Where Does all the Carbon Dioxide End Up?
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 01. 1.08
We imagine most of you, upon reading the post's title, will have already (and accurately) guessed the short answer: the atmosphere and the oceans (for the most part). But, to delve further into the matter, where exactly in the atmosphere or the oceans does it all go? How much of an impact do carbon sinks such as forests and the soil have? In what proportions? These are but a few of the questions that have long befuddled leading climate scientists trying to make heads or tails of carbon emissions' final resting place. They themselves will readily admit that they aren't even sure where a significant percentage of global emissions - roughly a quarter - ends up every year.
"A quarter of all the CO2 that is emitted is going somewhere, and we don't know where. That raises a lot of red flags," said David Crisp of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. According to a new study of 28,000 measurements collected between 2000 and 2006 and analyzed by NOAA's CarbonTracker system, only about a third of the carbon dioxide is absorbed by carbon sinks such as the soil and forests; a large portion of it ends up in the atmosphere - but that still leaves a significant amount unaccounted for.
Interestingly, the CarbonTracker found carbon emissions to be highest in the Midwest; that single region released more carbon dioxide than any other country - except Russia, China, India and, of course, the U.S. Carbon dioxide was found to be most readily absorbed east of the Rocky Mountains and in northern Canada.
As helpful as these measurements are, however, scientists are worried that they may be overestimating or - more likely - underestimating the climate situation. The wave of droughts and wildfires that roiled many regions of the country have likely left several hundred million more tons of carbon in the atmosphere and devastated many of our natural carbon sinks - as much as half, according to John Miller, a NOAA geochemist.
Katie Fehrenbacher from Earth2Tech linked to another helpful portrayal of the U.S. carbon sources, the National Energy Technology Laboratory's (NETL) NatCarb, in a recent post. As scientists move forward in the new year, it will be interesting to see whether they'll be able to pinpoint that elusive chunk of carbon emissions (we sure hope so); not being able to quantify such a significant portion raises clear "red flags," as Crisp explained, because it casts into doubt most of the temperature predictions being made based on our current data.
Via ::The Wall Street Journal: Tracking Carbon Trail To Find Why So Much Fills the Atmosphere (newspaper)
See also: ::Carbon Tracker: What's the CO2 in Your Neighborhood?, ::Using GPS to Track Global Warming
On a similar theme, I've always wondered...if there is more oxygen in the air in a forest??!
There is an important social principle currently being violated by many manufacturing activities: the principle that, while engaged in a profit-making activity, one must not leave a mess behind for the rest of society to clean up.
This principle is understood in a societal context as common decency, but is continually breached in our economy to such an extent that nobody even objects!
The easiest example is that of mineral water and soft-drink manufacturers, who sell a product that results in a consumer who usually discards a non-biodegradable PET bottle into the environment in an unregulated manner.
We should mobilize citizens to demand legislation that every manufacturer must repurchase/collect and recycle as many tonnes of raw material as he uses on a week-by-week basis. For example, if a mineral-water manufacturer uses ten tonnes of plastics per week to manufacture bottles, he MUST buy back ten tonnes of plastic scrap and safely recycle it. The same goes for automobile manufacturers, who must buy back that many tonnes of metals, plastics, glass etc. every week, and find ways to recycle them. The cost may be met by raising the market price of their product... but the responsibility to make the recycling activity happen MUST be fixed on the manufacturer of every product.
The same goes for manufacturers of tyres, batteries, plastic goods, newspapers, clothes, chemicals, auto-lubricant oils, etc. The list is long.
And if this makes some manufacturing and marketing processes unviable, it means that their economic activity was unviable in the first place, and was sustainable only by passing on hidden costs to the environment, to society, to consumers etc !
Many industrial activities are environmentally and socially subsidized to keep them economically profitable. Let us lobby governments to knock off that subsidy and see how many activities remain sustainable!
