Sub-Topics Biomass and Biochar Carbon Sequestration Geoengineering Also Try Biochar Global Warming Methane Gases Tipping Point Multimedia The Keeling Curve (SoilCarbonCoalition.org) Displays the level of monthly average carbon dioxide concentration at Mauna Lao Observatory in Hawaii from 1960 to 2006. The parts per million changed from 315 to 385. 01-09 News -001 Can We Prevent Global Warming? (Newsweek.com) Secretary of Energy Chu: "Right now, the climate scientists feel that if all humans shut off carbon emissions today, it will still glide up by about 1 degree centigrade. In the business-as-usual scenarios, Nicholas Stern says there's a 50 percent chance we may go to 5 degrees centigrade.... And certain tipping points might be triggered. We can adapt to 1 or 2 degrees. More than that, there is no adaptation strategy." "So the big fear is that once the tundra thaws, those microbes wake up, they digest all that carbon. It goes up in the atmosphere. At that point, no matter what humans do, it's out of our control. This is the realization in the last decade that has caused many of us to get very, very concerned. Adaptation at 1 or 2 degrees will be painful, it will cause a lot of hurt and pain, but adaptation at 5 or 6 degrees—I'm terribly frightened that that's catastrophic." 04-09 -001 Report: Carbon Pollution to Grow by 40 Percent (MSNBC News) "The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide seeping into the atmosphere will increase by nearly 40 percent worldwide by 2030 if ways are not found to require mandatory emission reductions, a U.S. government report said Wednesday." "The EIA report said that "much of the increases in carbon dioxide emissions is projected to occur among the developing nations" including China and India." "It said 94 percent of the world's expected increase in industrial energy use between now and 2030 is expected in the economically developing countries, with Brazil, Russia, India and China expected to account for two-thirds of that growth." 05-09 -001 Report: Threat from Melting Permafrost (MSNBC News) "Eventually, in between 15 and 50 years, those plants [absorbing the carbon from the melting permafrost] 'can't keep up' and get overwhelmed, said study lead author Ted Schuur, a University of Florida ecologist." "At that point, a billion tons of carbon a year can be released into an atmosphere that is already warming because of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, cars, and other industrial activities, Schuur said. That would contribute the same amount to global warming as the deforestation of the tropics, he said." "Making matters worse is that much of the gas trapped in permafrost is methane, which is more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide." 05-09 -01-26-09 Study: Reducing Emissions Not Enough (MSNBC News) " 'People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that's not true,' lead author Susan Solomon told reporters." "Instead, the team concluded, warming tied to higher CO2 'is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop.' " "Before the industrial revolution the air contained about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. That has risen to 385 ppm today, and politicians and scientists have debated at what level it could be stabilized." 01-09 -05-21-09 How Much Carbon Is Too Much? (Scientific American) "To avoid catastrophic climate change, the world will need to emit less than one trillion metric tons of carbon between now and 2050, according to two new papers published in Nature today. In other words, there is only room in the atmosphere to burn or vent less than one quarter of known oil, natural gas and coal reserves." Editor's Note: One alternative is to "pull carbon from the air and store it in the soil. See biochar. 05-09 -09-16-09 Doctors Urge Action to Avoid Catastrophic Health Consequences (Time.com) "A weak response to climate change could be catastrophic for international health, leading doctors said in two British medical journals Wednesday." "In a letter jointly published in The Lancet and BMJ, presidents from 18 medical organizations worldwide called on doctors to pressure politicians meeting in Copenhagen in December to take decisive action on global warming." "In an accompanying editorial, Lord Michael Jay of the medical charity Merlin and Michael Marmot of University College London wrote that 'a successful outcome at Copenhagen is vital for our future as a species and for our civilization.' " 09-09 -09-24-09 Is China the "Good Guy" on Climate Change? (Time.com) "Now the world's fastest growing big economy is ready to move into one of the world's fastest growing financial markets: carbon-trading. The China-Beijing Environmental Exchange (CBEEX) and the French emissions exchange BlueNext announced on Sept. 23 that they were putting together a carbon market standard for China." 