Is North America accidently working on the global warming problem? I have always maintained that if an effort was made to plant trees on land and promote plant growth in the seas, carbon containing gases could be removed from the atmosphere. If genetic research could lead to the insertion of genes into trees so that they would use nitrogen fixing bacteria to tie up nitrogen in the wood as well, it would promote plant growth and remove nitrogen compounds. Instead, what we have is the World Bank promoting the burning and clearing of rain forests. Rain forests could be left intact and used to farm natural rubber, cacao (chocolate), and pharmaceuticals. On the other hand, the ecologists maintain we are the bad guys and must stop running our engines.
+++++++++++
By Randolph E. Schmid
The Associated Press
W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 16 — There may be a bit of
good news on the global-warming front. North
America seems to be removing a substantial
portion of the excess carbon in the
atmosphere—almost 2 billion tons annually.
A team of government and university researchers
speculates that the carbon is being soaked up, at least partly,
by the regrowth of plants and vegetation on abandoned
farmland and previously logged forests.
But the report, in today's edition of the journal Science,
could mean more controversy for the global-warming debate.
In particular, environmentalists worry that groups opposed
to the global climate treaty negotiated last year in Kyoto,
Japan, will use the findings to argue that the United States
doesn't need to reduce emissions of so-called greenhouse
gases, as it agreed to do.
“There is a huge concern that this result will be
misinterpreted,” ecologist David Schimel of the National
Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said in a
telephone interview.
“I don't believe this result,” said Schimel, commenting that
other research indicates the amount of carbon taken up by
North America can be no more than 700 million tons, rather
than the 1.2 billion to 2.2 billion tons estimated by the new
report.
Cause In the Temperate Zone?
Pieter Tans, one of the scientists who worked on the paper,
admitted the “uncertainties are still large.”
“This is not ironclad. We say in the paper the evidence is
still somewhat tentative,” he said.
But “we do think that we have used good models. … We
think we've used data in a proper way. … We've tried to
look at all the uncertainties, and this is what we get,” said
Tans, an atmospheric chemist at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Climate Monitoring and
Diagnostics Laboratory in Boulder.
Carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels such as
coal and oil has been increasing in the atmosphere. That has
led to the conclusion by many scientists that it might cause
excessive warming of the Earth by trapping heat from the sun,
somewhat like the glass of a greenhouse.
The measured increase in carbon dioxide has been less
than was expected, leading scientists to wonder where the
excess was going.
The Science paper measures carbon dioxide levels
around the world and concludes that whatever is absorbing
the gas is in the temperate region of the northern hemisphere,
roughly between 25 degrees and 51 degrees north latitude.
Comparing carbon dioxide levels in America, Europe and
Asia led the scientists to believe that the major absorption is
occurring in North America.
‘We Need to Know Why'
Regrowth on farmland and previously cut forests is a strong
possibility, since growing plants absorb carbon dioxide, use
the carbon for growth and release oxygen into the air.
Tans also speculated that increases in carbon dioxide have
spurred plant growth, which caused them to grow faster and
remove more of the gas from the air. Fertilization by
increased nitrogen in the air might have had the same effect,
he said.
The analysis looked at carbon dioxide levels between
1988 and 1992, measured at 63 atmospheric sampling
stations.
“The current uptake of carbon by terrestrial ecosystems is
helping to slow down the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, but
we need to know why it is happening. Only then may we be
able to project for how long into the future this process may
continue,” Tans said.
Jerry Mahlman, director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid
Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University, a co-author of
the paper, said that while the North American carbon sink
may prove important in worldwide management of
atmospheric carbon absorption, its value will come at a global
level, not regional.
In addition to Tans and Mahlman, co-authors of the article
in Science are Song-Miao Fan, Emanuel Gloor, Stephen
Pacala and Jorge Sarmiento of Princeton University and Taro
Takahaski of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory.
Copyright 1998 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,
or redistributed.
abcnews.com:80/sections/science/DailyNews/carbon981016.html
Meanwhile, Russia does the opposite.
++++++++++++=
By Judith Matloff
The Christian Science Monitor
K H A B O R O V S K, Russia, Oct. 15 — The smoke here
was so thick that it resembled a heavy fog. Its acrid smell
spread to villages more than 1,000 miles away.
