European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 14 February | 91 comments (91 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

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Climate change impact of soil underestimated: study

Helsinki (AFP) Feb 8, 2010
Finnish researchers called for a revision of climate change estimates Monday after their findings showed emissions from soil would contribute more to climate warming than previously thought.
"A Finnish research group has proved that the present standard measurements underestimate the effect of climate warming on emissions from the soil," the Finnish Environment Institute said in a statement.
"The error is serious enough to require revisions in climate change estimates," it said, adding that all climate models used soil emission estimates based on measurements received using an erroneous method.
The institute said that while emissions from soil were known to have a significant influence on climate warming, previous studies took into account short-term measurements which gave "systematically biased estimates on the effects of climate change on the emissions."
The Finnish scientists' experiments in boreal forests used radiocarbon measurements and showed that the more abundant, slowly decomposing compounds in soil were more sensitive to rises in temperature, the statement said.
This showed "carbon dioxide emissions from the soil will be up to 50 percent higher than those suggested by the present mainstream method," if the mean global temperature rose by the previously forecasted five degrees Celsius before the end of the century, and if the carbon flow to soil did not increase.
The institute said a 100 to 200 percent increase of forest biomass was needed to offset the increasing carbon emissions from soil, whereas previous estimates called for a 70 to 80 percent increase.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Feb 13th, 2010 at 12:13:34 PM EST
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Re: Living Off The Planet (none / 1)

CLIMATE CHANGE: The Day After Tomorrow Might Have Been Yesterday - IPS ipsnews.net

As Washingtonians finally dug themselves out Friday to brave clogged metro trains and icy roads on the way to the office, one of the lasting impacts of the past week is the discussions it has provoked about how climate change has impacted the current weather - and how this weather might impact the ongoing debate here over how the U.S. government should address the threat of climate change.

Dubbed the "snowpocalypse" - or sometimes "snowpocalypse II" in deference to the previous storm that blanketed Washington in December - the scenes on the streets this past week have actually seemed eerily post-apocalyptic. Silent, monochrome and empty, they have, for some, forebode a world in which no action is taken to stem the effects of climate change.

Others, though, see the wintry landscape as undermining the direness - or even the reality - of the threat posed by climate change, which they prefer to refer to as global warming, thus underscoring what they see as the incongruences between the phenomenon and the snowy spell.

On Wednesday, for example, climate change denier Sen. James Inhofe told The New York Times that the recent weather furthered doubts over whether climate change is "unequivocal" or a human-made phenomenon.

Fox News commentators likewise raised throughout the week what they felt was the "inconvenient" connection between the blizzard and the theory of global warming.

And conservative Republican Sen. Jim DeMint posted the comment "It's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle'" to his Twitter account Tuesday morning.

If anything, though, the weather should help discredit climate change deniers, contend major climate scientists and activists.