Posted on 01/16/2007 5:06:47 AM PST by oldtimer2
If the riparian flux don't git you, the Enviro whackos will; or maybe the Mississippi will beat the Army Corps of Engineers in the long run, and NOLA will return to its pre-industrial age state.
Sounds to me like you have a really workable plan. If the French can go nuclear, why can't we!!!
... scientists who are not waiting for any further data to "brow beat and shut down" scientists on the AGW side.
****
This sounds a lot like the current argument that the dems in Congress are making to control conservative talk radio. It seems to me that the "AGW scientists" are the ones getting brow beaten on a regular basis, just for being contrarian.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2004/07/02/little-white-exaggeration/#more-54
There is a drumbeat of upbeat news about the future of rice: Any relatively small reduction in yield from elevated nighttime temperatures will be dwarfed by the biological benefits of elevated CO2. Evidence of those facts is not hard to find. A quick visit to the library netted these results:
More yield, consistent nutrient value. A team of scientists from New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan, wondered how elevated CO2 would influence nutrient concentrations of staple food crops such as rice. They grew rice outside with natural and elevated CO2 levels, and, like everyone else, they found that “elevated CO2 increased biomass and grain production” in the rice. With respect to nutrient concentrations, they “found no changes in the concentrations of any of the other elements analysed.” Elevated CO2 produced more grain yield with absolutely no decline in nutrients!
Up to 71% more rice. A scientist with the USDA grew a variety of rice cultivars commonly raised in the southern United States outdoors in controlled chambers with natural and doubled CO2 concentrations and varying day-night temperatures. Although unrealistically high temperatures cooked the plants, Baker reported that “At the 28°C temperature treatment, CO2 enrichment increased grain yield by 46% to 71% among the three cultivars.”
He concluded that future rice growers will be able to take advantage of “the possibility of selecting or breeding rice cultivars with enhanced capability to take advantage of future global increases in [CO2].” Even if nighttime temperatures remotely approach threatening levels, future agriculturalists will be able to identify cultivars that are more tolerant of heat – rice farmers are not stupid!
The nitrogen factor. A team of Japanese scientists grew rice at ambient and elevated CO2 with variations in nitrogen (N) solution in the soil. The Yamakawa et al. team found that “The dry matter of rice was increased by elevated CO2” and that “the amount of N uptake seemed to limit rice growth.” Assuming rice farmers of the future do not run out of nitrogen (which would be like running out of air), their yields will increase substantially.
Microbial mass increases. Another team of Japanese scientists examined how the beneficial soil microbial biomass beneath the rice plants was impacted by elevated CO2. Li et al. reported “Elevated [CO2] significantly increased microbial biomass carbon in the surface 5 cm soil when N (90 kg ha-1) was in sufficient supply.”
Spend 10 more minutes in a good science library and discover at least a dozen more published experiments on the future of rice in the 2004 literature alone; there are hundreds more on rice and elevated CO2 in the older stacks.
This recent warning from the Peng et al. group regarding rice and global warming may not be a little white lie, but they certainly commit a sin of omission. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that rice yields will increase significantly in the years to come, with or without the predicted rise in nighttime temperature.
References:
Baker, J.T. 2004. Yield responses of southern US rice cultivars to CO2 and temperature. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 122, 129-137.
Li, K. Yagi, H. Sakai, K. Kobayashi. 2004. Influence of elevated CO2 and nitrogen nutrition on rice plant growth, soil microbial biomass, dissolved organic carbon and dissolved CH4. Plant and Soil, 258, 81-90
Lieffering, M., H.-Y. Kim, K. Kobayashi, and M. Okada. 2004. The impact of elevated CO2 on the elemental concentrations of field-grown rice grains. Field Crops Research, 88, 279-286.
Peng, S., J. Huang, J.E. Sheehy, R.C. Laza, R.M. Visperas, X. Zhong, G.S. Centeno, G.S. Khush, and K. G. Cassman. 2004. Rice yields decline with higher night temperature from global warming. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101, 9971-9975.
Yamakawa, Y., M. Saigusa, M. Okada, and K. Kobayashi. 2004. Nutrient uptake by rice and soil solution composition under atmospheric CO2 enrichment. Plant and Soil, 259, 367-372.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/01/09/the-lessons-of-mid-holocene-droughts/#more-204
The second article in the recent issue comes from three scientists at the University of Illinois who examined oxygen-isotopic composition (d18O) from layered deposits at the bottom of Steel Lake in north-central Minnesota. The high-resolution calcite d18O values are shown to be sensitive to drought in the area, so once again, we, via proxy, have a 3,100 year record of drought. Tian et al. begin their article noting “The detrimental societal, economic, and environmental repercussions of 20th-century drought episodes are evident in the North American mid-continent. However, the intensity, duration, and frequency of 20th-century drought are dwarfed by those inferred from paleoclimatic records in some areas.”
