North American Carbon Imbalance
A new report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program has determined that there is now a greater than three-to-one imbalance between the fossil fuel sources and the ability of vegetation to absorb carbon over North America, and that fossil fuel emissions for North America are greater than 25% of global emissions. The carbon absorption by vegetation, primarily in the form of forest growth, is expected to decline as maturing forests grow more slowly and take up less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.The conversion of fossil fuels to energy is the single highest contributor with transportation second.
Report authors find it unclear how rapidly this carbon storage “sink” will decline and whether it might potentially become a source since changes in climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide could affect forest growth differently in different regions. Further warming, for example, could exacerbate drought, increasing carbon release through vegetation dieback and increased fire and insect disturbances.
Here is the link to the
North American Carbon budget. This particular chapter has some interesting graphs and figures.
Comments (4)
Very, very surprising that as we quickly burn the entire organic carbon fossil record from the last 300 million years, we are creating an imbalance in atmospheric CO2.
Their speculations about the effects of CO2 seem to be based entirely on hearsay - which is the norm for these types of papers. What evidence did they generate to show that increased CO2 leads to an increase in droughts?
How much do these guys get paid to figure out this tricky stuff?
Posted by Patrick Henry | November 15, 2007 1:03 PM
After reading both links, and messing around on the sites linked to, I must say I am just simply amazed at how anyone, especially a government agency, is able to assess the amount of CO2 either put into, or taken out of, the environment as a whole. The fact that this info is reported as a FACT worthy of taking action upon is somewhat troubling to me. Kinda like guessing at what might, or might not, be left in your checking account. Any takers?
Posted by Darren | November 15, 2007 1:24 PM
According to the US greenhouse gas inventory from 2005, the biota in the US was only able to uptake about 10% of US greenhouse gas emissions.
Posted by shannon | November 15, 2007 3:28 PM
patrick Henry---
re: increased co2 leads to droughts.
When their premise is based a hypothetical, one can run this pony anywhere they want, as far as they want.
A great job if you can get it.
Ever wonder how deep dinosaurs were stacked on one another running around earth, how many gallons of crude could a single decomposing dino produce ? Or how many gallons P/acre of vegetation ?
There has to be a math equation here somewhere, with the billions of gallons pumped and the billions of yet undiscovered reserves.
Hey, I can run my pony too.
Posted by Don | November 15, 2007 9:40 PM