A new study has found that California wildfires emit more greenhouse gases than previously believed largely through the post-fire decay of dead wood, a finding that is raising questions about how effective the state’s forests are at storing carbon and slowing global warming.
The study by Thomas Bonnicksen, a retired forestry professor at Texas A&M University, found that four major wildfires – from the Fountain fire near Redding in 1992 to the Angora blaze at Lake Tahoe last year – are responsible for the release of 38 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, far more than the 2 million tons the state estimates that fires produce on average each year.
“Up until now, we have not fully appreciated the magnitude of the impact of wildfires on climate change,” Bonnicksen said. “This is a very important part of the problem.”
His study, which is not peer-reviewed and has been found lacking by some, is one of a flurry of reports that have begun to explore the critical role that forests play in regulating carbon dioxide, the principal atmospheric gas responsible for global warming. Traditionally, forests have been viewed as green reservoirs of landlocked carbon, soaking up and storing CO2 from the atmosphere in their leaves, needles, roots and soil.
Bonnicksen’s study casts that view into question. Forests today are so overcrowded with spindly, unhealthy trees – partly the result of decades of fire suppression – that as they burn and decay they are turning into an actual source of greenhouse gas pollution.
His study, for example, estimates emissions from just one blaze alone last year, the Moonlight fire in Plumas County, at more than 19.6 million tons, three-quarters of which are expected to occur over the next century as trees killed by the fire decay. That much carbon is roughly equivalent to the emissions from 3.6 million cars for a year.
Overall, California fires are producing so much CO2, he said, that they will defeat the state’s pioneering efforts to respond to climate change by reducing emissions elsewhere.
“No matter what anybody does in California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as long as these forests are burning, they are wasting their time,” Bonnicksen said. … [more]
For the full text of Dr. Bonnicksen’s reports, see W.I.S.E. Forest and Fire Science [here]
March 15, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News, Latest Fire News, Latest Forest News
A Guest Post by Neil McCann
I like to fondly think of myself as “a scientist”. I have a Bachelor of Environmental Science (Australian Environmental Studies). I like to think “scientifically”, and this is the first letter I’ve ever written – -just to establish that I’m not a total nutter or media/Internet blog junkie. I feel compelled to speak out about the current green/greenhouse obsession –- in the vein that silly ideas can take on a life of their own when other people do and say nothing.
To the greenhouse/global warming advocates: I am an unbeliever! I find it astounding that the only significant source of heat on the planet, in fact in the entire solar system, is completely ignored or unspokenly assumed to be static and unchanging, and that a minor gas making up a very small percentage of Earth’s atmosphere is declared definitely responsible for a less than 1% temperature change over the last 100 years.
The southern oceans of earth are documented as showing a temperature increase of 0.01 percent. It’s not science to assume C02 is definitely the culprit (human knowledge is littered with false correlations –- it is only a correlation between temperature and CO2, and correlation is definitely not causation), and that the sun, a fantastically enormous ball of fire that I can feel directly on my skin, that must and does vary (think solar flares) is definitely not. That isn’t science, it’s ideology.
Let’s be honest, it’s still only a theory. There is NOT universal agreement, and that’s a fact. Many scientists heavily dispute both the theory and the underlying data. Approximately 20,000 people with science degrees and/or post graduate qualifications recently signed a petition from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a nonprofit, non-corporate funded research institute entirely disputing the global warming thesis. Not 50, 100, or 2000, but 20,000. Most people have never heard of OISM; it gets no airtime.
It’s quite possibly a classic chicken and egg -– which came first? — situation. When you boil a kettle, heat comes first, and then comes steam/gas. It’s counterintuitive to reverse this dynamic, as greenhouse believers do, i.e., that instead, add gas first and this causes the temperature to rise. Think about it, if the oceans are warmed, they then release, among other things, CO2. This is primary school physics. The earth is not a greenhouse anyway. It’s an open, not a closed system.
Read more
March 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
By Mike Surbrugg, CNHI News Service, Midwest City Sun [here]
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Jim Gerrish, a grazing land consultant, recently spoke at a forage conference in Springfield and offered several perspectives for cattle producers and farmers.
Cattle operations in countries that make more use of forages have positive returns despite low prices and they are not hurt by the rising corn prices linked to ethanol production, he said. Gerrish also predicted that in three years ethanol production will collapse.
A former University of Missouri forage scientist, Gerrish said ethanol requires more energy to produce than it provides, is less efficient than unleaded gasoline, hurts the environment by using more land to grow corn and hurts the agricultural economy.
Cattle producers also can buy expensive equipment to make labor more efficient and still lose money making hay, he said. His challenge is not to work hard, but to work smart. Doing this enables some successful ranches in the West to use one employee to care for up to 800 cows by letting cattle eat grass.
