Posted on 07/07/2003 9:09:43 AM PDT by presidio9
If your dogwoods and peony patches are looking a bit more robust than they did 20 years ago, you may have climate change to thank for much of their growth. Using two decades' worth of data on climate and vegetation, a team of scientists has taken what may be the first planet-wide look at plant activity during a time when Earth's environment underwent significant change.
The researchers found that globally, shifts in rainfall patterns, cloud cover, and warming temperatures triggered a 6 percent increase in the amount of carbon stored in trees, grass, shrubs, and flowers.
Many scientists hold that the growth in atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping carbon-dioxide - from nearly two centuries of rapidly growing populations that burned increasing amounts of fossil fuels - is largely responsible for the earth's warming climate.
The new research adds to the body of evidence that plants can store increasing amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, but it remains unclear how long this trend will continue or whether it will significantly affect atmospheric CO2 levels.
Kyoto provisions
The 1997 Kyoto Protocols - a first step at trying to reduce emissions and so moderate the change - permits countries to use the carbon-absorbing capacity of their forests and farmlands as credits against their emissions targets. In addition, projects that increase vegetation also are seen as ways to reach national CO2 emissions targets. Thus, understanding the flow of carbon from the atmosphere to plants and back is vital to projecting future trends in atmospheric CO2 levels.
For 50 years, scientists have been measuring the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere, according to Ramakrishna Nemani, a professor in the forestry school at the University of Montana in Missoula, who led the research team. "But if you look at the record of the past two decades, the annual growth rate hasn't been going up like it had before," he says.
Other groups had forecast an increase in plant growth for a time with climate change, although rates would vary depending on region. And some smaller-scale studies had indicated that the earth was greening.
Dr. Nemani's team was interested in seeing how plant activity had changed - and where - worldwide during a 20-year period that saw two of the warmest decades ever recorded, several intense El Nino episodes, one major volcanic eruption, a 9 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and a 37 percent growth in human population.
The team measured how much carbon plants store after absorbing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and returning some of it through respiration.
First, the team built maps reflecting changes in temperature, cloud cover (which affects the amount of sunlight reaching plants), and available water. Then they overlaid satellite data on net primary productivity on land and looked for relationships among these components.
Big change in the Amazon
They were stunned at the growth rates in South America's Amazon region.
"That was a big surprise," says Ranga Myneni, a botanist at Boston University and a member of the research team. Amazon rain forests accounted for nearly half the increase seen globally over the 20-year period.
The surprise was twofold. The growth rate far exceeded what most scientists expected. Many models indicated that additional growth in the tropics would be minimal, given the fairly constant temperatures from one season to the next. In addition, many researchers had held that any increased productivity in the tropics would largely be driven by a rise in atmospheric CO2 rather than changes in climate itself.
Yet the drop in tropical cloud cover during the period allowed more sunlight into places like Amazonia, Dr. Myneni says, far outpacing CO2 as a prod to growth. Likewise in other climate regions, changing Climate conditions appeared to be the dominant factor driving plant growth.
The other half of the equation
The good news for plants, which appears in Friday's edition of the journal Science, comes with caveats, Myneni cautions. Since humans collectively use about half of plants' net primary production, he says, the team's estimate of 6 percent growth over 20 years translates into a trivial 3 percent growth in material available to a growing human population.
Moreover, the 20-year period the team studied could be unusual, and hence not representative of long-term prospects for vegetation growth. And if the climate continues to warm, as many expect, plants will bump up against limits to their ability to make use of the additional water, warmth, and sunlight, just as they bump into limits on the amount of CO2 they can use. The study also doesn't answer questions about how changing climate conditions in these areas are affecting the amount of CO2 given off from plant decomposition and soil - amounts that can offset the CO2 that plants imprison in their roots, stems, and leaves.
"That's the other half of the equation" the study doesn't address, he cautions.
