I can’t find the words to describe the illogic behind the EPA with this ruling. Perhaps it is best to say that bureaucrats don’t understand anything but regulations and leave it at that.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to several people close to the matter. Story here.
To celebrate, surfacestations.org volunteer Gary Boden sends along this poster:
But there’s an interesting twist, just two days ago, the University of Wisconsin says that CO2 is accelerating forest growth. Of course, bureaucrats wouldn’t understand this, because they can’t regulate tree growth. Oh, wait.
From the University of Wisconsin-Madison press release:
Greenhouse gas carbon dioxide ramps up aspen growth
Dec. 4, 2009
The rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be fueling more than climate change. It could also be making some trees grow like crazy.
That is the finding of a new study of natural stands of quaking aspen, one of North America’s most important and widespread deciduous trees. The study, by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota at Morris (UMM) and published today (Dec. 4) in the journal Global Change Biology, shows that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the past 50 years have boosted aspen growth rates by an astonishing 50 percent.
“Trees are already responding to a relatively nominal increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 50 years,” says Rick Lindroth, a UW-Madison professor of ecology and an expert on plant responses to climate change. Lindroth, UW-Madison colleague Don Waller, and professors Christopher Cole and Jon Anderson of UMM conducted the new study.
The study’s findings are important as the world’s forests, which cover about 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface, play an important role in regulating climate and sequestering greenhouses gases. The forests of the Northern Hemisphere, in particular, act as sinks for carbon dioxide, helping to offset the increase in levels of the greenhouse gas, widely viewed as a threat to global climate stability.
What’s more, according to the study’s authors, the accelerated growth rates of aspen could have widespread unknown ecological consequences. Aspen is a dominant tree in mountainous and northern forested regions of North America, including 42 million acres of Canadian forest and up to 6.5 million acres in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Aspen and their poplar cousins are considered “foundation species,” meaning they exert a strong influence on the plant and animal communities and dynamics of the forest ecosystems where they reside.
“We can’t forecast ecological change. It’s a complicated business,” explains Waller, a UW-Madison professor of botany. “For all we know, this could have very serious effects on slower growing plants and their ability to persist.”
Carbon dioxide, scientists know, is food for plants, which extract it from the air and through the process of photosynthesis convert it to sugar, plant food.
Previously, scientists have shown that plants and trees in growth chambers respond to levels of carbon dioxide well above levels in the atmosphere. The new study is the first to show that aspen in their native forest environments are already growing at accelerated rates due to rising ambient levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“It’s a change hiding right in front of us,” says Cole, a biologist at UMM. “Aspens respond to all sorts of things we had to account for — water, genetics and other factors — but the strong response to carbon dioxide surprised all of us.”
The study measured the growth rates of 919 trees from Wisconsin forests dominated by aspen and birch. Trees ranging in age from 5 to 76 years old were sampled and subjected to tree-ring analysis. Comparing the tree-ring data, a measure of annual tree growth, with records of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the researchers were able to correlate increased rates of growth with changes in the chemistry of the air.
The surprising increase in growth rates for the trees sampled in the study is coupled, the authors note, with moist conditions. By contrast, aspen in the western United States do not seem to grow as fast as those in the American Midwest, most likely due to recent extended periods of drought. Also, while the researchers found that aspen grow much faster in response to elevated carbon dioxide, similar effects have not been observed in other trees species, notably oak and pine.
Findings from the new study, the authors note, could augur revisions of the estimates of how much carbon northern temperate northern forests can sequester.
“Forests will continue to be important to soak up anthropogenic carbon dioxide,” says Waller. “But we can’t conclude that aspen forests are going to soak up excess carbon dioxide. This is going to plateau.”
“Aspens are already doing their best to mitigate our inputs,” agrees Cole. “The existing trees are going to max out in a couple of decades.”
The new study was funded by the National Science Foundation and UMM.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger.
EPA should lead the way in protecting its employees by moving them out of those dangerously enclosed buildings — where those employees are subjected to higher concentrations of CO2 — and out into the parking lots surrounding their buildings.
Immediately.
I predict that will reduce the number of employees at risk from CO2 poisoning in direct proportion to the numbers succumbing to pneumonia, *and* I have a graph to prove it.
OT? In case you haven’t seen this yet:
Promises, promises: A closed meeting on openness
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091206/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_open_government
“It’s hardly the image of transparency the Obama administration wants to project: A workshop on government openness is closed to the public.
“The event Monday for federal employees is a fitting symbol of President Barack Obama’s uneven record so far on the Freedom of Information Act, a big part of keeping his campaign promise to make his administration the most transparent ever. As Obama’s first year in office ends, the government’s actions when the public and press seek information are not yet matching up with the president’s words.”
Did anybody actually believe him? Oh, well, yes, I guess a few people did.
The only ‘carbon capture’ that makes any sense at all is using the warm damp CO2 laden air to feed rows and rows of market garden greenhouses. High value products like pomegranates and bananas would then subsidize power-production and side-step the EU’s Cap & Tax.
I suppose a positive economic impact is not quite the ‘Green’ way.