09-09 -EPA: Greenhouse Gases Pose a Threat to Health (Time.com) "In detail, Thursday's decision means that any new air pollution permits for coal plants will require that Best Available Control Technology (BACT) be used to reduce CO2 emissions, the same criteria currently used for other pollutants, like sulfur dioxide or soot. BACT requires companies involved in power plants to use the best available technology to control pollutants — it's a tool to keep pollution controls up to date as both safety technology and our understanding of pollution impoves. In the past, CO2 wasn't affected by BACT because the EPA didn't recognize it as a pollutant. This decision changes that." 11-08 Papers "Carbon-Neutral" Won't Be Enough (SoilCarbonCoalition.org) "What this means is that our current widespread advocacy of CO2 emissions reduction has little leverage on what most scientists regard as the cause of global warming—the highest atmospheric CO2 levels in hundreds of thousands of years. The assumption that CO2 emissions reductions will do the trick has become popular groupthink, not subject to scrutiny because it's what we all know, and may seem like the only available option. Once again, we are goading ourselves into a gallant cavalry charge into the barbed wire." "What's needed is to reverse the Keeling curve, to quickly and significantly reduce existing atmospheric concentrations of CO2." "Carbon-neutral won't be enough. We have to be carbon-negative, to be pulling carbon out of the atmosphere into some safe, stable place. Various technologies have been proposed for this, but so far they haven't succeeded in solving the immense storage or disposal issues, and they require energy. The oxidation or burning of carbon compounds yields energy, and the reverse reactions require energy. Reversing the Keeling curve will require enormous amounts of energy." 06-08 -001Lovelock: One Last Chance to Save Mankind (NewScientist.com) "There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast." "Would it make enough of a difference?" "Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it." 05-09 -09-03-09 Study: Arctic Warming But Should Be Cooling (MSNBC News) "The Arctic is warmer than it's been in 2,000 years, according to a new study, even though it should be cooling because of changes in the Earth's orbit that cause the region to get less direct sunlight." 09-09 -09-04-09 We Can Slow Climate Change With Biochar (RenewableEnergyWorld.com) "The natural balance of the earth has always included carbon storage in the plants and soil. The problem is that we have disrupted that balance. We have burned in one century much of the carbon that nature sequestered over millions of years. Coal is almost pure carbon, gathered by plants and sequestered by natural processes. We need to stop burning it!" "Carbon-inefficient slash and burn agriculture is practiced by 300-500 million people today. If these people could convert to slash and char methods, we could stop the growth of greenhouse gas in its tracks." 09-09 -A Vision for Reversing Catastrophic Climate Change (Evaluation and Development Institute) "Our quality of life cannot survive in a world with massive climate change…and massive climate change is very likely unless we aggressively sequester the carbon dioxide (CO2) already in the atmosphere[1]. If something is not done quickly, the earth may be facing an Extinction Level Event.[2] Merely reducing the rate that we increase CO2 cannot succeed. The amount of CO2 already in the air is already much too great to avoid catastrophe.[3] Pre-industrial levels were at 280 parts per million (ppm) and the current level is 387ppm. Even after massively reducing use of fossil fuels, the earth is expected to exceed the “redline” of 450 ppm before the atmosphere gets better." 11-06 -Climate Change: What We Can Do (Evaluation and Development Institute) "Earth's climate became very stable 10,000 years ago, allowing for agriculture for the first time. Our stable climate arose from a balance of three ingredients: -Greenhouse gases -Ocean currents and -Polar ice Greenhouse gases provided a stable temperature to allow ocean currents to mix heat and cold around the globe and to maintain a relatively constant amount of polar ice. We now have 1/3 more CO2 in the air than we had only 150 years ago--and CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. The extra carbon keeps more heat in the air. The extra heat is absorbed by polar ice, soil, and the oceans. The ice over the Arctic Ocean is expected to be gone during summers within 5-10 years. Instead of ice over the Arctic Ocean reflecting heat, the Arctic Ocean will absorb heat. This will slow the ocean currents even more--they already are slowing because of the change in climate. When the ocean currents stop and the Arctic ice melts, we will have a climate catastrophe that can be expected to last thousands of years. Permafrost in Russia and other regions will melt, releasing gigantic amounts of carbon and methane stored in the soil. The release will trigger even more extreme climate." "Only one cost-effective solution has been found for quickly reducing the carbon in the air:" "Each year we must convert enough biomass (organic waste) into biochar (charcoal) to extract at least 7 gigatons of carbon from the air and place it in our soils." 08-09 -Editorial: Where Is the Tipping Point for Disaster? (Time.com) "When asked to quantify the impact of climate change, scientists come up with a lot of interesting answers, no two of them quite the same. For the lay person, then, perhaps the simplest way to understand it is to imagine a distant asteroid, somewhere out in space, on a collision course with Earth. It's not clear when or where the asteroid will hit, or exactly how severe the consequences will be. But it is clear that when it happens, the consequences will be far worse — and last far longer — than any natural disaster humanity has ever known." 