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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (18882)	12/26/2007 10:40:23 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36921

Now imagine that all our sinks are in good health. Next, imagine I am an economist. 'Unexpected growth' in CO2 found Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere have risen 35% faster than expected since 2000, says a study. International scientists found that inefficiency in the use of fossil fuels increased levels of CO2 by 17%. The other 18% came from a decline in the natural ability of land and oceans to soak up CO2 from the atmosphere. About half of emissions from human activity are absorbed by natural "sinks" but the efficiency of these sinks has fallen, the study suggests. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), was carried out by the Global Carbon Project, the University of East Anglia, UK, and the British Antarctic Survey. It found that improvements in the carbon intensity of the global economy have stalled since 2000, leading to an unexpected jump in atmospheric CO2. "In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slow-down of natural sinks and the halt to improvements in the carbon intensity of wealth production," said the study's lead author, Dr Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project. Global sink The weakening of the Earth's ability to cope with greenhouse gases is thought to be a result of changing wind patterns over seas and droughts on land. "The decline in global sink efficiency suggests that stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 is even more difficult to achieve than previously thought," said report co-author Dr Corinne Le Quere of the British Antarctic Survey. "We found that nearly half of the decline in the efficiency of the ocean CO2 sink is due to the intensification of the winds in the Southern Ocean." The declining power of the seas to soak up industrial pollution is not only being recorded in the southern hemisphere, however. According to a separate 10-year study published recently, the effect is also being seen in the North Atlantic. Story from BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (18882)	12/26/2007 2:19:39 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 36921

You have to understand that the amazing Maurice is visiting us from Sim's Planet. Yes, I did note that he 2'nded Watson's plug for junkscience. The junkscience link posted here was very amusing. Did you read it? The nutcase tries to bash the Greenhouse metaphor by claiming that a real greenhouse works on conduction, while the earth/space heat transfer is all about radiation, hence the metaphor is not good. LOL! I don't have exact numbers, but the primary use (AFAIK) of greenhouses are to provide a warmer environment in cool or cold locations. Hence the primary energy function of a greenhouse is to maintain higher internal temps, while letting light in. Hence they are generally mostly transparent (glass or plastic). As such, they in fact do work mainly in the radiation region. Sunlight comes in as radiation, and is blocked from going out by the wavelength change and the difference in transmission of the glass at the radiation wavelength. The efficency calculations for a glass greenhouse are going to be pretty close if you just look at the radiation environment and ignore conduction. In fact, a good greenhouse tries to force conduction to zero, thus doing a good job of mimicing the earth in space. The junkscience nimwit confused himself on this front because when a greenhouse needs to cool down, it does in fact rely on conduction (or rather convection) by running some fans to suck in outside colder air. But cooling down is not the general function of a greenhouse. I suppose if we were worried about global cooling and someone advanced a cooling greenhouse metaphor, then his objection would have merit, since there is no equivalent mechanism of claiming the earth is cooling via conduction or convection to space. Always worth a laugh I guess. To bad people actually think there is something worth reading on that site.