOIL NITROGEN BY 130% compared to accumulation under ambient CO2 levels.”
“….AND SOIL NITROGEN BY 130%…..”
So far our default position has to be that the extra CO2 will INCREASE and not DEPLETE soil nitrogen.
We can therefore send these Science Daily studies to the fires.
The truth about adding extra CO2 to increase plant growth is that it only has a dramatic effect when plants are running under or over optimal conditions – when a plant is getting as much, if not more light than it can photosynthesise, as many nutrients up to the level that they can metabolise and enough water to keep them transpiring at maximum. Then, and only then will any extra CO2 have the amazing outcomes in terms of increased growth and production that people are citing. Those people who grow dope (or any other plant in a controlled indoor environment) know this, which is why the hydroponic shops can sell all that gear needed to maximise everything. But, as every dope grower knows, adding extra CO2 into a grow room with insufficient light, or inadequate nutrients is just a waste of time and money. For the bulk of the world’s plants in the wild, living as they do under far less than optimal conditions in terms of access to light, water and nutrients, it is highly unlikely that extra CO2 will do anytthing to bring about the dramatic outcomes alluded to….
Cheers…
No thats not right Mick.
CO2 benefits under any normal conditions.
But that might be what you are saying. After all listen to this:
“The truth about adding extra CO2 to increase plant growth is that it only has a dramatic effect when plants are running under or over optimal conditions….”
You sure sound like a fellow who like to cover his ass!!!!!!!
Try again. CO2 works. Don’t try and bullshit your way out of that one.
But what do we have here?
“…..and enough water to keep them transpiring at maximum.”
You see now I KNOW you are bullshitting and tendentiously making it up. Because the fact is that the extra CO2 REDUCES plant transpiration and therefore increases the WATER-PRODUCTIVITY (ie the rate of growth/water use) of plants.
Next time Strummer don’t make it up.
The whole point is that CO2 is not some kind of magic bullet that will automatically increase plant growth no matter what. It takes its place in a delicate combination of things that a plant needs to grow, and if a plant is lacking any one of them, extra CO2 will make no absolutely difference. You can stick a plant in a desert with no water, and feed it all the extra CO2 you like, but without water it ain’t gonna grow. I ain’t making that up, it is a basic physiological fact. A plant with no nutrients isn’t going to grow no matter how much CO2 it can metabolise. If ALL the factors that limit plant growth are increased up to the physiological limits of the species, then yes, extra O2 will have an effect. But we don’t know enough about plants and they way they grow to figure that extra carbon dioxide will be a good thing.
BTW My earlier comment that
Birdy, one of the points I raised earlier is the differential reaction of plants to an increase in CO2 availability. For example, scientists are now concerned that in the Amazon vines have been overtaking and killing trees because they are more efficient at utilising CO2. I have just found this study which shows that this problem is far more widespread than I initially suspected http://www.mbl.edu/inside/what/news/features/feature_ivy.html Note the following:
“Pumping carbon dioxide through pipes into a North Carolina pine forest, Mohan found that poison ivy grew at 2 1/2 times its normal rate, an increase five times the average gain for trees. The noxious vine grew thicker, used water more efficiently and became far more allergenic to humans.”
So it seems that your idea that more atmospheric CO2 will uniformly benefit all plants and flora ecosystems is at best harebrained. So is your idea that we should be plantings lupins all over the bloody globe. Are you volunteering to plant lupins in the middle of the Amazon, dopey?
No no no thats wrong.
The point is that it IS a magic bullet. And that it DOES make virtually ALL plants grow faster in virtually ALL normal circumstances….
And so the people who want to impose costs on us to reduce CO2 output will also be starving off the poor and making it harder for us to get fresh water to folks.
“I will clarify this – for anyone who can’t or won’t get it – by saying again, when plants have no other factors that are limiting their physiological potential to grow, then extra CO2 will help.”
No No NO NO NO NO NO no no no no no Strummer.
Thats wrong. Extra CO2 will help you do better with anything you got going. Those conditions where it won’t help are the exception and outside of the normal relevant circumstances.
CO2 is for plants what cash is for humans. It goes well with anything else you got going. You do not have to get everything NEAR PERFECT for CO2 to be helpful.
You have it wrong.
You are making it up.
