Humans are hogging the Sun's energy.

[Martin]

We use up 24% of the Sun's energy.. I never thought of this as a bad thing until now. Does that mean were semi-draining the Sun's energy prematurely ? I always thought the Sun's rays were sent out and nothing on land would really affect its performance.


Human greed takes lion's share of solar energy - Environment - smh.com.au

Human greed takes lion's share of solar energy

July 3, 2007
HUMANS are just one of the millions of species on Earth, but we use up almost a quarter of the sun's energy captured by plants - the most of any species.

The human dominance of this natural resource is affecting other species, reducing the amount of energy available to them by almost 10 per cent, scientists report.

Researchers said the findings showed humans were using "a remarkable share" of the earth's plant productivity "to meet the needs and wants of one species".

They also warned that the increased use of biofuels - such as ethanol and canola - should be viewed cautiously, given the potential for further pressure on ecosystems.

The scientists, from Austria and Germany, who publish their results today in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analysed data on land use, agriculture and forestry from 161 countries, representing 97 per cent of the world's land mass.

This showed humans used 24 per cent of the energy that was captured by plants. More than half of this was due to the harvesting of crops or other plants.

The human use of the natural resource varied across the globe, ranging from 11 per cent in Oceania and Australia, to 63 per cent in southern Asia.

An agriculture professor at the University of Melbourne, Snow Barlow, said the paper showed humans were taking up too much of an important natural resource.

"Here we are, just one species on the earth, and we're grabbing a quarter of the renewable resources … we're probably being a bit greedy."

The key phrase is: HUMANS are just one of the millions of species on Earth, but we use up almost a quarter of the sun's energy captured by plants - the most of any species.

IOW we are destroying the plants that, through photosynthesis, produce the oxygen we breathe.

Some of this destruction is through the harvesting of crops that we eat and some of it is by the destruction of the rainforests, leveling of wooded lands to clear areas for subdivisions, shopping centers, etc.

The problem is that in totality we are destroying at a rate faster than nature is able to sustain and replace - which will mean either the demise or serious curtailment of the human species.

What Would Happen If Humans Vanished?

After We Are Gone
July 14, 2007 - If humans were evacuated, the Earth would flourish.

July 23, 2007 issue - The second coming may be the most widely anticipated apocalypse ever, but it's far from the only version of the end times. Environmentalists have their own eschatology—a vision of a world not consumed by holy fire but returned to ecological balance by the removal of the most disruptive species in history. That, of course, would be us, the 6 billion furiously metabolizing and reproducing human beings polluting its surface. There's even a group trying to bring it about, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose Web site calls on people to stop having children altogether. And now the journalist Alan Weisman has produced, if not a bible, at least a Book of Revelation, "The World Without Us," which conjures up a future something like ... well, like the area around Chernobyl, the Russian nuclear reactor that blew off a cloud of radioactive steam in 1986. In a radius of 30 kilometers, there are no human settlements—just forests that have begun reclaiming fields and towns, home to birds, deer, wild boar and moose.

Weisman's intriguing thought experiment is to ask what would happen if the rest of the Earth was similarly evacuated—not by a nuclear holocaust or natural disaster, but by whisking people off in spaceships, or killing them with a virus that spares the rest of the biosphere. In a world with no one to put out fires, repair dams or plow fields, what would become of the immense infrastructure humans have woven across the globe? In a matter of days or weeks, nuclear power plants around the world would boil off their water and melt into vast radioactive lumps. Electrical power would fail, and with it the pumps keeping New York City's subways from flooding; in a few years Lexington Avenue would collapse and eventually turn into a river. Lightning-caused fires would blow out the windows in skyscrapers, and concrete floors would freeze and buckle. A few centuries on, steel bridges would fall victim to rust and the inexorable assault of vegetation taking root in windblown clumps of soot. Masonry structures would last the longest, although the next ice age would wipe them out, at least at the latitude of New York, and bronze sculpture, Weisman estimates, would still be recognizable 10 million years into the future, probably the last recognizable artifacts of our civilization.

More Earth: What Would Happen If Humans Vanished? - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com

[waltky]

Should we take a second look at biofuels?...

Biofuels CO2 Impact Is 9X That Of Petrol, Says World Land Trust
August 18, 2007 - Researchers at the University of Leeds and the World Land Trust have warned that growing biofuel crops to make eco-friendly car fuel could actually be harmful to the environment.

Large areas of land in the developing world are being converted to grow crops such as sugar cane and palm oil as part of the global rush to make biofuels which are widely thought to produce less carbon dioxide than conventional transport fuels.