Do you realize there's a difference between CO2 from manmade sources and global warming from natural sources? That's there's no causation? Why do you keep implying that they are the same thing?
I agree. And lets not do SOMETHING simply because it makes us all FEEL GOOD about ourselves (Kyoto). In another post today, one scientist calculated that even if all of Kyoto was put into place, it would result in a miniscule temperature decrease over what is predicted by GW. What the heck good is that? A conservative solution should give real results. I trust in the future, like you do, I think there will be solutions available that do not require an arm and a leg from every person in the developed world to implement.
The 1975 NAS panel claimed to have good reason for their fears: Global temperatures had been in steady decline since the 1940s. They considered the preceding period of warming, between 1860 and 1940, as "unusual," following as it did the "Little Ice Age," which had lasted from 1430 to 1850. -- S. Fred Singer, emeritus professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service.
As you can see from the latter, quotation, not only was the trend there, but the National Academy of Sciences was in a panic over the cooling trend from the 1940s to 1970s.
There is no such consensus in the scientific community and in fact any consensus that is evident is that man-made global warming is not occuring.
If you had gone to the site, you would have seen this;
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Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine
PO Box 1279
Cave Junction OR 97523Fax: 541-592-2597
Phone: 541-592-4142
Explanation Listed below are 19,200 of the initial signers
During the past 2 years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition.Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists (select this link for a listing of these individuals) who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth's atmosphere and climate.
Signers of this petition also include 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences (select this link for a listing of these individuals) make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth's plant and animal life.
Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields. In addition to these 17,100, approximately 2,400 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science or whose field of specialization was not specified on their returned petition.
Of the 19,700 signatures that the project has received in total so far, 17,800 have been independently verified and the other 1,900 have not yet been independently verified. Of those signers holding the degree of PhD, 95% have now been independently verified. One name that was sent in by enviro pranksters, Geri Halliwell, PhD, has been eliminated. Several names, such as Perry Mason and Robert Byrd are still on the list even though enviro press reports have ridiculed their identity with the names of famous personalities. They are actual signers. Perry Mason, for example, is a PhD Chemist.
The costs of this petition project have been paid entirely by private donations. No industrial funding or money from sources within the coal, oil, natural gas or related industries has been utilized. The petition's organizers, who include some faculty members and staff of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, do not otherwise receive funds from such sources. The Institute itself has no such funding. Also, no funds of tax-exempt organizations have been used for this project.
The signatures and the text of the petition stand alone and speak for themselves. These scientists have signed this specific document. They are not associated with any particular organization. Their signatures represent a strong statement about this important issue by many of the best scientific minds in the United States.
This project is titled "Petition Project" and uses a mailing address of its own because the organizers desired an independent, individual opinion from each scientist based on the scientific issues involved - without any implied endorsements of individuals, groups, or institutions.
The remainder of the initial signers and all new signers will be added to these lists as data entry is completed.
Our e-mail address, for the purposes of this project, is: info@oism.org
If you would like to mirror this site or download it to your hard drive, click here.
You may also view and print this entire web site in one easy step.
Copyright 2001 © OISM
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Here is the text of the petition these scientists signed.
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Global Warming Petition
We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
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Go to the site, read the peer-reviewed papers that discredit the entire theory of man-made global warming based on computer models. Actual measurments do not show warming and in fact show minor cooling over the last 60 years.
As I said, these are things that Dan Rather will never tell you and he will never mention the opinions of 17,000 + real scientists as opposed to the virtual handfull of UN Clepto-crats, international socialists and government research grant hustlers who are pushing this hoax down our throats.
So, you say "don't ignore the science," but you won't post "the science."
Poat 85 had heard of Vostok, --but you didn't respond to that post.
It's getting hard for me to waste my typing time on people that don't want to listen to reason. The last few times I've created or participated in threads addressing global warming, a Freeper named "ancient_geezer" has dumped megabytes of unsorted data on me in rebuttal, most of which was only marginally relevant.