That is not true, at least not for pine. Pine responds DRAMATICALLY to increased CO2 to include 2x more seed production with a 50% increase of CO2 according to studies done at Duke University.
http://news.duke.edu/2009/08/carbonseed.html
so the biosphere is part of an natural regulatory system to keep the planet within a band of temperatures that suits plants that rely on photosynthsis
more co2 = faster plant growth which reduces the co2 in the atmosphere
The Navy is going to have fun with this given that submarines typically have co2 contents in their atmosphere of up to 2-3000 pts per million:
see the headline EPA to close down Nuke Subs.
Mind you a cunning beauracrat might push this ruling knowing it is a nonsence and will be challanged in court, ant the whole co2 charade will be exposed and subject to a judicial evidence based process.
Another change noted was dramatically better drought resistance and freeze resistance in plants grown in enhanced CO2 environments. Plants grown in 2x CO2 showed no slowdown in growth at precipitation levels that shut off growth in plants at ambient CO2. I believe that study was done with sweetgum but pines might have been included.
off topic
but would it be possible to change the link to Climate Audit to the new mirror site rather than the old one.
http://camirror.wordpress.com/
For those of us that like to use WUWT as a home page this would help.
There were a Swedish science rapport that get buried a year ago, something,
I think it was from Lund university working together with scientists from Italy.
A little simplified it goes like this. They study traffic CO2 impact on nature and concluded that the woods take up more CO2 in close to roads then elsewhere.
In fact they concluded that the uptake of CO2 was more then ten times of ordinary for woods.
I think it was also published in Nature. Now I cant find it anywhere, so sorry for missing links
This is one of the key acts in enacting ‘global warming’ economics.
It is the beginning of the end for US science if it goes on.
Time for US scientists to start upping sticks to practice their trade in foreign lands, perhaps??
Quote of the week for me.
“To blame the current warming on humans, there was a perceived need to “prove” that the current global average temperature is higher than it was at any other time in recent history (the last few thousand years). This task is one of the main topics of the released CRU emails.
Some people were so eager to prove this point that it became more important than scientific integrity.”
-Petr Chylek Los Alamos National Laboratory-
http://www.thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/218-petr-chylek-open-letter-to-the-climate-research-community.html
I would expect to see species that evolved and were dominant (such as conifers) when CO2 levels were much higher than today would benefit from enhanced CO2. CO2 depletion may well be a main reason for the decrease on coniferous forest and the rise of hardwoods in temperate regions. If atmospheric CO2 depletion resulted in decreased seed production of conifers (probably due to less efficient photosynthesis) then it stands to reason that hardwoods may they gain an advantage in reduced CO2 conditions.
“The existing trees are going to max out in a couple of decades.”
I am ever more impressed with the precise scientific terminology of the academics involved in these studies. Max out, rock on and stay cool, Professor Cole.
A few grains of salt. I haven’t read the paper, but…
* Aspen decline has been the big issue lately, not aspen “growing like crazy”
http://www.aspensite.org/research_dieback.htm
* Oh no, more tree ring studies
* I thought that trees worldwide have been experiencing an inexplicable growth contraction since 1940 or 1960 (see the ‘hide the decline’ spline justification by the CRUcrew)
* This paper is not about greenhouse growth under controlled conditions (confound those pesky confounding factors!)
* Repeat over and over: correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation, …
Whoops wrong thread! Moderator please delete.
No. It’s the right one. Confound it!
Reply: Glad we got that cleared up. ~ ctm
http://aspenface.mtu.edu/
“The Aspen FACE (Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment) Experiment is a multidisciplinary study to assess the effects of increasing tropospheric ozone and carbon dioxide levels on the structure and function of northern forest ecosystems.”
This is the begining of the end for the EPA. They will try to end run the senate to put in place carbon controls by regulation and court orders and congress will cutoff their funding. sooner or later bureaucrats will over reach too far to be egnored.
All animal exhalations are “O” sum CO2 to the enviroment, kind of obvious isn’t it?
As I commented a few months ago, a doubleing of CO2 would be wonderful for life on this planet and might also temper the next cold period.
Come on CO2 is not bad for you, what about particulate matter, that will kill you, just visit LA. So why does Ian Plimer the scientist state that CO2 has an effect for the first 50ppm but after that it makes no difference in concentration, we could have 2000ppm and it’ll be fine. And that gulf stream escalator or whatever it’s called, to stop that you’d have to stop the earth spinning LOL
I wish the EPA would start by regulating the excessive carbon footprint of those hypocritical elites that are invading Copenhagen. Imagine, they want us peasants to cut back while looting our treasury!!
“Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges”
“Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.”
“The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers. ”
“As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles.”
