NASA bias exposed?

Exactly. Replant trees in the medians and right of ways of interstates, US highways, state highways, and city streets. The trees never should have been butchered out in the first place.

 

what? I acknowledged your claims of the major contribution to increased CO2 levels from deforestration. I provided a link the highlights the issue and what is being done to coombat it.

Deforsetration is a much large problem than "just" increasing co2 levels, habitat destruction is the major cause of extinction and the diminution of bio diversity.

While estimates vary a few %, I can find nothing to corroborate your contention that is contributes up to 50% of the co2 increase.



https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/deforestation

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warmi...ropical-deforestation-and-1.html#.WkvGjN-nHIUhttps://www.ucsusa.org/global-warmi...ropical-deforestation-and-1.html#.WkvGjN-nHIU

http://climate.org/deforestation-and-climate-change/

 

thank your for the classic demonstration of your "Example" above.

 

Funny, so agreeing with the actual science makes one "faithful"? Laughable. But I suppose the ad hominem is all that is left for some....

 

No ad hom in my response, but of course you'd think that since you appear oblivious that you excoriate the left for EXACTLY the same thing you are doing.

That you have no clue that weather and climate change are not the same thing, I am not surprised your "faith" is based on quack science bought and paid for by big oil.

 

Big oil card... everyone drinks... Are you really going to use it? If big oil has an interest, and of course they do, how can you be certain that those federal dollars they contribute to, and their pac dollars aren't also driving the studies you believe in? Ponder that a spell, and get back to me...

 

Yes I am going to use the fact that the vast majority of climate change denier science is funded by special corporate interests. That is well known.

I don't care if they are playing both sides of the fence. Consensus peer reviewed science is the arbiter of truth.

The oil industry can't stop the global trend to renewable energy, which is why they are actually investing billions in it, but they can slow it down, while attempting to get as much of it out of the ground as possible as fast as possible from wherever they can economically get it.

 

I gave a link saying 50% of the forest no longer exists. In essence we have destroyed half the Earth's lungs and it's ability to handle C02. That has to be a bigger contributing factor to rising C02 levels than man's infinitesimal addition to naturally occurring C02. If all those forest were still here our 3% addition would be handled without a hiccup.

 

The 15% of additional C02 that is the number bandied about is based on C02 produced by slash and burn clearing and the missing forest themselves are not factored in. That's the big flaw here.

 

Nobody is disputing that natural carbon emissions exceed anthropogenic emissions. I first disputed your claim about 50% being from deforestration. That is far to simple an extrapolation, since it ignores the fact that forests do not represent 50% of biological life and totals only about 15% contribution.

Second, while anthropogenic sources are smaller than other sources, its still a significant factor. Solely using fossil fuel and industrial contributions as the measure of anthropogenic sources, ignores the massive contribution of domestic livestock (10 times more than machines and industry). That adds up to a very significant chunk of the contributions that is under human control.

 

The Earth has 50% less forest than it did before man started clearing for agriculture. Much of that has occurred simultaneously with industrialization so there's the same correlation causation option. All the numbers I see credit clearing forest with 15% of man's addition to C02 from slash and burn but I can find nothing on what the 50% missing forest means to the rise in C02 levels. If you have that data and studies I'd appreciate seeing them. Looks to me like 100% of the effort to explain a rise in C02 has been geared towards man's additional C02 and virtually no studies on what the Earth having lost half it's forest has done. I see a political agenda in this one sided quest for an explanation to rising C02 levels.

 

There's tons of research and significant international cooperation on exactly this issue.

here's a rather interesting study on that refers to deforestation. starting on page 24. Good news is that reforestation mitigation is expected to reduce the problem substantially.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers.pdf

There is a lot of reports in this regard, but like you I have not yet found a detailed paper examining the issue. I've found lots of papers that reference an amount (ranging from 10% to 18%) but so far no original source material that would put this to rest.

Thanks for providing me the opportunity to learn something new.

OTOH, there is no doubt that climate change is a political issue. Its also a social issue. Its also an economic issue. Its also a global human issue. There's lots of crap science out there on both sides which is exactly what the deniers want. Up the noise, discredit sources, reinterpret results, claiming mistakes are evidence of conspiratorial manipulation, and on and on.

