Burning Fossil Fuels are Greening the Earth

It is not a reply only to say that EHRLICH in German means HONEST !

I do not understand why people want to make themselves interesting by making fear prognosis.

You mention some of the predictions, but none of the changes that have taken place to mitigate some of these prognostications....

" Under nutrition is a contributory factor in the death of 2.6 million children every year.^[3] Figures on actual starvation are difficult to come by, but according to the FAO, the less severe condition of undernourishment currently affects about 925 million people, or about 13.5% of the world population.^[4]"

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation}

In 1970 the figure for undernourishment was 37% of the world's population....This has continued to improve thanks to GM crops and mechanized farming with improved methods and economic efficiency, and efforts to feed the starving by many organizations....

http://cdn.wfp.org/hungermap/

http://www.news.wisc.edu/21505

What about people displaced by natural disaster, extreme weather conditions, political unrest and military coups ? What about epidemics ? What about economic collapse ? What about blight ? These things are taking place around the world as we speak, and it is no fault of the people who fall victim....To lump these together with people who are dying of natural causes, or of illness at an old age, hardly seems the same....

The dichotomy of the argument is a reality. On the one hand we have increased our capacity to feed the world and global warming is a contributing factor. However, we have countries, particularly in Africa, that have population growths that far outreach their local capacity to support the expansion. According to Harm Blij, Nigeria is now the fastest growing country in the world and will be over 800,000,000 million by 2025. Also expect that population to be dominated by youth under 25. The balance of poor countries to rich countries has always been a problem. We should expect a greater problem in these quick population growth countries and the demography they present. Even though we increase our food products globally, we as humans need to find a means of transfer to the poor countries.

We will face many Somalia-like problems where the rules are bent in order to keep people fed. They attack or pirate ships near their shore, stronger tribes push weaker tribes to oblivion. A desperate population is a dangerous population. We as humans need to prepare today and not wait for the shite to hit the fan. We can improve our yields in crops. Countries like China, India, and Brazil are making headway to improve their lot. Alas, the UN is inept as a world modifier.

800 million or 800,000,000 million?......thats a population explosion and a half.

"According to the United Nations, Nigeria has been undergoing explosive population growth and one of the highest growth and fertility rates in the world. By their projections, Nigeria is one of eight countries expected to account collectively for half of the world's total population increase from 2005-2050.^[81] By 2100 the UN estimates that the Nigerian population will be between 505 million and 1.03 billion people (middle estimate: 730 million).^[82] In 1950, Nigeria had only 33 million people.^{[83]"
wikipedia is just a click away}

#10 was true.

No.10 seems to have some weight. <Cough>

I would say that we have done a job on number 3, "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." - New York Timeseditorial. Had we continued polltuing like we were in 1970, the world would have deteriorated into an intolerable situation.

Its not like these statements were made and we did nothing about them. A lot has been done to conserve our resources and control pollution and the job is not done. The problem with society is that they will not react until we are in a crisis, so statements such as these have to be made to get the masses off their *sses.

I must agree with you.

Anyone remember how the air around a city used to be versus now, after 43 years of air pollution regs?

I had to drive into Philadelphia numerous times in June of 1969. Every time, about 30 miles out, I drove into a yellow cloud that hung over the city. My eyes started burning. I went back in 2012, and there is no more yellow cloud. Yes, we did stop that one with air pollution regulations. The change has been slow enough that we don't realize what has been accomplished so far.

Continuing on - It's not just the air - I remember the Cuyahoga River being on fire back in that era from the build up of pollutants on it. Haven't seen that lately here - China, however, might be a different story. The creeks down stream from paper plants in NW Pa used to be a brown foamy mess. That's gone now too.

Looks like we are getting somewhere with this pollution control.

Tell that to the Rain Forrest in Brazil.

Never mind, it's gone.

Not quite....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7360258.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Basin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_by_region

Well then, everything's fine. What's to worry?

Actually going by the average numbers of what converts the most CO2 back into oxygen most any farm crop, when given a fair comparison on the tons per acre per season, way out does old growth forest which is what the rain forests are made up of.

A typical crop out does the amazon rain forest on a per acre per year equivalent ranging from 2:1 to over 8:1 depending on the crop.