I propose peaceful demonstrations to remedy this
Small groups of citizens shall collect the branded packaging material of various manufacturers from the environment, and delivering them in large bundles every week to their corporate offices. It belongs to them, right? So let them have it back!
A peaceful demonstration like this, sustained over some weeks, would make a powerful statement. I think this will make a powerful media impact as well... and thereby, an impact on the consciousness of people.
What say? I would appreciate your detailed responses to this idea.
--
Warm Regards
Krish
Member, Global Warming Committee
Indian Merchants' Chamber
Founding Member, Children of the Earth
http://globalwarming.rediffiland.com
http://friendlyghost.rediffiland.com
Stop Credit Cards & Consumer Loans
Today, we have affluent economies, with only a small fraction of our economies' output devoted to basic needs. Environmentalists say that we are reaching the limits of growth due to ecological constraints. In cities, we have not only reached the limits of human needs but overshot them many times over. What we currently have in our metros is largely overconsumption or unnecessarily luxurious consumption which has many adverse consequences on us, on our economies and on our planet.
Economic growth is no longer improving our well-being. The extra time and energy that we must spend on healthcare, children's education, commuting and just keeping pace of changes are on the rise. The quality of our surroundings -- our neighbourhood, roads, civic infrastructure etc. are deteriorating even as more and more goods flood the supermarkets.
We have reached a point of counterproductive growth; additional growth now brings diminishing benefits while causing increased social and environmental costs.
As we urban Indians have become more prosperous, we have moved from consuming necessities to consuming conveniences to consuming luxuries. We are now driving to work one-per-car and spending many hours per week in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
This has severe environmental consequences. India's phenomenal economic growth of 9.5% per annum comes at the cost of farmers being deprived of electricity, of countless creatures of all shapes and sizes being deprived of their natural habitats and their food, of countless rivers and groundwater resources being both overexploited and polluted. Due to the continuous expansion of factories for manufacturing everything from cement to SUVs to cream-biscuits expand to meet the burgeoning demand, we overdraw on planetary resources and disrupt the fine web of life by cutting its strands.
But how can we stop? How to stop so many billion people from doing all the things they do in daily life?
In my mind, I keep searching for key points that are causing our present situation. I keep trying to identify places where the cancerous tumour, so to speak, can be clearly isolated from human flesh. Because these are the places where we can start cutting away surgically, methodically, without hurting too many people.
1) Consumer credit -- loans extended by banks for purchase of new vehicles and consumer appliances -- is one of the major arteries of this cancerous tumour. Easy loans affect our purchasing decisions. How?
Two calls from an aggressive marketer of car loans is all I need to make me feel that I NEED to step up from my family car to an SUV. I start believing that it is high time I bought a bigger car. "You can afford it, Sir," says the loan agent, sleazily massaging my ego into a full-blown erection.
I think about my employee who drives the same brand of car that I drive, thanks to the same loan agent's persuasion. Then I think about my neighbour's shining new Scorpio and think about how insignificant my own vehicle (read phallic symbol) looks standing next to it.
Some advice from my friendly chartered accountant reinforces this feeling: New SUV = more tax-deductible depreciation. Also, interest on loan installments is tax-deductible.
I reason: if I trade in my present vehicle, it brings down the price of the new one a lakh or so. Then I only need to afford the reduced EMIs (Equated Monthly Instalments) on the load. Can't I afford an EMI of Rs 12,000? Of course I can; what kind of man am I if I can't afford to pay a small installment like that?!
Besides, business is looking up; that new client who I have been pursuing for six months is almost in the bag. So what if he hasn't actually signed on the dotted line? His word is as good as gold.
That decides it: I just WANT a brand-new fuel-guzzler, and I want it NOW! Never mind the price, I can afford the EMI. Of course I can... Case closed!
2) Credit cards: Visa Power -- you've got it! If you have a credit card or two, you know what it means to be a really wealthy person, because you are able to securely carry large amounts equivalent to many months' earnings in your wallet.
