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shoyemore at 18:53 PM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
bozza@10
There is more than 1 satellite:
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shoyemore at 18:49 PM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
alalfa@6,
As expected, the study Breitbart is spinning is the one of Bart Verheggen, who is a co-author of the paper this post describes. That study is included in the wider analysis of the Carlton et al publication.
The question for Breitbart and alfalfa is: if there are so many non-consensus scientists, then where are their papers, their AGU presentations, their conference attendances? None seem to exist beyond the 3% "usual suspects".
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bozzza at 18:45 PM on 14 April 2016You can’t rush the oceans (why CO2 emission rates matter)
howardlee, do you know if the Antarctic circumpolar current is tightening and if it is it might be related?!!!
If you don't know if the current around Antarctica is tightening do you know where I could find the answer to such a question?
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bozzza at 18:41 PM on 14 April 2016Deep Ocean: Climate change’s fingerprint on this forgotten realm
Does anyone know if the sea currents are tightening around Antarctica?
Does anyone know where to find the answers to such questions?
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bozzza at 18:26 PM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
@1, Consensus starts with nomenclature!
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bozzza at 18:21 PM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
NSIDC is down: it is discounting all of Aprils data as unreliable.
How do we know any of March 2016, or indeed the weird few years of Arctic Sea Ice over the last few years, is reliable?
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bozzza at 17:25 PM on 14 April 2016James Powell is wrong about the 99.99% AGW consensus
The trouble is anarchy: risking anarchy is not worth it! Jobs, otherwise known as occupations, keep anarchy at bay.
Collateral damage is fine. The whole thing that keeps anarchy at bay is the collection of tax payer dollars that allows the business confidence to keep people regularly too occupied to roam the streets in packs looking for random things to occupy their minds. The collection of tax payers dollars itself depends on business confidence: meaning the whole things depends on no one panicking.
What would you do first?
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Digby Scorgie at 14:11 PM on 14 April 2016After COP21: 7 Key Tasks to Implement the Paris Agreement
OPOF, okay, so you don't need to burn fossil fuel to make plastics. But if the oil required becomes increasingly expensive, plastic products would also become increasingly expensive, would they not? Or is this where recycling comes in?
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Tom Curtis at 12:15 PM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
alfalfa @6 references breitbart's spin on this study rather than the study itself. That is nodoubt because if you look at the study itself, you will see it does not support either breitbart's spin. Specifically, once you exclude the non-responses (unknown, I don't know, and other) 84.3% of respondents agreed with the IPCC that humans have caused 50% or greater of warming since the middle of the 20th century. That figure is itself biased low because the respondents include a group of people invited to respond solely on the basis that they are AGW 'skeptics'. That is, the sample population is not representative of climate scientists in general because of a deliberate bias to include additional 'skeptical' respondents.
Breitbart tries to pull the wool over our eyes by focusing not on those who agree with the IPCC on attribution, but on that subset who also agree with the IPCC on how certain they are. He also carefully neglects to mention the built in bias in the sample, portraying it as unbiased and representative when it is (by design) biased in favour of 'skeptical' respondents.
alfalfa will find nothing wrong with breitbart's spin doctoring because, like all 'skeptics' his global warming denial is built on straining at gnats in the work of scientists, while swallowing camels served up by his fellow deniers.
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RickG at 11:40 AM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
Alfalfa, thank you for the link. Once again I wish to point out that the scientific consensus being discussed here relates to what the published peer review research world-wide shows. That published research is physical evidence, not opinion. Conversely, upon following your link I find that the non-consensus finding was an opinion poll of selected scientists in what was stated as climate related fields. What I would have to ask is: how many of them have actually performed original climate research and had their findings published in the peer review literature?
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alfalfa at 10:51 AM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
Here is an article about how the antartica is growing. Evidence is more important than consensus. http://patriotupdate.com/liberals-heads-are-spinning-after-nasa-releases-new-images-showing-that-antarctica-is-growing-not-shrinking/
Moderator Response:[PS] Please see here for discussion on this. Note also from IPCC TAR
"Changes in ice sheets and polar glaciers: Increased melting is expected on Arctic glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet, and they will retreat and thin close to their margins. Most of the Antarctic ice sheet is likely to thicken as a result of increased precipitation. There is a small risk, however, that the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will retreat in coming centuries. Together, these cryospheric changes may make a significant contribution to sea-level rise.**** "
so not exactly evidence against consensus. Please put any further discussion on Antartica in the appropriate thread.