Corn for example runs around 5:1 over rain forest!

So yes any rain forest that is being cleared to make way for even marginally maintained cropland is in fact still doing more good than harm!

You make many statements but offer no authoritative sources to back them up.

Common farmers knowledge around here. Didn't know I needed to cite anything.

To be honest there are a lot of crops known to have superior CO2 to O2 conversion or carbon sequestering numbers above that of the typical values associated with rainforests on equal area to area comparison.

What's more is that crop biomass can and is easily and commonly turned into other useful material or stock for human and animal related activities that further sequester carbon at the end of use whereas rainforests tend to just sit there not really doing anything from year to year other than converting CO2 into O2.

I am not saying rainforests are bad but on the numbers to numbers comparison there are a lot of other plant life that surpases them on the CO2 conversion and sequestering aspect!

Now if you really want to see some huge conversion numbers for CO2 to O2 or carbon sequestration capacities read up on algae farming! They put all other land based plant life rates to shame by magnitudes of order given the same working area!

@tcmtech: I heartily agree with your tagline!

I don't know what type of crops you think sequester more CO2 than trees, but AFAIK it's not even close with perennial grasses it's about .33 ton per acre and with trees it's about 2.5 tons per acre....Besides this it's about preservation of diversity as much as anything else...

http://www.plna.com/content.asp?pl=99&contentid=99

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/climate_change/mitigation/resources_and_publications/carbon_sequestration/index.cfm

Ah but I am not talking just about sequestration of CO2 directly into organic storage I am talking conversion of CO2 into O2 where the collected carbon gets reused and not just left to lay!

Is there a problem with getting rid of CO2 by changing it to O2 and putting the carbon into plant residue and by products that are used instead of just left laying in the fields?

As I have come to understand it human activities are heavy carbon users and any carbon that can be collected from an organically based CO2 based absorption method counts as viable carbon source stock of which itself gets used in a a lot of human applications that could be seen as longer term carbon sequestration methods than what organic life cycles constitute.

O2 production does not offset CO2 production.....CO2 is much heavier and clings to the surface of the planet...

Huh?????

The O2 production of crops does not make up for the release of CO2 that is and was sequestered by the Forest....An acre of trees sequesters ~2.5 tons of CO2 annually, it's stored in the wood and roots and foliage, hardwoods particularly so...The crops planted do not sequester as much and release the CO2 when harvested....Not to mention the loss of biodiversity....and other effects to the biosphere....

I am with TCMTECH on this one. Just think for a moment about what would happen if we burn all the oil, coal and gas without getting any O2 back? We aways worried about burning things and create CO2 but we are never worried about the O2 being taken out from atmosphere. I bet we would if we are in a house or an enclosure. Now if we call our atmosphere our global enclosure we should be worried about this. So if you think about O2 production - now this is another level of intelligence we bring in here!

Trees yes can store Carbon a bit longer. But heh we need a balance of C being stored away and O2 for breathing!!

Some body might remind me what CO2 was bad for again!

Bonus question: how much CO2 is in a standard beer! Is it carbon offset when drunk?

If I am remembering my environmental geology chemistry numbers right there ia a roughly 4/3 rule of plants turning CO2 into O2. That is for every 4 mass units of CO2 they take in the return 3 mass units of O2 while keeping the 1 mass unit of carbon.

Now the problem with that is when factored out over a planet sized eco system and the added CO2 from human activities as weighed in with all of the natural CO2 emissions the numbers for CO2 tend to start falling apart a bit being CO2 sequestration is actually only carbon sequestration while the O2 part of the mass products either stays in active play or becomes H2O and thus part of the water cycle and all of its natural influences.

Now consider that the vast majority of screaming eco nutters factor the mass of hydrocarbons being burned as a whole not just the carbon part that makes the CO2 byproduct. There is also the hydrogen mass that they don't account for or the water vapor byproduct that creates or what that water mass adds or subtracts depending on what side of the argument you want to be on.

It's not that it's hard math and chemistry to work with but when handled by with political agendas and pseudo religion levels of devotion too much of the other side of the actual chemistry and math gets ignored or wrongfully accounted for.

