Climate myths

[PersianPaladin]

Peter, I stand corrected!

How did I miss this!

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/...icle2539349.ece

Someone's listening to me

Link is broke.

[pottyprof]

Link is broke.

Working fine here..

From The Independant. http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/...icle2539349.ece

Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming

In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. So why are global leaders turning a blind eye to this crisis?

By Daniel Howden

Published: 14 May 2007

The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth's equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories.

The rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases according to report published today by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of leading rainforest scientists.

Figures from the GCP, summarising the latest findings from the United Nations, and building on estimates contained in the Stern Report, show deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total.

"Tropical forests are the elephant in the living room of climate change," said Andrew Mitchell, the head of the GCP.

Scientists say one days' deforestation is equivalent to the carbon footprint of eight million people flying to New York. Reducing those catastrophic emissions can be achieved most quickly and most cheaply by halting the destruction in Brazil, Indonesia, the Congo and elsewhere.

No new technology is needed, says the GCP, just the political will and a system of enforcement and incentives that makes the trees worth more to governments and individuals standing than felled. "The focus on technological fixes for the emissions of rich nations while giving no incentive to poorer nations to stop burning the standing forest means we are putting the cart before the horse," said Mr Mitchell.

Most people think of forests only in terms of the CO2 they absorb. The rainforests of the Amazon, the Congo basin and Indonesia are thought of as the lungs of the planet. But the destruction of those forests will in the next four years alone, in the words of Sir Nicholas Stern, pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than every flight in the history of aviation to at least 2025.

Indonesia became the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world last week. Following close behind is Brazil. Neither nation has heavy industry on a comparable scale with the EU, India or Russia and yet they comfortably outstrip all other countries, except the United States and China.

What both countries do have in common is tropical forest that is being cut and burned with staggering swiftness. Smoke stacks visible from space climb into the sky above both countries, while satellite images capture similar destruction from the Congo basin, across the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.

According to the latest audited figures from 2003, two billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere every year from deforestation. That destruction amounts to 50 million acres - or an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland felled annually.

The remaining standing forest is calculated to contain 1,000 billion tons of carbon, or double what is already in the atmosphere.

As the GCP's report concludes: "If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change."

Standing forest was not included in the original Kyoto protocols and stands outside the carbon markets that the report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointed to this month as the best hope for halting catastrophic warming.

The landmark Stern Report last year, and the influential McKinsey Report in January agreed that forests offer the "single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions".

International demand has driven intensive agriculture, logging and ranching that has proved an inexorable force for deforestation; conservation has been no match for commerce. The leading rainforest scientists are now calling for the immediate inclusion of standing forests in internationally regulated carbon markets that could provide cash incentives to halt this disastrous process.

Forestry experts and policy makers have been meeting in Bonn, Germany, this week to try to put deforestation on top of the agenda for the UN climate summit in Bali, Indonesia, this year. Papua New Guinea, among the world's poorest nations, last year declared it would have no choice but to continue deforestation unless it was given financial incentives to do otherwise.

Richer nations already recognise the value of uncultivated land. The EU offers €200 (£135) per hectare subsidies for "environmental services" to its farmers to leave their land unused.

And yet there is no agreement on placing a value on the vastly more valuable land in developing countries. More than 50 per cent of the life on Earth is in tropical forests, which cover less than 7 per cent of the planet's surface.

They generate the bulk of rainfall worldwide and act as a thermostat for the Earth. Forests are also home to 1.6 billion of the world's poorest people who rely on them for subsistence. However, forest experts say governments continue to pursue science fiction solutions to the coming climate catastrophe, preferring bio-fuel subsidies, carbon capture schemes and next-generation power stations.

Putting a price on the carbon these vital forests contain is the only way to slow their destruction. Hylton Philipson, a trustee of Rainforest Concern, explained: "In a world where we are witnessing a mounting clash between food security, energy security and environmental security - while there's money to be made from food and energy and no income to be derived from the standing forest, it's obvious that the forest will take the hit."

