Swedish Scientists: An ICE AGE is co... 
Dquixote1217
12 years ago
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Swedish Scientists: An ICE AGE is coming, only CO2 can save us
Forget Hurricane Sandy - fear the peat powered freezeBy Lewis PageA 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 age right now. However, we're not noticing it due to the effects of carbon dioxide," says Professor of Physical Geography Lars Franzén, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Gothenburg uni.
Franzén and his colleagues have examined various scenarios for the peatlands of Sweden, which are a continually expanding "dynamic landscape element". According to the scientists:
Peatlands grow in height and spread across their surroundings by waterlogging woodlands. They are also one of the biggest terrestrial sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Each year, around 20 grams of carbon are absorbed by every square metre of peatland.
The scientists have calculated that the potential is there for Swedish peatlands to triple in extent, enormously increasing their carbon sink effect. By extrapolating to include the rest of the world's high-latitude temperate areas - the parts of the globe where peatland can expand as it does in Sweden - they project the creation of an extremely powerful carbon sink. They theorise that this is the mechanism which tends to force the Earth back into prolonged ice ages after each relatively brief "interglacial" warm period.
"Carbon sequestration in peatland may be one of the main reasons why ice age conditions have occurred time after time," says Franzén.
With no other factors in play, the time is about right for the present interglacial to end and the next ice age to come on. Indeed, Franzén and his crew think it has barely been staved off by human activity:
The researchers believe that the Little Ice Age of the 16th to 18th centuries may have been halted as a result of human activity. Increased felling of woodlands and growing areas of agricultural land, combined with the early stages of industrialisation, resulted in increased emissions of carbon dioxide which probably slowed down, or even reversed, the cooling trend.
Other scientists have attributed the Little Ice Age to a quiet period in the Sun's activity: others say it was purely a local effect in Europe, though that theory has lately been disproved by research in Antarctica.
In any case, the scientists assess that if it weren't for human activity such as carbon emissions, we could expect a new ice era in short order. They write:
Thus, on a global scale, carbon sequestration in peatlands may have had important climate cooling effects towards the ends of previous interglacials ... It cannot be ruled out that similar effects would be seen in a hypothetical Holocene lacking human presence.
It's probably worth noting that the great physicist Freeman Dyson long ago suggested that only relatively small amounts of new peatland would be enough to sequestrate colossal amounts of CO2 from the air. Other scientists have noted in recent times that brief warming spells like that observed at the end of the 20th century appear to have occurred towards the end of previous interglacial periods - just before the glaciers returned.
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.
The Swedish scientists' paper is published in the peer-reviewed journal Mires and Peat.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/09/peat_ice_age_coming_only_co2_can_save...Google Advertisement
- Re: Swedish Scientists: An ICE AGE i... pawel110
12 years ago
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Hi Tony, interesting post!
I can only see benefits of more CO2 - primarily greater plant yields! as archaeological evidence points to periods when the earths atmosphere had far greater concentrations of CO2 always coincided with far greater diversity and yields of life ie the cambrian explosion.
Logically it seems that this planet has its own system to deal with atmospheric balancing.
There is however an argument wrt greenhouse gases that may be of interest since it is slowly gathering momentum - slowly mainly due to censorship by omission by the msm.
That is the repeat of the woods experiment by professor Nasif Nahle in a modern rendition of the famous experiment that disproved the erroneous greenhouse effect wrt CO2.
http://principia-scientific.org/index.php/latest-news/the-famous-woods-experi...
http://principia-scientific.org/index.php/search.html?ordering=&searchphrase=...
Along the same lines and with perhaps using the false paradigm of the green house effect professor Joe Postma explains why P/4 is also in error. Simply put most dont understand that The sun does not in reality shine at a quarter of its power all over Earth constantly, and therefore P/4 is a meaningless average in this context. Therefore the models are in reality unphysical!
http://www.facebook.com/groups/446446425385858/
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-1324.html
http://climateofsophistry.com/2012/11/06/on-the-absence-of-a-measurable-green...
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/a-discussion-of-the-slaying-the-sky-dragon-s...
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk
If the net effect of CO2 is as little as the woods experiment or for that matter Prof Nasif Nahle propounds then it is likely that we are heading for a little ice age whether or not we create more co2 or not. The increase in plant growth as mentioned would of course be a benefit either way.
It appears to be clear that the physics curriculum will at some point be revised correcting the error that purposefully adheres to the mainstream view concerning the green-house effect.
Geophysicist Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner predicts new Little Ice Age by the middle of this century
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/geophysicist-dr-nils-axel-morner....
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- Re: Swedish Scientists: An ICE AGE i... pawel110
12 years ago
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