And when you do that, you are potentially able to do all those wonderful, beautiful, generous things that you see in TV commercials -- things that can make your wife's heart go flutter-flutter, and that will make her give you that million-dollar smile. How about buying her that diamond solitaire? Or taking her out to dinner at the Taj Princess? Or booking the Presidential suite for your wedding anniversary? Or, better still, surprising her with a couple of air-tickets to Paris
Wow, that would be such a PRICELESS moment... just like they show in Visa commercials!
Credit-card bills? What's that? Oh, just a minor detail, that's all. Stuff that happens in the background, inconspicuously, as part of routine life. Life goes on, bills get paid... they always do. So let's not waste time talking about bills. Those airline tickets are one phone-call or one mouse-click away.
The point that I'm making here is: Consumer credit and credit-cards are the hot air causing the great big Economic Growth balloon to go up... and up... and up at the current rate of 9.5% per annum. Thanks to this banking 'reform', all of us are learning to increasingly live in perpetual debt, just like the Americans whom we all adore so much that they can do no wrong, not even in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thanks to easy consumer credit, we are all borrowing from the future. We aren't only borrowing economically, we are borrowing ecologically. As the previous article points out, "Globally, we are demanding 1.3 planets to support our lifestyles this year, and yet we only have one planet earth. Each year, we as a global community place demands on cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries that goes beyond their capacity to generate resources and absorb wastes. We are using more far more than the planet can regenerate in a year."
Conclusion: At an individual level, we should stop buying things with credit, and stop using our credit cards. It is worth cutting up our credit cards. Let us stop borrowing for the future.
And as a community of concerned citizens, let us lobby for a clampdown on consumer credit. Let us write to the government, to Reserve Bank and to individual banks and bankers.
Let each person in the banking industry be targetted with this message: Cap and roll back. Let us ask for a freeze of consumer credit at current levels this year, and a 50% reduction in the amounts of credit given each year. This would give the economy about three years to adjust to the changing scenario. (Three years is 36 months -- far more time than the economy and its stakeholders get for adjustment when the stock-markets crash or a bank collapse which happens within a few weeks time.)
Do you think there is truth in this argument? If so, please help by spreading the word.
Which really just goes to show that we know very little about what damage we are really causing.
Yes of course it does. Go visit a greenhouse or botanical garden and you can easily feel the clean air.
The interesting thing about this is that the Midwest is showing the most carbon dioxide output, despite having very few major cities. The megalopolis of the east coast has almost no red above it, and neither do San Francisco, LA or San Diego. In fact, the big red areas are mostly rural and covered in farmland.
If global warming is truly a result of human activity, wouldn't the big cities be the reddest areas on the map? Or are cow farts themselves responsible for the ice caps melting?
See, when actual science comes into the picture, you start to realize more and more what an incredible hoax this anthropogenic global warming BS is.
That's probably the carbon output, wouldn't it?
And prolly ends up in the Australasian waters;
http://ipy.nasa.gov/multimedia/m000000/m000000/m000001/160657main_OZONE_large.jpg
Greg,
That was an incredibly ignorant jump to a conclusion; you asked a question you don't know the answer to, and thinking that's the end of it, claim that anthropogenic global warming is BS and a hoax. Let me inform you of the fact that the Midwest, and the other regions colored in red, burn more coal than almost any other region, and have other coal intensive industries.
Do you have any idea how much CO2 a coal plant produces, compared to burning natural gas? Nearly 100% of the molecular content of the emissions of burnt coal is CO2, whereas burning methane (the dominant component of natural gas) gives emissions which are 4/5 water vapor and only 1/5 CO2. The water vapor portion condenses out of the atmosphere easily and does not add to the greenhouse index because the atmosphere as a whole is saturated with it.
Not every unanswered question you can pull up means the research that led to the conclusion of anthropogenic global warming is a "hoax" or is BS. All your remark demonstrated is that you're eager to cling to anything coming your way that excuses you from accepting anthropogenic global warming, not that "real science" has anything to do with your conclusions.
