From the Carnegie Institution , what looks to be a throwback to the old days of central planning has been introduced, except it is twice as good as that, ten years instead of five. The only difference between the ten year carbon and science plan and what you see in the image below, is that none of the industrial elements you see will be included.
Scientists tackle the carbon conundrum
Palo Alto, CA—U.S. scientists have developed a new, integrated, ten-year science plan to better understand the details of Earth’s carbon cycle and people’s role in it. Understanding the carbon cycle is central for mitigating climate change and developing a sustainable future. The plan builds on the first such plan, published in 1999, but identifies new research areas such as the role of humans as agents and managers of carbon cycling and climate change, the direct impact of greenhouse gases on ecosystems including changes to the diversity of plants and animals and ocean acidification, the need to address social concerns, and how best to communicate scientific results to the public and decision makers.
The first carbon science plan for the U.S., published in 1999, resulted in numerous breakthroughs for understanding the carbon cycle and how it is changing in response to human pressures. For instance, researchers discovered that the huge quantities of CO2 absorbed by the oceans are causing ocean acidification, which is harming sea life and affecting the food chain. Research also characterized the large uptake of carbon by plants and soils in the Northern Hemisphere, and found that understanding land use and disturbance patterns is integral to understanding the global carbon cycle.
The new plan is the culmination of a three-year effort with input from hundreds of scientists about the current needs of the research community. Carnegie Institution for Science’s Anna Michalak, Duke University’s Rob Jackson, Appalachian State University’s Gregg Marland, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Christopher Sabine led the work on the 2011 A U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Plan.*
“Although there has been a bonanza of new understanding about the carbon cycle over the last decade, many new questions have arisen,” remarked Michalak of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology. “A U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Plan lays the groundwork for expanding beyond a primary focus on the ‘natural’ carbon flows between the atmosphere, oceans, and plant life, to fully integrate human impacts and the role of both intentional and inadvertent carbon management decisions.”
The team developed four science elements to drive the research. The backbone of the research strategy is to strengthen the network of observations to better monitor and track carbon as it winds its way through the atmosphere, ecosystems, oceans and society, and to find out how this changes over time. Other elements include studies of the processes that control the flows and transformations of carbon, and developing numerical models to predict future behavior.
Another important aspect of the plan is its increased emphasis on communication and making research more accessible to policy makers and the general public. It is hoped that this will lead to rational and well-informed decisions on how best to manage the global carbon cycle, especially the human impacts on it.
In an era of tight budgets and with public questions about the value of science, this plan calls for an expanded role for careful, integrated, and clear science to inform and support human objectives for a sustainable environment.
*The report is published by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research supported by NASA, DOE, USDA, USGS, NOAA, NSF, and NIST. The authors are Anna Michalak, Robert B. Jackson, Gregg Marland, Christopher L. Sabine, and the Carbon Cycle Science Working Group.
The Department of Global Ecology was established in 2002 to help build the scientific foundations for a sustainable future. The department is located on the campus of Stanford University, but is an independent research organization funded by the Carnegie Institution. Its scientists conduct basic research on a wide range of large-scale environmental issues, including climate change, ocean acidification, biological invasions, and changes in biodiversity.
The Carnegie Institution for Science (carnegieScience.edu) has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902. It is a private, nonprofit organization with six research departments throughout the U.S. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I have not seen any quality studies where factual data have been used to demonstrate harm to marine life from “acidification” at current atmospheric CO2 levels.
This is easy to test in a laboratory. The only studies I have seen, use CO2 acidification levels well above current levels to find an effect on marine life.
I think we can safely assume that experiments using current levels of CO2 acidification have no measurable effect.
Нефтяники больше нефти Родине
At least the Bolsheviks understood that oil creates jobs and makes the motherland grow.
I salute your noble endeavours, having much expertise in the field myself, but I fear you may struggle to get funding in the face of competition from tens of millions of students majoring in the same…
Anyone seriously worried about “ocean acidification” should be immediately fire from any educational or governmental organization for being a bloody idiot.
For the vast majority of time life on this planet thrived under CO2 concentrations that were much higher than they currently are. If ocean acidification didn’t destroy all life back under levels 10-20 times the present then it certainly isn’t going to be causing much, if any, harm under the slight increases we are currently seeing.
5 year plan, 10 year plan, 50 year plan, 100 year plan, what some people won’t come up with to make a living.
Vaclav Klaus is familiar with plans proposed by those who wish to have control:
Philip Bradley says:
November 16, 2011 at 4:41 pm
This is easy to test in a laboratory.
=====================================
Philip, it’s almost impossible to test in a laboratory…
….first you would need a limitless pool of calcium carbonate
If you start with that….there’s nothing else to test
The way they “test” this in a laboratory, is add acid until they deplete the buffer..
…that’s the only way they can do it
If they continued to add buffer……nothing would happen
What an absolutly wonderfull example of modern Marxist rhetoric!
Philip Bradley says:
November 16, 2011 at 2:46 pm
For instance, researchers discovered that the huge quantities of CO2 absorbed by the oceans are causing ocean acidification, which is harming sea life and affecting the food chain.
I don’t recall any studies that showed actual harm from acidification to date.
______________________________________
That is because the oceans are very well buffered and ocean acidification is just another “Lets scare the beJeez out of people” piece of propaganda.
Ocean buffering: http://www.co2web.info/esef4.htm
Lots more info and PDFs at http://www.co2web.info/
With a comment like “For instance, researchers discovered that the huge quantities of CO2 absorbed by the oceans are causing ocean acidification, which is harming sea life and affecting the food chain”, it obviously cannot be scientific. The oceans are not acidic but rather thay are alkaline. At most, the CO2 being absorbed by the oceans is neutralising the oceans.
Most of the CO2 being absorbed by the ocean is natural in origin and the CO2 absorbed levels were probably higher in the LIA and during the ice age and yet ocean life survived. What evidence is there that CO2 absorption causes any long term problems or is in any way harming the sea life and affecting the food chain? One suspects that if harm is on going it is due to over fishing and/or other pollutants
R. Shearer says:
November 16, 2011 at 3:57 pm
As a chemist, it bugs me that a lessening of pH from 8.2 to about 8.0 could be called acidification…..
________________________________
Agreed. Perhaps we should use a different word like neutralization? And start correcting acidification every time we see it. (what say you Anthony?)
Some how Neutral just doesn’t have quite the “Scare factor” as Acid does.
10-year plan? I need a barf bag!
I can’t imagine they wouldn’t start by taking a look at the overall pH of the ocean and see how lifeforms vary through out the ocean. Heck, we even have a graph w/i WUWT which shows the pH worldwide and I’d have to say from a layman’s view, there is life throughout the ocean with diversity level.
Why does this remind me of the Great Leap Forward…?
The best way I can think of to “manage” carbon is for all those who believe CO2 is causing climate change/global warming to stop breathing. That way we kill (pun intended) two birds with one stone – human CO2 output is reduced and we won’t have to listen to those idiots anymore.
The increasing contempt for rent seeking and grant farming of tax payers by the alarmist, catastrophe promoting cabal of opportunistic climate warming scientists and their administrators and their various ethics free hanger ons is becoming very obvious on the skeptic blogs as can be seen in the comments above.
Maybe the the skeptic commenters are the most outspoken on this at the moment but they quite likely reflect a growing contempt in the public domain for the constant barrage of predicted “catastrophic unless we get more money” predictions from [ climate warming ] scientists.
The end result is a now increasing attitude amongst the public of an increasing sense of doubt and cynicism about science in general.
The increasing contempt for the grasping, greedy, arrogant and contemptuous of the inferior intelligence and understanding of the public climate warming scientists, the same public that has given those scientists and science of all disciplines the enormous latitude to pursue what lines of research they wish without ever being beholden or accountable to that public for the public funds they spend, is now starting to wear off to a stage when all science is starting to come under heavy scrutiny and considerable doubt as to it’s need or use or contribution to our society and questions on just what science is still worth financing for it’s potential contribution to our future society.
This particularly so as the public sees the global financial situation deteriorating further day to day and the increasing realisation that savage cuts will have to be made by governments to anything and anything that is not of immediate use to the public’s needs.
The public increasingly are reaching a stage where they will no longer accept situations where there is a lack of any useable results or a complete lack of accountability by scientists, both individually and collectively and by their institutions.
Or unlike public accountability in any other sector in our economy, why so much of the so called research never amounts to anything worthwhile in either science advances or in useable technologies for the public who have granted so much freedom and money without strings to those same non productive scientists to follow their choice of science research.
The glory days of science and the respect that science and scientists have had for some 200 years is drawing to a close as we, the tax paying public are exposed through the medium of the internet, to ever more corruption and rent seeking and grant farming from third and fourth rate science and scientists.
For some 200 years science and scientists have been placed on a high public pedestal that has far exceeded all other professions in the respect and latitude that the public has accorded science.
Through their own despicable actions, climate warming scientists as a group are destroying the very public’s support that has respected, sustained and generously supported all science for the many tens of decades past.
And recognition of this trend by scientists of every ilk and the demand for a drastic cleaning of science’s Augean Stables is just simply non existent in science of any sort.
You know, if Carnegie wants to pay for these dip-weeds, that’s fine. But we taxpayers are also paying for this drivel – that’s what irks me.
“In an era of tight budgets and with public questions about the value of science …”
Gee, I wonder why that’s happening … too bad it’s mostly the bad economy and some but not enough public realization that they’re being had by a bunch of flim-flam artists.
Why do they need to do any more research? There conclusions have already been predetermined….”huge quantities of CO2 absorbed by the oceans are causing ocean acidification, which is harming sea life and affecting the food chain” and “calls for an expanded role for careful, integrated, and clear science to inform and support human objectives for a sustainable environment” and “will lead to rational and well-informed decisions on how best to manage the global carbon cycle, especially the human impacts on it.”
They have obviously already concluded that human generated CO2 is bad; that humans are not currently living a sustainable lifestyle – ie cheap and reliable energy is bad; and that “the standard progressive fixes to all of these supposed problems” need to use the cloak of “science” to justify their implementation (or “well informed decisions as they call it).
Oh, man, that poster brings back memories! Reminds me of the other slogan I used to see all the time: “Proletariats of all countries, unite!”
There is another “scary” article link further down the page of the Carnegie document.
http://carnegiescience.edu/news/testing_geoengineering
“While it is clearly premature to consider testing solar radiation management at a scale large enough to measure the climate response, — ”
“Solar radiation management” sort of stares you in the eye.
Must require a lot of funding.
Philip, it’s almost impossible to test in a laboratory…
I was referring to the whatever the generally accepted PH change is, which wikipedia tells me is -0.11 in the industrial era. Setting up 2 tanks with a PH difference of -.11 and seeing the effect on some marine animal is something that an undergrad could do.
Whether this value is correct or not, I haven’t looked into.
Latitude said:
November 16, 2011 at 4:35 pm
hotrod (Larry L) said:
November 16, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Yep big problem, the ocean has gone from as alkaline as baking soda to almost as alkaline as baking soda
==================================================
LOL………….As the pH drops, it dissolves more calcium carbonate……..which buffers it
———————————————————————————
Acid + calcium carbonate = salt and H2O and – OH NOES! CO2!!!
WE’RE DOOMED!!!!!
Stephen Brown says:
November 16, 2011 at 3:09 pm
I’m engaged in a study of the effects, break-down and eventual dispersal of compounds containing carboniferous compounds as CH3Ch2OH.
I have discovered so far that the effects of this heavily-laden carbon bearing substance are multifarious; sometimes deleterious, often humorous and sometimes injurious but always micturation provoking.
More money is needed to continue as taxes have increased the price of the raw materials required.
Stephen – good thinking. While you’re doing that, I’m going to be looking for similar funding for my research into C21H30O2. I’ve got more carbon to look at so my project may take longer.
U.S. scientists have developed a new, integrated, ten-year science plan to better understand the details of Earth’s carbon cycle and people’s role in it.
Which scientists? Who are they? How many of them are there? Why do they think that us free peoples of the world want to have our lives controlled based on their dogma? Send these bastards to North Korea where they belong!
“The Department of Global Ecology was established in 2002 to help build the scientific foundations for a sustainable future. ”
This is what it’s all about. More “State” Control back up by “Science”.