03-09 -Food Storage, Waste, and Biochar (VillageEarth.org) " 'In Latin America it has been estimated that there is a loss of 25 to 50 percent of harvested cereals and pulses; in certain African countries about 30 percent of the total subsistence agricultural production is lost annually, and in areas of Southeast Asia some crops suffer losses of up to 50 percent.' " Editor's Note: The losses are linked to poor storage and poor drying before storage. For crops that are lost, making biochar is the logical solution. Farmers can build low-tech kilns from mud and other local materials, make biochar from the crop waste, use the heat from burning biochar to dry crops, and then either sell the biochar or use it on the fields as fertilizer. This solution can help the farmers economically and can play a major role in reducing catastrophic climate change. If farmers globally make biochar out of their organic wastes, catastrophic climate change will be prevented. 05-09 -How Much Carbon Is Too Much? (Nature.com) "More than 100 countries have adopted a global warming limit of 2 °C or below (relative to pre-industrial levels) as a guiding principle for mitigation efforts to reduce climate change risks, impacts and damages1, 2." 05-09 -Leaders Meet on Climate Change (CNN New) "World leaders converge Tuesday in New York to focus on climate change, with the clock ticking down toward a summit this year in Denmark, where a global climate change pact is to be signed." "Chinese President Hu Jintao, U.S. President Barack Obama, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Rwandan President Paul Kagame are among the world leaders expected to speak Tuesday." "Roundtables are also planned, all with the overarching and generally accepted goal of limiting the rise of Earth's temperature to within 2 degrees Fahrenheit above its temperature before the industrial revolution." 09-09 -Report: Carbon Pollution to Grow by 40 Percent (MSNBC News) "The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide seeping into the atmosphere will increase by nearly 40 percent worldwide by 2030 if ways are not found to require mandatory emission reductions, a U.S. government report said Wednesday." "The EIA report said that "much of the increases in carbon dioxide emissions is projected to occur among the developing nations" including China and India." "It said 94 percent of the world's expected increase in industrial energy use between now and 2030 is expected in the economically developing countries, with Brazil, Russia, India and China expected to account for two-thirds of that growth." 05-09 -Report: Climate Change "Catastrophic" (CNN News) "More than 300 million people are already seriously affected by the gradual warming of the earth and that number is set to double by 2030, the report from the Global Humanitarian Forum warns." "The report's startling numbers are based on calculations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the Earth's atmosphere warmed by 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 degrees Fahrenheit) from 1906 to 2005, with much of that increase coming in recent decades. The panel predicts that by 2100 temperatures will have increased a minimum of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels regardless of what's agreed in Copenhagen." 05-09 -Report: Global Warming May Be Twice as Bad as Expected (USA Today) "Global warming will be twice as severe as previous estimates indicate, according to a new study published this month in the Journal of Climate, a publication of the American Meteorological Society." "The research, conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), predicts a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise more than 9 degrees (F) by 2100, compared to a previous 2003 MIT study that forecast a rise of just over 4 degrees." "The projections in the MIT study were done using 400 applications of a computer model, which MIT says is the most comprehensive and sophisticated climate model to date." Editor's Note: See catastrophic climate change. 05-09 -Simulation Results: Temperature Rise Caused a Mass Extinction (BBC News) "A computer simulation of the Earth's climate 250 million years ago suggests that global warming triggered the so-called 'great dying'." "A dramatic rise in carbon dioxide caused temperatures to soar to 10 to 30 degrees Celsius higher than today, say US researchers." "Some 95% of lifeforms in the oceans became extinct, along with about three-quarters of land species." 8-05 -We Could Be Hitting the Limit of Oceans to Absorb CO2 (Time.com) "Like the vast forests of the world, which continually suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen, the planet's oceans serve as vital carbon sinks. Last year the oceans absorbed as much as 2.3 billion tons of carbon, or about one-fourth of all manmade carbon emissions. Without the action of the oceans, the CO2 we emit into the atmosphere would have flame-broiled the planet by now." "But a new paper published in the Nov. 19 issue of Nature demonstrates that the oceans' ability to absorb man-made carbon may be dwindling — and that has worrying ramifications for future climate change. While the ocean is now absorbing more carbon in total than ever before, the waters are sucking up a smaller percentage of the CO2 emitted by humans. That could mean that there's a physical limit to the oceans' capacity — and we could be hitting it." 11-09 Can Biochar Save the Planet? (Time.com) "Biochar's ability to sequester CO2 has given new urgency to such research. 