The Midwest high output is simply explained; nearly all the coal fired power plants in the U.S. are in the Midwest. Period; end sentence. As an east coaster, I get to enjoy the polluted air as it blows this way and the acid rains as they fall, just so Midwesterners get cheap power. Gives me a TINY insight into how the poor Third worlders must feel about the First world screwing up their climate first...BAN THAT COAL! (I see that in typing my pedantic rant Berkana has addressed Greg's misguided missive. Thank you, Berkana!)
While I think Krish is whistling in the wind about returning to a cash basis (it's not that I don't agree, I just don't think that either business or consumers would buy in), his proposal on industry centered recycling is a good one; precedents are set (You can't sell anything in Sweden you won't recycle; they even do cars!), and the time is right. One more thing for the rest of the world to sign on to and my country to ignore, but keep up the good work, all you other countries! We are getting rid of the fascist regime in less than a year and we should finally be able to at least half step with the rest of the world instead of our current status as a roadblock...
Global Warming is a farce. Carbon dioxide goes into trees. It's called the carbon cycle.
This is a bunch of crap.
It's just an excuse to get there carbon tax passed. Which equals a global tax. Do some research....
This is a bunch of crap.
It's just an excuse to get there carbon tax passed. Which equals a global tax. Do some research....
The argument for human contributed global warming is flimsy at best, and has only lasted as long as it has by virtue of a particularly disingenuous statistical sleight of hand. The smoke and mirrors trick I am referring to is the widespread and profoundly dishonest practice of omitting the single most powerful (and entirely natural) cause of greenhouse effect in our atmosphere: water vapor. Water vapor accounts for 95% of all greenhouse effects on this planet; every single other cause, including CO2 (both natural and man-made), methane, various other greenhouse gasses, and kicking puppies - all together make up to the remaining 5%.
The only way human activities can even make a blip on the global warming radar, is by ignoring the immense role water vapor plays - a role which lies entirely outside of human control, and has a lot more to do with well known and cyclic variances in the energy output of the sun.
Marksy, you demonize the burning of coal due to its high carbon dioxide release rate (all of carbon dioxide emissions both human and naturally occurring add up to less than 3% of total greenhouse effect, by the way; humans activities account for some small fraction of a percent). But just to play the devils advocate, your preferred alternative produces copious quantities of the most powerful greenhouse gas known to man! A hundred times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2! You guessed it - diabolical dihydrogen monoxide, in vapor form, the insidious pairing of two hydrogen atoms with a single oxygen atom! Also known as "water." Kind of makes all the hand waving and teeth gnashing look a little silly, don't it?
thotpoizn, I'm afraid I'm calling BS on you. Where does your 95% figure come from? You don't say. Nor do you mention that the mositure content of the atmosphere increases with temperature (this is why meteorologists talk about relative humidity, as in relative to the maximum possible humidity at a given temperature), so the water vapor you are so fond acts as a multiplier.
Furthermore, temperature is rising quickest over the Arctic, or in Siberia and Alaska, yet all of these places have much colder air, and thus far less water vapor, than equatorial regions. If increased water vapor was the culprit of rising temperatures, these would rise in the lower, not higher latitudes.
Nor can you add greenhouse effects linearly, anyway. The same photons interact with many molecules as they travel through the atmosphere.
Finally, unlike CO2, water vapor turns into clouds and these reflect light, raising the albedo of the planet. So the NET effect of water in the atmosphere you claim is simply hogwash. You decry that water vapor is ignored, but you ignore condensed water (clouds,see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CloudOpticalThickness.jpg).
Helpful Gardener,
What what? You East coaster's poots don't stink? East coasters don't consume, waste, and putter about? Pooooooor East coasters putting up with everyone else's crap. It's especially tragic since the dawn of Anglo occupation ya'll've been eating toxins and excreting recycled Christmas presents.
