From Yale University pick which one is the true message of this press release:
1. The title of the press release: US rivers and streams saturated with carbon.
2. The pointless statistic: Rivers and streams in the United States are releasing enough carbon into the atmosphere to fuel 3.4 million car trips to the moon.
3. The title of the paper: Significant Efflux of Carbon Dioxide from Streams and Rivers in the United States.
4. The caveat: The researchers note in the paper that currently it is impossible to determine exactly how to include this flux in regional carbon budgets, because the influence of human activity on the release of CO2 into streams and rivers is still unknown.
Who writes these things?
US rivers and streams saturated with carbon
New Haven, Conn.— Rivers and streams in the United States are releasing enough carbon into the atmosphere to fuel 3.4 million car trips to the moon, according to Yale researchers in Nature Geoscience. Their findings could change the way scientists model the movement of carbon between land, water and the atmosphere.
“These rivers breathe a lot of carbon,” said David Butman, a doctoral student and co-author of a study with Pete Raymond, professor of ecosystem ecology, both at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “They are a source of CO2, just like we breathe CO2 and like smokestacks emit CO2, and this has never been systematically estimated from a region as large as the United States.”
The researchers assert that a significant amount of carbon contained in land, which first is absorbed by plants and forests through the air, is leaking into streams and rivers and then released into the atmosphere before reaching coastal waterways.
“What we are able to show is that there is a source of atmospheric CO2 from streams and rivers, and that it is significant enough for terrestrial modelers to take note of it,” said Butman.
They analyzed samples taken by the United States Geological Survey from over 4,000 rivers and streams throughout the United States, and incorporated highly detailed geospatial data to model the flux of carbon dioxide from water. This release of carbon, said Butman, is the same as a car burning 40 billion gallons of gasoline.
The paper, titled “Significant Efflux of Carbon Dioxide from Streams and Rivers in the United States,” also indicates that as the climate heats up there will be more rain and snow, and that an increase in precipitation will result in even more terrestrial carbon flowing into rivers and streams and being released into the atmosphere.
“This would mean that any estimate between carbon uptake in the biosphere and carbon being released through respiration in the biosphere will be even less likely to balance and must include the carbon in streams and rivers,” he said.
The researchers note in the paper that currently it is impossible to determine exactly how to include this flux in regional carbon budgets, because the influence of human activity on the release of CO2 into streams and rivers is still unknown.
The research was funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation, the United States Geological Survey and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
“US rivers and streams saturated with carbon”
You mean, all I need is some flavour and I have a fizzy drink?!
Or do I just dip my hand in and pull diamonds out?
Or if I dip my finger can I do a charcoal etch?
(In other words: what brain damaged nonsense.)
So perfectly natural out-respirations of the carbon-cycle are now being treated as pollution? What else do they mean when they equate it to burning gasoline (CO2 from which is regularly called pollution these days)? Breathing in good, breathing out bad. Incredible.
AndyG55 says:
October 17, 2011 at 11:41 pm
These guys seriously need to go back to school !!!
No way, they need to get jobs. We need a few thousand miles of ditch diggin right now.
Gary Hladik says:
October 17, 2011 at 11:14 pm
“This release of carbon, said Butman, is the same as a car burning 40 billion gallons of gasoline.”
“I think I saw that car once; passed me on an LA freeway like I was standing still.”
I once had a car that burned more than that in oil a day. It got around 10 billion gallons of oil an hour.
Crispin in Waterloo said:
“Is there a car that runs on CO2? I am pretty sure that is the claim.”
Why yes, and not only that, there are CO2-powered cars that you can fly to the moon!
Absurdities never end with these momo’s…..
boy i blew the syntax with that rant.. sorry 😀
Let’s see – 3.5 million trips at about 500,000 miles per round trip, divided by 40 billion gallons = 44 mpg (and that includes getting to escape velocity!). Not bad. Those trips to the moon must all be in Priuses.
Fixed it;
Rivers and streams in the United States are releasing enough carbon into the atmosphere to fuel 3.4 million car trips to the moon, according to Yale researchers in Nature Geoscience. Their findings could change the way motorists drive to the moon for family holidays.
