UN climate conferences obsolete
New study considers vegetation cooling
A new NASA computer modelling effort has found that the additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback — a cooling effect — on the Earth’s climate system that could work to reduce future global warming to only +1.64°C if carbon dioxide was doubled. The IPCC had assumed a +3°C warming in that case.
The cooling effect would be -0.3 degrees Celsius globally and -0.6 degrees C over land, compared to simulations where the feedback was not included, said Lahouari Bounoua, of Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Bounoua is lead author on the paper that was published Dec 7, 2010, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
With the negative feedback included, the model found a warming of 1.64 degrees C globally when carbon dioxide was doubled.
Doubling the CO2 contents in the atmosphere from 390 ppmv to 780 ppmv would require some 195 years with the present growth rate of 2 ppm/year. This means, however, that until the year 2100 we have to expect a temperature increase of only 0.75°C. Also, with the higher IPCC value, the resulting temperature growth would be well below the limit of 2°C which has been decided as a limit by the recent conference in Cancun.
Apparently none of the 15,000 participants in Cancun has recognized this fact (or, rather, did not want to do so) since this means that the political UN conference-circus is indeed obsolete. No new post-Kyoto agreement is required, nor a reduction of CO2 emissions at all.
However, we must expect that the expensive annual mega-meetings will continue, since no participant wants to give up these free vacation weeks in one of the more beautiful places of this planet (Kyoto – Bali – Nairobi – Rio de Janeiro – Geneva – New Delhi – Marrakesh – Buenos Aires – Copenhagen – Cancun – and next year Durban, South Africa).
The most important decision at each of 16 conferences was to meet again next year. And if it were only for that reason, then the “fight against climate change” must be continued.
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I immediately observe that Richard C posted a better story on this topic way back on December 9 — thanks, Richard.
My “Topics for posting” folder is populated too well! All right, it’s overcrowded.
“a better story on this topic way back on December 9”
It’s well worth keeping information like this current. there’s so many stories already written and they need to be dusted off even if they are a few years old. This one is exactly what should be front-of-mind but I’d forgotten about it already.
I’ve got my head in one that was written before IPCC AR4 2007 “New Little Ice Age Instead of Global Warming?” by Dr. Theodor Landscheidt, that I think is the best article I have read that expounds the alternative natural climate change hypothesis, Gleissberg cycles and the solar influence on climate change.
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new-e.htm
It is interesting that although it has been proven to be skillful in prediction, the actual cause and effect relationship has not been completely established yet.
All brushed over by the IPCC of course but it shows that we really should be looking at what we already have and that it is scandalous just how much has been ignored for decades to perpetuate the “process”.
Another interesting aspect is that these NASA/NOAA scientists used a model which regards carbon sensitivity as being only 1.9°C – even without taking the newly-discovered cooling feedback into account.
This tells us at least two things:
1. The high-carbon-sensitivity models which produce the IPCC’s projections of 3-6°C temps must have been carefully selected.
2. When doing their own work, for publication, the leading scientists at USA’s top Government institutions prefer to work with models which assume realistic (ie low) carbon-sensitivity.
There is, of course, a less worthy explanation. The NASA scientists might have preferred a low-sensitivity model so that the negative feedback they identified would have a low absolute value. But, whatever the absolute value, this new feedback accounts for a handy 15-20% reduction in alleged greenhouse warming.
WUWT had a post on Dr. Theodor Landscheidt some time ago 4/2009
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/23/a-possible-correlation-between-the-southern-oscillation-index-and-the-solar-ap-index/
there’s another paper linked which might be interesting to you learned ones
Connection between ENSO phenomena and solar and geomagnetic activity (PDF) by M A. Nuzhdina, Astronomical Observatory of Kiev National T. Shevchenko University, Kiev, Ukraine in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (2002) 2: 83–89. European Geophysical Society.