In such a scenerio and not being a climate scientist, I am more than comfortable to accept the scientific consensus as correct. That is until definitive evidence of it being wrong is presented.

Today is the 92nd anniversary of the day our view of the universe was drastically changed forever. Hubble's paper on the discovery of a variable star within the "andromeda" nebula indicated it was 900,000 light years away. Shortly followed by the discovery that all those previously observed nebula were in actuality galaxies. Less than 100 years ago our entire underst anding of the universe drastically changed and formed the basis for the modern science of cosmology.

Methinks that when the dust settles in the climate change debate within the next few years, our understanding of our world and the consequences of our habitation upon it will also change.

 

Okay, here a few peer reviewed publications I'll try to read at some point. The global carbon budget is pretty complicated.

Balancing the Global Carbon Budget
The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
Global Carbon Budget 2016
Aboveground Forest Biomass and the Global Carbon Balance

At a quick glance it looks like ocean/land may be evenly split 50/50 as sinks. The land category includes biomass and soil with biomass/land again split 50/50. I'm not sure what percent forests represent in the biomass category. But, if we assume it is 50% (which seems high) that would mean forests represent 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.125 of the sink side of the budget. Some of the stuff I was reading was saying as CO2 increases biomass increases (we already know that), but the implication is that CO2 absorption increases as well because there's more biomass. So even though we have lost 50% of the trees is this partially offset by more biomass of other types? There's a lot to wade through here and I'm already getting overwhelmed.

 

Its almost like you have to be a climate scientist to figure it out. You most definitely aren't alone in the challenge of understanding.

 

Exactly. And even then you're usually a subject matter expert is a small subset of the climate sciences. For example, the guys doing research on the global carbon budget (which is itself a small subset of the climate sciences) focus on specific topics like soil absorption, deep/shallow water fluxes, ocean/atmosphere fluxes, etc. There's too much for any one person to research everything.

 

Why are you posting on a political discussion forum to seek technical scientific data. Surely at the very least a scientific forum would be a better choice. Assuming you actually want the data of course.

 

Thanks for the link. I read it and all I can find is the usual statistics on emissions and mitigation. Reforestation is only referred to as a way to mitigate man's extra C02. What I'm looking for and can't find is an in depth analysis of how much the missing 50% of forest on Earth has contributed to rising C02 levels. If there is such a study I can't find it. Common sense tells me if you remove half the trees from the planet you are removing a huge percentage of Earth's ability to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen kind of like if you remove one long from a human they can still breathe but nowhere near as efficiently. It seems to me more emphasis should be put on studying this and stopping the continuing deforestation that we at present do. It also seems to me virtually all the attention of AGW climatologists is focused on man's input while Earth's lungs get a brief mention. Once again I see a political agenda here that is anti America and anti fossil fuel although at this point I think many people are just to the point where they can't see outside the box and can't see the forest through the trees, pardon the pun.
It seems obvious to me that if man is effecting climate the first place we should look is at the way we have altered the environment but instead it's the last. Where there once we're forest there are now farms and cities and roads and shopping malls and urban sprawl. Concrete and asphalt instead of trees. Plowed fields instead of trees. Going after man's C02 output is like caulking every little crack in your house to keep flies out but leaving a window with no screen wide open. The long term solution here is to immediately stop deforestation and try to reforest as much as possible as quickly as possible but America can't be made the Boogeyman so it's not a popular world opinion. If man is increasing C02 levels I'd look here first.

"Unbelievably, more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day. That is more than 150 acres lost every minute of every day, and 78 million acres lost every year! More than 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest is already gone, and much more is severely threatened as the destructioncontinues.Dec 21, 2012
Rainforest Facts
www.rain-tree.com › facts

 

It occurs to me that this stuff shouldn't be so hard to find and I have to ask why it is. You can find voluminous study's on man's contribution to C02 levels but looking for information on what man's changes to the environment have done over time is like looking for a needle in a haystack. That should be getting just as much or more attention than man's emissions of C02 but obviously it is not.

 

"When the researchers turned their attention to deforestation, they found that since the start of human civilisation around 12,000 years ago, we’ve cut down 45.8% of all our trees.

Bringing this up to the present day, satellite estimates suggest that humans cleared around 192,000 square kilometres of forest every year of the last decade. This translates to 15.3bn trees being cut down annually, the researchers say.

