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Saturday, January 20, 2007

 
Why the next 10-30 years are critical


• President George Bush's top climate modeller, Jim Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert catastrophe.

• Former chairman of the World Bank, Sir Nicholas Stern, warned the world recently that it had 10 years to reverse the damage done or face the worst of the scenarios outlined by scientists.



• A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago.

• Britain’s Institute of Public Policy Research says that, to minimise the risk of a 2C rise - seen as the threshold for dangerous climate change - global carbon dioxide emissions would need to peak between 2010 and 2013.

((((((Only soils can 'suck' enough CO2 out of the atmosphere in 10 years to take humans to safety.))))))

• Sir David King, the British government's chief scientific adviser, said that it was looking increasingly unlikely that the world would be able to stay below the 2C threshold.



Every company and every individual has a “carbon footprint” or CO2 load that is shed on their behalf as a result of their energy consumption – whether it be a power company burning coal to provide electricity to run their lights and appliances and equipment... or the car they drive or the bus they ride on... or the factory burning carbon in the form of coal (for electricity) or oil (for combustion engines). Just by living a modern consumer lifestyle we are emitting greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, etc), either directly or by proxy.


This would not be so bad if the carbon cycle remained in balance. Carbon cycles through the air, is sucked into the soil or the ocean by photosynthesis and other processes, released again by plants at night or by farmers ploughing fields or burning stubble, or people burning wood in fireplaces, or green waste rotting, etc. The world was able, until 200 years ago, to keep the CO2 in balance.



But 200 years ago, mankind’s impact on the atmosphere increased after the Industrial Revolution gave us machines with the power to do the work previously done by horses and people. The machines were powered by wood, then coal, then oil. Wood, Coal and Oil are essentially stored carbon. Coal and Oil were once organic matter – plants and animals are mostly made of carbon – that was locked up under the earth’s crust, retired from the cycle. Man set this stored carbon free by burning it, but it was released at such a rate that the earth and the ocean was incapable of sucking up (“sequestering”) enough CO2 to maintain a balanced cycle.


Why it’s getting hotter

Naturally, the natural level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, for so long held at around 250 ppm (parts per million), rose to 300+ ppm. It is climbing inevitably towards 400ppm. This is a problem for the earth’s atmosphere because there is a natural layer of greenhouse gases which regulates how much of the sun’s rays bounce around on earth and how much passes back out. When this layer gets thicker, more of the sun’s rays are trapped, like in a greenhouse. The result: the temperature rises.

If the mean temperature of the earth’s atmosphere rises 1°C we get unusual weather events and ice caps at the poles start to melt. If it rises 2°C, we encounter severe weather events, higher temperatures, lower rainfall in some places, higher/heavier rainfall in other places.

Greenland could melt and the sea level rise to inundate low lying islands and coastal regions. If it rises by 3°C, a major ice melt in the North Atlantic could completely stop the ‘conveyor belt’ in the oceans that distributes warm water around and maintains the water temperature. The last time this stopped, it caused an Ice Age in Europe. Extreme weather events such as typhoons, catastrophic landslips and wind storms are likely... At this level, crops could fail, transport and distribution infrastructure is destroyed, the complex economies that underpin our lifestyles could break down, millions of people are displaced and converge on other countries, causing a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions.

A leaked scenario document from the Pentagon predicted that Australia could be invaded by a flotilla of people from Asia forced to search for living space. Their homes will have disappeared under water. Our military forces are not large enough to withstand the sheer volume of environmental refugees.


What can we do about it?

The world’s scientists have agreed among themselves that, no matter what we do, the temperature is going up at least 2°C. What can we do to avoid 4°C? Two things: 1. Stop emitting as much CO2 as we can as soon as possible. 2. Suck up as much CO2 out of the atmosphere that we can (“sequester” it) as soon as possible.

The nations of the world spent 10 years negotiating the Kyoto Protocol which would phase in limits on what companies could emit, hoping to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2030.

They forgot two important facts:

FACT 1: Reducing emissions doesn't get rid of the legacy load of CO2 in the amtosphere.

FACT 2: Soil is the biggest carbon sink or vault that we have control over.


HERE COME THE CARBON FARMERS

New breed of Australian farmer holds the key to Climate Change response

Scientists now believe that a new style of agriculture is the only way mankind will reduce CO2 in the atmosphere fast enough in a short while to avert the very worst consequences of Global Warming.

The major cause of CO2 release from farming is opening the soil to the air, by clearing native vegetation, by ploughing, by burning, and by over-grazing.

Substituting other methods for these practices prevents CO2 emissions. (It was Australian farmers’ ceasing to clear native vegetation that enabled the PM to boast that Australia has met its obligations under Kyoto.)

But these other methods are not only useful in cutting emissions. They can turn agricultural soil into a massive carbon sink, capable of’sequestering’ millions of tonnes of carbon beneath the ground. (A one-half-a-percent increase in organic soil carbon across the Central Western Catchment of 97,000 km2 would sequester more than 70 million tonnes of carbon.)

Already the soil is the biggest carbon sink on earth, holding more carbon than the air and the vegetation combined. Grazing land makes up 60% of the earth’s surface. Most of it is degraded by years of poor management. Degraded soils can store up to 5 times more organic carbon in their surface layers that they currently hold if the soil management approach changes.

The cheapest, most efficient form of organic carbon for soil life is made by actively growing roots of pasture grasses and cereals as a part of the simple process of photosynthesis. New farming practices that encourage this include maintaining ground cover, giving pasture grasses enough time to recover after each graze, and not disturbing the soil while planting crops.

Soil carbon levels can also be increased by adopting forms of ecological agriculture such as biodynamic, organic and biological farming.

This style of land management has been called “Carbon Farming”, but it goes by many names, including “Conservation farming”, “Zero tillage farming”, “Biological farming”, and “Regenerative farming”. Many of this new breed of farmer have been taught to manage their properties ‘holistically’, using a technique called Holistic Resource Management.

Carbon farming is not only useful for growing carbon sinks. Soils rich in carbon are never eroded or washed away. They hold up to 7 times their weight of water, making it available to plants long after the rainfall on other land has run away down the gullies. They do not suffer from salination. They grow better plants faster.

Farming to grow carbon in the soil has the effect of conserving the soil, the environment, the native vegetation (which encourages soil carbon) and water. THE CARBON COALITION AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING was formed to fight for carbon credits for farmers who conserve the soil and grow carbon.

# posted by Michael Kiely @ 4:27 PM
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Australia 2.33 tonne
United States 2.08 tonne
United Kingdom 0.92 tonne
European Union 0.92 tonne
Canada 2.00 tonne
New Zealand 1.25 tonne

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