Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

So 10 to 30% of one year's methane are produced by plants - which was formerly though to be impossible.

This means now exactly what re climate change?

It doesn't happen? It isn't our fault?

Walter writes

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So 10 to 30% of one year's methane are produced by plants - which was formerly though to be impossible.

This means now exactly what re climate change?

I don't know. But don't you think it should be at least considered in the debate?

Nature 439, 187-191 (12 January 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature04420

Received 14 July 2005; Accepted 3 November 2005

Methane is an important greenhouse gas and its atmospheric concentration has almost tripled since pre-industrial times1, 2. It plays a central role in atmospheric oxidation chemistry and affects stratospheric ozone and water vapour levels. Most of the methane from natural sources in Earth's atmosphere is thought to originate from biological processes in anoxic environments2. Here we demonstrate using stable carbon isotopes that methane is readily formed in situ in terrestrial plants under oxic conditions by a hitherto unrecognized process. Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed during incubation experiments in the laboratory and in the field. If our measurements are typical for short-lived biomass and scaled on a global basis, we estimate a methane source strength of 62-236 Tg yr-1 for living plants and 1-7 Tg yr-1 for plant litter (1 Tg = 1012 g). We suggest that this newly identified source may have important implications for the global methane budget and may call for a reconsideration of the role of natural methane sources in past climate change.

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It doesn't happen? It isn't our fault?

I think only the most irrational anti-human radical would think that it is humankind's fault that plants emit methane.

I don't think, Oklahoma is reprentative for the whole earth.

Nor is Colorado.

Plague of beetles raises climate change fears for American beauty[/b[/quote]

This is becoming laughable. Every problem is now due to climate change, right, Walter? Pine beetles have been a problem in Colorado for a long time. I've seen those areas, dating back to at least 20 years ago. This is not new news. I believe a large part of the problem is the fire suppression policy and reduced timber cutting by the Forest Service, which has gendered unhealthy crowded forests, which becomes a prime target for disease and fire.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States must act to cap its emissions of greenhouse gases and join the fight against climate change or risk losing global leadership, a former CIA director said in a report released on Monday.

"The United States must adopt a carbon emission control policy," John Deutch, head of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1995-96, said in a report to the Trilateral Commission, a grouping of business and opinion leaders from Europe, the United States and Asia.

"If the United States or any other OECD country that is a large producer of greenhouse gas emissions is to retain a leadership role in other areas, it cannot just opt out of the global climate change policy process," he wrote.

Deutch, an energy specialist who is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also proposed an expanded use of nuclear power, international cooperation to develop clean coal technology and a sharing of the costs of emissions control between rich countries and large emerging nations.
MORE HERE

This is becoming laughable. Every problem is now due to climate change, right, Walter? Pine beetles have been a problem in Colorado for a long time. I've seen those areas, dating back to at least 20 years ago. This is not new news. I believe a large part of the problem is the fire suppression policy and reduced timber cutting by the Forest Service, which has gendered unhealthy crowded forests, which becomes a prime target for disease and fire.

As an aside, which is more alarming? An energy specialist who now prescribes international policy on climate control being the head of the CIA? Or somebody qualified to be head of the CIA now presuming to dictate climate policy as an energy specialist with MIT ?

okie wrote:

This is becoming laughable. Every problem is now due to climate change, right, Walter? Pine beetles have been a problem in Colorado for a long time. I've seen those areas, dating back to at least 20 years ago. This is not new news. I believe a large part of the problem is the fire suppression policy and reduced timber cutting by the Forest Service, which has gendered unhealthy crowded forests, which becomes a prime target for disease and fire.

Well, I don't like it either if everything is related to climate change.

But re those pine beetles - you must have better data than the official state and federal offices.

But unlike previous infestations, which experts view as part of the forest's system of self-management, this time a combination of factors has conspired to propel the beetle population to epidemic proportions. Almost the entire stock of lodgepole pines in Colorado is mature, a result of the settlement and logging of much of the area 100 years ago. Consequently, the beetles have an abundant source of food. A long-term drought has put the trees under stress and deprived them of one of their defences against the bugs, the ability to exude sap and expel the insects.
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"The current outbreak is so far along that there's nothing much that can be done," says Bill Romme, professor of fire ecology at Colorado state university and lead author of a report into the infestation published in November. "If we get a period of bitter cold temperatures, that could cause the outbreak to collapse. But we're not getting the temperatures. Usually an insect outbreak will go on for one to three decades. We're about a decade into this one but at the rate they're moving they could run out of food before then."

Romme is reluctant to attribute the outbreak to global warming. "We can't say that the current outbreak is the product of global warming," he says, "but we can say that this is a harbinger of what could be produced by global warming." The devastation has caused much soul-searching among those who manage the forest, as well as those who have pursued a dream of moving to the pine-covered slopes of Colorado.

