Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates
Posted by carrie_roll
Sue Zamora, a member of the GreenJoyment community, shared this article with us, and we’re sharing it with you.
What do you think you, as an individual, can do to help with this issue?
Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates
By Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 15, 2009; A03
CHICAGO, Feb. 14 — The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.
“We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations,” Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Field, a member of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said emissions from burning fossil fuels since 2000 have largely outpaced the estimates used in the U.N. panel’s 2007 reports. The higher
emissions are largely the result of the increased burning of coal in developing countries, he said.
Unexpectedly large amounts of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere as the result of “feedback loops” that are speeding up natural processes. Prominent among these, evidence indicates, is a cycle in which higher temperatures are beginning to melt the arctic permafrost, which could release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, said several scientists on a panel at the meeting.
The permafrost holds 1 trillion tons of carbon, and as much as 10 percent of that could be released this century, Field said. Along with carbon dioxide melting permafrost releases methane, which is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
“It’s a vicious cycle of feedback where warming causes the release of carbon from permafrost, which causes more warming, which causes more release from permafrost,” Field said.
Evidence is also accumulating that terrestrial and marine ecosystems cannot remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as earlier estimates suggested, Field said.
In the oceans, warmer weather is driving stronger winds that are exposing deeper layers of water, which are already saturated with carbon and not as able to absorb as much from the atmosphere. The carbon is making the oceans more acidic, which also reduces their ability to absorb carbon.
On land, rising carbon dioxide levels had been expected to boost plant growth and result in greater sequestration of carbon dioxide. As plants undergo photosynthesis to draw energy from the sun, carbon is drawn out of the atmosphere and trapped in the plant matter. But especially in northern latitudes, this effect may be offset significantly by the fact that vegetation-covered land absorbs much more of the sun’s heat than snow-covered terrain, said scientists on the panel.
Earlier snowmelt, the shrinking arctic ice cover and the northward spread of vegetation are causing the Northern Hemisphere to absorb, rather than reflect, more of the sun’s energy and reinforce the warming trend.
While it takes a relatively long time for plants to take carbon out of the atmosphere, that carbon can be released rapidly by wildfires, which contribute about a third as much carbon to the atmosphere as burning fossil fuels, according to a paper Field co-authored.
Fires such as the recent deadly blazes in southern Australia have increased in recent years, and that trend is expected to continue, Field said. Warmer weather, earlier snowmelt, drought and beetle infestations facilitated by warmer climates are all contributing to the rising number of fires linked to climate change. Across large swaths of the United States and Canada, bark beetles have killed many mature trees, making forests more flammable. And tropical rain forests that were not susceptible to forest fires in the past are likely to become drier as temperatures rise, growing more vulnerable.
Preventing deforestation in the tropics is more important than in northern latitudes, the panel agreed, since lush tropical forests sequester more carbon than sparser northern forests. And deforestation in northern areas has benefits, since larger areas end up covered in exposed, heat-reflecting snow.
Many scientists and policymakers are advocating increased incentives for preserving tropical forests, especially in the face of demand for clearing forest to grow biofuel crops such as soy. Promoting biofuels without also creating forest-preservation incentives would be “like weatherizing your house and deliberately keeping your windows open,” said Peter Frumhoff, chief of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate program. “It’s just not a smart policy.”
Field said the U.N. panel’s next assessment of Earth’s climate trends, scheduled for release in 2014, will for the first time incorporate policy proposals. It will also include complicated models of interconnected ecosystem feedbacks.
The panel’s last report noted that preliminary knowledge of such feedbacks suggested that an additional 100 billion to 500 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions would have to be prevented in the next century to avoid dangerous global warming. Currently, about 10 billion tons of carbon are emitted each year.
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3 Responses to “Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates”
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steve says:
I agree with the previous poster that the carbon footprint of solar and other ‘Green’ technologies is poorly reported.
Mandating solar or any other technology is counter-productive as people will only readily embrace what is effective for them. we are now in a period of decreasing solar activity which will promote global cooling. One good ‘burp’ from a Krakatoa will undo all the emissions from China and cause a host of other issues. Solar is a viable option for the future and must be explored – but NEVER mandated as mandates merely attempt to stiffle ingenuity. -
J. Zuijdveld says:
To J McCarty above and any others who read this I say do your own home work and don’t believe everything that you read or hear in “THE MEDIA” they are owned by the ones who want to keep you ignorant and are willing to pay extraordinary amounts to keep you dumb!
If you make enquiries into the seemingly huge contradictory reports on ie: smoking and the causes of lung cancer or the existence of any threat from global warming, you will find that most of these articles are written by the same people, a handful of so-called knowledgeable scientists who actively and aggressively seek to be published in all medias by nothing less than blackmail. They insist that they have an equal right to voice their view and if they are not given exactly the same time and space they threaten to take that media outlet [with funding from the tobacco industry groups and others] to the courts, this is usually enough to intimidate most media enterprises.
Yet their own statements and articles against tobacco related diseases or global warming are not backed up by any scientific experimentation or research whatsoever, interrestingly they are ONLY found in the mainstream media and are not published in ANY scientific publications worldwide! This is because they are not actually trying to prove solve or show anything but simply they work to create enough doubt about these subjects in the minds of the majority of simple sheep [the general public] so as to leave them inactive or passive on the subject. These types of people they can work with, it’s how they made their fortunes!
I suggest if you want to see just how much of a difference we humans have made to our planet in regard to CO2 gasses you need only check out the data analysis of the 2 now famous “ice core samples” have revealed, the first was the “Vostok” core samples which reveals what changes have occurred over the last 500,000 yrs. The second the name of which I can’t remember offhand shows information going back 2.5 million yrs and in both you can see the pronounced spike in CO2 levels which started at the early 1900′s and is now at levels exceeding one third more than at any period in that time scale as compared with 1900 levels as an average.
My personal position on green house gas emisions is probably contrary to the information presented in this article. I believe that there are as many articles written contradicting this situation as in suport.
Having made my previous statement, I am very interested in solor technology, but I have a question; what is the carbon footprint created by the production of photovoltaic solar collectors? My understanding is that they are being produced in China (primarily), and it has a dirty footprint. Why is there no mention of the cost to the environemt to produce these solar collectors? I have also seen reflected solar heat collectors that may produce significant energy without the increased carbon foot print.
I live in Arizona, and would be very interested in how we can help our country by efficiently and cost effectivly producing clean energy from the sun. My opinion again, is that solar should be mandated if it is truely clean and can reduce our dependance on fossil fuels. I would further suggest that we (as a culture) build more efficient home designs (semi-subterrainian), and much more well insulated (rammed earth or something along this line), to reduce our need for energy to heat and cool homes.