Bird clearly has a pre-conceived view about extra CO2 in for plants. Hey, we all know that food is a good thing, but we also know that too much of it creates obesity. CO2 might be a good thing such that plants can’t grow without it, but I am yet to read any serious peer reviewed serious scientific evidence that shows that it is a good thing all the time everywhere under all circumstances. I know that this will result in Bird giving us heaps of links – doubtless to his own previous pronouncements and all sorts of other dodgy psuedo science. When all is said and done, though, maybe Bird should actually go out and try and get his high office, do something to develop more policies to pour even more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. Then he could stop lecturing the rest of us on blogs that he clearly doesn’t agree with…. What do they say? Those that can do, those that can’t blog…
Cheers…
Birdy, saying “no” three times and dancing a jig does not constitute persuasive argument. The study I cite is recent and was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It isn’t a piece of trash research conducted for a dodgy publication like E&E. Again, read this quote:
“Besides the blistering rashes caused by poison ivy, scientists are interested in Mohan’s research for another reason: the choking of the world’s forests. Poison ivy is in a class of plants called woody vines. Around the world, woody vines are flourishing to the point where they can smother young trees, which are the ‘forests of the future’ ”
If you have any scientific evidence to show why the Mohan study is wrong, please provide it.
Birdy,
I have found reference to two other contemporaneous longitudinal field studies that dismiss your claim the increased atmospheric CO2 will have a lasting positive effect on plant growth. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_15_169/ai_n16347037
Here are some quotes:
” Lab and field experiments had shown that plants grow more quickly in the presence of higher-than-normal concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air, says Peter B. Reich, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota in St. Patti. Unfortunately, results of along-term experiment by Reich and his colleagues show that the trend doesn’t last.”
And another:
” Another group of researchers also finds that plants getting extra carbon dioxide run out of other nutrients. That team, led by ecologist Johan Six of the University of California, Davis, reports in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences an analysis of earlier experiments by several research groups.
In the presence of nitrogen-producing legumes and higher-than-normal concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, soil continues building up carbon only when other nutrients, such as phosphorus, potassium, and molybdenum, are added. In other ecosystems, high concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide increase soil carbon only when researchers add nitrogen, the Davis group concludes.”
Worryingly, Reich says that if nutrient limitations cause plant growth to slow, as the new studies suggest, carbon dioxide may build up in Earth’s atmosphere faster than scientists previously expected.
Once again, if you have scientific evidence that disputes these longitudinal field studies I would be grateful if you would provide it.
Well, I have anecdotal evidence that CO2 is bad bad bad bad bad.
(Sorry. Caught Birdy’s stutter for a moment therer.)
I once lived with a nurse while I was going through a welding phase. I had a very neat oxyacetylene set with a goddam huge tank of oxygen. One day I caught my nurse housemate taking a toke on it! Really! She said nurses did that at the hospital she worked at (Cairns Base) to ward off hangovers.
Anyhow, I had a try (very dangerous, I later learned, with industrial oxy), and it was beaut, I tell you. Great to have no CO2 in the lungs. A real buzz.
Actually, I’ve heard if you do it enough you end up looking like Steve Munn’s gravitar.
But anyhow, that’s my empirical evidence on par with Birdy’s.
The trend doesn’t last.
What a lot of bollocks. The trend DOES last. And its just a matter of time until I find the tendentiousness of your last tendentiously hunted-for post like I did for the Science-Daily ones.
You tell me Munn, in your own words, why the effect wouldn’t last? It already HAS lasted for decades now and is still going strong.
The fact is you people are being unscientific even as we speak. Hunting through the data to find some leftist scientist who has artificially reduced the nitrogen in the soil is a bit rich.
Now don’t be idiots. The fact that CO2 improves plant-growth is one of the best-known commercially and empirically-tested facts there is. And to say otherwise using your google-method is laughable and its a depressing display of the leftist bubble-mind in action.
Weathergirl. You had O2 in your lungs surely?
“Bird clearly has a pre-conceived view about extra CO2 in for plants.”
No thats bullshit Strummer. Thats YOU thats being tendentious. You are desperately twisting things to attempt to say that CO2 release is a bad thing. Yow were trying to pretend that every other condition had to be perfect or close to perfect for CO2 to have an effect. Well its a nice leftist try but its just bullshit so stop bullshitting.
Caught you Munn!
The study your article sites is the exact same one that Brian sited and your journalist misreported it. He made it look like the nitrogen had been depleted by the extra CO2 whereas the science daily version has them depleting the nitrogen for the purpose of the study.
