[speechlesstx]

Dead trees spewing greenhouse gases

Katrina's surge up the Pearl River damaged or killed many thousands of trees, and the tons of debris left to rot is slowly spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to new research released Thursday by Tulane University.

The scientists, led by Tulane ecologist Jeffrey Chambers, hand-counted trees along the river and compared satellite images from before and after the storm to identify damage hot spots. From their data, published in the journal Science, Chambers said trees felled in just a few hours in a small area would decay, eventually releasing enough carbon gases to erase what every healthy forest in the United States could suck up in a year.

It was surprising, he said, "that one storm could essentially offset the gains for an entire year."

Should climate-change predictions of stronger and more frequent hurricanes be true, and more trees suffer Katrina-level beatings, the role of forests as a moderator of greenhouse gases could reverse, he said. Healthy forests are a "carbon sink," pulling in more greenhouse gases than they release during natural decay. Katrina's damage has had the opposite effect, Chambers said.

Darn that Bush. Better get out there and plant those trees, or is that bad for wildfires? How does something "slowly" spew anyway?

That ain't all the bad news...

Science Friday: Congratulations, We're Dinosaur Killers
By Devilstower
Fri Oct 26, 2007 at 05:22:51 AM PST

Sixty-five million years ago, a large rock came screaming in from space. Despite all the recreations that show an impressive fireball streaming overhead, the real deal probably took about two seconds from the moment it entered the atmosphere, to the moment it impacted the Caribbean Basin with a force greater than anything in our nuclear arsenal. There wasn't really time for anything to think "huh, look at that," even if there had been anything around capable of such a complex thought as "huh."

The common conception is that it was this falling stone that signaled the end of the dinosaurs and cleared the slate for the mammals to take center stage. The truth was messier. Only a few million years before, an object of similar size had slammed into present day Iowa, but the number of known extinctions associated with that collision... was zero. It seems unlikely that the first collision would be absorbed without a blip, while the second would mark the end of an age. Actually, the end of the Cretaceous was a messy time marked by vulcanism, large shifts in sea levels, and changes to the connections between continents. The timing between the Yucatan collision and the mass extinction is too close to think that there was no effect, but it may be that all those species were already looking over the edge of a cliff, stressed by the many changes in their environment. The asteroid simply gave them a push.

While the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous easily gets the most press, it was not the only such event in geologic history -- and far from the most severe. A study by the University of York looked at several of the other extinction events. They found different engines driving these events, but one factor in common.

Of the five mass extinction events¹, four — including the one that eliminated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago — are associated with greenhouse phases, while periods of high diversity were associated with cooler conditions. The largest mass extinction event of all, the end-Permian, occurred during one of the warmest ever climatic phases and saw the estimated extinction of 95 per cent of animal and plant species.

"The long-term association has not been seen before, as previous studies have largely been confined to relatively short geological periods, limited geographical extents and few groups of organisms," says Professor Benton. "But the evidence is striking."

According to the record, it hasn't mattered why the temperature rose, only that it did. The result was the same -- a massive loss of species both on land and in the sea. If global warming and the associated changes are what really does in ecosystems, what does that say about our immediate future?

Global temperatures predicted for the coming centuries may trigger a new ‘mass extinction event’, where over 50 per cent of animal and plant species would be wiped out
...

future predicted temperatures are within the range of the warmest greenhouse phases that are associated with mass extinction events identified in the fossil record.

Even the 50% change is far more radical than the extinction event that marked the end of the dinosaur's rule -- and that would be the lower end of the change indicated based on previous greenhouse events.

We are shaping a different world from the one we have known. One that, in some distant future, may be populated by a panoply of new creatures that appear to fill the gaps. But for the near term, it's going to be a duller, less vibrant world, one whose milestones are marked out in terms of ecosystems unraveling and species going extinct.

The next time someone tries to shrug off global warming with some remark that "the planet has been warmer before," you might want to let them know that when it was, massive and widespread death was the result.

OK all you "dinosaur killers," what are we going to do to save the planet? And the left complains about the right's fearmongering?

[N0help4u]

I tell people that complain about global warming to PLEASE send it my way cause the hotter the better for me!
How are we going to save the planet? Tell the liberals the other countries are 0UT of petro and then IF they STILL will not let us drill and produce more gas in our own countries tell them it is horse and buggy time and we all have to live like the Amish.
N0 more wasted trips for them or anybody to Wal Mart.
Writers never get to go back to work after their strike because we no longer watch brain dead TV shows.
We tie the hands of the environmentalists that will not allow controlled burns of the forests so that their houses do not burn down.
We make Gore quit being a hypocrite that wastes more on gas and electric than 25 families put together.
Gee if I keep going on we won't have anything left!!