8 aug. 2012

Carbon dioxide sink works well

Natural sinks, including land ecosystems and the oceans,
 remove about half of the carbon emitted by human
activities back out of the atmosphere.
More than we ever thought. Credit: NOAA illustration.
Planet Earth’s oceans, forests, and other assorted ecosystems according to Nature 488 (8/ 2012) are continuing to soak up approximately half the carbon dioxide we humans pump into the atmosphere every day, even as those emissions continue to increase, once again belying the very little knowledge we currently have of our planet.
Although approximately one-half of total CO2 emissions is at present taken up by combined land and ocean carbon reservoirs, nut now models by IPCC predict, a decline in future carbon uptake by these reservoirs, resulting in a positive carbon–climate feedback.
They talk about `the flip side´ if the Earth wasn't taking up all that CO2, we would be experiencing much more warming over the last 50 years than we have observed.

a, The annual atmospheric CO2 growth rate (dC/dt).
b, Fluxes of C to the atmosphere from fossil fuel
emissions are plotted in red and those from land-use
 changes are plotted in brown.
c, Annual global net C uptake. Credit: NOAA illustration.
Globally, these carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ have roughly kept pace with emissions from human activities, continuing to draw about half of the emitted CO2 back out of the atmosphere.
Since we don’t know why or where this process is happening, says some, we cannot count on it, but we can believe taxes?

Recent studies have suggested that natural sinks of carbon dioxide may be having trouble keeping up with the sheer level of carbon dioxide humans are pumping into the atmosphere. If that was in fact the case, we would expect to see a faster-than-normal rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide as the same levels of CO2 find no place to go.
If  CO2 find no place to go, If.
Science gave us the pesticides that made environmentalism necessary in the first place.

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