"It's not so much an ecological challenge as a social and economic challenge," says Don Carroll, acting supervisor of the White River forest, who heads the Colorado Bark Beetle Cooperative. "If it wasn't for all the people that lived here it wouldn't be much of an issue." He reels off a list of the safety issues raised by the death of the pines, from the fire hazards caused by dead trees to the possibility of timber falling on homes or power lines and the threat posed to the water table.

He is also concerned about extracting the fallen timber from the forest, from trees that have died and fallen and from those that have been logged to prevent them falling.

"We don't have the industry to handle this stuff," he says. "We're not going to get 2x4s out of these trees in the future, so we're looking at new technologies to utilise biomass fuels."

But the forest service has met opposition from those who are against the large-scale felling of trees and it has been difficult to persuade communities - some of them among the US's richest - of the need for mass logging. Vail has committed $1.5m (£770,000) to logging trees in the hope that it will be able to retain some of its green mountainside.
... ...

In 1983 you didn't have a bunch of people trying to stir up a panic over global warming. The science may be a bit less distorted back then.

Well, I don't like it either if everything is related to climate change.

"The current outbreak is so far along that there's nothing much that can be done," says Bill Romme, professor of fire ecology at Colorado state university and lead author of a report into the infestation published in November. "If we get a period of bitter cold temperatures, that could cause the outbreak to collapse. But we're not getting the temperatures. Usually an insect outbreak will go on for one to three decades. We're about a decade into this one but at the rate they're moving they could run out of food before then."

Romme is reluctant to attribute the outbreak to global warming. "We can't say that the current outbreak is the product of global warming," he says, "but we can say that this is a harbinger of what could be produced by global warming." The devastation has caused much soul-searching among those who manage the forest, as well as those who have pursued a dream of moving to the pine-covered slopes of Colorado.

Walter, U.S. forests are generally not as well managed as those in Germany. They tend to be densely packed with young trees and covered with considerable ground cover growth. These are the results of inadequate management and a blanket prohibitin on logging - even to thin out the growth in many arreas. A result is that they are much more prone to fires and some forms of insect and parasite infestation. Our annual losses to both are very large, but various environkental groupd fiercely resist any effort to construct access roads or thin the growth to create more natural and stable conditions.

Fire Ecology and Economics

Fire, along with CLIMATE and SOIL, is one of the three primary natural factors that have shaped the present Canadian forest. Much of this forest is, in its natural state, ecologically dependent on recycling by random periodic fire for its long-term stable existence on the landscape. Exceptions to this pattern include the southeastern hardwood forest, forests in the wetter areas of the east and west coasts, and forested bogs and swamps in general. In the boreal forest, for example, the main tree species are black SPRUCE, jack PINE, lodgepole pine, trembling ASPEN, and white BIRCH, all of which are adapted to regenerate even after all individuals over a large area have been killed by fire. Aspen suckers directly from its root systems, while other hardwoods sprout from the base of dead trees. Jack and lodgepole pines and black spruce store live seed in their crowns for years, only shedding them after the cones are opened by heat from a fire.
Other prominent species, such as red and white pine, white spruce and DOUGLAS FIR, require ground that has been prepared and opened up by fire for optimum regeneration, but some individuals must survive to supply seed. In pre-European times ignition was mainly by lightning, and, without control, perhaps two to three times as much area burned annually as at present. Ecologically, then, fire is neither good nor bad, but simply an environmental necessity for the perpetuation of the forest in its natural state.

Economically, fire competes with the forest industry for the annual tree growth on which the industry is based. Some high-value fire-killed timber is recovered, but salvage is impractical on the large scale. Of the 2.5 million ha burned annually on the average, about 30% is classed as stocked, productive forest. However, no commonly accepted way of evaluating this economic loss directly has yet been devised. A better approach has been to analyse the indirect effect of forest fire on the annual timber supply from the whole forest; the fire-killed timber itself then turns out to be a red herring. Based on several such analyses, it is probable that, across the boreal forest, the current level of fire incidence depresses the potential ideal annual timber supply by about 15%. This effect would be somewhat less in our more southerly forests.

As fire-control efforts are increased, it costs more and more to reduce the annual burned area by any given amount. Theoretically, the ideal position would be the point at which the cost of further reduction in burned area just equalled the value of the corresponding increase in timber supply (see FOREST ECONOMICS). Other forest uses are also taken into consideration, and the safety of forest towns is a primary concern.

The ecological realities of fire create a dilemma in large natural parks and other unmanaged areas, because certain kinds of forests cannot be maintained in perpetuity in the absence of fire. The administrators of Canada's national PARKS are well aware of this problem, and are developing operational combinations of fire control and prescribed fire to cope with it. The interaction of ecological and economic factors complicates forest-fire management in general, and debate is continuous about the optimum level of fire-control effort. The Canadian Forestry Association along with the provincial forestry departments carry out fire-prevention programs aimed at educating people about their responsibilities toward the forest. Whatever the complexity of the forest fire picture, the rule "do not start forest fires" remains as valid as ever for the individual citizen.

So here again wikipedia is wrong as well as other websites.

Thanks for those infos, Foxfyre.