O2 Dropping Faster than CO2 Rising
ISIS | 30.08.2009 11:50 | Climate Chaos | Energy Crisis | Other Press | World
These years happen to coincide with record rates of deforestation. In Brazil, 10 000 square miles were lost mainly to pasture land, soybean plantations and illegal logging, a 40 percent rise over the previous year [14]. Massive deforestation has continued in the Amazon and elsewhere, spurred by the biofuels boom [15]; it is estimated that nearly 40 000 ha of the world’s forests are vanishing every day.
The crucial role of forests and phytoplankton [4] in oxygenating the earth shows how urgent it is to take oxygen accounting seriously in climate policies. Reductionist accounting for CO2 alone is insufficient, and even grossly misleading and dangerous.
A case in point is the proposal of the International Biochar Initiative (IBI). ‘Biochar’ is charcoal produced to be buried in the soil that IBI has been promoting worldwide over the past several years [16] as a means of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere to save the climate and enhance soil fertility. It involves planting fast growing tree and various other crops on hundreds of millions of hectares of ‘spare land’ mostly in developing countries, to be harvested and turned into charcoal in a process that could produce crude oil and gases as low grade fuels. There are many excellent arguments against this initiative [17], but the most decisive is that it will certainly further accelerate deforestation and destruction of other natural ecosystems (identified as ‘spare land’). In the process, it could precipitate an oxygen crisis from which we would never recover [18] (Beware the Biochar Initiative, SiS 44).
ISIS
Homepage:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/O2DroppingFasterThanCO2Rising.php
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How long before...
30.08.2009 12:11
Ecocide
o2
30.08.2009 12:24
And we can acclimatise to varying levels of oxygen with no problem. The top of mt blanc has the equivilent of about 55% oxygen which is bordering on extreme. People live high up all around the world with no problems.
kind of silly
Wikipedia on Oxygen levels on Earth
30.08.2009 13:12
[51] Berner, Robert A. (1999-09-18). "Atmospheric oxygen over Phanerozoic time". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 96 (20): 10955–57.
Capitalism is Ecocide
@ecocide - song for you
30.08.2009 13:25
have monopolized the oxygen
so it's as easy as breathing
for us all to participate
yes they're buying and selling
off shares of air
and you know it's all around you
but it's hard to point and say "there"
so you just sit on your hands
and quietly contemplate
your next bold move
the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself
what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable
and sell them to seagulls flying in circles
around one big right wing
yes, the left wing was broken long ago
by the slingshot of cointelpro
and now it's so hard to have faith in
anything
Danny
Homepage:
http://www.danah.org/Ani/Reckoning/YourNextBoldMove.html
A reference please?
30.08.2009 20:38
'planting fast growing tree and various other crops on hundreds of millions of hectares of ‘spare land’ mostly in developing countries'
Is there a reference for this claim, or is it just completely unsubstantiated?
Sean