It does not bring joy that the IPCC found that it's 95 per cent certain that humans are behind the planet's rising temperatures.
The naive climate change skeptics will continue to be lead by the nose by vested interests, big oil, big coal big business who always put profits before people.
The IPCC said to ignore the warnings would have dire consequences for the planet and mankind. Unfortunately here in Australia Abbott and his cronies are about to repeal the carbon tax which shows that the government has caved into vested interests and will do what's required to serve their political masters in big business.
We now require the political will to take action on climate change although such action might be unpalatable at times. This requires voting out the Abbott government, the political puppet of big business, and voting in those, like The Greens, who are committed to action on climate change for the good of the planet and its people.

A comment of Grim's earlier post (to Loudmouth)

Hi Grim,

Your post is very good because it reveals a common misconception. You conflate over population, general pollution and the impact of green-house gases.

The AGW case (as pushed by the IPCC) is all about green-house gases warming the planet.

It has little to say about over population and little to say about poor farming methods or general pollution.

I, and I'm sure a lot of others, would agree that over-population and general pollution has had a detrimental affect on the planet & ecosystems.

But to side with the IPCC mob because you want a cleaner planet is missing the point.

The IPCC/AGW bandwagon is not an umbrella group for everyone who has an environmental concern.The IPCC might even be seen to make things worse by putting the focus on CO2 at the expense of other issues.

Of course global warming is taking place, but can human activity mitigate the effects of increased emissions from increasing use of fossil fuels ?

The problem is that other anti-mitigation activity is happening all the time, mainly de-forestation and land clearing.

In fact, here's an observation of a layman: over the past couple of centuries, vast areas have been cleared, de-forested, across the world and it continues unabated. Southern South Australia was covered in various mallees and other eucalypts only 170 years ago, but now all one sees in mny parts is bare hills, mainly for the mining industry, the paddle-steamers and agriculture.

My naive question:

Since the uptake of CO2 by plants and forests can be measured, is it possible to measure the impact on increasing CO2 levels of that land-clearing over those years, to estimate the amount of emissions of CO2 from this cause ? And can the damage be un-done ?

In other words, is it too rosy an outlook to imagine that RE-planting on a huge scale might have the impact it used to have, of sucking CO2 out of the air ?

And I'm not so sure that mulch emits CO2, as someone suggested. I thought it builds the soil and provides nutrients for organisms and plants. Still, I'm no expert in anything really.

Just putting it out there :)

Joe
www.firstsources.inf

Loudmouth,

Deforestation accounts for approximately 10 -15% of global carbon emissions.

Here's an analysis of Abbott's Direct Action plan - "....up to 85 million tonnes per annum of CO2 abatement through soil carbons...."

http://theconversation.com/will-the-oppositions-direct-action-plan-work-12309

"To achieve the pledged return of an annual 85 million tonnes of CO2, Australian wood production would need to be around four times what it currently is by 2020. The minimum land requirements for this additional wood production would be close to two times the size of Sydney by 2020."

"The ultimate goal will necessarily be to achieve carbon neutrality. In this case, soil sequestration simply could not fulfil such obligations without major shifts away from a carbon driven economy – we will have to reduce emissions if we hope to sequester all we create.

The Direct Action Plan seems unlikely to be a viable counter pathway to the established price on carbon, because a carbon price has intrinsic market-based motivators to decouple carbon emissions from economic growth."

"In other words, is it too rosy an outlook to imagine that RE-planting on a huge scale might have the impact it used to have, of sucking CO2 out of the air?"

Sure why not? Reforestation has to help but getting us back to where we were pre-industrialization is not enough, and overtaking the pre-industrial level of forestation.involving large population displacement, is not going to solve the problem going forward. In any case, look at the immense magnitude of the proposal.

Joe, we're casting around for unworkable alternatives to doing the hard thing here.

Hi Poirot & Luciferade,

My point about de-forestation was not just the act of destroying forests but the long-term impact of LESS forests afterwards available to take up the increasing CO2.

I have great faith in scientists to come up with solutions that we can't even imagine yet. For example, finding ways to make trees edible. Seriously. To convert biomass to food. At least that would put more fibre back in our diet.

Luciferade, there are vast areas of the world, even in Australia, where very few people, if any, would be displaced - if anything, more people would be required in currently-'empty' areas to plant, run nurseries and irrigation systems, transport materials to and fro - and yes, of course, it would have to be on a massive scale.

But it's good to see that you are thinking about such things. One can run around in panic for only so long :)

Joe
www.firstsources.inf