Also, when asked to back your assertions, please supply links published science not opinion pieces (and since pseudo-skeptic sites specialize in misrepresenting papers, make sure you actually read the paper).
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From Peru at 10:29 AM on 14 April 2016James Powell is wrong about the 99.99% AGW consensus
I would ask a simple question: even if the consensus were just under 10%, betting against a 10% probability of getting detroyed is still utterly irresponsible, to say the least.
It would be like playing Roussian Roulette with 9 billion people. Now, betting against a >90% chance of disaster is completely insane.
To put things in perspective, the 1918 flu pandemic, with a fatality rate of "just" between 2% and 6%, killed more people than WWI and WWII. As a policymaker, I would rather shut down the entire world economy for some months (i.e. massive quarantines) than letting another monster like this spread like fire by people travelling in planes, roads and ships. The economy can be restored years later, dead people cannot.
Climate Change is a slow-motion disaster that can be far worse than a pandemic, yet the measures required are much less traumatic and abrupt. They could be even beneficial by themselves, reducing air pollution and eliminating energy poverty (renewable energy has a near zero operating cost, and a declining capital cost, unlike fossil energy).
Why do we need a consensus? The mere possibility of disaster is more than enough to me.
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alfalfa at 10:23 AM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
Crossing out the truth doesn't make it any less true. If you want a reference to the Netherland study take a look at http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/07/31/new-study-majority-of-climate-scientists-dont-agree-with-consensus/
Moderator Response:[JH] Moderation complaint snipped.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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chriskoz at 09:55 AM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
Tom@4,
Thank you for your valuable assertion and a link showing that flat earth concept was a myth among science denialist rather than the errant of science. I havn't known it! Thus Middle Ages were not "Dark Ages of Science" as wrongly portrayed by common opinion, but "Dark Ages of Science Denial". Exactly the same phenomenon as in today's climate science (Concensus Gap).
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Tom Curtis at 07:30 AM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
alfalfa @1 claims that "There used to be consensus that the earth is flat" (since stricken as sloganeering by the moderator).
Of course, that claim is a myth. That the Earth has been round has been the concensus among scholars since emperical observations have been coupled with mathematical reasoning in the fourth century BC (Aristotle). That the Earth orbits the Sun has been the concensus since just prior to the start of the scientific revolution (ie, the wide spread acceptance that observation, not the authority of the ancients is the primary determinant of knowledge).
What has persisted is a concensus among the ignorant that contradicts the scientific concensus - much as is the case with climate science. Historically, where the popular view has starkly contrasted with the scientific view, the scientific view has always proved more accurate in the long run. If alfalfa was to truly draw the lesson from history, he would conclude that the 97% consensus is good reason to think that whatever the truth about climate, it is far closer to the scientific consensus than popular theories espoused on the internet.
Of course, he will not. We know already from his views on climate science that his opinions are not guided by empirical facts, but by what he desires to be true.
Moderator Response:[PS] I think we have enough responses to alfalfa now. Thanks for contributions. More would be dogpiling. Let us see whether alfalfa can back his/her claims and please dont let this discussion disappear down a track of when/if people thought earth was flat. I think we can all acknowledge that consensus doesnt imply a theory is true and that consensus positions have been wrong in the past. The point is that consensus does exist and consensus position is best guide to policy. Please dont get this offtrack.
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RedBaron at 07:24 AM on 14 April 2016To meet the Paris climate goals, do we need to engineer the climate?
Further reading on the LCP.
Humified carbon differs physically, chemically and biologically from the labile pool of organic carbon that
typically forms near the soil surface. Labile organic carbon arises principally from biomass inputs (such as
crop residues) which are readily decomposed. Conversely, most humified carbon derives from direct
exudation or transfer of soluble carbon from plant roots to mycorrhizal fungi and other symbiotic or
associative microflora. Humus can form relatively deep in the soil profile, provided plants are managed in
ways to encourage vigorous roots [1] -
RickG at 05:12 AM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
@ alfalfa: The consensus is what the scientific literature states, not opinion as you seem to indicate.
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Magma at 05:12 AM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
@ alfalfa: this site is frequented by scientists and others who know what they're talking about. Peddle your tired misinformation elsewhere.
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alfalfa at 04:52 AM on 14 April 2016It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming
First of all consensus is not what makes a scientific theory true. There used to be consensus that the sun orbited around the earth. There used to be consensus that the earth is flat. Evidence that a scientific theory is true is when predictions match reality. Climate model predictions have deviated extensively from reality. Tinkering with the models after the predictions fail to make them match the past is fudging and does not support any theory at all.
