Global warming linked to mass extinctions 07 February 05

perchance a bunch of volcanoes decided to erupt within the next 300 years – say 1/3 as spewing as the Permian volcanoes. Not much we can do about that.

So, let’s do the things we can do – reduced our own GHGs.

An interesting post from yesterday’s realclimate.org.

Misguided clearance of Borneo’s enormous swampland for agriculture has resulted in immense smouldering areas of peat up to 12m deep See link to New Scientist article about this and the huge contribution to atmospheric CO2.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6613

This is a fixable problem that could provide a useful exercise for international cooperation.

Colin Keyse

Thanks for posting this article. Please keep doing this! I like the distraction from debating if the science is on track or focusing on hopelessness.

It seems more beneficial if the land could be harvested instead of burning it. After the fire is put out, then a better plan could be developed so that more of these important sinks remain undisturbed.

At least we know that this event may be the cause of the marked increase in CO2 instead of other more important sinks becoming ineffective like the oceans. This is reassuring.

And also, it seems that an international ban against the use of burning as a means to clear forests, peat bogs would be prudent. This ban could include the phasing out of the practice of flaring natural gas from oil wells and even the flaring of methane from landfills.

My point is that if you have to clear land, then the cleared vegetation could be used to make paper or other wood products. Even though flaring is important to reduce methane emissions, it would be better to capture it and use it as a fuel offsetting the carbon release from fossil fuels.

One mistake that seems to be made is focusing only on the energy consumer. I believe that the energy end user should increase in efficiency and conserve more. But, we have so many other aspects to this problem.

It seems that the destruction of carbon sinks and, worse yet, to burn these sinks is much worse than any blame we can hurl at the fossil fuel industries. This is an easy point to make because at least the fossil fuel was put to good use (except for flaring of useful methane which is equivalent to the combined natural gas consumption of Germany and France. Nigeria is the worst offender).

Bottom Line: Let us eliminate the wasteful burning of natural resources. Let us place an international ban on burning sinks and flaring recoverable fuel. Let us create an economic incentive for companies to harvest instead of burn natural resources. Let these become international laws. Let these land use laws encourage cooperation rather than polarization. This would be in line with diversifying our resource base and creating more opportunity as well.

I think this would be the “prudent” thing to do.