You go find yourself more direct sources. But I ask you. Isn’t it TELLING YOU SOMETHING bubble-boy if you have to hunt down this counter-factual deal and you keep getting the same study in many different disguises?
My goodness? Leftists hey? The most simplist well-known thing that CO2 improves plant-growth and you guys can just bullshit this fact out of existence.
I think I said on another thread what Steve, Mick and Brian have posted here – basically that in real-world ecosystems, the effect of increased CO2 on plant growth can’t be considered in isolation from other variables such as changes in precipitation, temperature (both averages and extremes), and availability of soil nutrients, the differential responses of different plant species to changes in these factors, and the likelihood of increased numbers of invertebrate pests and parasites, and changes in predation by herbivores, in the context of overall climate change. I’ve studied enough ecology to know that in real-world ecosystems there is seldom, if ever, a simple linear monocausal relationship between two variables of the sort that PB is suggesting here.
Says it all, really. Who is to say what will happen under competitive conditions and sub-optimal resource levels. In the complicated non-linear systems that are found in nature, there will almost certainly be a different outcome. And even if we do get any increased growth, it will also certainly benefit undesirable plants like woody weeds and invasive species that can out-compete more desirable plants that are cultivated. This in turn could well mean that agriculture and forestry, far from benefitting, may well have to rely on ever greater levels of herbicides merely to maintain production…. We simply don’t know enough to run around asserting that increased levels of CO2 are a goof thing. Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t. But the evidence is a long way from being put to the jury, let alone supporting a verdict.
Cheers…
“…. basically that in real-world ecosystems, the effect of increased CO2 on plant growth can’t be considered in isolation from other variables such as changes in precipitation, temperature (both averages and extremes), and availability of soil nutrients”
Yes it can. On the AVERAGE it can. And the contention I’m making that at least for the next several centuries extra CO2 is a massive positive net benefit. So we are talking about global averages here. Albeit that we might have to have a plan afoot to rein things in down the track.
And the other contention I’m making is that for the time being my HEDGEHOG-STRATEGY is quite sufficient. And the one big reaction a la le HEDGEHOG ought to be for us to be trying to slowly extend nature corridors everywhere. So that over many decades…. perhaps two centuries…
So that perhaps after two centuries few homo-sapiens will be very far from a massive contiguous unfenced curved path of trees that allows the critters to migrate…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now….. CO2 is the growth-limiting step barring massive artificial nitrogen depletion and some sort of mega-starvation of the normal spectrum of trace elements and minerals. And CO2 furthermore INCREASES precipitation and INCREASES the plant productivity of water because it reduces transpiration……
So the water side of things is taken care of if we are talking global-net-positive benefits-on-the-average. And I’m ONLY talking about global-net-positive benefits-on-the-average.
So what do we have here? The factors are water, CO2, Nitrogen and trace elements….
And we have taken care so far of water and CO2…. What about the Nitrogen? Perhaps CO2 depletes soil nitrogen?…
Well as we have SEEN…. and as my link SHOWS (third link in group of four above) CO2 INCREASES the amount of nitrogen in the soil.
But we have via links to this very thread a group of science workers, simply assuming that this is the opposite of the case? Why don’t we go with them when we have this perceived conflict of information?
Well my guy tested it out. And the other fellows (in one study at least) simply ASSUMED the opposite of my guys findings.
But I can read your minds and hear you thinking…. “But this cannot be right. How could we be so fortunate as for the CO2 to not only speed up the plant growth but enrich the soil with Nitrogen while its doing it?”
Well the FACT of the matter is that we ARE so fortunate, and there is a very simple reason for this if you consider a plant to be like a factory………..
Whereas currently the plants can only GET-AT CO2 by picking the CO2 molecules out of AIR which has only 387 parts per million of CO2 and 999613 parts per million of……………OTHER STUFF.
(in most recently published books its 380, but since its growing at .4% per year I’ll go with the 387 figure I saw somewhere or other)
It must be pretty tricky to pick up those CO2 molecules.. out of the air… when the air is only 387 parts CO2 and 999613 parts other stuff.
Whereas this sparseness of the target molecule is the case with CO2………
But with NITROGEN matters are somewhat different…
For one thing most plants are not constituted by as much NITROGEN in their WHOLE being as they are by HYDROGEN, OXYGEN AND CARBON…. And they can get more then enough OXYGEN from water and CO2. So much so that they end up crapping/exhaling much of THAT oxygen.