As we all have seen far too much of the big stink is focused only on CO2 yet in real life biology and human activities that CO2 also has O2, H2O, and what ever the base HxCx hydrocarbon molecule chains in with it all adding and subtracting from the equations as a whole plus those equations are still just a small part of the much larger equations that nature loves to toss around and change at its own whims and wishes.

Plants respire exactly the same way that animals do. If they don't have oxygen plants will suffocate and die within a few hours.
Plants produce oxygen when they have access to light, but they also burn oxygen constantly, 24/7.... Doesn't matter whether they are producing oxygen at the time, they are also burning oxygen.
It requires 22 trees to produce the amount of oxygen consumed by one person. (An acre of trees produces enough oxygen for 18 people).
It is estimated that marine plants produce between 70 and 80 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere. Nearly all marine plants are single celled, photosynthetic algae.
There are more than 7,000 different species of algae. Most live in the oceans, but they also live in fresh water and even on land. Also, algae produce about 330 billion tons of oxygen each year.

Wood represents the locking up of the Carbon extracted from CO2 in order to release oxygen. So forests produce lots of wood, they must also produce lots of oxygen - which is true. Grass on the other hand produces no wood. Its carbon is turned into carbon products such as sugars, starches and cellulose. These are all good carbon products, and represent a production of oxygen, and they are all produced by the forest plants as well. The problem is in the next step - what happens to the grass? If it is left on the ground it rots, and uses up oxygen as the sugars and starches and cellulose rot and release CO2 again.
If the grass is eaten by a cow, then the cow uses oxygen to 'burn' the grass as fuel, and produces CO2....Either way, the net production of oxygen in a field of grass is very small, because the carbon products are not as long lasting as wood is.

How are trees or any woody average being considered carbon sinks short term or long term? The vast majority of woody species of plants have life cycles of only a few years to 100 - 200 years on average.

At that point they die fall over and rot just like all other plant life putting their carbon back into play in the system again. On the grand scheme of things in nature carbon sequestration cycles even 500 years is too short to account for anything.

Now however in modern farming and ranching practices loads of carbon is getting sequestered as topsoil horizon layers are getting darker and thicker not lighter thinner over the years.

Around here that's easy to see where ever there is earth moving work being done that goes between a location where native prairie is present and active farmland is present side by side. I have seen this myself on our own land over the years. The places that are native and untouched have very thin topsoil layers but the pasture land where cattle and horses have been actively using for the last 50+ years have far better topsoil layers with the only thing separating the two soil conditions being nothing but a fence line.

Around here the ungrazed native topsoil layer may only be 2 - 4 inches thick. Whereas actively grazed areas will easily be double that plus darker in color and active farmland can get to be as much as 18+ inches of carbon rich black topsoil!

However anyplace that has had active forests growing on it for long term tends to have the worst and least organic nutrient rich topsoil conditions which is well known by what gets seen in clear cut locations.

Personally I just don't see trees as being very good short or long term carbon sinks. They may live longer that grasses but they put very little of their captured carbon into the ground during their lifetime.

True but you are neglecting the seasonal factor here where most ground cover crops are once a year and have a life span of at most 4 months whereas most tree cover is 8 months for decideous and 12 for conifers- and they do not need GMO fertilizers that are of questionable health value- so lets use the crop greenery to make ethanol and let the trees make O2

Your point is well taken. You should also remember that trees retain the carbon, not only as leaves but wood and that is year round. I am not sure if cleared amazon forest land is capable of growing much as the land below the rainforest is generally infertile. After a few crops the land becomes sterile. The rainforest is unlike a deciduous forest that constantly drops leaves that decompose to add to the soil over many years. The ratios TCM refer may not apply at all to rainforest cleared land. But his point of concentrated carbon uptake is noted and temporary. It is carbon that is cycled annually. A forest locks up the carbon at least for several decades.

I wonder if WWF has a similar de-forestation map of the North American contenent from 1750 to 2000? Some Brazilians resent US hypocrisy for preaching environmentalism when the US has a history of making vast changes in the our environment.

