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'Runaway climate change' 'unrealistic', say scientists
As climate scientists are cleared of wrongdoing on two fronts, yet another much-cherished theory is challenged
As the scientific community seeks to put a lid on the outpouring of climate change scepticism unleashed in the wake of Climategate and the publicising of flaws in a UN climate report, a new study has suggested that the theory of 'runaway climate change' is "unrealistic".
Today, Sir Muir Russell's independent review of the Climategate scandal, in which hackers stole and circulated emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, cleared climate scientists of malpractice. It is the third inquiry to do so – leading to calls of 'whitewash' from climate change sceptics.
And in another boost for climate science, a Dutch government review yesterday gave the all-clear to a United Nations report which had been widely criticised for overstating the threat of climate change and containing bogus claims about the probable effects.
The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report contained "no errors that would undermine the main conclusions" that climate change will have serious effects for the world. The 35 errors it did find were mainly typographical or similarly trivial. The IPCC has accepted 12 of them.
Embarrassingly for PBL, it had to admit it was the source of one of the most glaring errors – a claim that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was at risk of flooding because it lies under sea level.
Despite two days of good news for climate scientists, a new study is set to rock the boat again by calling into question one of the more frightening global warming scenarios: 'runaway climate change'. Under this scenario, rising temperatures speed up processes that catastrophically increase the rate of global warming – a positive feedback loop.
One of these processes is an increase in the rate of carbon dioxide (CO2) production by plants and microorganisms in the soil caused by an increase in temperature. As CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it has been suggested this will further increase temperatures, leading to a further increase in CO2 production until the Earth is too hot for human life.
Using Fluxnet, a global network of more than 250 'flux towers' to sample CO2 concentrations, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute has found that, actually, temperature has a much smaller effect on CO2 release than previous studies claimed.
The researchers, led by Miguel Mahecha, found that the rate at which plants and microorganisms produce CO2 in ecosystems from tropical rainforests to savannah does not even double when the temperature increases by 10°C from one week to the next.
His colleague Markus Reichstein says: "Particularly alarmist scenarios for the feedback between global warming and ecosystem respiration (CO2 production) thus prove to be unrealistic."
Climate change sceptics might say the new study is yet another nail in the coffin of the IPCC report, which says: "Anthropogenic warming could lead to some effects that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change."
But mainstream scientists will just be pleased that Fluxnet has given them real-world measurements upon which to base their computer models - which could be another nail in the coffin of climate change scepticism, relying as it so often does on quibbles over the quality of data. ·
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Isn't it about time our media stopped concentrating on whether climate change is occurring or not (it is changing, it always has changed and it always will change - ask any competent geologist).
The real meat of the question is whether humans are having any discernible effect one way or the other (anthropomorphic change).
The influence of humans in comparison to the vast effects of nature istelf, for example, rotting vegetation, the action and activity level of that monstrous nuclear reactor the sun, etc etc mean that is is highly unlikely our puny efforts are having much effect at all.
far better if we were concentrating on
a) Learning to live with change instead of believing we can stop it.
b) husbanding valuable limited natural resources
c) endeavouring to not pollute our world more than absolutely necessary as we all have to breathe the same air and drink the same water...
The ONLY thing people have to worry about is whether climate-change will "run-away" before they die. If you think things will be "bad" you can always not have kids. The optimists - of course - will continue to breed but as the human population gets more optimistic the climate-change "problem" will be lessened (as optimism will prevail). I'm optimistic that human optimism will solve all future "challenges" (after-all, "with great challenges bring great opportunities" - as a memo from corporate management might say).
Btw, not having kids also reduces your carbon-footprint to near zero.
Well, "runaway" implies some measuring - of the regular running speed - then the use of this baseline to judge that the process (whatever it is), has gone off the scale. Let us suppose an earth without polar ice caps, which then cools. The ice caps will grow. If the process goes "runaway" we might get what geophysicists call the "Snowball Earth". Ice everywhere except a bit at the equator. It has happened before, 100s of milions of years ago, and presumably could happed again. The best explanation I know is Svensmark's "Chilling Stars" theory, see the book of that name if want a good scientific read. Of course, such a theory does not suit the current howling mobs of manmade global warming theorists, so it is not likely to get any attention. But it just shows, without definitions of terms and establishment of baselines by normal science, all the talk of "runaway" remains subjective and emotive, not scientific.
Charlie Harnett, I'm sorry to say this, but there is nothing wrong with this article based on what you described. Living plants emit o2, yes, but dead and decaying plants emit co2, a lot of co2. Higher temperatures cause the decaying process to speed up, and causes more micro-organisms to grow at a faster rate, which means more co2 and other gasses. A good sized compost pile will release more "greenhouse" gasses than most cars do. The earth itself produces about 96% of all co2, in the form of decaying bio-matter, fallen trees, leaves, etc, the oceans and the organisms living off that matter.
Jerome Peter: You've made some pretty serious allegations there. Got any evidence?
There's something terribly wrong with this article. This paragraph:
"The researchers, led by Miguel Mahecha, found that the rate at which plants and microorganisms produce CO2 in ecosystems from tropical rainforests to savannah does not even double when the temperature increases by 10°C from one week to the next."
Makes no sense whatever. It's pointless to talk about the change in the rate of production of CO2 by plants, as they do not produce CO2. Plants emit O2.
I read the Max Planck article and compared it to the summary here. It's clear that the author of this article on FirstPost didn't understand the Max Planck paper at all.
This massive scam is designed to financially rape and ruin richer countries. We have our wealth stolen by corrupt politicians and handed over to poorer ones as bribes to equally corrupt politicians, to persuade them of the value of joining a sick and sinister New World Order. This political mafia get richer and richer with their banking and big business friends at the expense of our freedom, as this becomes more like the Roman Empire by the day. These violent politicians use an armoury of psychological tactics against those of us who defy their wickedness, including using an array of hate words that they spit out, such as 'denier' and 'racist'. It beggars belief that we can allow such evil men and women to psyche us into allowing our country to be dismantled and impoverished under our very noses, whilst actually behaving as if they are the wronged ones if we disagree. Most of Westminster should already be on trial for crimes against humanity. If we stand up and fight then one day they will face these charges.