By weight the NITROGEN component of your average plant would be somewhat miniscule.
And yet as we said that vital CO2 only constitutes 387 parts per million of the AIR the plant has to work with whereas (water vapour aside) NITROGEN constitutes 780,080 parts per million of THAT self-same air.
NITROGEN CONSISTS OF SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND AND EIGHTY PARTS PER MILLION OF THE AIR THAT PLANTS WORK WITH IN PRODUCTION.
So it is no MYSTERY then, when MY scientist finds out that given enough CO2 the plants actually have Nitrogen TO BURN, so to speak, and start depositing the extra NITROGEN in the soil and thus ENRICH, rather then deplete the soil with nitrogen.
And this seems to be so much the case that MUNN’s science workers had to artificially deplete the soil of Nitrogen in order to get their negative results. And actually they probably bullshitted where that is concerned anyway. Because leftists are liars.
Now to the FINAL element……………..
We have dealt with the Water the CO2 and the Nitrogen. And we have found that extra CO2 ought to help with ALL OF THESE, and that my scientist ought to be believed on all counts…… And that this is very much relevant to the theses that I’m trying to put over here.
But the last element was TRACE ELEMENTS…… We haven’t dealt with the trace elements. And if CO2 depletes the trace elements then this is a VERY serious matter indeed.
How many billion years have plants been around?
I’m not looking it up. But lets go with the last 500 million years only. Now if growing a lot of stuff exhausted the soil we’d all be pretty messed up already wouldn’t we?
YES WE WOULD. AFTER 500 BLOODY MILLION YEARS WE WOULD.
We’d be in trouble if 500 million years of growing stuff exhausted the soil.
We surely would and there can be no denying this.
So whats happened? Well on average the trace elements never LEAVE the situation…. for Petes sakes. You have leaves falling… THEY ROT with the help of bacteria… you have animals dying THEY ROT TOO… the animals eat stuff…. AND THEY EXCRETE ALL THAT STUFF…… there are EARTH-WORMS…. and so forth…..
And so its bollocks to think that there will be this NET depletion of trace elements and we know this is not the case because things have been growing for all the time of our sample period…….. Our sample period being 500 million years.
So there is just no sense or reason to believe that CO2 is going to tire out nature in the way so far suggested on this thread?
Makes no sense at all.
It makes no sense to think that CO2 will act like a ONE-OFF-SHOT of speed, or cocaine………….. and that then nature will get tired.
“THEY SAID THAT CO2 WAS ‘NATURES COCAINE’. THEY SAID THAT CO2 WAS THE ‘SPEED-OF-GASSES’. THEY TELL US THAT CO2 IS THE AMPHETAMINE OF GASSES, IN THAT CO2, WILL MAKE MOTHER NATURE WORK TOO TOO HARD…………. AND THEN CO2 WILL WEAR THE OLD BITCH DOWN.”
You see the above is what you guys were trying to put over and its just not plausible.
It’s just SILLY. We have accounted for water, CO2 and Nitrogen. The trace elements are recycled endlessly in any natural system.
But in the hydroponic world…
That is to say OUTSIDE the world of nature…..
In the world of commercial crops for example….
OF COURSE you are going to have to REPLACE these TRACE ELEMENTS that will be depleted.
Thats no problem and will be cheaper with all this ambient CO2 taking care of the big three (water, nitrogen, CO2)……….ON AVERAGE.
So if some science workers allege they’ve done a study where CO2 TIRES out the soil and by inference suggest that it will tire out NATURE ITSELF……
If some bogus tax-eating science-workers in cahoots with some dopey journalists try and tell you that CO2 will LEAVE MOTHER NATURE JADED AND DEPLETED and set us up for a MUNN-LIKE-MEGA-DISASTER….
….Then you will know whats going on won’t you?
You see what these bloody science workers will have done is that they will have grown some stuff… cut it out…. taken it away….. grown some other stuff…. cut THAT out… and they will have taken THAT away….. And so forth until the TRACE ELEMENTS HAVE BEEN DEPLETED…
And then the dumb leftist bastards will make a lying leftist inference to THE NATURAL WORLD.
And I ask you?
Is THAT any way to conduct a scientific experiment on the public tit?
I…………don’t………THINKso!!!!!!!!!
Just to remind people that Andrew Denton will be talking to Al Gore on Enough Rope tonight.
What time is THAT Brian?
