Ice age?
I thought we were already in an ice age? Hence the polar caps?
A group of Swedish scientists at the University of Gothenburg have published a paper in which they argue that spreading peatlands are inexorably driving planet Earth into its next ice age, and the only thing holding back catastrophe is humanity's hotly debated atmospheric carbon emissions. "We are probably entering a new ice …
Actually, it's pretty safe to say it does. The Milky Way has a distinct planar orientation to it (the starts within are not distributed in a globular pattern but spiral out pretty flatly). There's also the idea of orienting worlds on their orbital or rotational axes. Earth's current coordinate system is oriented on rotational axis.
"That simply means there is a vertical axis. Which end of that axis is 'up' or 'down' is merely convention."
But either way, there is an up and a down whichever is which. So the original point is right. Or would if they hadn't misunderstood "cap" to mean a type of head-clothing, rather than in the sense of things that "cap" the ends of something.
Actually, it's pretty safe to say [Earth] does [have a top]
I'm looking forward to us contacting extraterrestrial life so that we can decide which side of the "topist" and "bottomist" divide we lie on. Or to put it another way, whether we root more for turnwise or widdershins.
I've only one niggling doubt: wasn't this already played out in Gulliver's Travels?
If the Earth has no top how do you explain Australia being on the bottom of the planet? Hah.. thought so, no answer to that smartypants. And for the pedantics that insist on proof that Australia is indeed at the bottom of the planet, first of all England is at the top, so that alone should be sufficient proof, but when you take into consideration they have summer at Christmas - clearly wrong and completely against nature - then the evidence is there for all to see.. unless they're some blinkered, head-in-the-sand-at-Christmas Australian standing upside down on the bottom of the world.
No matter what happens, the politicians will seize it and tax. We get an ice age..look it's climate change, hot and dry, oh look its climate change....I'm reminded of fleas on an elephants back thinking that they can predict where it will go, and perhaps, just perhaps they can get it to change course.
"..it's true that 'Mires and Peat' isn't exactly Nature or Cell..."
Umm. I am aware that it hasn't got the same global presence or (probably) highly inflated opinion of itself as those two establishment publications.
But, without having done a lot of research, I suspect from the name that it is pretty hot on the chemistry and ecology of mires and peat bogs. In fact, I would not be surprised to find that it was the world's authoritative publication on those subjects......
Why would it matter whether they are experts on global climate? The only conclusion of the research is the unprecedented scale of carbon sequestration in peat, and the enormous rate of growth of mires and bogs. The additional conclusion that the amount of carbon sequestrated might be high enough to offset human industrial CO2 emissions is added almost as an afterthought.
By the way, annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions are within the margin of error of estimates on amount of CO2 emissions from a medium-sized volcano eruption. How could human-made CO2 be responsible for anything? That's the thing that I've never seen climate scientists refute. It's like they're trying to explain how we can heat an ocean using a candle.
.... we should get a new directive from our Dear Leaders.
Instead of banning the use of Peat in horticulture, we should encourage it. Possibly providing grants for pensioners to dig it into their gardens? And certainly expanding its use in power stations....
Isn't climate science wonderful? Especially allied with a command economy run by moronic politicians with no technical knowledge whatsoever...
Without getting into the debate about whether warming is super-damaging or not-a-big-deal, I thought this rather elegantly shows the "last 10/12/16 years have not shown any warming so AGW is a crock" statement to be a load of denialist bollocks.
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Hurricanes are caused by warmth.
This has been the most expensive US election ever.
There has been blanket politicking throughout US.
Politicians spout hot air.
Hurricane Sandy hit at the peak of the electioneering.
The election is over, and there is no hurricane.
Q.E.D.
"If Franzén and his team are right, the big chill is now under way, and is only just being held off by increasing human carbon emissions - perhaps explaining why temperatures have been merely flat for the last 15 years or so, rather than descending."
Surely this is wrong. If Franzén and his team are right then we can expect the world to be still warming and can expect significantly more warming over the 21st century, just like all those climate scientists are saying. That's because Franzén and his team's work is saying CO2 is a strong driver of global temperature. They only predict cooling IF CO2 levels fall. But CO2 levels aren't falling and won't fall without emission cuts. CO2 levels are rising sharply due to human emissions of now over 30 billion tons of CO2 a year. In contrast Franzen and his team say the peatland sink *might* reach 3.7 Gt yr. So it isn't likely to even dent the increase in CO2.
So there is simply no cooling or big chill predicted. Instead expect continued warming. Global temperatures over the last 15 years are consistent with this.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/11/short-term-trends-another-proxy-fight/
So if I read you correctly - and I have no figures here of my own you understand - human activity is emitting 30 billion tons of CO2 per yer, and the peatlands may extract up to *3700 billion* tons (3.7 giga tons) per year.
And you think the peatland will barely dent the CO2 increase? If those numbers are correct, they'll annihilate it...
Why the hell is a lot of my town heated by a peat-burning power station? I think they have similar in Sweden.
I thought that burning released the CO2 from the peat??? Plus, the immense effort and 'global warming' of putting a new road from the northern peatlands to Oulu so the trucks (CO2 again...) can transport it...