Second there was a recent large scale study in the Netherlands showing that the consensus was not that human activity caused climate change.
Moderator Response:[JH] Sloganeering sticken.
Also, please provide references for your statements about specific studies.
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One Planet Only Forever at 23:43 PM on 13 April 2016After COP21: 7 Key Tasks to Implement the Paris Agreement
Digby Scorgie, Plastics can be made from any oil and burning fossil fuels is not required. Making plastic from fossil oil would also be fine. However, any plastic should be for durable plastic items able to be completely recycled after its long use.
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denisaf at 22:21 PM on 13 April 20162016 SkS Weekly Digest #15
The InfluenceMap deals with how corporations are adjusting their policies to cope with their perceptions of climate change. However, it does not take into account the demand for the goods or services provided by the corporations. Coping with climate change is only one of the predicaments society will have to deal with. A corporation may rate at F for its policies on claime change but an A for the impact of their policy on, for instance, food production.
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Hans Petter Jacobsen at 21:31 PM on 13 April 2016The 35 countries cutting the link between economic growth and emissions
The blog post says: 'The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that global emissions stalled in both 2014 and 2015'. Many environmentalists regards this as good news. I do not. With future emissions as high as they were in 2014 the carbon budget for one and a half degree warming will be exhausted in six years, and the budget for two degrees in a little more than twenty years. With this perspective it is not good news that the emissions in 2015 were the same as they were in 2014.
The table in the blog post shows how the CO2 intensity has changed in percent, and it links to a document that shows the same for territorial CO2 emissions. I agree with the conversion formula that calculates the change in CO2 intensity based on the change in CO2 emissions and in GDP that is used here. But the blog post links to another document that shows the same for consumption based CO2 emissions, and I do not understand the conversion in that document. Let me use China as an example. The first document says that their GDP increased with 270.1%, and that their territorial emissions increased with 184.5%. This gives a 23.1% reduction in the CO2 intensity, as stated by the document. The other document uses the same increase in GDP, and it uses 174.8% increase in the consumption based CO2 emissions. This should give a greater reduction in the CO2 intensity than for the territorial CO2 emissions, but the document says that the reduction is 20.4%, i.e. smaller. Using the same formula as for the territorial emissions I calculate the reduction to be 25.7%. Do the two documents apply different formulas for the CO2 intensity, or have I missed something ?
The SkS post is a re-post from Carbon Brief. In the discussion following that post Simon Evans explains how the change in carbon intensity is calculated. I have checked that the formula I am using may be derived from his explanation.
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James Powell is wrong about the 99.99% AGW consensus
New consensus paper -> cue the exploding heads in denierville.
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John Hartz at 11:55 AM on 13 April 2016To meet the Paris climate goals, do we need to engineer the climate?
We know less about the Earth's ecosystems, including soils, than we think we do. For example...
Researchers are only beginning to understand the complexities of the microbes in the earth’s soil and the role they play in fostering healthy ecosystems. Now, climate change is threatening to disrupt these microbes and the key functions they provide.
Is Climate Change Putting World's Microbiomes at Risk? by Jim Robbins, Yale Environment 360, Mar 28, 2016
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Magma at 10:42 AM on 13 April 2016James Powell is wrong about the 99.99% AGW consensus
Nicely done! Short and punchy, clearly argued and written, and up-to-date. You even included one on my favorite points from Powell.
Powell (2015) shows that applying Tol’s method to the established paradigm of plate tectonics would lead Tol to reject the scientific consensus in that field because nearly all current papers would be classified as taking ‘no position’.
I'd say that should settle matters with our pseudoskeptical friends, but we all know I'd be dead wrong. "So you're telling me there's a chance."
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Andy Skuce at 07:57 AM on 13 April 2016James Powell is wrong about the 99.99% AGW consensus
In the green box at the end of the piece I wrote "stay tuned". The new paper is now out a little earlier than most of us expected. There will be more on this soon...
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RedBaron at 06:12 AM on 13 April 2016To meet the Paris climate goals, do we need to engineer the climate?
While I have been mostly talking about carbon sequestration via the LCP, (a much more stable carbon cycle than biomass sequestration) biochar and the LCP are not necessarily incompatable. Turns out biochar can be an important jump start for the LCP in highly degraded agricultural ground.
