Great! So the whole of coast of Essex and Norfolk will be OK while the rest us rush down to JJB Sports to get our trunks and water wings sorted!
Salt marshes will suck CO2 from air faster and faster as seas rise
Salt marshes and similar types of coastal terrain could act naturally to fight global warming by absorbing increasing amounts of carbon in a warming world, scientists have found. Even better, salt marshes' carbon-sequestering effects would actually be increased sea-level rise. Salt marshes, mainly made up of specialised …
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Friday 28th September 2012 09:06 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Some of you..
"I live in a house in the pennines....." Whilst you are no doubt making the best of a poor situation, it really would need an Apocalyptic scenario to give the area appeal. After all, in the event of major flooding, where do you think all the inhabitants of Moss Side will be heading (after they finish looting)?
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Friday 28th September 2012 08:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Yep, the Doomsayers models are too simple.
As we dig deeper into the CO2 fiasco and question the validity of the climate models we are finding that a poorly constructed Newtonian view of the climate is found to be wanting. There are millions of equasions to get a very rough estimate of what MAY happen that are subject to ENORMOUS variance as to be next to useless.
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Sunday 30th September 2012 18:40 GMT compdoc
Re: Yep, the Doomsayers models are too simple.
The only fiasco is the amount of CO2 we've been pumping into the environment. Not to mention the other pollutants into the air and seas. I remember a time when the oceans off California were pristine and you could see to the bottom. No longer. The planet is trashed, and the poles are melting. It might already be too late and yet there are still people around that think the whole 'global warming' thing was just some hoax designed to take our money. Incredibly shortsighted. Incredibly dumb.
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Friday 28th September 2012 08:42 GMT Chris Miller
Re: Wonderful. Nothing to worry about then.
No-one seriously doubts that CO2 is increasing or that burning fossil fuels is a major contributor. Where it gets tricky are questions like these:
(a) what will be the future rate of CO2 emissions - depends in large part on economic assumptions of future growth in GDP (which hasn't been very much over the last few years) and technological ones about the energy sources needed to support it.
(b) what will be the impact on climate - which is what this paper is about, one of many positive and negative feedback loops whose magnitude is not well understood (science-speak for 'no-one has a clue').
Try answering these questions without using the words 'could', 'might' or probably'.
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Friday 28th September 2012 10:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Wonderful. Nothing to worry about then.
"If I were you I would worry far more about overpopulation, deforestation and despeciation. CO2 is a red herring."
Its not a red herring, but the others are problems we can solve quite easily. Educating women is a known way of cutting down the birth rate in developing countries - a tiny percentage of the budget spent on windfarms spent on educating in africa etc could indirectly do more for the enviroment than the windmills ever could.
Though of course no politician ever wants to address the elephant in the room that is overpopulation especially given that every religion and culture seems to worship having children as the ultimate goal of any adult. We really need to get past this primitive hormonal driven mindset so we can address the issue. China did it and still get critised from emoting idiots , but imagine chinas population (and hence pollution) now if there HADN'T been a 1 child policy.
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Friday 28th September 2012 09:01 GMT Grikath
Re: Oh, the bit Lewis didn't feel like mentioning.
Nice quote, but it does make me wonder if you actually looked at, and interpreted the nice graphs provided with the abstract. They tell you stuff, m'kay...
Especially fig.3 is interesting since it tells you how much sea level rise a coastal marsh system can take before sea level rise > accumulation of elevation. Which comes in at around 5-6 mm/year *on average*.
This is just about double the average global sea rise we currently have, and comparable to the average sea level rise during the Big Melt at the end of the last glacial period.
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Friday 28th September 2012 09:15 GMT Adam-the-Kiwi
Re: Oh, the bit Lewis didn't feel like mentioning.
Lewis Page in "selectively reports scientific paper to suit his own worldwiew" shocker! Tell me it ain't so...
On a more serious note, this is great news and should be a driver to exert much more effort on preserving salt marshes, sea grasses and mangroves - something we're not very good at right now.
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Friday 28th September 2012 09:20 GMT Lord Voldemortgage
And salt marshes make for very tasty sheep.
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Good news that this CO2 / sea level model can be trusted unlike all those nasty old model which predict unpleasant things sooner.
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Friday 28th September 2012 08:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
I imagine Lewis...
... combing the gigabytes of newswires every day to find any small nugget that can be turned into a positive story about climate change. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it, I suppose. Isn't it time El Reg did a story on the positive potential for Britain's wine makers?
