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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (187873)	6/1/2006 6:07:01 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

And how long will it take for the existing CO2 to come back to pre-1850 norms Couldn't find that one, but here's a link on CO2 fertilization..,. realclimate.org

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (187873)	6/1/2006 12:19:09 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I don't understand what correlation there could possibly be between increasing dust and decreasing CO2 levels. If anything, were the dust levels high enough to cool the earth would cause a decrease in plant life (ocean and land) and thus CO2 levels should increase. One thought I have (not having looked at your links yet) is that decreased CO2 & temps (as in ice-ages) are also linked to general global drying. So mid-latitude areas in the ME & Africa might have seen more dust storms. Sahara dust storms now have quite the global reach at times. Conversely, if temp rises resulted in wetter times, dust might go down. And if it's a long time, then the existing CO2 levels, if unabsorbable, would logically continue to exacerbate increasing temperatures as more and more water vapor finds its way into the atmosphere, right? Cumulative damage should result until such a point where the world is at 100% humidity EVERYWHERE (saturation point),right? The water cycle is quite short duration (days, weeks) compared to the CO2 cycle. AFAIK, the water vapor in the atmosphere pretty much just tracks temperature based relative humidity. I.e. warmer air can support more water. If we created the speed bump, don't we have an obligation to smooth it out, rather than waiting for nature to erode it naturally? That is my POV. If I lived in Alaska, I might have a different one. BTW, I'm not adverse to things like ocean iron seeding, but we do need to be very careful when implementing any rather radical, large scale operation which impacts the ecology. IMO, our burning of fossil fuels is the root cause, so why not seek the solution there rather than elsewhere? One example I'm actually playing with however, is growing trees. Wood is a good carbon sink, but only net so long-term, if the carbon is taken from the forest. So my scheme is to grow a fast growing, but truly excellent hardwood tree native to the eastern US, called Black Locust. It grows like a weed here, and the wood has about the best all around technical properties of any American timber. I want to see them used for timberframe homes (I'm building one slowly), and I want to see LOTS of wood in each home. Such homes should last for hundreds of years (the wood has stellar rot resistance as well as high strength). Many environmentalists like to see conservation wrt to wood use, and I would like to preserve natural and old growth forests. But for ag forestry, the more wood we use, provided it has a very long use period, the more carbon we take from the atmosphere. The effect of this is to somewhat smooth out the bump. BTW, Black Locust, being a legume, also fixes nitrogen in my soil, so it is a good, but somewhat long, crop rotation as well.