“The researchers assert that a significant amount of carbon contained in land, which first is absorbed by plants and forests through the air, is leaking into streams and rivers…”
LEAKING!!! Its worse than the Exxon Valdez! Whole watersheds must be covered with the stuff. We’ll need volunteers to get out there and scrub the carbon off fish and pelicans.
I’m shocked that we haven’t all died of carbon poisoning. Seems like every living thing must be contaminated with it. Is there nothing the EPA can do to save us?
A fascinatingly weird concept here. These waterways release “… enough carbon to fuel 3.4 million car trips to the moon …” Really? Given that this “carbon” is in the form of the harmless, beneficial trace gas carbon dioxide, do we infer that they’ve found some way of using carbon dioxide as a fuel? An eager world awaits the details. Indefinitely, I’m guessing.
Yale obviously ought to stick with Arts/Law…..
Their science department seems to be severely lacking.
There have been many new measuring systems invented by the AGW crowd, but this one takes the cake. A lunar equivalent CO2 car trip to the moon as measured by volumetric river discharge CO2 out gassing. This will be phased in as a new S.I. unit of measure as a carbonlunatic or a CL for short. They pay these people for scientific investigation and we get this nonsense.
Colder water holds more CO2.
Rainfall warms as it falls from the sky and flows towards the oceans. Hence it will (nearly) always be fully saturated with CO2 and will be releasing it throughout the journey from sky to sea.
Why the need to suggest that it is only at saturation because we have injected extra CO2 into it ?
This reminds me of a comment by Murry Salby when he mentioned soil moisture on land. If I read it right his data may suggest that CO2 release from soil moisture, indeed all water on or in land, makes a significant contribution to environmental CO2 release or uptake.
Thus a slightly warmer global troposphere from, say, solar or oceanic effects would result in lower CO2 absorption capability not only for water near the ocean surface but also for all water on or in the continental land masses.
I think some serious reworking of the carbon cycle is in order before we start blaming human activity for atmospheric CO2 changes.
Great story, and kudos to you doing this in your later years. It reminds me of my (apparently) misspent youth when I used to hitch around Europe when I could not afford the plane fare to go and lie on tropical beaches. (I have since discovered Australia, where you can do both without needing to fly). I discovered three main points:
1. Carrying a motorbike helmet gets you many easy lifts in the UK, but none at all in Europe.
2. Talking to caffeine-fuelled truckers in their own language is the best way to learn it. They really do not care that you cannot talk well – they just want to talk! I learnt French quite well that way.
3. Hitching without a shirt will get you picked up by gay truckers wanting some action. You may get a free shower out of it, however. (Being a guy, obviously. For girls it will be different, I suspect!)
I had a great deal of fun, met a great many good people, and had almost no scary moments, apart from one where a guy threatened to rape me. That was when I discovered that motorbike helmets could be used as a decent weapon, although I suspect I was not in real danger.
I now have children, and my question to you is, would you recommend your 19-year-old daughter hitches anywhere like this? It is a problem for me because I do not want to encourage my children to hitch, despite it working so well for me. In Australia it is (I believe) illegal, although that never stopped me. Seems daft for a country with almost only one road – Highway 1 (the longest national highway in the world).
^^^ opps, sorry, wrong thread!
@wayne Job says:
October 18, 2011 at 1:41 am
“There have been many new measuring systems invented by the AGW crowd, but this one takes the cake. A lunar equivalent CO2 car trip to the moon as measured by volumetric river discharge CO2 out gassing. This will be phased in as a new S.I. unit of measure as a carbonlunatic or a CL for short. They pay these people for scientific investigation and we get this nonsense.”
=======================================================
Would you kindly do a favor for this old Luddite and convert that new-fangled SI unit, the CL, into good ol’ every day units like Olympic swimming pools or Houston Astrodomes or Lake Eries?
Thanks in advance ;o)
“…releasing enough carbon into the atmosphere to fuel 3.4 million car trips to the moon…”
Where can I get one of these cars that runs on carbon (or CO2) and can go to the moon?
Despite their total lack of knowledge of the natural variability of the carbon flux on anything less than a millennial scale (routinely evidenced by studies like this), the warmists are certain that the ~100 ppmv rise in atmospheric [CO2] over the last 150 years is entirely anthropogenic.