“We need cows that work for us, not us for them. Too many cows have an addiction to corn,” Gerrish said.
Functional livestock on any size farm or ranch harvest the grass, spread manure on the land and have calves without help, he said.
“They are your employees. Leave them alone to do their jobs. Let them eat grass. They’re ruminants,” he said.
Maximum use of grass helps the environment, provides a healthier food for consumers and can improve farm income.
“Market your product, your story about your farm and your sincerity. Be honest and believable and look your customers in the eye and tell them how you raise animals and how they are processed,” he said.
March 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
by Julie Kay Smithson
We are noticing a decided absence of “global warming”. In fact, we’ve just had the most snow ever recorded in a 24-hour period in this part of Ohio, 15.4 inches, PLUS the most snow ever recorded here in one snowstorm, 21.4 inches.
There are some amazing drifts, some of them four to five feet high, and many of them on the local roads. Fifteen counties, including my own, Madison County, are under Level 3, which means the roads are closed to all but emergency personnel. Another 18 counties are Level 2, for a total of 33 counties, in the middle of Ohio that got slam-dunked by Ole Man Winter!
Read more
March 10, 2008 | 3 Comments | Topic: Latest Climate News
By Marc Sheppard, The American Thinker [here]
If you rely solely on the mainstream media to keep informed, you may not have heard that the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change concluded in New York City on Tuesday. And if you have heard anything — this being primarily a forum of skeptics — it was likely of a last gasp effort by “flat-Earthers” sponsored by right-wingers in the pockets of big-oil to breathe life into their dying warming denial agenda. Well, having just returned from the 3 day event, I’m happy to report that the struggle against the ravages of warming alarmism is not only alive, but healthier than ever.
Granting a long overdue forum to noted dissenting scientists, economists and policy experts from around the world, the Heartland Institute-sponsored symposium at the Marriott Marquis offered welcomed reasoned analysis as alternative to last December’s hysterical circus which was Bali. It also served as the perfect launch point for a long-awaited un-IPCC report — Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate: Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change [here].
Compiling the work of over 20 prominent fellow researchers, editor Fred Singer’s NIPCC report distinguishes itself from the recent IPCC Fourth Assessment (AR4) and its predecessors in that it was not pre-programmed to “support the hypotheses of anthropogenic warming (AGW) and the control of greenhouse gases.” Instead, the nearly 50 page document is a non-political authoritative rebuttal to the multi-government controlled IPCC’s “errors and outright falsehoods” regarding warming’s measurement, likely drivers, and overall impact.
And its ultimate conclusion of “natural causes and a moderate warming trend with beneficial effects for humanity and wildlife” set the perfect framework for speakers and panelists - many of whom contributed to the NIPCC — to elaborate on the summit’s “Global warming is not a crisis” theme. … [more]
March 10, 2008 | 2 Comments | Topic: Latest Climate News
John Herron, Global Warming Hoax, 05 March 2008 [here]
Some scientists are so convinced that man-made global warming is now unstoppable and harmful that they are proposing to artificially tamper with the atmosphere to “fix it”. If we truly are heading in to a period of low solar activity (cooling), as NASA and many others have predicted, this god like action to slow “global warming” could kill millions from cold and starvation.
We try to avoid fear mongering here and base our arguments on science. Historically science has generally been used to counter ignorance and prejudice, today science is often used to justify political correctness, to gain social acceptance or as a means to gaining power and wealth. When used incorrectly science can cause ignorance and prejudice. When science losses its built in skepticism it can be nearly impossible for the average person to know what to trust. We can find no better reason to fear the current politically tainted scientific community then the current push towards “geoengineering” to “fix” our climate.
As has been reported here in previous articles there have been several studies that say even if we cut CO2 emissions to zero the planet will continue to warm. The latest study claims we’ll continue to warm for the next 500 years. No one believes we can cut our CO2 emissions to zero anytime soon and with reports like this one “China’s 2030 CO2 Emissions Could Equal the Entire World’s Today” it would hardly be worth other developed countries even trying. Not that we believe any of the malarkey about a planet doomed by CO2 but there are many on the left and some vocal scientists that do. This unfounded fear and the media’s mass-hysteria is very dangerous. Cooling the planet at a time that we’re heading in to a Dalton or Maunder Minimum level of solar activity could be disastrous! … [more]
March 9, 2008 | 2 Comments | Topic: Latest Climate News
Miklós Zágoni isn’t just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.
That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA’s Langley Research Center.