The deforestation of the Amazon is different than what has occurred in NA. The rainforests of the Amazon are among the worst fertile soils in the world (link in post 31). The trees lock up the nutrients normally found in any soil; carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen. When rainforest area is cleared for logging or slash and burn the soil that remains is very sterile or devoid of nutrients. You may get a couple of crops and then are forced to move on to a new area where the process of tree removal starts all over. Not only is the soil sterile but it the area receives abundant rain that washes or erodes the soil and bedrock through weathering. The soils would become elevated in metals like aluminum. The grass that would grow would be low in nutrients and not even good grazing. The criticism of the destruction of the rainforest in Brazil is warranted and not at all similar to deforestation in areas where deciduous trees grew. The processes are different but some are similar.

I remember doing a paper on nitrates in ground water after it was discovered that the NO3 levels in a well forested park area were elevated in wells. That was curious because NO3 in ground water is generally low in a forested area. The answer could be found if the history of land use was explored. It was a heavily logged area in the early 19th century and was re-logged several times. The squared timbers (2 feet by 2 feet x 14 feet) were removed but the debris was left behind. The soil was then washed away and the decomposing debris, which contained the nitrogen, was allowed to be released and washed into the deep bedrock or ran off to the streams. The high nitrates in the ground water could be traced directly to the logging operations of more than 100 years past. Many cases of elevated ground water and nitrates can be traced to deforestation throughout the so called western world and likely elsewhere.

I have not swallowed the Koolaid of environmentalism but if you are of a scientific mind, logging in a rainforest as practiced by clear cutting and burning is wrong at many levels. There are likely more valuable aspects to the rainforest than temporary farming. Exploitation of the region could be much more selective and controlled. Brazilians may resent it but that is tough love.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica on the web, 1/2 of the eastern US was deforested in the 1800s. The Brazilians look at US history and consider us hypocritical. I do agree the Amazon and the US are differing ecosystems, but also understand what the Brazilians notice about US attempts to intervene on their internal land use decisions.

In these sources, the analyses ignore one thing, I haven't seen any include an accounting of the massive amounts of Carbon stored in the rainforest and released when it is cut and burned.

Yet, according to the Ridley presentation, we are turning more and more farmland back to forest. Even though releasing some carbon from the rainforest is a reality, there is the offset of new or refurbished woodlots elsewhere that stores carbon. Also remember that not all the carbon stored by a rainforest is a total loss. even replacement grasslands have a capacity to store lots of carbon. So do food crops that replace the rainforest.

And what happens to the carbon in food crops when they are eaten? It's a bit like saying, humans sequester carbon, so population increase is a Good Thing!

Biosphere carbon goes round and round. It's the release of subterranean carbon into today's biosphere that is the cause of concern, 'cos it ain't going back down there. Well, not for a few millions of years, anyway.

Biosphere carbon does go round and round. A healthy forest will store more carbon than the same land used for foodlands. If the forests are all hewed down, there will be more carbon released to the atmosphere from the carbon stored as trees, unless you bury the trees chopped down ( I assume the burning of forests to clear land is the bigger problem). If the trees are not replaced then there will be an net influx of atmospheric carbon. However, according to Ridely, much farmland is now returned to woodlots and at an ever increasing rate. England is becoming as forested as it was in 1066. It is the earth's capability of growing more crops on less land that has allowed former farmland to be returned to woodlands. That aspect appears to be taking up some of the fossil based carbon released to the atmosphere.
Planting trees is one of the engineered strategies to try to cool the earth down by reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. According to Mother Earth News there are more trees in USA today than 100 years ago. Although we seem to admonish global warming through human fossil fuel burning there seems to be an up side not often mentioned. That is that the CO2 is allowing crops to grow better and bigger. We know fertilizers, GM, and mechanical tractors and harvesters all help to raise productivity levels as well. So we get more food from less acreage and thus more former farmlands now returning as forests and those forests are reducing carbon footprints. Ridley's point was that burning fossil fuels green the earth. With our growing population and more mouths to feed, this is a winning formula. I do not advocate for air pollution and believe all our discharges, industrial, domestic, cars, etc should be as clean as possible.

Yes--And a good example of poor Stewardship was what created the Dust Bowl, and now modern Agriculture has replanted that land and it is productive. Now one of the questions is whether or not the Genetically Modified crops that are becoming more prevalent are good for us in the long run..That is another debate for another time.