'Reducing emissions isn't enough — we have to draw down the carbon stock in the atmosphere,' says Tim Flannery, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a consortium of scientists and business leaders linked to next year's United Nations Climate Summit. 'And for that, slow pyrolysis biochar is a superior solution to anything else that's been proposed.' Cornell's Lehmann is even more emphatic. 'If biochar could be massively applied around the globe,' he says, 'we could end the emissions problem in one to two years.' " 05-09 China Becomes Leader in Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Wikipedia.org) "On June 19, 2007, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency announced that a preliminary study indicated that China's greenhouse gas emissions for 2006 had exceeded those of the United States for the first time." 06-07 Climate Change Grants (Foundation Center) Provides information on grants given and available to combat climate change. 10-09 Climate Report: Massive Extinctions Expected (MSNBC News) "A key element of the second major report on climate change being released Friday in Belgium is a chart that maps out the effects of global warming with every degree of temperature rise, most of them bad." "There’s one bright spot: A minimal heat rise means more food production in northern regions of the world." "However, the number of species going extinct rises with the heat, as does the number of people who may starve, or face water shortages, or floods, according to the projections in the draft report obtained by The Associated Press." "The final document will be the product of a United Nations network of 2,000 scientists as authors and reviewers, along with representatives of more than 120 governments as last-minute editors. It will be the second of a four-volume authoritative assessment of Earth’s climate released this year. The last such effort was in 2001." 03-07 Climatologist: 450, the CO2 Red Line? (ForeignPolicy.com) "Twenty years ago, when global warming first came to public consciousness, no one knew precisely how much carbon dioxide was too much. The early computer climate models made a number of predictions about what would happen if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to 550 parts per million. But, in recent years, as the science has gotten more robust, scientists have tended to put the red line right around 450 parts per million. That’s where NASA’s James Hansen, America’s foremost climatologist, has said we need to stop if we want to avoid a temperature rise greater than two degrees Celsius. Why would two degrees be a magic number? Because as best we can tell, it’s where the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets would become rapid and irrevocable. The ice above Greenland alone contains about 23 feet of sea-level rise, which is more than enough to alter the Earth almost beyond recognition." 01-09 Consequences of Global Warming (Salon.com) "Achieving the Obama target would require replacing the country's entire multitrillion-dollar energy infrastructure -- including the vast majority of power plants and cars -- in four decades. I would call this policy "radical," but in fact it is pragmatic. Failing to act quickly will most likely result, by century's end, in 5°C to 7°C global warming, sea levels rising 10 inches a decade or more, widespread desertification, the loss of the inland glaciers that provide water to a billion people and an ocean that is one large, hot, acidic dead zone." 01-09 Editorial: How Denmark Became Energy Independent (New York Time) "Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn’t happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.)" "...Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today." "Frankly, when you compare how America has responded to the 1973 oil shock and how Denmark has responded, we look pathetic." 08-08 Experts: Seafood Could Collapse by 2050 (MSNBC News) "If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, by 2050 the populations of just about all seafood face collapse, defined as 90 percent depletion, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a study published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science." 10-06 Food Chain in Oceans Threatened (Time.com) "Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is threatening to make oceans too corrosive for marine organisms to grow protective shells, according to researchers." "If emissions continue unabated, the entire Southern Ocean, which stretches north from the Antarctic coastline, and subarctic regions of the Pacific Ocean will soon become so acidic that the shells of marine creatures will soften and dissolve making them easy targets for predators. Others will not be able to grow sufficient shells to survive." "The loss of shelled creatures at the lower end of the food chain could have disastrous consequences for larger marine animals." 