[Michael Winston]

Any thoughts, anyone, on the impact of volcanic activity?

[Gray-Wolf]

Slash and burn agriculture was practiced by small tribes in a way which allowed the area of forest to recover. Practices of this nature were not extensive enough to cause an imbalance in environmental CO2 levels apart from perhaps very local areas. Areas of TRF used for slash and burn amongst most Indian peoples' in Brazil, for example, are small and there are enough seedlings from the enclosed surrounding forest to be able to reach the soil. The ash and the carbon output and its proximity to immediate forest is likely to be contained within that area and reabsorbed upon regrowth. Whereas the modern day practices of defforestation leaves large areas of land far away from the virgin forest; and chances of regrowth and carbon re-utilisation by mature trees is zero. The local environment and biome is transformed into one where the heat and carbon flux promotes greater diurnal temp contrasts and carbon output into the atmosphere.

The evidence from Flagg Fen (mainly snails) would suggest that the area fringing the fen underwent long term change as shrub/tree species were 'burnt out' when the sedges were burnt back to provide 'new green' to attract large herbivours to the fens edge.

The lanscape of large areas of the NW territories in Australia give testament to how that area was changed by Aborigional 'managed burning'.

I know the only 'slash and burn' most people encounter is the type taught at junior school (to clear land and prepare it for short term cultivation) but cultivation is not as old as 'slash and burn'.

Edited May 18, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

People are trying to save the rainforests but they need help from all quarters; everyone here can do their bit to help. Here are just a few ways or ideas to get everyone started.

http://www.primates.on.net/mgsa.htm

http://www.primates.on.net/mgsa.htm

http://www.elc.org.uk/pages/links.htm

http://www.greenlongmarch.org/en/rainforestexploration

http://www.worldlandtrust.org/supporting/donation.htm

http://www.therainforestsite.com/clickToGi....faces?siteId=4

http://www.rainforestrescue.org.au/daintreebuyback.html

http://www.rainforestforever.org/faq.asp

http://www.carbonbalanced.org/personal/pcbfaq.htm

And finally, governments are aware and some are trying to preserve it

http://www.innovations-report.com/html/rep...port-81936.html

[Hiya]

But here and in another place we 'believers' try to talk science.

I am of the opinion if things are the way the "believers" say they are then there will need to be some sort of worldwide clampdown on something, like banning of cars or something along those lines. Both sides are as bad as eachother when it comes to namecalling, both sides thoeries are "myths"

Devonian you always seem to phrase these things strangly, and bluntly, I was wondering on what authority you stand, feel free to PM me if you don't want to clutter up the thread.

[Filski]

Don't know if anyone has noticed but Durkin has a letter in the latest NewScientist.

[Stratos Ferric]

Debunking the 26 "myths" is actually a simple logical exercise.

The recent warming is either largely human-caused or not. No real proof has been offered that it is, and I for one don't believe that it is.

It follows from that assumption that if the warming is natural, all the other "myths" are in fact myths, without the " " required.

Some of the myths are entirely a matter of opinion, rather than provable fact. For example, there is one that states that global warming will be beneficial where some people live. Just because it will not be beneficial where other people live does not change the truth or falsehood of that fact, which is indeed a perception to which any individual is duly entitled.

The world has always been like that -- the circumstances of one part of the world may be unfavourable at the same time that they are favourable elsewhere.

I'm hoping that the natural cycle of warming runs its course soon and that significant cooling shows up in many places where the global warming lobby tells us it cannot happen any longer. This will not only place the 26 "myths" in a more appropriate context, it will provide massive entertainment for those of us who have been ridiculed for dissenting against the new state religion of global warming, and that's no myth either.

Roger,

Whilst I'm aware of your own rationale for warming (personally I discouynt it but I accept that, though far fetched, it is not quite in Stephen King territory of unlikelihood) I do spot a trend in your arguments that are not uncommon in the US. This is not to refute warming, so much (as was seen in the - frankly risible - Oregon petition) as to present an argument that says that effects might be beneficial. They may, or may not, be, depending on just where you live, but this is an irrelevance to the discussion on AGW, made resonant in the US by the focus on the cost of taking action and a huge right wing agenda.