And their certainty is based on three things:
1) The fact that Antarctic ice cores incapable of resolving sub-centennial CO2 shifts don’t contain the sub-centennial CO2 shifts seen in the Antarctic ice cores capable of resolving sub-centennial CO2 shifts. Plant stomata data showing those preindustrial shifts are simply FUD.
2) The d13C depletion measured instrumentally and in the same Antarctic ice cores don’t contain the prominent d13C maximum during the LIA that is common in carbonate sediments. Those carbonate sediments are just FUD.
3) A “simple accounting” of anthropogenic carbon emissions… Less whatever has to be subtracted out to fit the narrative. Any criticism of the Warmist “fuzzy math” is more FUD,
Gary Hladik says:
October 17, 2011 at 11:14 pm
“This release of carbon, said Butman, is the same as a car burning 40 billion gallons of gasoline.”
I think I saw that car once; passed me on an LA freeway like I was standing still.
Oh wait, I was.
That’s some motor! Do you know the manufacturer’s name, designer, production techniques, & how many engines did it have replaced to consume 40 billion gallons of fuel? Perhaps they were US gallons, slightly smaller than UK’s Imperial gallons, so not so much wear & tear! 🙂
Now, I read somewhere that H2O + CO2 = basic sugars = life on Earth, etc, etc! Now this life started off as microbes in shallow seas or Primordial Soup back in the…………………………………………………………………………….., many millions of years later, eventually, this mamalian Ape dropped down from the trees in which it resided, in Central Africa, & for whatever reason, stood upright, (possibly because Al gore told him to, he likes telling people how to run their lives it seems, even back then when he invented the interweb thingy!), anyway this Ape evetually developed hand skills & learned to use tools he (or she) made from the elements around him (or her), helping to improve his lot in life, turning ever so slowly into a Homonid then into a Human Being then into Modern Man, culminating in the great (& not so great) civilizations of recent history & up to today’s healthier, better, safer (relatively) modern lifestyles! Wow, what a wonderful story of achievement, triumph over adversity! Now why do they want to change all that? There are probably 21 reasons on the Agenda why that is I expect. I do love a good interglacial. Now, to “complete” my research studies into this, I will need a grant of several millions, (salary, pension, exotic holidays, whoops I mean field studies, business class flights to catch with free champagne & Goats’ cheese salads & all that, staff to pay, salaries to pay, pensions to pay, etc)! Sarc off! 🙂
Ah, but yes, it is asserted to be very evil that the rivers and streams breath CO2 into the atmosphere, it be better if it came from the soil doing the breathing right away. One can also assert that more rain and more snow is truly bad…way to go Texas for drought-ing up to save the planet from all that evil wet CO2.
US rivers and streams saturated with carbon.
How odd. I’ve scraped enough carbon off Caterpillar piston jugs to know that carbon isn’t water soluble.
Interesting.
Rivers and streams. Hmmmm … what about lakes and ponds?
Might be relevant if the U.S. was involved in some international carbon trading scheme. Just think of all the fun that could be had with resolving the carbon levels in the Great Lakes and apportioning shares with Canada or the Rio Grande and Mexico. Staffing levels at the EPA would soar.
Or the impact on carbon markets in the event of major flooding. Or a drought.
Oh well … let us now turn out attention to matters of much more serious import, such as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I did sediment oxygen demand (SOD) studis in the 80’s. There is a background SOD for a typical reach of a water body. Human activities do increase thisw SOD. The main reason of course is that man is just as natural as a polar bear, and the increased numbers of a species has an effect. Most of the impact in the 1980’s was not from increased CO2 from burning fossil fuels but from the rich organic loading from our farms and waste systems. In fact, because CO2 is well mixed, the amount should be easily estimated by rainfall analysis. The real issue is the implication that the earth’s biomass is adjusting to CO2. Hardly a unique conclusion since life on earth is carbon based.
I guess what this study wants to tell us is that if we just manage to dry out 3/4 of all rivers we can offset all the carbon dioxide emitted by humanity. Based on the precautionary principle I guess that’s the way to go then.