9-05 Industry Leader in Coal Refuses to Use New Technology (New York Times) "Many scientists say that sharply reducing emissions of these gases [from coal processing] could make more difference in slowing climate change than any other move worldwide. And they point out that American companies are best positioned to set an example for other nations in adopting a new technique that could limit the environmental impact of the more than 1,000 coal-fired power projects on drawing boards around the world." "But most in the industry are not making that bet. Among them is Gregory H. Boyce, chief executive of Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal producer in the world thanks in part to its growing operations here in Wyoming and with aspirations to operate coal-fired plants of its own. Mr. Boyce's company alone controls reserves with more energy potential than the oil and gas reserves of Exxon Mobil." 05-06 Polar Ocean Soaking Up Less CO2 (BBC News) "One of Earth's most important absorbers of carbon dioxide (CO2) is failing to soak up as much of the greenhouse gas as it was expected to, scientists say." "This effect had been predicted by climate scientists, and is taken into account - to some extent - by climate models. But it appears to be happening 40 years ahead of schedule." 05-07 Raising the Bar on Climate Change (Time.com) "A 2008 Stanford University study found that between one-third and two-thirds of carbon offsets under the U.N.'s Clean Development Mechanism — which oversees offset projects under the Kyoto Protocol — do not represent actual emission cuts. In addition, the USCAP proposal recommends that many of the initial carbon emission allowances under a cap-and-trade system should be given to industry free, rather than auctioned — even though auctioning would push carbon reductions faster." Visitors may call it cap and trade. 05-09 Research: Amazon Forest Crisis Can Create "Incalculable Consequences" for Earth (The Independent) "The vast Amazon rainforest is on the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year." "Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable." 07-06 Scientist: We Are on the Path to a Catastrophe (CBS News) According to Michael MacCracken, chief scientist of the Climate Institute, " 'We're on a path to exceeding levels of global warming that will cause catastrophic consequences, and we really need to be seriously reducing emissions, not just reducing the growth rate as the president is doing.' " 03-07 Serious Claims Against Global Warming (ABC News) "Not one scientist of any credibility on this subject [of global warming] has presented any evidence for some years now that counters the massive and repeated evidence — gathered over decades and come at in dozens of ways by all kinds of professional scientists around the world — that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the world's average temperature." "Or that counters the findings that the burning of these fuels is doing so in a way that is very dangerous for mankind, that will almost certainly bring increasingly devastating effects in the coming decades." "One small group of special interest businesses leaders — those of some fossil fuel companies — have been well documented by journalist Ross Gelbspan and others to have been fighting a PR campaign for 15 years to keep the American public confused about the wide and deep scientific consensus on this." "They've aimed, as Gelbspan explains, to keep us thinking that (to borrow the president's words this morning) 'There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused' — though no open and thorough journalism this reporter knows of can find any such thing." 06-06 Snows of Kilimanjaro Melting Fast (Time.com) "For the first time in almost 12,000 years, based on ice-core analysis, Africa's highest peak probably will be ice-free as early as 2022 or as late as 2033, says glaciologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, who led the study." 11-09 Study: Carbon Trading Has Not Worked (MSNBC News) " 'A responsible approach to solving this crisis [of global warming],' Al Gore said recently at New York University's Law School, would be 'to authorize the trading of emissions ... globally.' Emissions trading, also called carbon trading, is being expanded in the European Union and Japan." "The scale of the inefficiency of emissions trading was revealed in a study published in the scientific journal Nature last month. The nearly $6 billion already spent on projects to curb emissions of HFC-23, a potent greenhouse gas, had the same impact on the environment as would $132 million worth of equipment upgrades." 03-07 Study: Global Warming Is Irreversible (TruthOut.org) "As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. The damage will persist even when, and if, emissions are brought under control, says study author Susan Solomon, who is among the world's top climate scientists." 01-09 Union of Concerned Scientists: ExxonMobil Paid to Confuse Public on Global Warming (USA Today) "ExxonMobil (XOM) gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in an effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted Wednesday." 01-07

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