Climate Policy

[eppie]

Again, in the strange mode of role reversal between Jester and I... I am optimistic. :) I was reading some climate articles in Science Daily today. A couple caught my eye...

Global Warming: Our Best Guess Is Likely Wrong

I don't think this article is of very much use. It is basically an amount of words thrown together without saying anything (abstract of scientific articles in popular scientific magazines can be very useless).
Anyway, what about methane, or one of the other greenhouse gasses? Rising temperatures will lead to eg melting of the permafrost in Siberia leading to large methane release.
And more important, I can't understand what makes you positive when reading this. The authors don't state CO2 is not responsible for warming, they state that something else might kick in (which also isn't a very new though buy the way). Instead of positive you should get more alarmed.

Then there was the story, "Global Warming Predictions Are Overestimated, Suggests Study On Black Carbon" which found that the climate models underestimated the amount of black carbon sequestered in different soils.

This is about a model for predicting the temperatures reached. So how warm will it be in 50 years? 2.6 degrees warmer or 1.3 or maybe even 4.4? It doesn't talk about our CO2 responsability.
Anyway interesting, I hadn't heard about this before. I would have never expect there to be so much black carbon formed when burning organic material. Of course the fact that most of the organic material will be converted in water and CO2 on timescales depending on the life duration (and soil conditions during rotting) of said species is nothing strange.

And finally, a NASA funded study of "Ozone, Nitrogen Change The Way Rising Carbon Dioxide Affects Earth's Water" Which suggests either plants use less water making an environment more productive for other plants, or depending on conditions might create more run off resulting in floods, erosion, and water contamination.

I wonder how big this effect is compared to the increased run-off after bruning down an area of forest.;)