On March 31, 2005, I posted a reference to the fact that forests are actually increasing in the good ol' USA (see "FORESTS" under categories on the right-hand side of this page). Now, from studies around the world, comes word that at least some forests' increases may be attributed to -- guess what-- increased CO2!
In an article on CO2Science [subscription required-$12.95/year] bearing today's date and entitled "Continued Accelerated Growth of Amazonian Forests", the authors summarize various studies:
For most of the past century it was believed that old-growth forests, such as those of Amazonia, should be close to dynamic equilibrium. Just the opposite, however, has been repeatedly observed over the past two decades.
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...the growth rates of these already highly productive forests [forty tropical forests from all around the world]had been rising ever higher since at least 1960, and that they had experienced an apparent acceleration in growth rate sometime after 1980.
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A few years later, Phillips et al. (1998) analyzed forest growth rate data for the period 1958 to 1996 for several hundred plots of mature tropical trees scattered around the world, finding that tropical forest biomass, as a whole, increased substantially over the period of record. In fact, the increase in the Neotropics was equivalent to approximately 40% of the missing terrestrial carbon sink of the entire globe.
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At the end of the day, it thus appears that a large body of scientists ... agrees that a wealth of scientific data confirms the reality of the ever-increasing productivity of earth's tropical forests, especially those of Amazonia; and they tend to agree that the concomitant rise in the air's CO2 content has had much to do with this phenomenon.
The article explains that the Earth appears to have a self-compensating mechanism regarding climate change:
...[the increase in] tropical forests "may be helping to buffer the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2, thereby reducing the impacts of global climate change." And, again, they identified the aerial fertilization effect of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content as one of the primary factors likely to be responsible for this phenomenon.
To a scientific layperson such as myself, it is hard to reconcile the above studies with the popular press' almost insatiable appetite for warning that the tropical forests are on the verge of disappearing. However, to a legal and policy wonk such as myself the CO2Science article reinforces the belief that we know far less than we sometimes think we know about the Earth's ability to take care of the environment on its own or, if the planet needs help, exactly what measures to "help" are necessary/wise.
Hi; Our postman and Canada Post are very suvtorpipe of our red dot effort. Almost all residents of our apartment building are going for it and we printed out the red dots on sticky label paper to go inside the mail boxes for any delivery person to see when they stack the boxes from inside. The Post office even sends participants a nice letter of acknowledgement.HOWEVER, the postman suggests that this effort does not save any trees and is ineffective inasmuch as the same number of junk mail is being printed and delivered to the post office. It's the advertisers who need to be told that their junk mail doesn't get to the recipients. No wonder the post office goes along with the red dot campaign since they get paid one way or another - wherever the junk mail ultimately get to the garbage.Ernie Geisel, Hamilton
Posted by: Ianskie | August 24, 2012 at 09:37 PM