Thanks Brian.
This is one Denton I won’t be missing. And I’s gonna see his flick when it opens on Thursday.. Will let prodeo people what I think – if anyone is interested…
Cheers…
Bird, I’m sorry the time has past. A transcript will appear in due course at the website.
I was tired tonight having talked for about 4 hours non-stop and done my 50k Monday night retrieval mission. My wife kept poking me to wake me up. No reflection on the show, which was excellent.
Gore’s science gets top marks. He thinks that public opinion is reaching a critical mass in the US to a point where the Congress and the administration will have to follow.
He also sees hope in Arnie Schwarzennegger mandating certain things in California and says other states are following. It gets to a point when business demands a national approach for convenience.
There was also a whole spiel about the internet and citizen generated and chosen TV. Sorry I nodded off during that bit.
It seems he’s not running for President in the short to medium term.
btw I’m claiming bragging rights on something I found today that I wrote in 1979. I was commenting on a paper that said the invention of the silicon chip was the equivalent of the industrial revolution:
Right now I’m more confident about what I was suggesting as against what he was asserting.
Birdy,
I am now asking you for the third and last time, provide me with links to the contemporaneous longitudinal field studies that support the bullshit that you are promulgating and disprove the studies I have cited.
If you can’t then I demand an apology.
I give you 24 hours.
Bird
you are really carrying this CO2 worship to absurd lengths.
Indeed, Jason. It seems Birdy has set his CO2 love to the sound of music:
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2006/09/11/co2saving-all-my-lovefor-you/
Yesterday I was rummaging under the house for something I needed to find and turned up my copy of Flannery’s book. This is what he says about increased CO2 and plant growth in response to propaganda from the coal industry:
The reference he gives is:
Ainsworth, E. A. & Long, S. P. 2005. What have we learned from fifteen years of free-air CO2 enrichment FACE? A meta-analytic review of the responses of photosynthesis, canopy properties and plant production to rising CO2. New Phytologist 165, pp. 351-72.
The reference to Ronald Wright who I had not thought of as a philosopher is to his A Short History of Progress.
“Birdy,
I am now asking you for the third and last time, provide me with links to the contemporaneous longitudinal field studies that support the bullshit that you are promulgating and disprove the studies I have cited.”
Why SHOULD I?
I CAN do that. But its not important.
YOu haven’t come up with anything. Come up with something?
For starters you have to get as close to source as possible. Because this study doesn’t tell us anything. And anything it tells us is filtered through some dumb-left reporter.
Secondly Brians link coming from the same crowd made it quite clear that they artificially reduced the nitrogen content of the soil. Whereas we see elsewhere that CO2 will increase the nitrogen content of the soil. So the study has no relevance whatsoever unless you can get the details.
You don’t HAVE anything Munn.
Listen carefully.
Are you listening?…….
Ready Munn….?
You don’t you have anything Munn.
This thread has been a medium for one bit of riduculousness after another on your part. I’ve won this argument and you’ve been a damn fool the whole way through.
“Jason Soon on 11 September 2006 at 11:36 pm
Bird
you are really carrying this CO2 worship to absurd lengths.”
Well how many kids died of malnutrition yesterday Jason? And how many square kilometres of currently useless land do we want to reclaim for nature and agriculture over the next 300 years and especially when we can cheaply get fresh water out of seawater?
How many kilometres would you think that would be?
And how many shows does the ABC do on the future disaster of not enough fresh water?
And how much was the human race attenuated by the last glaciation at the worst point?
Of COURSE!!!!! I want to point out the great free lunch that is CO2. In economics we say there is no free lunch and mostly true until you discover CO2.
Why aren’t you SCANDALISED by the one-sided nature of this most ridiculous and ridiculously premature of scares? The scientists should know, better and they should be pointing out the things I’m pointing out.
We are talking food prices for starving millions for Pete’s sakes. You cold-hearted freaks out there need some sort of empathy transplant.
Come on Brian. You get all this great news and then you somehow manage to twist it to make it sound bad. This is just indicative of how much momentum this scare has gained.
“It turns out that trees benefit far more than shrubs and grasses from increases in CO2, and that than species that benefit least are grasses belonging to a group that includes our most important crops.”
Right. So all plants benefit from CO2….BUT ESPECIALLY TREES..
Now why haven’t you hailed this as fantastic news? There is no real detail here so we cannot really assume too much. But tell me?