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Friday 28th September 2012 09:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I imagine Lewis...
You just don't get Lewis' humour. There never is positive news about climate change. It's always bad. Lewis just takes the piss out of the lengths these morons have to go to to come up with it. Lol.
Bit of Bill Hicks for you. You can adapt it quite easily to climate change news. "Watch CNN Headline news for an hour, its the most depressing fucking thing: WAR, FAMINE, DEATH, AIDS, HOMELESS, RECESSION, DEPRESSION... and you look out your window ::cricket sounds:: where's all this shit happening?!"
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Friday 28th September 2012 09:38 GMT DrXym
Re: I imagine Lewis...
The sad part is why anybody would do this at all. Cherry picking and quote mining are not science. They're tools of denialists and you'll see them commonly used by denialists whether the topic is global warming, evolution, vaccinations, moon landings, 9/11 or the holocaust.
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Friday 28th September 2012 10:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I imagine Lewis...
"Cherry picking and quote mining are not science"
No, they are not. The problem is that most of the 'peer reviewed science' that passes for climate science is exactly that, cherry picking and quote mining. But you don't get that. Just the fact that you use the word 'denialist' says enough. You are part of the sheeple my friend. Easy prey. But no worries, X Factor will be on this weekend, enjoy.
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Friday 28th September 2012 10:18 GMT DrXym
Re: I imagine Lewis...
Er no, peer reviewed studies are expected to follow the scientific method and apply a high level of rigor in terms of what they report and the conclusions that can be drawn from such. Rigor might include such as error bars, qualifying remarks, size of studies, method of analysis, and so forth. It is of course these things that denialists leap upon and do their cherry picking and quote mining from. And we see it time and again from Mr Lewis.
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Friday 28th September 2012 17:41 GMT John Smith 19
Re: I imagine Lewis...
"Er no, peer reviewed studies are expected to follow the scientific method and apply a high level of rigor in terms of what they report and the conclusions that can be drawn from such."
*Expected* to certainly.
Done so? Not allowed factional interests to compromise integrity?
Not had papers peer reviewed where the reviewers *know* the writers (and are in contact with them)?
Not published papers showing conclusions *without* evidence perhaps because the data analysis chain was (to put it politely) FUBAR?
I am not a denialst. But I'd suggest the evidence is that researchers have played *very* fast and very loose with the peer review process.
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Friday 28th September 2012 11:53 GMT Tom 13
Re: I imagine Lewis...
Having worked at a scientific journal once upon a time, yes actually I do. And a far better idea than the myth you and the rest of the warmists portray. Peer review is an even worse piece of crap than anything a politician says during a campaign, because in a campaign you at least KNOW what they are peddling is crap.
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Friday 28th September 2012 09:29 GMT ukgnome
Good news all round
Currently Cleethorpes is trying to work out what to do about the expanding salt marsh there.
But if it slurps up the naughty carbon dioxide then they are fighting a losing battle if they want to get rid of it. Also it turns out to be a breeding ground for fish. Although why the folk of Grimsby want to do their breeding on the marsh is beyond me. *I may of miss read the article a bit.
http://www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/Cleethorpes-salt-marsh-haven-breeding-fish/story-11530589-detail/story.html
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Friday 28th September 2012 10:15 GMT Thought About IT
Mixed message
What a mixed message Lewis is sending. Contrast the headline:
"Salt marshes will suck CO2 from air faster and faster as seas rise"
with the first sentence of his article:
"Salt marshes and similar types of coastal terrain could act naturally to fight global warming"
At least he's now conceding that global warming is happening and CO2 emissions are driving it. I wonder how long it will take him to admit that countering the effects will cost far more than reducing the emissions.
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Friday 28th September 2012 12:53 GMT EvilGav 1
Re: Mixed message
How many times must this be repeated - no-one has ever questioned climate change, it's happening, you wuold have to be the biggest buffoon in the history of the world to think otherwise.
But :
Climate Change := Global Warming
Further, the use of the word "could" means, as well as anything else, that the assumption is based on something yet to be proven - namely that increase in CO2 is driving the climate.
