Climate Policy

[kandrathe]

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 gases?

I thought it was useful. It might disprove the completeness of the current GHG global warming model. This helps the creators of the model and the IPCC to go back and figure out what they are missing. And, as I said, if they are missing some things, then those things might moderate warming making less or accentuate warming making it more. But it casts doubt on the accuracy of the model, just the same.

Rising temperatures will lead to melting of the permafrost in Siberia leading to large methane release.

Yes, but increased growing season and more moderate temperatures in Siberia may result in an explosion of plant growth in Siberia and Canada offsetting any GHG's released. I haven't heard of any serious land speculation going on yet on the beach front property north of Churchill.

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 thought buy the way). Instead of positive you should get more alarmed.

Not so much alarmed, as uncertain. Global warming is not a belief system. And, as a skeptic of the certainty espoused by adherents and alarmists, I don't consider myself a heretic.

I consider myself more of an old fashioned earth conscious individual, like Henry David Thoreau. "If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!"

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 responsibility. 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.

Also, black carbon is formed during decomposition, only part of the biomass is converted leaving a more substantial portion of carbon sequestered than was originally modeled. And, the article stated the carbon would remain in the soil for much longer than they first thought (hundreds of years).

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

There was another article I read about how preventing natural forest fires ultimately contributes to global warming. But, perhaps a better way would be for humans to aggressively manage certain agricultural forest lands growing and cutting as much timber as is possible to sequester the carbon in houses, barns, fences, and buildings. But, we should be diligent in caring for our wooden things to prevent them from decay, releasing their CO2 back into the atmosphere.