Among many interesting findings, they note that the “1930s Dust Bowl was minor compared to that during many other time intervals both before and after 300 AD. Thus drought events of greater magnitude than the aridity extremes of the 20th century were not uncommon during the late Holocene.” They also note “A striking feature of the record is the mean-state shift around 300 AD; drought was prevalent and long-lasting before 300 AD.” Regarding variability of drought, they state “Results indicate much greater variability before 1900 AD than after” and “In all, ~90% of the variability values during the last 3100 years were greater than the average of the 20th century.” They warn that “This low variability was atypical of the last 3100 years, and it probably should not be expected as the prevailing state of variability for the future.” Finally, they find that drought in north-central Minnesota is significantly related to sea surface temperatures in the North Pacific and to output from the sun.
World Climate Report has addressed the issue of drought many times in the past. We fully realize that the central United States will experience severe drought in the future, and we also realize when this occurs, the global warming fraternity will have a field day. But it is more than interesting that we are told drought will become more common as greenhouse gases buildup in the future, and that variability will increase giving us an undesirable combination of droughts and floods. But as we look at these two recent articles, we see that during the 20th century, and during a time of substantial increase in greenhouse gas concentration, droughts were actually less severe than during the mid-Holocene and variability decreased as well.
References
Diffenbaugh, N. S., M. Ashfaq, B. Shuman, J. W. Williams, and P. J. Bartlein (2006), Summer aridity in the United States: Response to mid-Holocene changes in insolation and sea surface temperature, Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L22712, doi:10.1029/2006GL028012.
Tian, J., D. M. Nelson, and F. S. Hu (2006), Possible linkages of late-Holocene drought in the North American midcontinent to Pacific Decadal Oscillation and solar activity, Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L23702, doi:10.1029/2006GL028169.
Got me. :)
Espy was the one let off on all charges - even the ones he admitted to doing in open court.
Oh wow. Some of that stuff is horrific. IIRC they have a single coal fire that measures near 1% of the Anthropogenic output of CO2 all by itself (Might be off a decimal, but even then, it's a huge waste).
Oh wow. Some of that stuff is horrific. IIRC they have a single coal fire that measures near 1% of the Anthropogenic output of CO2 all by itself (Might be off a decimal, but even then, it's a huge waste).
China getting a pass on this while there being a refusal to accept credit for our carbon sinks makes it even more clear that "Kyoto" was pretty much entirely just a political knife aimed at us.
I was skimming a paper a couple of weeks ago regarding the effects of warmer water (a couple of degrees C) on a common type of plankton (tropical West Pacific or Indian Ocean as I recall). The plankton apparently causes some sort of cloud of particles above it, which A) causes a smog, and B) forms droplet nuclei for cloud formation. It suggested a 15w/m2 decrease in sunlight reaching the ocean below.
If so (and darn it that I can't find it again), that's a powerful feedback by itself.
That is good for purposes of illustrating how the statistics work...but what are the 100 variables, what are the 90 we have to get right, and how do we know we can predict the variables with an accuracy of 99% ? :-)
Cheers!
I read about that algal species too. That's one of the possibilities of unexpected negative feedbacks -- more of that type would be helpful!
Ask Lewis, it's his number. Also the 99%. I merely added a perfectly reasonable variation to come to a radically different conclusion. The point being that for probabalistic arguments the devil's usually in the details. Consequently it's easy to fool the less mathematically sophisticated.
Yup, point indeed taken.
Cheers!
Thanks for the explanation!!
Normally, AGW means Anthropogenic Global Warming - man made. Did you perhaps use it to mean "Against" or "Anti-" GW?
Bumpus.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the largest producer of "greenhouse gases" the oceans?
If you look at the end of that chart, its pretty clear that CO2 is being produced at a very high rate.
What the chart shows though, is that CO2 is a trailing factor, not a leading factor. In other words, there is no evidence that CO2 production is going to lead to the cancellation of the effects that will ultimately lead to our next ice age.
Possibly, one could argue that CO2 would stabilize the chart *a bit*, but I doubt it would change the general oscillation caused by external forces.
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