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Friday 28th September 2012 14:34 GMT Red Bren
while ( $argument <> true ) echo $argument;
"How many times must this be repeated - no-one has ever questioned climate change"
Er yes they did, until that position became untenable. The hierarchy of climate change denial goes
1. Deny it is happening
2. Accept it is happening but deny that human activity is a major contributor
3. Accept that human activity is a factor but the contribution of developing economies will overwhelm any changes made in the developed world
4. Accept it is happening but it's too late to do anything about it.
I'd say we're somewhere between 2 and 3 at the moment.
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Friday 28th September 2012 13:02 GMT cnapan
Re: Mixed message
"I wonder how long it will take him to admit that countering the effects will cost far more than reducing the emissions."
Indeed. We have the technology today to hugely reduce emissions, and it would cost a tiny fraction of the impact of sea-level rise to replace the world's coal and gas power stations with these green alternatives.
I'm talking of nuclear power of course.
The green movement are the oil companies' biggest assets in a world which knows it should stop pumping oil and digging coal out of the ground but just can't break the habit.
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Friday 28th September 2012 12:50 GMT Alan Brown
The real issue
Isn't the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere.
There have been a number of calculations made of carbon emissions which would give a 80% probabilty that the planet's temperature would increase no more than 2C over the next 50 years (it's about the same amount of carbon as has already been released up to now)
The big issue is that the amount of carbon likely to be released into the atmosphere during that period is five times higher than that "safe" figure. Even sceptics agree that there will be enhanced warming effects, the only argument is how pronounced they'll be (a bit like arguing if moses had red socks or green socks as he came down from the mountain and achieves about as much too)
We're in the middle of the biggest science experiment performed in history - and we don't get a choice about participating in it. The only practical way to curb resource demands which drive the carbon emissisions is to cap population growth and that's not a popular option.
It's more than likely that nothing of note will be done until sea levels start rising far faster than they already are. By that time it would be too late. if action is taken and large sea level rises are staved off then the y2k brouhaha aftermath will be minor by comparison.
Sea level has the potential to rise 100 metres if all polar/greenland ice melted. That's not going to happen - but a (highly unlikely) 10 metre rise would be catastrophic for current civilization as it would displace at least 3billion people. 1 metre will be bad enough, but given a few decades for it to happen, society can cope.
"Round and round and round it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows."
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Friday 28th September 2012 12:57 GMT cnapan
Re: The real issue
"Sea level has the potential to rise 100 metres if all polar/greenland ice melted. That's not going to happen - but a (highly unlikely) 10 metre rise would be catastrophic for current civilization as it would displace at least 3billion people."
What do you mean "highly unlikely"?
On the contrary. If the history of the planet is anything to go by, one thing we can be absolutely sure of is that sea levels will eventually be 10 metres higher than they are now.
It would be utterly remarkable if sea levels managed to remain at today's historically rather low levels.
Whether we can do something about it is another matter. I just hope it happens in someone else's lifetime.
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Friday 28th September 2012 12:54 GMT cnapan
But will it outstrip the Co2 emissions from melting permafrost?
I'm not too impressed with this article. It seems to me as though I ought to be excited by it, given that most scientists think all that Co2 we've released into the atmosphere to be A Bad Thing.
But how can I get excited by it, when there are no figures. How much of a negative feedback thing are we talking about?
Will the sea levels rise by just a foot then stop?
Or will they rise by 10 metres then stop?
Or 20?
You see, by 10 metres, quite a significant portion of the global population will be running for the hills anyway and will probably not get that excited by their not having to travel quite so far inland as they at first thought.
I suspect this story will just be clung on to and thrown back into climate change debates in a 'and anyway... the salt marshes will fix it so I don't need to worry' sort of way.
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Friday 28th September 2012 14:41 GMT Lars
Folks!!
Why are you picking on Lewis all the time?. He is clearly an optimist and wants to show us "the sunny side".
Perhaps I am sarcastic, but we all know that the end is shitty anyway. We all know we do not know enough and some of us believe we can learn more about how this planet reacts. Any new ideas, data is interesting, I think.
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Sunday 30th September 2012 00:37 GMT JeffyPooh
Climate models...
Climate models that fail to include the impact and reaction of every possible biosystem, both known *and unknown*, are fatally flawed. Yep, that'd be all of them.
This does not imply that they necessarily fail to arrive at an approximation of the ultimately correct answer, but it would be pure luck.
Anyone else notice the report that the USA has accidentally met the Kyoto Protocol by accident? Fracking, natural gas displacing coal. Also, look up the gasoline sales figures for the USA. Huge decrease.
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