Tornados in Atlanta, Fog in Dubai, Snow in Baghdad, January Tornados and Thunder Snow.
hmmmmm"More importantly, the homestatsis of earth resembles homeostasis maintained by warm-blooded animals. Accordingly, small change in temperature produces little or no effect because of homeostasis maintaining mechanisms. However, make those changes large enough..."
Neat analogy, Kevat!
Imran points out,
"there are plenty of things we can, should and are doing to reduce CO2 emissions growth ...."
Reducing emissions will help us out in the long run (50+ yrs) by allowing us to control or maintain lower levels of CO2.
However, any current reduction in emissions (even a complete cessation of emissions) will not prevent further warming.
For the near term....In its Second Assessment Report the IPCC, 1996 estimated that it might be possible, over the next 50 to 100 years, to sequester 40-80 Gt of C in cropland soils (Cole et al., 1996; Paustian et al., 1998; Rosenberg et al., 1998).
...agricultural soils alone could capture enough Carbon to offset any further increase in the atmospheric inventory for a period lasting between 12 and 24 years.
...there is also a very large potential for Carbon storage in the soils of degraded and desertified lands.
Soil Carbon sequestration alone could make up the difference between expected emissions and the desired trajectory in the first three or four decades of the 21st century, buying time for development of the new technological advances...[emission reduction/recycling].
This mitigation option was set-aside in the Kyoto negotiations ostensibly because of the perceived difficulty and cost of verifying that Carbon is actually being sequestered and maintained in soils.
**Storing Carbon in Agricultural Soils: A Multi-purpose Environmental Strategy
Edited by:
Norman J. Rosenberg and Roberto C. Izaurralde
Reprinted from Climatic Change, Vol.51, no.1, 2001
Kluwer Academic Publishers
ISBN 0-7923-7149-6
...and this isn't the high-cost, high-tech "carbon capture" CO2 sequestration schemes that energy companies are researching.
It's very low cost, requiring mainly organization and a change in culture and behaviour.Probably we should not even wait for governments to act (focusing on only emissions will not help us now), and should just start at the grass-roots level (pun intended), spreading the good word to gardening clubs, nurseries, hardware stores, churchs, local governments, planning commissions and zoning boards.
...see also: Terra Preta Soils (to enhance sequestration).