But scientists at the University of Leeds and the World Land Trust have found that up to nine times as much carbon dioxide will be emitted using biofuels compared to conventional petrol and diesel because biofuel crops are typically grown on land which is burnt and reclaimed from tropical forests. The report concludes that protecting and restoring natural forests and grasslands is a much better way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Study co-author Dominick Spracklen of the School of Earth and the Environment at the University of Leeds says: "This study shows that if your primary concern is reducing carbon dioxide emissions, growing biofuels is not the best way to do it. “In fact it can have a perverse impact elsewhere in the world. The amount of carbon that is released when you clear forests to make way for the biofuel crop is much more than the amount you get back from growing biofuels over a 30-year period.

"You can't convert your car to run on biofuel and keep on driving and think that everything will be OK. You are turning a blind eye to what's happening around the world and that in fact, you could be making things much worse."

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[waltky]

A better way to harness energy from the sun...

Thin-Layer Solar Cells Bring Cheaper 'Green' Power
1 September 2007 - Scientists are researching new ways of harnessing the sun’s rays which could eventually make it cheaper for people to use solar energy to power their homes.

The experts at Durham University are developing light-absorbing materials for use in the production of thin-layer solar photovoltaic (PV) cells which are used to convert light energy into electricity. The four-year project involves experiments on a range of different materials that would be less expensive and more sustainable to use in the manufacturing of solar panels.

Thicker silicon-based cells and compounds containing indium, a rare and expensive metal, are more commonly used to make solar panels today. The research, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) SUPERGEN Initiative, focuses on developing thin-layer PV cells using materials such as copper indium diselenide and cadmium telluride.

Right now the project is entering a new phase for the development of cheaper and more sustainable variants of these materials. The Durham team is also working on manipulating the growth of the materials so they form a continuous structure which is essential for conducting the energy trapped by solar panels before it is turned into usable electricity. This will help improve the efficiency of the thin-layer PV cells.

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[waltky]

Deforestation worse than ever...

Earth's vital signs in bad shape'
September 14, 2007 - MORE wood was removed from forests in 2005 than ever before, one of many troubling environmental signs highlighted today in the Worldwatch Institute's annual check of the planet's health.

The Washington-based think tank's Vital Signs 2007-2008 report points to global patterns ranging from rising meat consumption to Asian economic growth it said are linked to the broader problem of climate change. "I think climate change is the most urgent challenge we have ever faced," said Erik Assadourian, director of the Vital Signs project.

"You see many trends in climate change, whether we are talking about grain production which is affected by droughts and flooding. Or meat production as livestock production makes up about 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions," he said before the report's release. Mr Assadourian said the key message of the report was that unsustainable consumption patterns were responsible for climate change linked to carbon emissions and other ecological woes.

He said of the 44 trends tracked by the report, 28 were "pronouncedly bad" and only six were positive. The trends range from the spread of avian flu to the rise of carbon emissions to the number of violent conflicts. The growing use of wind power is among the few trends seen as positive.

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See also:

Report: Cutbacks threaten climate study
Thu Sep 13, 2007 WASHINGTON - The government's climate change research is threatened by spending cuts that will reduce scientists' observations from space and on the ground, a study says.

A major problem, the National Research Council said Thursday, is the program director's lack of authority to organize spending and research among the 13 different agencies that study the impacts of climate. Nonetheless, the report said, the U.S. Climate Change Research Program has made good progress "in documenting the climate changes of the past few decades and in unraveling the (human) influences on the observed climate changes."

In contrast, the report said progress in combining research results and supporting decision making and risk management "has been inadequate." The climate research program is "an important initiative that has broadened our knowledge of climate change, needs to package more of that knowledge for policymakers from the national to local level, and place more emphasis on understanding how people will be affected by climate change and how they might react," said committee chairman Veerabhadran Ramanathan, professor of atmospheric and climate sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.

The world has moved into an era when climate change is accepted as real, he said, and it is accepted that human activities are the major drivers for many of these changes. But progress has been inadequate in determining how climate change will affect people, Ramanathan said in a briefing Thursday. In its report the research council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, did not make recommendations on how to improve the program. That is expected to be included in a follow-up report next year.

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[waltky]

We all gonna die laughin'?...

Nobel prize-winning chemist: Biofuels will lead to global warming from 'laughing gas'
September 21, 2007 - The growth and conversion of biofuel crops could raise rather than lower greenhouse gas emissions, says a new study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, best known for his work on the ozone layer.

He and his colleagues have calculated that growing some of the most commonly used biofuel crops releases around twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O, also known as ‘laughing gas’) than previously thought – wiping out any benefits from not using fossil fuels and, worse, probably contributing to global warming. "The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuels are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto," Keith Smith, a co-author on the paper and atmospheric scientist from the University of Edinburgh, told Chemistry World magazine. "What we are saying is that [growing many biofuels] is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse."