After studying it, Zágoni stopped calling global warming a crisis, and has instead focused on presenting the new theory to other climatologists. The data fit extremely well. “I fell in love,” he stated at the International Climate Change Conference this week.
“Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations,” Miskolczi states. Just as the theory of relativity sets an upper limit on velocity, his theory sets an upper limit on the greenhouse effect, a limit which prevents it from warming the Earth more than a certain amount.
How did modern researchers make such a mistake? They relied upon equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term from the final solution.
Miskolczi’s story reads like a book. Looking at a series of differential equations for the greenhouse effect, he noticed the solution — originally done in 1922 by Arthur Milne, but still used by climate researchers today — ignored boundary conditions by assuming an “infinitely thick” atmosphere. Similar assumptions are common when solving differential equations; they simplify the calculations and often result in a result that still very closely matches reality. But not always. … [more]
March 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
By Joseph Bast, President, The Heartland Institute [here]
Tuesday, March 4, 2008 (6:00 p.m. EST)
The final day of the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, hosted by The Heartland Institute and more than 50 cosponsors, began with a keynote presentation by the Hon. Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, who received a thunderous standing ovation from an international audience of some 500 scientists, economists, and other experts on global warming. It ended with withering criticism of the mainstream media’s biased and alarmist coverage of the global warming issue by ABC News correspondent John Stossel.
President Klaus–who won reelection just two weeks ago–explained his strong opposition to claims that global warming is a “crisis” that requires rapid reductions in human greenhouse gas emissions. An economist by training and author of a new book on environmentalism, Dr. Klaus pointed out the impossibility of meeting the ambitious emission reduction goals being endorsed by European countries, saying they would require lowering populations or widespread poverty.
Dr. Klaus was followed by Dr. William Gray, one of the country’s preeminent hurricane forecasters and a pioneer in tropical meteorological research. Gray described what he called the huge errors in the treatment of water vapor by computer models used to forecast future weather conditions and pointed to evidence showing the warming predicted by the models was not occurring at the altitudes and latitudes predicted by the models.
March 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
Written By: Dennis Avery
Published In: News Releases [here]
Publication Date: March 3, 2008
Publisher: Hudson Institute
(New York City - March 3, 2008)–The co-authors of the best-seller Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years today released a second list of more than 400 peer-reviewed scientists who’ve recently found physical evidence of the long, natural climate cycle–bringing the total of such authors to more than 700.
Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute and S. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project presented the new list of scientists at The Heartland Institute-sponsored conference of man-made warming skeptics in New York City.
The Singer-Avery book assembled the historic and physical evidence of the long, moderate climate cycle–including the Medieval Warming, the Roman Warming, and six previous global warmings since the last Ice Age. For example, Suzanne Carbotte of New York’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory used side-scanning sonar to locate long-dead fossil oyster beds–which were active in a warmer Hudson River 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, and 6,000 years ago. (Carbotte, S., 2004, Geo-Marine Letters, Vol. 24.)
“Most of our modern warming occurred before 1940,” said Avery, “before much human-emitted CO2. The net warming since 1940 is a minuscule 0.2 degree C–with no warming at all in the last nine years. The Greenhouse Theory can’t explain these realities, but the 1,500-year cycle does.”
March 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
“Global warming” is not a global crisis
We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,
Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;
Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;
Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;
Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;
Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:
Hereby declare:
That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.
That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.
That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.
Now, therefore, we recommend –
That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth.”
That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.
Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008
March 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
Australian Ski Resorts See Summer SNOW
‘We have barely had a summer this year’
Posted by ICECAP [here]
Done and dusted … summer ends with snow at NSW ski resort Perisher Blue. Forecasters predict a bumper ski season for 2008. The final day of summer in the Snowy Mountains has taken on a wintry chill after snow fell last night at the ski resorts of Perisher Blue and Thredbo. A light dusting of snow blanketed the NSW ski resorts overnight as temperatures dropped to a low of minus 3.8 degrees Celcius at Perisher and minus 3 degrees at Thredbo. Intermittent light snow flurries continued to fall into the morning on Mount Perisher.
Weather forecasters are already predicting a bumper snow season for 2008, according to resort management. Temperatures are expected to remain low with persistent precipitation throughout winter. “We have barely had a summer this year,” said Gary Grant, Perisher Blue’s general manager of marketing. “It’s felt as though it’s remained cold since the end of the 2007 season, apart from a few warm days, there air has always had a nip in it.”
Icecap Note: Last Year, Australian ski areas had the best ski season in 17 years.