But when I get a chance, I may be more active again.
SO2, not CO2. Volcanic CO2 emissions are negligible compared to human sources.
Also note that the "warming" is generally in urban areas, and that neither balloon, nor satellite data suggest the same warming is over the whole surface. Global warming people claim the ground-based measurements show that the satelite data has some unknown errors. Anti-global warming people point to the satellite data to show that the ground based measurements are a poor sample (being taken nearly entirely where local effects such as asphalt and buildings have an inordinate effect).
In short, not only is the statement that mans activities have contributed to global warming severely questioned, whether there is "global warming" at all is dependent on what definitions are used, and which data points from which sources are selected.
As for solutions, in an earlier post, I made a link to an article by Teller (Father of the Hydrogen Bomb), who refered to some ideas, the most intrusive of which was an estimated cost in the high millions per year. There have been some reports by global-warming enthusiasts that suggest that what little was done in regards Kyoto had the opposite of the intended effect: The reduction of atmospheric sulfur compounds appears to have made the atmosphere less reflective, allowing more sunlight to strike the earth's surface...though in truth, the data sample size has the same weaknesses as I referred to in the 1990s warming trend above.
PLEASE.... Go read the literature that Dr. Sitz has posted on the Oregon Project web site. NASA, NOAA, Harvard, MIT and other reputable peer-reviewed data, shows just that! All the data points agree, --- not some points, ALL POINTS! Again, there is not only no "consensus" among the scientific community that global warming is a fact. All of the "non-political data" would lead a reasonable, un-biased individual to conclude that it is not happening. 17,000 scientists did not sign this petition on a hunch.
Just read the other side before you make blanket statements that are not supported by the facts.
Theyahs a little toooo much diversion goin' on out dayah.
Conservatives need to start diverting attention to Al Sharpton as a viable democrat presidential candidate, too.
yitbos
Mount Pinatubo increased both, but yes, the SO2 release effects overshadowed the CO2 effects.
You are also correct to point out that I should have said "significantly", rather than "greatly" in regards CO2.
BTW, I found this in a quick search of Volcano info. It's an interesting article about a high CO2 producing volcano in Antarctica. This volcano releases three times the CO2 as it does SO2, and it releases 150 metric tons of CO2 per day, though a value of 1,850 metric tons per day is referred to as its total release from all sources. This places it as 9th in the world for known CO2 production.
I DO take the position that such warming is not incontrovertible. I believe there to be some warming within the last half-decade after a cooling in the early 1990s, and a warming in the decade preceeding that, but based on the evidence, even this is not certain to the point of being "incontrovertible". Again, the statement is subject to quite a number of definitional qualifications, such as picking the start and end dates to compare, which datasets are used, and severe questions as to which data sets actually are meaningful.
It is generally accepted that ground-based measurements show a warming trend within themselves, however, the methodology used to collect the data is subject to question, as the collection points are neither randomly placed, nor systematically placed from an atmospheric perspective. The overwhelming majority are placed in areas which are subject to urban "hot spots", for which it is generally agreed (to a greater or lesser extent) there is a distortion in results due to localized heating. So, though it is generally accepted that there is some warming over the last century, there's an asterisk.
Further, when one says "global warming" one needs be certain of what is actually being asserted. Is a one-year change "global warming"? Is "global warming" a continuous string in which each year is warmer than the year before? For how long? Is "global warming" a long-term effect to be assessed in units of decades, quarter-centuries, centuries, or epochs? Does "global warming" refer to full atmospheric effects, or ground-effects only? Using one or more of these can change whether one can say there is "global warming".
So, when you say "global warming", do you mean the more-or-less continual warming of the earth's atmosphere over the next 50 to 100 years compared to a long-term mean, or do you mean the warming of cities during night-time from one year to a point five years later without regard either to the mean or to temperature change trends before or after?
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