1. Which of these plants do we need to reclaim formerly useless land and set it up as a great environment for both nature and crops….
Its the trees Brian. The lupins go in first and then we plant the trees. Later on we can carve out the agricultural land from the middle of the trees.
2. Which type of plant do we want to soak up great amounts of carbon if things overshoot?
Well that would be the trees too Brian. Wouldn’t it. Such joyous news you bring?
3. Improved yields of 6% and 8%…. well thats terrific news and not to be sneezed at. This means of course that the trees are going to pick up their growth by a great deal more. Of course I’m skeptical about this. And its a bit too much of an assumption to make that we cannot find new strains of rice, grass, wheat and so forth that cannot take great good advantage of the extra CO2 now available.
“Rice, for example, showed an increase in yield of only 6 per cent in response to a doubling of CO2, while wheat yields rose by only 8 per cent.”
Lets just change the way that reads: Rice increased its yield with extra CO2 by a MASSIVE 6% and wheat yields improved EVEN MORE THEN THAT!!!!!
Millions of lives will be saved. Hallelujah. Think of the children. Isn’t that the best news..
You see how you have…. just due to the massive momentum that this movement has gained, gotten into the habit of thinking what could go wrong. And you managed to do this in the midst of the best news imagineable.
” In future, crops will be stressed by higher temperature….”
There’s no reason to believe this
“….. more ozone at ground level and changes in soil moisture….”
Changes in soil moisture for the better (global-net-average-positive benefits is whats relevant here…)
“…. all of which will decrease yields…..”
As we have seen thats not going to happen on a global net positive basis under capitalism.
” Thus, rather than an agricultural paradise, a CO2-rich world promises to be one in which crop production is lower than today…”
Bad guess.
The best guess is that under Capitalism CO2 will give us the POTENTIAL to vastly increase yields.
Now its going to require capital investment. But thats what capitalism is good at.
Hurry up damn your black heart Norton!!!
And don’t handball it off onto Brian either. I was never going to believe that one.
Fuck it man?
Why don’t you just damn well let the chips fall where they may???
Is that too much to ask?
If you hold my reply over Norton its misleading. Because it creates the false impression that the other side is winning.
Birdy, you are a prolific writer. Ever thought about publishing a collection?
Bird, no-one would ever think you had no more to say. But it may be getting to the stage where what you will say has already been said by you!
I thought Flannery could have stated his case better, but I was only reporting what he said and he was only reporting on a meta-analysis of research. I assume he interpreted its overall meaning accurately and there is no mistake about this statement:
I gave the full citation so that academics like Paul could check out the original at their leisure if they chose. It sounds to me like a refereed journal so I’d take it as a pretty good source.
Flannery also mentions with some detail the species that will go extinct if the tundras become wooded. There is a fair amount of hubris in reorganising the biosphere in a world with CO2 in the range of 1000 to 1500ppm or even thinking that it can be brought to any kind of steady state that is generally favourable to life at such levels when we have had no experience of same. FWIW my ethical position is that we should try to put it back the way we found it in 1800 with the proviso that we ought also to avoid another ice age in the normal sense of the word.
Other than that I’m with Lovelock in thinking that we should try to make our peace with the planet by allowing it the capacity to heal itself, but I don’t really want to expand on how this may be accomplished here and now. But we’re in a tight scrape and we are going to have to cooperate like the species never has before, and need a bit of luck.
The Bird as far as I can ascertain, has published quite a few papers on the sciences.Some titles I have discovered are as follows.
MY CAREER AS A CLOWN.
SOLDIER OF MISFORTUNE.
BIRD THE BUILDER (YES I CAN’T)
MY CAREER AS A CLOWNS ASSISTANT.
SELF DENIAL MADE EASY.
MY CAREER AS AN ASSISTANT TO THE CLOWNS ASSISTANT.
No that would be you Phil.
Now has someone got some sort of serious argument that I HAVEN’T overturned?
Brian.
Could you seriously have had better news that the trees will grow a lot faster.
Every night its the women of Dafur that go out to collect the wood for the fires. Because whereas they will be raped the blokes would be killed by the jihadists if they go out.
Which just goes to show how important wood is FOR JUST THAT PURPOSE ALONE.
I’m surprised that you aren’t twigging yet. The pattern should be forming for you that this movement has so much momentum even the best news is twisted.
Now about this 1000ppm-1500ppm…..