I recently saw a program on television - I believe by David Suzuki (I note comments re verifying quotes) on the role played by the common beaver- in recovering wetland and natural areas- one of the items was the fact that two beavers took a 1 foot wide -6 inch deep creek in Nevada and with two years had a wetlands of significant size ( not sure but believe 10 x 1 mile) that had restored greenery and wildlife in the area- so lets not overlook the contribution of our animal ( birds and fish also) friends

I don't think global warming is so bad. As Putin said in September 2003, global warming would help Russians, "save on fur coats and other warm things."

Source: http://geocurrents.info/place/russia-ukraine-and-caucasus/siberia/global-warming-and-siberia-blessing-or-curse#ixzz2RLQROXLX."

A thousand years ago, Greenland was GREEN (that's how it got its name, by the Vikings). The world certainly didn't end back then when global warming had another of its 1500-year warming/cooling cycles and things got hot.

As noted above, warmer temperatures and more CO2 helps things grow.

If the ice at the North Pole melts, it won't raise sea levels an inch--what happens when the ice in your Coke melts? Same thing.

We're in yet another global warming cycle, and we have been since 1750, the end of the Little Ice Age. We didn't cause it, we ain't making it worse, and there's nothing we can do about it. It'll last 1500 years until the next solar cycle.

So lay back in the sun and enjoy the warmer weather.

It depends on whether the ice is floating on water, versus accumulated on land above water.

Conversely if the land ice mass melts due to higher temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic it means there usually is significant higher evaporation in more tropical regions so the ocean level changes would be miniscule.

Water and carbon dioxide are not enough for trees to grow. We need trees,unpolluted soil/air etc too. If you cut down trees at a rate there will be no trees,no good water but carbondioxide only.

That gives you an idea that Mr. Algorre is not telling the truth. Nah, global warming ey? --blame it on HAARP

I'm afraid if we sequester too much carbon and release the O₂ from the CO₂, we will contaminate our atmosphere with a combustible substance thus turning our entire world into a ticking time bomb. I move that we immediately start an organization for the sequester of O₂ by converting it into CO₂.

The first order of business is to name the organization. Any ideas?

But the O2 is what makes the ozone and protects this planet from being cooked by the Sun.....and as we all know there's a hole that needs to be filled up there ↑↑↑

I think ozone is O₃, isn't it?

This gets oh so complicated, doesn't it?

What hole?

Contrary to what the media and politicians would have you believe there is a seasonal thin spot that has been continually seen to come and go with ever since we first figured out how to measure the ozone layer back around 1956.

For those who don't know the ozone layer is measured in its density or concentration levels by Dobson Units, DU for short, and the global average for a healthy ozone layer ranges from 250 DU and up whereas the hole is varies between 100 - 200 DU on average not actually zero as certain media and politicians would have you believe.

Now more importantly the thing to see is the hole is not a permanent year round event or condition. In fact it "disappears" every year for about 8 - 10 months when the average ozone density is over 250 DU but then is considered to have come back when the readings drop below a 200 DU average. A regular annual cycling that has been going up down in predictable seasonal cycles since scientists discovered a way to measure the ozone layer back around 1956.

The problem is that before 1956 we had no way of measuring it and thusly also have no data ancillary or direct to show whether it's been a normal long term natural cyclic event or otherwise.

To give you both sides of the issue here is the one that we are most familiar with that the media and politicians all dwell on. Fair enough but look closely at the timelines of when that data relates to. September - October and that's it! Nothing mentioned for the other 10 months out of the year every year. Go figure.

As the media shows it. Ozone Hole History

And as NASA shows it as an animated year round repeating cycle recorded since 1979. NASA's animated history of the Ozone Hole.

Hmmm...

Machine Design magazine called freon and the ozone layer the "Billon Dollar Hoax"--alas, it was so long ago, Google has no record of it.

However, just before the freon hoax, the government exploded some nuclear bombs high in the atmosphere

http://listverse.com/2011/06/12/10-secret-us-military-intelligence-projects/

(Scroll all the way down to #2)

"We almost blew a hole in the ozone layer," says one scientist. Maybe they did, and decided to blame it on freon.

That Area 51 book is downright scary--it shows, with many examples, that the US government lies to us all the time. We really can't believe anything the government tells us about anything. Even the causes of global climate change.