The work is currently subject to open review in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, and Crutzen himself has declined to comment until that process is completed. But the paper suggests that microbes convert much more of the nitrogen in fertilizer to nitrous oxide than previously thought – 3 to 5 per cent, which is twice the widely accepted figure of 2 per cent used by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to calculate the impact of fertilizers on climate change.

For rapeseed biodiesel, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the biofuel production in Europe, the relative warming due to nitrous oxide emissions is estimated at 1 to 1.7 times larger than the relative cooling effect due to saved fossil CO2 emissions. For corn bioethanol, dominant in the US, the figure is 0.9 to 1.5. Only cane sugar bioethanol – with a relative warming of 0.5 to 0.9 – looks like a better alternative to conventional fuels.

In the wake of the findings comes a recent report prepared by the OECD for a recent Round Table on Sustainable Development, which questioned the benefits of first generation biofuels and concluded that governments should scrap mandatory targets. Richard Doornbosch, the report’s author, says both the report and Crutzen’s work highlights the importance of establishing correct full life-cycle assessments for biofuels. ‘Without them, government policies can't distinguish between one biofuel and another – risking making problems worse,’ he said.

Source

[waltky]

Humans increasing humidity...

Rising Humidity May Make Global Warming Worse
Thursday, October 11, 2007 WASHINGTON — With global warming, the world isn't just getting hotter — it's getting stickier, due to humidity. And people are to blame, according to a study based on computer models published Thursday.

The amount of moisture in the air near Earth's surface rose 2.2 percent in less than three decades, the researchers report in a study appearing in the journal Nature. "This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming," said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study. Gillett studied changes in specific humidity, which is a measurement of total moisture in the air, between 1973-2002.

Higher humidity can be dangerous to people because it makes the body less efficient at cooling itself, said University of Miami health and climate researcher Laurence Kalkstein. He was not connected with the research. Humidity increased over most of the globe, including the eastern United States, said study co-author Katharine Willett, a climate researcher at Yale University. However, a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia were drier. The finding isn't surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Gillett's study shows that the increase in humidity already is significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

To show that this is man-made, Gillett ran computer models to simulate past climate conditions and studied what would happen to humidity if there were no man-made greenhouse gases. It didn't match reality. He looked at what would happen from just man-made greenhouse gases. That didn't match either. Then he looked at the combination of natural conditions and greenhouse gases. The results were nearly identical to the year-by-year increases in humidity. Gillett's study followed another last month that used the same technique to show that moisture above the world's oceans increased and that it bore the "fingerprint" of being caused by man-made global warming.

More FOXNews.com - Rising Humidity May Make Global Warming Worse - Science News | Current Articles

[waltky]

Granny says one day we all gonna wake up an' there won't be no oxygen an' we all gonna die...

Greenhouse gas threatens coral reefs
Oct. 17, 2007 -- Australian scientists say greenhouse gas is causing an acid buildup in the world's oceans, posing a threat to coral and marine organisms.

Ocean acidification, a side-effect of global warming, occurs when excess carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean and becomes carbolic acid -- making it harder for corals and plankton with chalky skeletons to calcify.

Scientists who have researched the problem say the acidification is potentially devastating for the marine environment, particularly affecting such coral areas as Australia's Great Barrier Reef along with crustaceans and plankton.

Presenting their findings at a scientific forum in Canberra Thursday, Prof. Malcolm McCulloch of the Australian National University, said "it appears this acidification is now taking place over decades, rather than centuries as originally predicted."

He said research indicated oceans have become "about one-third of a pH unit more acid in the past 50 years." "It is happening even faster in the cooler waters of the Southern Ocean than in the tropics," he said. "It is starting to look like a very serious issue."

Source

[waltky]

Oceans can't handle all the CO2...

Oceans soaking up less CO2
October 21, 2007 - THE world's oceans appear to be soaking up less carbon dioxide, new environmental research has shown, a development that could speed up global warming.

A 10-year study by researchers from the University of East Anglia has shown that the uptake of CO2 by the North Atlantic ocean halved between the mid-1990s and 2002-2005. “Such large changes are a tremendous surprise,” said Dr Ute Schuster, who will publish the findings with professor Andrew Watson in the Journal of Geophysical Research next month.

“We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean's great mass.” There is also evidence of a slowdown in the uptake of CO2 by the Southern ocean, although it is not as great or as sudden as in the North Atlantic. The scientists based their findings on data collected by merchant ships fitted out with equipment to automatically measure the levels of carbon dioxide in the water. One ship that sailed between Britain and the West Indies made more than 90,000 measurements in recent years.

The oceans are one of two major carbon “sinks” for CO2 emissions, the other being the land biosphere, which together absorb about half of all CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. If the oceans soak up less CO2, it means CO2 levels in the atmosphere will rise much faster and the climate could warm more rapidly, the researchers said.

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