That is inferior to true conservation, but preferable over all other ‘forest options’.
Flatulent dinosaurs may have been a larger methane source than current human activities
The long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs known as sauropods that lived about 150 million years ago appear to have been rather flatulent. New calculations put the combined methane production of the hulking beasts at 520 million tonnes (Tg). As a comparison the total global methane emissions in 2010 were 593 Tg of which only 395 Tg was anthropogenic.
Grand Solar Minima do bring cooling to Europe Holocene record shows
But now it’s not dry and icy five-month winters, but wet and windy springs instead. Or would you say these combine?
Biodiversity increases biomass
In theory less biodiversity would not necessarily imply less biomass. But in reality – in case you were to try and replace all animals with pandas – somewhere along the line you may risk to overlook some important symbiotic connections. And what goes for animals and pandas goes for plants and bamboo, new research shows.
Stopping economic growth for the sake of the climate
A United States and Spanish research team has conducted a study into the most likely causes of climate change and came to a rather surprising conclusion. The most feasible manner of stopping climate change is halting economic growth. Or changing the economy drastically.
Annual growth of the world economic output (green line, trillions of 2000 US dollars) and annual change of estimated CO2 emissions (red line, millions of Kt) (Credit: University of Michigan).
Graph of the day: probability of upper-range warming
As for weather extremes, for the climate average too a smaller-chance-higher-risk range exists, as indicated by the light-blue climate model members to the right.
Increasing forest biodiversity could inhibit pine beetle plague
New source of methane discovered: the Arctic Ocean
Cracks in the Arctic ice through which methane emissions were measured (Image credit: NASA/JPL)
It has been know for some time that large quantitites of methane lie hidden in reservoirs under the permafrost layers on the tundra and in clathrates on the continental shelve. It is neither a secret that those large quantities of gas might be released due to the warming of our planet, which will result in positive climate feedback making it even warmer.
But now NASA researchers have found a new methane source that might have global consequences: the Arctic ocean.