To escape the forest inferno, many animals headed into
the city. Startled residents in one apartment building found a
brown bear in their lobby.
The Siberian taiga is a pristine woodland of conifers,
stretching 1.3 million square miles to Russia's Far East Pacific
coast. Comprising nearly a quarter of the planet's timber
reserves, the taiga is twice the size of the Amazon rain forest.
It is one of the earth's great lungs, generating oxygen and
extracting pollutants, while providing a refuge for endangered
tigers, bears, and birds.
But huge fires have been raging unchecked in the Siberian
Far East for three months, devastating vast tracts of primeval
forest. United Nations experts who visited Sakhalin island
and Khabarovsk, near the Chinese border, this week called it
a global catastrophe.
“Forest fires of such a scale fall in the category of
worldwide ecological disasters,” the U.N. experts said.
“They bear consequences not only for the ecosystem of
frontier countries with Russia but also for a large part of the
Northern Hemisphere,” the U.N. statement added.
These 2.2 billion acres of woodland serve as “sinks” that
soak up carbon gases that add to global warming. The forests
host diverse plant and animal life and make up the traditional
homelands of nearly 200,000 indigenous people.
Now the fires, as well as illegal logging, are devastating
these woods. Environmentalists say this poses a bigger threat
to the world's environment than the destruction of forests in
Brazil, Madagascar, or Thailand.
Dry Year Fuels Huge Blazes
Forest fires in the Far East are an annual summer event,
touched off by both nature and careless humans. But this year
was particularly dry, and the autumn rains are late. In
Khabarovsk, about 990,000 acres are still blazing and 2.9
million acres have been destroyed. As much as two-thirds of
the forest on Sakhalin, an island just miles off Japan, have
burned.
“If there is no serious rain, Sakhalin's forest will disappear
soon,” says Yevgeny Usov, a spokesman for Greenpeace
Russia. “The consequences are serious.”
Forest fires are difficult to control in this part of the world
because there are few roads or towns, little equipment, and
scarce funds. The fires began just as Russia's economy
collapsed and the central government is too distracted — and
bankrupt—to worry about trees.
Foreigners are filling the void. Japan pledged $40,000 in
humanitarian aid to the town of Gorky, which was ruined by
fire, while foreign oil firms working on Sakhalin have
promised $50,000. But Greenpeace estimates that total
material losses in the region could top $31.5 billion.
That doesn't even take into account the ecological havoc:
As much as 50 million tons of toxic carbon gasses may be
emitted this year from the forest fires. And ashes falling into
Sakhalin rivers will make it difficult for salmon to spawn. This
could affect the red caviar industry on which the
impoverished region depends.
Environmentalists fighting to save endangered Siberian
tigers are glum. Protection efforts had made progress in
stabilizing the wild population at more than 400, but the fires
are destroying traditional habitats. “This means they will move
closer to towns where they inevitably will be killed by
poachers,” Greenpeace's Usov says.
The attention on the forest fires is obscuring another
serious problem—the smuggling of valuable cedar, elm, and
ash trees to China, Korea, and Japan.
Illegal logging has soared over the past decade, especially
since borders opened after the Soviet Union's collapse in
1991. Russia's pervasive corruption means that truckloads of
rare wood regularly cross the border unchecked. It can be
catastrophic when the trees are cut down in areas of
permafrost, where soil remains frozen year round. Swamps
are created on which new trees cannot be planted.
Illegal Logging Adds to Losses
Illegal logging is practically equal to forest fires in terms of its
threat to the taiga, says Vladimir Shetinin, deputy chairman of
the Primorsky region's State Committee on Environmental
Protection, based in Vladivostok.
“The real smuggling is only beginning now. Over the past
three to four years smugglers got a taste of the money they
could make,” he says.
Ash is one of the most valuable woods in the world,
fetching up to $800 for a small piece, says Vladimir Stegni,
director of the Primorsky regional government's Department
of International Economic Relations in Vladivostok. Cedar is
banned from export because it is so endangered. But it gets
to China anyway.
Shetinin blames the economic crisis, which he says is
driving desperate men to smuggle. “Middlemen meet laid-off
factory workers and take advantage of their professional
skills. This is first-class work.”
Copyright 1998 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten, or redistributed.
Charles |