Hansens projections never have the ppm going over 600. So that idea is not really relevant. But what I’m saying is that we ought see a more robust nature right up to these levels.
So your next statement after that appears to be that even trees are a bad thing.
When it gets that far you ought to be seeing the sheer power of the momentum of this scare.
“In future, crops will be stressed by higher temperature, more ozone at ground level and changes in soil moisture, all of which will decrease yields. Thus, rather than an agricultural paradise, a CO2-rich world promises to be one in which crop production is lower than today.”
Well clearly this is not right. Why is he targeting the CO2 if its the ozone thats the problem?
CO2 mitigates against ozone and in any case its ozone that reduces plant growth whereas CO2 increases it.
And just pull apart what is meant by changes in soil moisture….
More rain is a BAD? thing for plant growth?
Not very plausible is it?
You see you have to get the concrete facts and build it up from the ground.
So far if we do that we can see that CO2 output is the best dumb luck the species and the planet ever had.
One of the things that amazes me in this thread is the way that people keep talking about CO2. Increased levels of CO2 will be good for us, the best thing that could happen to the planet is billions of extra tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. Maybe. As I said earlier, the jury is probably still out on CO2, and until we get the scientific evidence, it is probably prudent to regard increased CO2 concentrations as something best avoided if possible. But the original post was about a report about the melting of Siberian permafrost where the greenhouse gas involved is methane. That same stuff that is produced in farts and natural gas deposits. I saw a TV report from the BBC the other day where some Russian scientist was able to collect enough in a soft drink bottle in a few minutes to sustain a flame. And this is happening everywhere across thousands of hectares of lakes that didn’t exist until a few years ago. And from I have read, the release of methane isn’t a benign thing in terms of climate change. Somehow I don’t think that extra methane in the atmosphere – which is not metabolised by either plants or animals – is somehow gonna be any kind of magic bullet that will turn the planet into a veritable garden of eden with lush greenery everywhere… CO2 may well be great for plants and agriculture, but methane certainly isn’t. I don’t know about you guys, but the thought of this plugging into a positive feedback loop sends a shiver down my spine…
Cheers….
Correction, Mick. The only one talking about CO2 in this way is a certain commenter of avian pedigree.
Don’t worry Jason. I have seen through ignorant Rock and Rollers prevarications. And I know his cheeriness to be as phoney as his science.
No the jury is NOT still out on the DIRECT benefits of CO2 up to the 1000 to 1500 ppm level.
Its the INDIRECT benefits/costs wherein the jury is still out. But there can be no doubt that until we know that the heating is sustained and clear and in both poles and in all seasons then the DEFAULT POSITION will have to be that the indirect effects are on the whole MASSIVELY POSITIVE at least for the two or three centuries…..
I’m not making light on what could happen after that. I’m not making light on the potential for overshoot.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Have any of you guys gotten so pessimistic or worried about the future that you thought what a good thing it would be to colonise Mars???????
Not me. But I want you to think about this daydream and compare it to the more practical reclamation of Inland Australia, The Sahara, Thos areas of Siberia that are sparsely populated, Far Northern Canada and Antartica.
Now its true that the total surface area of Mars will be a lot more then all these put together. Since the surface area of Mars is pretty close to the land area of Earth.
But look at the COMPARATIVE practicality.
If we have:
1. Growth deflation and therefore..
2. High savings rates and therefore,
3. A LOW DISCOUNT RATE FOR CALCULATING THE VIABILITY OF LONG-TERM INVESTMENTS.
And if we also have
4. High CO2 levels. And if we discover
5. A cheap way to desalinate sea-water and if we have….
6. Pretty cheap energy….
Then we can reclaim ALL of these areas. We can and should then reclaim them for both man and nature.
All this extra CO2 and the encouragment of Coal use will make this ten times easier.
“A cheap way to desalinate sea-water and if we have….”
We just did , i think
see link
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16977&ch=nanotech
And for those who thought the only answer is a silly carbon tax and tend to foeget that the tech pacman machine isn’t chasing after all the C02, read this link
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17367&ch=nanotech
Mick, that TV item on Siberia was on the SBS news. I saw it too.
I believe the area we are dealing with there is equivalent to France and Germany combined. So the total methane is huge.
Some point out that more grass and stuff grows there now and that this will offset the methane burp somewhat. But I can’t imagine it would be anywhere near the quantity of methane that comes out of those deep bogs.
And from what we saw it’s never going to be a rolling prairie.