Category: RT Newswire

University of Illinois News Bureau

NEWS INDEX Archives 2007 December    12/10/07

New model revises estimates of terrestrial carbon dioxide uptake

Diana Yates, LIfe Sciences Editor
217-333-5802; diya@uiuc.edu

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new model of global carbon and nitrogen cycling that will fundamentally transform the understanding of how plants and soils interact with a changing atmosphere and climate.

The new model takes into account the role of nitrogen dynamics in influencing the response of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Current models used in the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change do not account for nitrogen processing, and probably exaggerate the terrestrial ecosystem’s potential to slow atmospheric carbon dioxide rise, the researchers say. They will present their findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

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by Cahal Milmo

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move “Beyond Petroleum” by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its “green sheen” by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the “biggest global warming crime” in history.

The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called “oil sands” that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Producing crude oil from the tar sands – a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay – found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta – an area the size of England and Wales combined – generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling. The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK’s entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists.

The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers – up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas. The industry, which now includes all the major oil multinationals, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil. BP insists it will use a less damaging extraction method, but it accepts that its investment will increase its carbon footprint. Continue reading

GJEP is the North American Focal Point of the Global Forest Coalition

PRESS RELEASE

Friends of the Earth International
World Rainforest Movement
Global Forest Coalition

WORLD BANK HANDS OFF FORESTS          December 10, 2007

BALI (INDONESIA), Dec. 10, 2007  Environmental groups at the United Nations climate talks in Bali today urged governments to reject a new World Bank initiative promoting the inclusion of forests in carbon markets.

The World Bank initiative, known as the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) is set to be launched on Tuesday 11th December in Bali as part of the discussions on Reducing Emissions through Deforestation in Developing countries’ (REDD).

The initiative, which would allow tropical forests to be included in carbon offsetting schemes, fails to combat climate change, the groups said, because it allows industrialised countries and companies to buy their way out of emissions’ reductions.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071129132753.htm [input]

Ocean Fertilization ‘Fix’ For Global Warming Discredited By New Research ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2007) —

Scientists have revealed an important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected $100 billion venture.

Research performed at Stanford and Oregon State Universities suggests that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a major contributor to global warming. Ocean fertilization, the
process of adding iron or other nutrients to the ocean to cause large algal blooms, has been proposed as a possible solution to global warming because the growing algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

However, this process, which is analogous to adding fertilizer to a lawn to help the grass grow, only reduces carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if the carbon incorporated into the algae sinks to deeper waters. This process, which scientists call the “Biological Pump”, has been thought to be dependent on the abundance of algae in the top layers of the ocean. The more algae in a bloom, the more carbon is transported, or “pumped”, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean. Continue reading