I'm not smart enough to argue the point about coal use in SE Oklahoma causing your toxic rain, but I am smart enough to figure out why remarks like this would cause a Midwesterner to say 'SUCK IT East Coaster!'
I'm also willing to wager you have no clue, however minuscule, what a "poor third worlder" experiences.
Helpful Gardener,
What what? You East coaster's poots don't stink? East coasters don't consume, waste, and putter about? Pooooooor East coasters putting up with everyone else's crap. It's especially tragic since the dawn of Anglo occupation ya'll've been eating toxins and excreting recycled Christmas presents.
I'm not smart enough to argue the point about coal use in SE Oklahoma causing your toxic rain, but I am smart enough to figure out why remarks like this would cause a Midwesterner to say 'SUCK IT East Coaster!'
I'm also willing to wager you have no clue, however minuscule, what a "poor third worlder" experiences.
Helpful Gardener,
What what? You East coaster's poots don't stink? East coasters don't consume, waste, and putter about? Pooooooor East coasters putting up with everyone else's crap. It's especially tragic since the dawn of Anglo occupation ya'll've been eating toxins and excreting recycled Christmas presents.
I'm not smart enough to argue the point about coal use in SE Oklahoma causing your toxic rain, but I am smart enough to figure out why remarks like this would cause a Midwesterner to say 'SUCK IT East Coaster!'
I'm also willing to wager you have no clue, however minuscule, what a "poor third worlder" experiences.
Well, you may call BS as you please, but try not to take offense if I do the same. A good source with plenty of reference links is:
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
There's dozens of other articles and published pieces out there from both "camps," but this one does a pretty good job of pointing out the serious holes in the "chicken little postulate" without a lot of hand waving or obfuscation.
Also note, I did not claim that water vapor was responsible for global warming; that is patently absurd. The sun is entirely responsible, as it always has been and always will be - for every warming period and every ice age. Water is the buffer which allows us to continue living here, conveniently trapping enough warmth so that we do not freeze our collective buns off - and generally moderating any radical temperature shifts.
By the way, if you really want to begin nitpicking about what facts are being left out, you might want to explain the exact mechanics of cloud formation at various temperatures and air pressures, specifically accounting for warmer temperatures and the corresponding capacity of air to retain higher amounts of water vapor (i.e. without any condensation or cloud formation.) More water vapor in the air does not *necessarily* result in more cloud formation - unless you think you have something to share with the rest of the scientific community?
A lot of arguments are about whether the current warming is NATURAL or caused by HUMAN ACTIVITES.
Now, just suppose we concede that the warmig is due to "natural causes". Let us ask the proponents of the Natural Global Warming theory: Is anybody disputing that there is a MASS EXTINCTION in progress -- 27,000-odd species dying every year due to diminishing tropical forests alone? And then maybe an equal number in other habitats such as continental shelves?
Is anybody disputing that this extinction is caused by HUMAN ACTIVITIES?
If they aren't, then maybe we should let the proponents of Natural Warming believe what they want. Let us shift the focus of our discussion to the Mass Extinction, and look at how to control human activities that is ripping apart the delicate web of life on this planet.
Warmly,
Krish
http://friendlyghost.rediffiland.com
http://globalwarming.rediffiland.com
Thotpoizn-- You need to go out and follow Gore around and have your own forum called and inconvenient truth about an inconvenient truth....
To many people jump on the CO2 bandwagon and fail to realize that the most powerful source of heat is..... The SUN! Wo mind blowing stuff...;)
There is an amazing correlation with cloud formation and solar activity. You greenhouse gurus should take a look into it..
Everyone should keep an open mind and read as much as they can about "global warming" there are plenty of scientists that will point out the sun is playing a part in all this...
MAN THIS IS VERY HELPFULL TO MY HOME WORK AND IT WILL HELP ME KINDA GET UP MY GRADES AND I HOPE MY TEACHER LIKES IT SOOO THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP AND WRITTING...... FRON JUSTIN 6GRADE SCIENCE CLASS