But new trees are added to forests as well – as cleared forests regrow and trees are planted deliberately, says Crowther. This amounts to around 5bn trees per year. Taking this away from the 15bn trees that are cleared leaves an overall net loss of approximately 10bn trees each year.

The scale of this human impact on forests is “astronomical”, Crowther tells Carbon Brief:

“It is extremely concerning to discover the amount of damage that humans have already had and the terrifying rates at which forests are being depleted.”
And this could well get worse in future, added co-author Dr Henry Glick, also from Yale, at the press briefing:"
As trees absorb around a third of manmade carbon emissions, the project aims to help moderate global temperature rise by adding more and more trees.

"In order to know what difference an extra billion trees a year makes, they wanted to know how many there were in the first place, says Crowther.

Although the study has found there are more trees than scientists thought, this doesn’t mean they’ve underestimated how much carbon the forests are holding, Crowther points out:

“I don’t think that our numbers are altering scientists’ perspective of how much carbon is stored in the global forest.”
Rather than discovering new trees or identifying new forests, their study just corrects earlier satellite-based estimates that sometimes mistook forest cover as a few large trees rather than lots of small ones, he says:

“Often the areas with the highest density of trees are dominated by lots of small trees, regenerating trees, or newly-growing trees. These don’t store much carbon compared to one giant tree.”
In other words, despite all these extra trees, the rate of deforestation means the carbon-storing ability of the world’s forests is diminishing."

https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-map-reveals-astronomical-scale-of-human-impact-on-forests
[

 

See post #44

 

Apparently I'm not the only one beginning to ask questions.

"How new EU rules could ‘hide’ climate impact of harvesting forests"

"Today, the EU began drafting laws to put its 2030 climate target into action – and there is one particularly contentious issue under discussion.

In the EU, forests act as a “carbon sink”, which means that they absorb more CO2 than they release. But new policies being proposed could result in more trees being harvested. What’s more, some countries are arguing for new accounting rules that would effectively hide the impact these policies could have for raising CO2 emissions from forests.

We are among the 40 scientific experts to sign a joint letter proposing a more scientifically-objective way to account for the climate impact of harvesting forests."

https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-new-eu-rules-could-hide-climate-impact-harvesting-forests

 

Destruction of the rainforests is a human tragedy.

I also don't believe that mitigation of anthropogenic sources can simply by brushed aside with an inaccurate metaphor as insignificant in the grand scheme.

If nothing else, the international consensus that mitigation of anthropogenic contributions is a social/economic imperative, has spurred and accelerated the development and implementation of renewable energy. The inevitable transition from a petrochemical based global economy is accelerating. Seems there's a bunch of vested interests that dont' want that to happen or at the least want to slow own the transition. As oil's dominance is diminished it will radically alter the world order. All those 'trust fund" oil rich two bit nations are under existential threat.

Personally, I do not have the science chops to truly evaluate the data and come to a definitive conclusion so I rely on scientific consensus. I strongly support proactive mitigation because of its transformative effects.

 

The links I've come up with and posted make it not all that complicated.

50% of the world's original forest canopy is gone due to man.
30% of C02 was dealt with by Earth's original forest canopy
15% of C02 we put into the atmosphere comes from slash and burn
We lose 78 million more acres of forest every year

The only grey area here is how much C02 is actually dealt with by remaining forest because much of that is newly planted young trees which show up as forest on satellite pictures but in reality are not nearly as good at using C02 as a mature forest. This means that forest we have intact are doing even less than their percentage numbers might indicate. So my question remains. Why does industrialization in general and America in particular get all the blame for rising C02 levels when diminished and diminishing forest canopy's get short shrift? Why does the Paris climate Accord put most if not all it's emphasis on industrialization and America instead of giving equal time to deforestation and the third world that is at this time doing most if not all of it. One word answer is politics. This whole global warming thing is not science it's politics and every time I look at it from any angle that's the answer I get.

 

deforestation cannot put out the amount of CO2 that is being added to the atmosphere.

 

Industrialization gets most of the blame from the public because it is the most VISIBLE to people. America does not get all the blame by a long shot. Recall those pictures from Beijing?

Again, the diminishment of the rain forests is a big deal and isn't getting short shrift. The problem there lies in economics and the until recently the relentless exploitation of the rainforest.

Paris most definitely recognizes deforestation as a serious problem.

https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf