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Forum Description: (General discussion regarding the next pandemic)
URL: http://www.avianflutalk.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=43963 Printed Date: April 28 2024 at 7:49am
Topic: Carbon dioxide, reaches 4million year high.....Posted By: carbon20
Subject: Carbon dioxide, reaches 4million year high.....
Date Posted: June 08 2021 at 1:35am
NPR: Carbon Dioxide, Which Drives Climate Change, Reaches Highest Level In 4 Million Years.
At the Paris Agreement in 2015, politicians pledged to limit the global temperature rise from pre-industrial levels to 1.5°C and promised to stop rises in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and to make rapid reductions in accordance with best available science, to achieve a balance between people's emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.
Yet, greenhouse gas levels keep rising and the rise appears to be accelerating.
DJ-Politicians are not serious in dealing with climate change...When you translate that insanity into how they deal with this pandemic we only can expect a resistent Covid-variant within a year-able to reinfect people/hosts over and over again...Maybe pushing for several vaccinations per year ?
------------- We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. ~Albert Einstein
Posted By: Technophobe
Date Posted: July 28 2021 at 4:51am
[A Tipping point perhaps.]
Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs
Cutting emissions more urgent than ever, say scientists, with forest producing more than a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year
The study found fires produced about 1.5bn tonnes of CO2 a year, with forest growth removing 0.5bn tonnes. The 1bn tonnes left in the atmosphere is equivalent to the annual emissions of Japan. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
The emissions amount to a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to a study. The giant forest had previously been a carbon sink, absorbing the emissions driving the climate crisis, but is now causing its acceleration, researchers said.
Growing trees and plants have taken up about a quarter of all fossil fuel emissions since 1960, with the Amazon playing a major role as the largest tropical forest. Losing the Amazon’s power to capture CO2 is a stark warning that slashing emissions from fossil fuels is more urgent than ever, scientists said.
The research used small planes to measure CO2 levels up to 4,500m above the forest over the last decade, showing how the whole Amazon is changing. Previous studies indicating the Amazon was becoming a source of CO2 were based on satellite data, which can be hampered by cloud cover, or ground measurements of trees, which can cover only a tiny part of the vast region.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/31/destruction-of-worlds-forests-increased-sharply-in-2020-loss-tree-cover-tropical">Destruction of world's forests increased sharply in 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/31/destruction-of-worlds-forests-increased-sharply-in-2020-loss-tree-cover-tropical - Read more
The scientists said the discovery that part of the Amazon was emitting carbon even without fires was particularly worrying. They said it was most likely the result of each year’s deforestation and fires making adjacent forests more susceptible the next year. The trees produce much of the region’s rain, so fewer trees means more severe droughts and heatwaves and more tree deaths and fires.
Luciana Gatti, at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil and who led the research, said: “The first very bad news is that forest burning produces around three times more CO2 than the forest absorbs. The second bad news is that the places where deforestation is 30% or more show carbon emissions 10 times higher than where deforestation is lower than 20%.”
Fewer trees meant less rain and higher temperatures, making the dry season even worse for the remaining forest, she said: “We have a very negative loop that makes the forest more susceptible to uncontrolled fires.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/25/food-brands-challenge-deforestation-rules-in-uk-environment-bill">Food brands challenge deforestation rules in UK environment bill
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/25/food-brands-challenge-deforestation-rules-in-uk-environment-bill - Read more
“This is a truly impressive study,” said Prof Simon Lewis, from University College London. “Flying every two weeks and keeping consistent laboratory measurements for nine years is an amazing feat.”
“The positive feedback, where deforestation and climate change drive a release of carbon from the remaining forest that reinforces additional warming and more carbon loss is what scientists have feared would happen,” he said. “Now we have good evidence this is happening. The south-east Amazon sink-to-source story is yet another stark warning that climate impacts are accelerating.”
Prof Scott Denning, at Colorado State University, said the aerial research campaign was heroic. “In the south-east, the forest is no longer growing faster than it’s dying. This is bad – having the most productive carbon absorber on the planet switch from a sink to a source means we have to eliminate fossil fuels faster than we thought.”
“Imagine if we could prohibit fires in the Amazon – it could be a carbon sink,” said Gatti. “But we are doing the opposite – we are accelerating climate change.”
“The worst part is we don’t use science to make decisions,” she said. “People think that converting more land to agriculture will mean more productivity, but in fact we lose productivity because of the negative impact on rain.”
------------- How do you tell if a politician is lying? His lips or pen are moving.
Posted By: carbon20
Date Posted: July 28 2021 at 6:48am
What's the cure..........??.