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Magma at 03:39 AM on 13 April 2016James Powell is wrong about the 99.99% AGW consensus
Andy, along those lines there's the 2015 Benestad et al. paper Learning from mistakes in climate research in Theoretical and Applied Climatology, but with all respect to the authors I have to say that it left me underwhelmed.
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Andy Skuce at 03:14 AM on 13 April 2016James Powell is wrong about the 99.99% AGW consensus
I certainly agree that there has been no significant publication refuting the core of AGW. However, that's a subjective judgement and the work to establish the quality, as opposed to just the quantity, of dismissive publications has yet to be done. That work would entail close reading of the dismissive texts, looking for recycling of previously debunked concepts, along with a citation analysis. Luckily, even at a 3% rate of rejectionist articles (among those that express an opinion) there are not many of them to review.
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Magma at 02:58 AM on 13 April 2016James Powell is wrong about the 99.99% AGW consensus
Andy Skuce makes some solid points here, but I still have a great deal of sympathy for James Powell's core argument that no significant peer-reviewed article refuting key tenets of the AGW scientific consensus has been published over the past several decades, even when such technically sophisticated and deep-pocketed actors as major oil companies and fossil-fuel exporting nations have compelling interests in funding such research and seeing credible findings make it to print.
In this case, absence of evidence really is evidence of absence.
Watch Richard Alley for a characteristically enthusiastic rebuttal of the "conspiracy of the scientists" meme: What drives climate scientists?
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PhilippeChantreau at 01:22 AM on 13 April 2016The 35 countries cutting the link between economic growth and emissions
Denisaf, part of the problem is that for many people of power in the business world, the notion that what they call "commodities" are finite earns nothing but contempt. It's not that they argue that they are not finite, they simply don't see it as a problem.
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denisaf at 17:44 PM on 12 April 2016The 35 countries cutting the link between economic growth and emissions
Economic growth is largely the increase in the goods and services produced by technical systems - by using up limted crustal natural material resources without this ecological cost being taken into account. It is an unsustainable processs so economic contraction is bound to occur in the near future.
Measures to cope with the irreversible climate disruption and ocean acidification and warming should be based on understanding on what is really happening. The ability to mount remedial activites will be limited by what infrastructure services are still available.
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Tom Curtis at 13:10 PM on 12 April 2016White House: Climate Change Poses Urgent Health Risk
chriskoz @1, re mercury, try this.
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RedBaron at 12:19 PM on 12 April 2016White House: Climate Change Poses Urgent Health Risk
Here is a less technical artical about it.
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White House: Climate Change Poses Urgent Health Risk
Gah. Considerable literature, sorry about the tablet autocorrect.
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White House: Climate Change Poses Urgent Health Risk
I haven't heard anything about mercury, but there's considerable html rature indicating that plants, particularly C3 species, growing more woody and less nutritious with increased CO2, see Myers et al 2014.
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chriskoz at 09:07 AM on 12 April 2016White House: Climate Change Poses Urgent Health Risk
Two claims in this article/study need explanation because they are not clear to me:
1. Higher sea surface temperatures will lead to more mercury in seafood
and
2. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide also reduces the concentrations of proteins and minerals in some plant species
First one sounds dodgy: how can mercury pollution have anything to do with rising CO2/temp? Anyone can explain?
Second one seems like exaggeration or wrong conclusion. The availability of minerals to plants is not altered by rising CO2/temp. Perhaps, if plants are heat stressed, they also start failing to absorb those minerals. But even with that qualification, still plant growth in general can be limitted by CO2 availability. And that appears to be the case in general, because we observe increased CO2 sequestration by biosphere as FF emissions continue. Where is the evidence how nutrient availability seems to limit the phenomenon of CO2 fertilisation/plant growth?
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David Kirtley at 07:24 AM on 12 April 2016Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Gavin over at RealClimate has a good post up on the "Volcano Gambit" — a look at the twisted history of misinformation on volcanoes over the last few decades.
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RedBaron at 04:32 AM on 12 April 2016To meet the Paris climate goals, do we need to engineer the climate?
John,
Well at least it made it's way from completely ignored to number 10. I'll take even that as a start.
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John Hartz at 01:31 AM on 12 April 2016To meet the Paris climate goals, do we need to engineer the climate?
Suggested supplementary reading...