This is like arguing that a ban on guns, in order to combat gun crime, would harm agricultural use to cull pests, or the rights of the individual to own a gun. There can be no rational argument to say that since the invention of guns more men have been killed unnaturally than would otherwise have been the case, and that guns, therefore, on balance, are a bad thing.

The climate is warming, certainly because of man's impact on earth, and probably in very large measure because of the same. There wil be upsides and downsides from taking action, and the spread of these will not be even, but let's be clear, so long as the first partof my contention is true, taking action is prudent, if personally, and in the short term, undesireable.

[Devonian]

I am of the opinion if things are the way the "believers" say they are then there will need to be some sort of worldwide clampdown on something, like banning of cars or something along those lines. Both sides are as bad as eachother when it comes to namecalling, both sides thoeries are "myths"

Devonian you always seem to phrase these things strangly, and bluntly, I was wondering on what authority you stand, feel free to PM me if you don't want to clutter up the thread.

I post my opinions, just like everyone else. I don't think that I know better than The Hadley Centre, NOAA, CRU, NASA, IPCC and the rest - call that the authority I have :lol:

I've spent many years following and trying to understand ACC. I think the authorties I listed are right. Might I and they be wrong? Possibly - but not so far (20 years).

[Gray-Wolf]

S.F., all I can do is fully support your post but would seek to reassure you by telling you how I feel things will go down (so far as the 'sceptics' are concerned).

Did you not find it mildly amusing to see the number of sceptic who jumped onto the 'flawed' ARGO data sets last year? the fact that the flawed data appeared to show deep ocean cooling led to many of them holding it up as proof that warming was either not occurring or occurring in an unpredictable way. How many appologise did they post when the truth of the 'calibration error' occurred? how many of them changed their tune when they realised that the deep ocean was warming ahead of the prediction of the models?

When the 'climate swindle' was shown how many of them jumped up and down with glee (and were left with egg on their faces when the 'truth' of the lies and manipulation became apparent)?

How many of them are disputing the reduction in global 'carbon sinks' (40yrs ahead of predictions) as part of their manifesto?

There seems to be a strong pattern emerging of straw clutching emerging.

My partner can only put it down to the fear that the changes brings to them (and their open aggression towards the folk who support the 'science' is a manifest displacement of this fear onto something 'reasonable' [to them])

Enforced change is never welcome, the plague changed society for the better but it wasn't a nice period of history to live through!, and so it will be with the charges occurring around us now. Humanity does not take to voluntary change (especially if it hurts them) easily but is the master of turning Adversity into Advantage.

The changes WILL occur and vast swathes of humanity will pay the ultimate price for our inability to act but I feel that a fairer, more equitable global society will be the result.

I only hope that we can be canny enough to maintain through the worst of the collapse and be around to watch our children re-build this 'new world'.

[Essan]

Link is broke.

Works for me okay.

Try here

Alternatively, the full report on which the story is based is here

Edited May 19, 2007 by Essan

[Gray-Wolf]

Works for me okay.

Try here

Alternatively, the full report on which the story is based is here

You just can't help but agree Essan. The 'developed worlds' thirst for 'green fuels' (unregulated green fuels) that leads to palms being planted (for palm oil to be made into 'green' bio-fuels) at a cost of 7 times the CO2 burning oil would cost is scandalous.

The world is set to regulate 'bio-fuels' next year by which time 7 years worth of extra emmissions will have been dumped skywards and led us ever closer (if not further into) the first of the climatic 'tipping points'.

EDIT: and this when we know that many carbon sinks are acting as 'saturated' leaving most of the CO2 to be atmospheric CO2.

Edited May 19, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[Devonian]

You just can't help but agree Essan. The 'developed worlds' thirst for 'green fuels' (unregulated green fuels)that leads to palms being planted (for palm oil to be made into 'green bio-fuels) at a cost of 7 times the CO2 burning oil would cost is scandalous.

