Thanx for the ping Red Badger !
Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 07/13/2011 11:05:11 AM PDT by Red Badger
More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes soil to release the potent greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, new research published in this week's edition of Nature reveals. "This feedback to our changing atmosphere means that nature is not as efficient in slowing global warming as we previously thought," said Dr Kees Jan van Groenigen, Research Fellow at the Botany department at the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, and lead author of the study.
Van Groenigen, along with colleagues from Northern Arizona University and the University of Florida, gathered all published research to date from 49 different experiments mostly from North America, Europe and Asia, and conducted in forests, grasslands, wetlands, and agricultural fields, including rice paddies. The common theme in the experiments was that they all measured how extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects how soils take up or release the gases methane and nitrous oxide.
The research team used a statistical technique called meta-analysis, or quantitative data synthesis, a powerful tool for finding general patterns in a sea of conflicting results. "Until now, there was no consensus on this topic, because results varied from one study to the next," explained Professor Craig Osenberg of the University of Florida and co-author of the study. "However, two strong patterns emerged when we analysed all the data: firstly more CO2 boosted soil emissions of nitrous oxide in all the ecosystems, and secondly, in rice paddies and wetlands, extra CO2 caused soils to release more methane." Wetlands and rice fields are two major sources of methane emissions to the atmosphere.
The culprits are specialised microscopic organisms in soil, that respire the chemicals nitrate and carbon dioxide, like humans respire oxygen. The microbes also produce methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide, 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Their oxygen-free habit is one of the reasons these microorganisms flourish when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase. Van Groenigen explained: "The higher CO2 concentrations reduce plant water use, making soils wetter, in turn reducing the availability of oxygen in soil, favoring these microorganisms."
The other reason these microorganisms become more active is that increasing CO2 makes plants grow faster, and the extra plant growth supplies soil microorganisms with extra energy, pumping up their metabolism. This extra plant growth is one of the main ways ecosystems could slow climate change. With more CO2, plants grow more, soaking up carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, and, the hope is that they also lock away carbon in wood and soil. But this new work shows that at least some of that extra carbon also provides fuel to microorganisms whose byproducts, nitrous oxide and methane, end up in the atmosphere and counteract the cooling effects of more plant growth.
"It's an ecological point and counterpoint: the more the plants soak up CO2, the more microbes release these more potent greenhouse gases," said Bruce Hungate, Professor at Northern Arizona University and co-author on the study. "The microbial counterpoint is only partial," continued Hungate, "reducing the cooling effect of plants by about 20%."
But it's an ecological surprise, too, and one that climate models will need to reckon with as they further refine pictures of the climate of the future. "By overlooking the key role of these two greenhouse gases, previous studies may have overestimated the potential of ecosystems to mitigate the greenhouse effect," van Groenigen concluded.
AGW Ping!...........
Kill Them!
Pour Kerosene everywhere....
Burn more coal to raise CO2 to cool planet.
Without the microbes we don’t have healthy thriving plants.
Cover every inch of ground with a foot of Agent Orange. Time to eat our peas and save the planet!
So, from this I gather that carbon sequestration by pumping carbon dioxide directly into the earth, is the exact opposite from what we are supposed to do, as the micro-organisms get pumped up and release the powerful gases methene and nitrous oxide, much more powerful than CO2.
Did anyone ever explain this to algore, scientist emeritous?
This is terrible, we’re all going to die!!!
Get the women and children off the earth immediately.
Methane percentage of ATM...00017% Nitrous....00003%
Smart-Stupid people.
Seems to me that nature is indeed efficient at slowing global “warming”....since the globe appears to be cooling recently ...and has been doing so for 10 years or so.
Oh, forgot, this was written by folks who’s very survival depends upon government grants.
And we all know the scientific proficiency of our current regime.
Meta analysis is junk science at its worst!!
It is only used when the deat fails all standatd statistical tests and the authors have an agenda to support!
deta = data (sorry)
Oh, my God! Now they are blaming mindless, single-celled organisms for the made-up catastrophy.
Let’s face it, everything including Mother Nature accelerates Glolbal Warming. As long as you give me research grants, I can study whatever named to the cause of acceleration of global warming.
/Except now that it is not warming up at all due to weak sun spot actvitities.
Nitrogen N2 78.08%
Oxygen O2 20.95%
Water H2O 0 to 4%
Argon Ar 0.93%
Carbon Dioxide CO2 0.0360%
Neon Ne 0.0018%
Helium He 0.0005%
Methane CH4 0.00017%
Hydrogen H2 0.00005%
Nitrous Oxide N2O 0.00003%
Ozone O3 0.000004%
Groenigen explained: “The higher CO2 concentrations reduce plant water use, making soils wetter, in turn reducing the availability of oxygen in soil, favoring these microorganisms.”
Increase in temperature increases chemical reactions and metabolic rates:
http://www.phschool.com/science/biology_place/labbench/lab10/temprate.html
I’m not sure that we understand the potential to mitigate as much as we understand the complex system that leaves Al Gore in a state of junior high school understanding. The man is either a moron or a demagogue. He is a climate scientist like my 11 y/o granddaughter Sarah is a Nobel prize winning physicist.
And Sarah is like smarter.
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