From Carbon Brief's daily broadcast email of Apr 11, 2016:
Explainer: 10 ways 'negative emissions' could slow climate change
Starting today (04/11/16), Carbon Brief is running a week-long series of articles looking at "negative emissions" technologies (NETs). With the Paris Agreement calling on the world to keep global surface temperatures "well below 2C", compared to the pre-industrial era, most of the climate modelling to date shows that we will have to, in part, rely on NETs in the second half of the century to "suck" CO2 out of the atmosphere. The problem is there are a range of NETs to choose from - yet none have been demonstrated to work at a commercial scale. In this first article in the series, we explain the 10 technologies most often put forward as a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Tomorrow, we ask a wide range of scientists and policy experts for their views. Carbon Brief Staff, Carbon Brief
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:48 AM on 12 April 2016The 35 countries cutting the link between economic growth and emissions
TonyW,
I agree that the measure of CO2 emissions and GDP are just measures and the 'uncertainty ranges' of those measurements need to be evaluated and be part of the reporting.
Actually, a measure that would be more meaningful would be the true measure of the amount of truly known to be sustainable activity in an economy. There are many other damaging unsustainable activities that cannot be part of a lasting better future for all of humanity. Replacing activity that increased CO2 with other unsustainable or damaging activity is not 'advancement', no matter how impressive the newer consumer toys for the more fortunate appear to be.
Many things that only a portion of humanity can get a reward from, other than CO2 emissions, are creating problems for furture generations (and others in the current generation). It is simply unacceptable that 'leaders' can still claim that their evaluation shows it is OK to make bigger problems for a furture generation because to not make those bigger problems that others will face would cost 'their portion of current day humanity' more than the impacts on future generations (as they figure it).
Putting that into business terms, a claim that the cost to future generations is justified is like a business developing profitability by doing something that actually damages the profitability of other businesses, but because it controls the rule making it gets to declare that they will only limit the damage they do to the other businesses to the amount of profit they believe they would have to give up to stop damaging the profitability of the other companies, then cooking the books to always show that their potential lost profit is always more than the damage they cause (as they figure it).
There is simply no justification for knowingly continuing to create larger problems that others will have to deal with. Clearly a focus on profitibaility and popularity as justification for things can create impressions of acceptability. The ability of 'people who are not very interested in advancing humanity to a lasting better future for all (because many current day people are more easily impressed by the present they hope to get for themselves)' to create and maintain misleading impressions is a fatal flaw of the system, maybe even the greatest weapon of mass destruction humans have ever created.
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CBDunkerson at 00:47 AM on 12 April 2016The 35 countries cutting the link between economic growth and emissions
TonyW, Monbiot has consistently argued that we need to become less materialistic / use less resources to fight global warming (and other environmental problems). He has dismissed the possibility that efficiency, miniaturization, and technology change (e.g. solar and wind replacing fossil fuels) can achieve significant results alone - despite mounting evidence to the contrary. IMO this represents a pre-existing bias in his thinking. Indeed, he even admits as much in one article. Also note, that the 'offshoring' argument (that countries has just shifted their manufacturing and thus emissions to other countries) is specifically addressed in the article above and shown to be not the case for a majority of the countries with declining emissions and increasing GDP.
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José M. Sousa at 00:36 AM on 12 April 2016The 35 countries cutting the link between economic growth and emissions
https://rwer.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/how-to-decarbonize-look-to-sweden/ This article seems also too optimistic. As might be seen in Jessie Henshaw´s comment here: https://rwer.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/co2-emissions-per-capita-united-states-denmark-finland-norway-iceland-and-sweden/
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esjope at 21:59 PM on 11 April 2016The 35 countries cutting the link between economic growth and emissions
These stats don’t include emissions from bioenergy (as it is often calculated as having 0 – emissions, which it isn’t). Also methane emissions are missing. Shipping and aviation I believe are also on the rise still. Emissions from agriculture are not here either. I’m afraid decoupling is much more difficult than these reports let us think.
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Digby Scorgie at 19:53 PM on 11 April 2016After COP21: 7 Key Tasks to Implement the Paris Agreement
I've thought of a problem. Some oil is needed to manufacture plastics. If there is an accelerating increase in the cost of fossil fuel, what is the effect on plastic products? Also, can plastics be manufactured without having to burn fossil fuel?
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TonyW at 18:12 PM on 10 April 2016The 35 countries cutting the link between economic growth and emissions
In a paper last year, as reported on by George Monbiot, it's clear that no decoupling has taken place. Indeed, claiming that an economy has "decoupled", as this post does, implies that there is no link between emissions and an economy, which would require far more evidence than mentioned here.The initial estimates by the IEA cover energy emissions only (and not, e.g. land use changes and cement manufacture). So, even if the estimate is true (and I don't think there is consistent stats on GDP), it doesn't prove that decoupling has happened or is in progress. It is far more likely that emissions are underestimated (which is certainly partly true, as they don't include some emissions) or that economic growth is overestimated. -
Trevor_S at 16:09 PM on 10 April 2016To meet the Paris climate goals, do we need to engineer the climate?