The world is set to regulate 'bio-fuels' next year by which time 7 years worth of extra emmission will have been dumped skywards and led us ever closer (if not further into) the first of the climatic 'tipping points'.

It's bonkers.

[Gray-Wolf]

It's bonkers.

To you or I but some Joe is out there making plenty wonga for it and saps over here are paying over the odds for the 'feel good factor' that running on biofuels gives!

EDIT: it maybe illustrates the morally bankrupt behaviours of the money god followers who have played a large part in leading humanity to this juncture......

Edited May 19, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

The changes WILL occur and vast swathes of humanity will pay the ultimate price for our inability to act but I feel that a fairer, more equitable global society will be the result.

I only hope that we can be canny enough to maintain through the worst of the collapse and be around to watch our children re-build this 'new world'.

[Gray-Wolf]

The changes WILL occur and vast swathes of humanity will pay the ultimate price for our inability to act but I feel that a fairer, more equitable global society will be the result.

I only hope that we can be canny enough to maintain through the worst of the collapse and be around to watch our children re-build this 'new world'.

Blimey GW a bit deep and gloomy for me today.

BFTP

Sorry BFTP, I either read through the 'sceptics' posts on here and dispair or I talk with the folk around me (and their lack of understanding of the issue or their lack of direction) and dispair.

We have not sunk our whole being into keeping current with the global issues as they have revealed themselves over the past 25yrs, it is just our 'interest'. Most other people's 'interests' appear to be this weeks East enders or where they are bound on their summer hols or whatever the papers tell them to focus on....... what can you do?

[Filski]

Climate Audit has a bit on this too. Robb Wilson has defended his temp chart there.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1586

[Stratos Ferric]

S.F., all I can do is fully support your post but would seek to reassure you by telling you how I feel things will go down (so far as the 'sceptics' are concerned).

...

The changes WILL occur and vast swathes of humanity will pay the ultimate price for our inability to act but I feel that a fairer, more equitable global society will be the result.

I only hope that we can be canny enough to maintain through the worst of the collapse and be around to watch our children re-build this 'new world'.

I certainly agree re the trend regarding uptake / resistance. As this is actually a technical specialism of mine I find it amusing and interesting in equal measure. The drivers of resistance are many and varied, and resistance is also quite normal and perfectly rational. For what it's worth, on here, the drivers fall into a number of main groups:

1 - Don't want to accept it because it threatens cold and I like cold.

2 - May or may not accept it but not willing to engage with the consequences / costs of doing something about it.

3 - Don't accept it because my belief system is that man is outside of creation / below creation.

4 - Don't believe the science of AGW.

Sometimes these drivers combine, so for instance there are some who might combine 1 and 4 to come to a view that the current warming is just a blip.

I do keep cautioning that there is still just a remote mathematical possibility that this is still just natural, but it's now all but implausible that this is the case. As to downstream consequences: it depends. I don't tend to get too carried away just yet, but at the upper end of projected warming the impacts wouls be massive, and in some places catastrophic.

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi again S.F., I'm no longer concerned 'whose fault' it (C.C.) is just very concerned that ;

A/ It is happening on our watch

B/ It seems to follow the way of the natural world in that the direction is constant but the rate of change varies greatly and we seem to be a the start of a period of rapid change.

It is almost as though, for the longest of times, the extra energy trapped within the atmosphere was spent on 'unseen' effects (deep ocean warming, state changes from solid to liquid) mitigating the added energies impact on the 'visible world'.

Now ,not only has that period of impetus passed, but the atmosphere is even more capable of retaining more heat. As such we stand to be witness to some very rapid,far reaching effects of the warming and none of it will be able to be explained as a 'blip'.

At times I feel like shouting WAKE UP at them all.......

[PersianPaladin]

The evidence from Flagg Fen (mainly snails) would suggest that the area fringing the fen underwent long term change as shrub/tree species were 'burnt out' when the sedges were burnt back to provide 'new green' to attract large herbivours to the fens edge.