Above from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html
I thought that there are a few ways to trap carbon from the atmosphere (apart from trees which probably is the most economical and efficient way) that could be floated to the more honoured people who are meeting in Copenhagen – an alternative way of thinking to the problem of cosmic scale made comic…
If one has followed my earlier comments, it would be clear that the carbon content of the atmosphere would increase in an epsilon way over millennia but by our actions (and presence itself!) we are augmenting it without doing anything to reverse it… Here are a few ideas to reverse it that are technically viable (with present technology) and economically feasible:
1. Most of the metals we have are reduced from their oxides and the cheapest way is to release the oxygen is as CO2. There are two suggestions here
a) The produced CO2 to be made into solid form (there are ‘n’ number of ways to do it if one now a little chemistry that are commercially viable) and bury them deep in earth (may be they will become our future fuels…? :-))
b) To condense the CO2 as huge of blocks of CO2 ice (a reverse of refining were selective gases can be condensed and the rest released to atmosphere) and use ships to drag them submerged in deep (at least 500m) ocean till all of it becomes gas. This is to enhance CO2 absorption by water (which from surface is not that high), resulting in higher growth of algae that can fix more CO2 in the animal life chain. Note that this could be a new industry (a reverse of fishing?) that will enhance economy and offset the cost of making the ice (well… making the CO2 ice needs energy but this can come from other sources or from part of the energy generated in those schemes that release a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere). For example, this would mean that electricity-generating plants from fossil fuel, if it follows this kind of a plan would reduce CO2 emission almost to zero at a loss of efficiency less than probably 20% (need to work this out) and also creating a new industry of making CO2 ice and their evaporation under water in deep oceans.
2. Create barges (of a sq. km or more) that can float in all weather in rough oceans and be partially submerged and earth filled. Plant mangroves and bamboo (some of whose species are tolerant to salt water) that has a very high growth rate implying an efficient way of fixing the carbon in the atmosphere. As long as the wood is not burned and say, used to create furniture etc. would mean that more carbon is fixed as solids…
3. Obvious – planting trees at right places with adequate water and rich soil. Unlike an old tree, a young sapling grows to a few tonnes within a few years and all of it is carbon content (I am searching for the % of carbon in timber) taken off from the atmosphere
4. Last, but not least, noticing the wind pattern over our peninsular India in the past few years as a specific example, I feel that flow has slowly over years shifted north and is running across northern peninsular India and curving over Arabian sea than the Bay of Bengal, which is the usual pattern. Flowing if it does through the bay will produce cyclones and while causing some damage brings in most of the rains in peninsular India (during the North-East monsoon period). Unlike what people think, a wind turbine, if many, would change the wind patterns (it is not such a clean source as one is made to believe, when one thinks of massive scales and over a long period of time) at surface levels, which causes shears in the successive atmospheric layers leading to a change in over all climatic conditions. The suggestion would be to install many a windmill in the northern part of the Indian peninsula to restrict this wind flow (and there are many similar regions in the world) to enable greater rainfall and to harness the wind energy when available. While this may be costly and the results prone to fluctuations in the global temperature mosaic, this would arrest the changes in climatic conditions (such as rainfall, temperature, etc. over a region due to changes in temperature distribution and rise), when they move too much to the extreme (such as the formation of cyclone in the Kanyakumari region rather than in the Bay and moving through the Arabian sea witnessed this year is an aberration which had very rarely happened in the past century)
To think globally would offer more solutions to the greater minds out there than the stupid but workable ideas told here, rather than thinking locally (or in a lower level at an individual organization/people, more keen to ensure their funding) and being at a risk of blowing a problem out of proportion and furthering urgent-wrong solutions scientifically, economically and politically, which would anyway collapse in the next decade so with the problem still persisting at large with the future (assumed by us to be born idiots) to handle this.
“Aspens are already doing their best to mitigate our inputs,” agrees Cole. “The existing trees are going to max out in a couple of decades.”
After being ~ “astonished” by the 50% increase, now they’ve decided they were right all along, just like before they were astonished.
OK enough is enough. Obviously almost the entire political class and government beaurocracy has gone stark raving mad. They have become a danger to liberty and the quiet enjoyment of life. I hypothesise that such an outcome is statistically significantly related to the access to free money provided by the working population. I would prove it but I deleted my raw data so you’ll have to trust me.
Has anyone had a chance to examine the CO2 monitoring site problems?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/greenhouse_gas_observatories_d.html
Is there anything to this story? If true, it looks like it is similar to the temperature monitoring site scandal to me.
The only bright side is that this may provide an avenue to get this back before the Supremes for reconsideration of their lame first decision, but with the”wise Latina” now on board, the odds of them overturning it aren’t real great. But we live in hope…
and die in despair.
“Richard111 (22:43:01) :
The average human breathes out CO2 at about 40,000ppmv. Multiply that by 6.5 billion then double every 45 years. I guess there is a problem.”
Hmmmm….. Lets say our atmosphere is a million grains of rice……
1,000,000 rice grains is approx 90 litres worth. Quite a pile. CO2 in our atmosphere is around a very small handful – 385. Hold out the other hand and put 13 grains in and that is the man made quotient. The UK output is but 1.6% of those 13 grains. Not even a quarter of one grain of rice. We have to get a magnifying glass to see our output and that is from all our Ships/Power Stations/Trains/Cars/Trucks/Aeroplanes etc long before one can discover the almost infinitely small contribution from British lungs!
Now look back at the huge pile of 1,000,000 rice grains and ask oneself how the 13 grains can apparently contaminate [EPA says CO2 is a poison] the remaining 999,999,987.
CO2 the new Ricin? Hmmmmmm…….