Get rid of the cause.......
Oh dear.......
That's the human race.......
Mmm mmm..........LMAO......sorry can't help it.....
Take care all......
------------- Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.🖖
Marcus Aurelius
Posted By: KiminNM
Date Posted: July 28 2021 at 7:52am
My guess is we'll be hit with an earth-changing CME and/or experience a magnetic reversal that will make this the least of our worries.
(Apparently I'm quite fatalistic today, might be best if I stop commenting! lol)
Posted By: Technophobe
Date Posted: July 28 2021 at 8:14am
Nah, Kimmi, you just fit the mood to the day.....
Critical measures of global heating reaching tipping point, study finds
Carbon emissions, ocean acidification, Amazon clearing all hurtling toward new records
Vast areas of the Amazon rainforest are being burned and cleared for grazing cattle — a double blow to global warming, as cattle produce methane and cleared forests release carbon into the atmosphere. Photograph: Florian Kopp/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock
A new study tracking the planet’s vital signs has found that many of the key indicators of the global climate crisis are getting worse and either approaching, or exceeding, key tipping points as the earth heats up.
Overall, the study found some 16 out of 31 tracked planetary vital signs, including greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat content and ice mass, set worrying new records.
“There is growing evidence we are getting close to or have already gone beyond tipping points associated with important parts of the Earth system,” said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who co-authored the new research, in a statement.
“The updated planetary vital signs we present largely reflect the consequences of unrelenting business as usual,” said Ripple, adding that “a major lesson from Covid-19 is that even colossally decreased transportation and consumption are not nearly enough and that, instead, transformational system changes are required.”
While the pandemic shut down economies and shifted the way people think about work, school and travel, it did little to reduce the overall global carbon emissions. Fossil fuel use dipped slightly in 2020, but the authors of a report published in the journal BioScience say that carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide “have all set new year-to-date records for atmospheric concentrations in both 2020 and 2021”.
In April 2021, carbon dioxide concentration reached 416 parts per million, the highest monthly global average concentration ever recorded. The five hottest years on record have all occurred since 2015, and 2020 was the second hottest year in history.
The study also found that ruminant livestock, a significant source of planet-warming gases, now number more than 4 billion, and their total mass is more than that of all humans and wild animals combined. The rate of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon increased in both 2019 and 2020, reaching a 12-year high of 1.11 million hectares deforested in 2020.
Ocean acidification is near an all-time record, and when combined with warmer ocean temperatures, it threatens the coral reefs that more than half a billion people depend on for food, tourism dollars and storm surge protection.
However, there were a few bright spots in the study, including fossil fuel subsidies reaching a record low and fossil fuel divestment reaching a record high.
In order to change the course of the climate emergency, the authors write that profound alterations need to happen. They say the world needs to develop a global price for carbon that is linked to a socially just fund to finance climate mitigation and adaptation policies in the developing world.
The authors also highlight the need for a phase-out and eventual ban of fossil fuels, and the development of global strategic climate reserves to protect and restore natural carbon sinks and biodiversity. Climate education should also be part of school curricula around the globe, they say.
“Policies to alleviate the climate crisis or any of the other threatened planetary boundary transgressions should not be focused on symptom relief but on addressing their root cause: the overexploitation of the Earth,” the report says. Only by taking on this core issue, the authors write, will people be able to “ensure the long-term sustainability of human civilization and give future generations the opportunity to thrive”.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/27/global-heating-critical-measures-tipping-point-study?utm_term=f41d69896199827fcb9b301b49624d2c&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email" rel="noopener noreferrer - The Guardian again
------------- How do you tell if a politician is lying? His lips or pen are moving.
Posted By: KiminNM
Date Posted: July 28 2021 at 8:25am
I could add information about our geomagnetic field weakening exponentially... but let's not and pretend I did. <facepalm>
Posted By: carbon20
Date Posted: July 28 2021 at 2:09pm
Researchers say high temperatures in the Arctic are melting Greenland's ice sheets so rapidly that the ice melt from Tuesday of this week alone would be enough to cover the entire state of Florida in two inches of water.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/us/greenland-ice-melting-climate-change/index.html?utm_source=twCNN&utm_term=link&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2021-07-30T00%3A47%3A55 - According to CNN , which first reported on the extreme melting, it's the third instance of such a melting pattern in the last decade. On Tuesday, Greenland lost more than 8.5 billion tons of surface mass from ice melt.
In total Greenland has lost 18.4 billion tons of surface mass from ice melt since this past Sunday.
Destruction of world's forests increased sharply in 2020 
Food brands challenge deforestation rules in UK environment bill 