The lanscape of large areas of the NW territories in Australia give testament to how that area was changed by Aborigional 'managed burning'.

I know the only 'slash and burn' most people encounter is the type taught at junior school (to clear land and prepare it for short term cultivation) but cultivation is not as old as 'slash and burn'.

I'll have you know that I studied it at university level.

And btw....any allegations that the Aborigines did not live in balance with their land and they somehow had an unprecedented affect on the landscape is totally unfounded. It is the western-style industrialised way of living that has caused untold damage to ecosystems and imbalances in biomes and their respective flora and fauna.

[Iceberg]

Have to admit that bio fuels are a pet hate of mine as well, it's part of the fluffy bunny world of environmentalism that exists purly to make people feel better, such as recycling christmas cards etc.

I once had the green party compaigning in Poole with a bus powered by bio fuels (bloody idiots didn't have a clue !).

Completely agree with the straw clutching as well.

[VillagePlank]

... for the 'feel good factor' that running on biofuels gives ...

Yes, given that the public consensus is, in my opininon, about to change (the scientific consensus means nothing unless the public go along with it and force political change) the 'feel-good' factor needs to be mitigated.

At first glance growing palm-trees and using the oil derived from them seems like a magical cure. Planting trees, renewable, the whole lot. But as you point out, that's actually not the point. The CO2 footprint is calamitous compared to burning fossil fuel, so it is not something one would want to do.

I think the solution is to reduce our need for energy or calories, if one prefers. This means walking, cycling, turning the TV off from standby, and we all know this tune, and can probably all do our bit with scant regard for the little effect it would have on our lifestyles.

I, yesterday, made my first significant decision based on four factors (in no particular order) CD,A/C,CO2 emmissions/Safety. I went for the new 1.2 Corsa (even though the MX5 looked much more fun) as it's emmissions are low (especially for it's class) and has a Euro NCAP rating of 5stars (the maximum)

I will still maintain my Espace, but the wife will use that for an estimated 5k miles/yr, my 15k-20k miles/yr will be done in the Corsa; which I think will reduce my carbon footprint, somewhat.

The reaons I have an Espace? - I have four little Planks, and a Mrs Plank running around.

Edited May 20, 2007 by VillagePlank

[biffvernon]

At times I feel like shouting WAKE UP at them all.......

I was in a medium sized branch of W H Smith yesterday and, amongst the thousands of titles, there was one on climate change (Lovelock) and one glossy picture book on the state of the planet. I think we need to shout more loudly lest the world stays asleep.

[Gray-Wolf]

I'll have you know that I studied it at university level.

And btw....any allegations that the Aborigines did not live in balance with their land and they somehow had an unprecedented affect on the landscape is totally unfounded. It is the western-style industrialised way of living that has caused untold damage to ecosystems and imbalances in biomes and their respective flora and fauna.

Hi P.P., I wasn't trying to poke a jibe at the way the Aborigional peoples learnt to live within the nature they discovered around them but the manipulation of 'wild fires' (lightning strike fires) to produce patches of favourable scavenging/hunting grounds is not, to my underestanding, in dispute. It happened, the results are documented and it cost us one of the largest lizards on the planet!!!

[Gray-Wolf]

I was in a medium sized branch of W H Smith yesterday and, amongst the thousands of titles, there was one on climate change (Lovelock) and one glossy picture book on the state of the planet. I think we need to shout more loudly lest the world stays asleep.

I have a lot of time for mr Lovelock. He not only has the science but plenty of 'smarts' to go with it. The 'hidden' periods of warming, where the planet tries to mitigate the change, seem (to me) quite logical. The energy needed to change solid water back into a fluid takes a lot of energy for little visible result but once the melt has happened then the water itself can 'help' with further ablation so we end up with little change followed by rapid change.

2003 was the end of 'little change' for me and the evidence we have been treated to from 2005 recently backs this up loss of CO2 sinks, Snow melt from EAIS, Dynamic sub-sheet activity across Antarctica, Ellis Island calving, northern polynya formation, meltwater freshening at both polar regions, (and many more)