Global Climate Changes Have Natural Causes [here]
By Dr. Lance Endersbee
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the climate in Europe was cold and unpredictable. Crops failed. Famine followed famine, bringing epidemics. There was a belief that crop failures must be due to human wickedness. But who were the wicked ones? It was believed that there must be some witches who are in the grip of the devil. Witches were named, Inquisitors tested their faith, and a large number of poor souls were condemned and burnt at the stake. For decade after decade, fires burned in most towns in Europe. It is an example of a public delusion. In 1841, Charles MacKay wrote a book, Extraordinary Public Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. It has been reprinted. MacKay describes several popular delusions such as The South-Sea Bubble, The Tulipmania, The Crusades, and The Witch Mania. We read it today with a detached amusement, but there have been many other popular delusions since MacKay wrote his book. We are not immune to the madness of crowds.
Today, there is global warming. The droughts and warm weather are regarded as punishment for the environmental sins of mankind. The particular cause is claimed to be the use of carbon fuels. Over the past two decades the concepts of man-made global warming and man-made climate change have come to be accepted as reality. It is repeated every day, in the papers, on TV, in schools and universities. Many governments, and the United Nations, have declared their faith that Man is causing global climate change. But is it true, or is it just another extraordinary popular delusion? …
In Australia, the newly elected government won support on the popular understanding that they would stop climate change. Such a claim is arrogant, and scientifically impossible. But there was no demur. …
An early action of the newly elected government in Australia was to attend the recent Bali Conference on Climate Change and to sign the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol is designed to reduce carbon emissions. The scientific basis is the assumption that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. It is merely an assumption. … [more]
March 1, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
From ICECAP — The Blogosphere (Joe’s Blog) [here]
By William F. McClenney, P.G. R.E.A.
When I first heard it, I believed it. It made sense. I could see it easily and clearly. And that was a long, long time ago. It seemed counterintuitive that anyone could or would not believe it. It was that seminal. Homo Sapiens would cause the earth to warm, we now call it the Greenhouse Gas theory, and it is now a law (at least in California). But it was just a few years ago as the real hype got going that I had my first cause to question the legality of what would soon be a law. And it happened in the oddest of ways. That occasioned a journey that took me from realization to epiphany to more realizations until I finally got it. I will take you on that journey, if you think you can handle it. But be well advised that due to the Nine Times Rule there is only an 11.1% chance you will be able to follow me.
In an advanced course in Psychology taken some 30 years ago I learned that the human being is nine times more susceptible to rumor than it is to fact. That simple rule explains a dramatic amount of human behavior. To prove this rule all one needs to do is accurately answer this simple question: Which religion is the correct one? That’s what I thought.
So if you want to take the journey I did, brace yourself well. My religion is geology, and this journey is the ultimate heresy. If you make it all the way to the end, and understand it all, you will be amongst a very rare breed, those that made the cut on the Nine Times Rule. And you will know how this fundamental rule has been revised, may possibly be revised again downwards, and why. Because this journey I took, and that you may take, started out about climate change and ended up somewhere else entirely. It ended up as part of the theory of everything. … [more]
March 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
by Michael Asher (Blog) - Feb, 26, 2008 [here]
Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
World Temperatures according to the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction. Note the steep drop over the last year.Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming
Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn’t itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.
Let’s hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans — and most of the crops and animals we depend on — prefer a temperature closer to 70.
Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.
Update 2/27: Anthony Watts, who kindly provided the graphics herein, otherwise has no connection with the column. The views and comments are those of the author only.
February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
by Gordon Fulks, published in the Oregonian [here]
Forcing out a scientist because he won’t go along with your favorite hoax hurts Oregon science and ultimately every citizen in this state.
Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s successful purge of George Taylor — Oregon’s former state climatologist and soon-to-be former director of the Oregon Climate Service at Oregon State University — has a clear message for scientists: agree with the governor or you too will disappear. Don’t hint that man-made global warming is the greatest scientific hoax of our time. It offends the governor.
Many, like Taylor, are unwilling to support political agendas at odds with good science but also are too polite to play the role of the little boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” They will quietly say, “Let’s look at the evidence concerning man-made global warming (more properly known as Anthropogenic Global Warming or AGW), because science is based entirely on evidence.”
As a meteorologist, Taylor would show that the warm-up we saw peak in the 1990s was very similar to the warm-up in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, before there was significant use of fossil fuels. He would also mention the sharp decline in global temperature this January, returning us close to where we were decades ago. Climate change is perfectly normal.
As a physicist, let me point out that our understanding of climate was not “settled more than a decade ago,” as global warming alarmists argue. Science is never settled, as Albert Einstein spectacularly demonstrated.
February 26, 2008 | 1 Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
by Lorne Gunter, National Post [here]
Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.
The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”
China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.
There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.
In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its “lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.
The ice is back. … [more]
February 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Topic: Latest Climate News