Good interview here with Professor Kevin Anderson about COP21 and the task ahead, he's not very complimemtary but always polite.
Also an interesting lecture he gives at the LSE
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Digby Scorgie at 11:27 AM on 10 April 2016After COP21: 7 Key Tasks to Implement the Paris Agreement
OPOF
Yes, a decreasing per-capita demand for electricity could be due to both increasing efficiency and increasing sustainability.
Right, so the next time some politician says we're reducing our emissions, I can look at my list and say, "These are the things that need to happen. They are not. You are wrong."
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:27 AM on 10 April 2016After COP21: 7 Key Tasks to Implement the Paris Agreement
Digby Scorgie,
I agree with including things like the energy efficiency of buildings in the list.
In keeping with the identification of broader categories "reduced energy consumption" may be the category for the variety of reductions of energy consumption that should be developing. Even the consumption of sustainable energy should be reduced because there are other unsustainable implications related to any type of energy production and distribution, not just the global warming ones (however, burning fossil fuels is clearly the least sustainable way of getting useable energy because unlike the resources required for other methods of energy generation fossil fuels cannot practically be recycled).
And I agree that identifying changes people can personally observe would be a good way to raise awareness of the adaptation/change of their local portion of humanity to the necessary changes required to advance global humanity to a lasting better future for all.
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ELIofVA at 00:15 AM on 10 April 2016To meet the Paris climate goals, do we need to engineer the climate?
Tom Curtis wrote about biochar:
But it can never be a substitute for reducing emissions to zero in the long term.
I totally agree with this statement. I would not suggest that an agressive practice of carbon storage by biochar or any other method would be a substitute for reducing emissions. One of the risk of optimism on geo engineering is for the public to believe we do not need reduce our high emissions lifestyle because a technological fix is coming. ak "Clean Coal Techonology". Therefore, biochar is not a substitue for agressive reductions in anthropogenic emissions. However, when we achieve net zero anthropogenic emissions, (I like to be hopeful) we will still be faced with a carbon concentration that are still too high, causing positive feedbacks such as reduce sea ice (higher light to heat absorption), and release of methane from permafrost thawing. Therefore, warming will continue. We must consider how we are going to sequester and store carbon out of the atmosphere.
I will use the metaphor of a retention pond used to mitigate the threat of flooding in an urban environment. A retention pond has an opening for the discharge or rain water. However, the size of the opening is limited so that during an extreme hard rain, or more frequently when the urban environment has created a very low absorption of run off, the opening reaches a maximum it will discharge and the level of the pond will rise above the level of discharge. Limiting the discharge of water allows the drainage systems below time to remove the water within the their limits and avoid flooding. Eventually, all the water is discharged, but at a rate that can be managed.
So, when we look at carbon capture and storage technologies, we must acknowledge that they may not be absolutely permanent. The planting of trees is promoted as a method of sequestering carbon. Yet a tree has a life cycle in which it will die and decompose the co2 back into the atmosphere. However, like the retention pond, the process has temporarily removed carbon, allowing time to reduce anthropogenic emissions.
Using biochar to more permanantly store the carbon from those trees allows much more time. The Terra Pretta soils of the Amazon demonstrates that the time frame is in the thousands of years. The release of carbon is very slow. Better yet, the environment created is a benifit for micro organisms, micro nutrients, and water retention, improving our potential to produce food in a sustainable way for our hungry population. Therefore there is an ecomomic and local environmental benefit that provides incentive for the process that does not require the achievment of global net zero carbon emissions.
From the book, "The Biochar Solution" page 76 the author quotes the belief by Rattan Sal, a soil scientist from Ohio State University that best practices could reduce atmoshperic carbon by 1ppm/4 years. Currently we are increasing by 2ppm/year. Obviously, the best methods do not compensate for current emission practices. Best practices includes other methods beside biochar such as no till farming. Sorry that I do not have a link to that information. However, I found this lecture by Rattan Sal that discusses the potential for capturing carbon as a mitigation strategy for climate change.
http://presenter.cfaes.ohio-state.edu/link/Ratan_Lal_5-7-12_-_Flash_%28Large%29_-_20120507_03.37.06PM.html
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