Tag Archives: carbon

About 40 percent of the carbon dioxide released from deforestation and burning fossil fuel stays in the atmosphere. Another 30 percent is taken up in the oceans. It was thought that the remaining 30 percent of anthropogenic carbon was absorbed by plants on land, but subsequent measurements didn’t bear that out, leading to the question of the “missing carbon sink.” The American Geophysical Union announced …

As 2013 winds down, there are promising signs that we may actually see a price on carbon in the U.S. In 2010, the cap-and-trade bill was killed in the Senate by the fossil fuel industry’s ubiquitous misinformation campaigns. However, a confluence of events have renewed hopes that we may yet see carbon pricing legislation that could significantly reduce U.S. carbon emissions. Why we need …

Ten Island Renewable Challenge Small island states’ economies, societies and ecosystems have been burdened by the need to import oil, natural gas and coal since around the time the fossil fuel era began. Now threatened by the effects of climate change – rising sea levels and ocean acidification prominent among them – island states find themselves raising the risks that threaten the sustainability of …

As large swaths of western forests in North America succumb to pine beetle infestation, due in part to warming winters, preliminary studies show that the dead, decaying trees are not releasing the huge flux of CO2 previously feared by scientists. According to a study just released in the journal Ecology Letters, despite the billions of trees killed in the pine beetle infestation ranging from Mexico to …

New research just published in the journal Nature say that plants, trees, and soil are absorbing carbon about 25 percent faster than scientists previously thought. A team of scientists headed-up by Lisa Welp-Smith of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have developed a new, more accurate, method of determining how much plants absorb and release carbon. The study estimates that global plant life take up …

A preliminary report released today by an international panel of interdisciplinary marine scientists on behalf of the International Programme on the State of the Oceans gives a stark warning that unless the combined threats facing the world’s ocean are not curbed soon, a marine mass extinction could occur on a scale unprecedented in human history. “The findings are shocking,” said IPSO Scientific Director Alex …

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released estimates on Monday showing that CO2 emissions have soared to record highs after a lull in 2009 due to the global recession. 30.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide where emitted into the atmosphere in 2010, mostly from burning fossil fuels, a rise of 1.6 gigatons over 2009 according to estimates from the IEA, and up 5 percent over 2008 …