permaculture

[lbsaltzman@aol.com]

I will dig up some citations latter, but while it is well understood that 
there was a lag in the past before CO2 increased in the atmosphere, the 
reasons why are well understood and different from the current CO2 rise. In 
the past the forcings were things like Milankovitch cycles in the Earth's 
orbit that forced the climate change and CO2 was a by-product of the initial 
forcing. But when CO2 increased it became a positive feedback loop to 
increase the warming.
 
Currently the primary forcing of climate change is the rise in CO2 in the 
atmosphere. And the CO2 is emphatically anthropogenic from the burning of 
fossil fuels.  This is a unique occurance in the history of the planet and 
the past forcing mechanisms of climate change are not currently relevent to 
this climate change. Other current forcings are extremely minor by comparison 
to the burning of fossil fuels.  I believe I said this earlier but the known 
decay rates of CO2 isotopes allow scientists to take accurate measurements of 
the CO2 and related isotopes in the atmosphere and determine the origin of 
the CO2 - fossil fuels.  
 
Currently we are at a 30 to 40% rise in CO2 in the atmosphere all occuring in 
the past 150 years and mostly in the last fifty years or so. This is much 
rapider than in earlier warmings.  It is absolutely unprecedented. So while 
agricultural patterns may have played something of role in the past few 
thousand years, they produced nothing comparable to the current climate 
change.
 
Obviously the planet is rapidly losing the tropic rain forests which could 
act as one of the major CO2 sinks and that ain't helping either.  
 
If we stopped emitting more CO2 than planetary systems can absorb, the best 
estimates are that our descendents face several hundred more years of rising 
temperatures. If we continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at the rate we 
are now for more than the next decade then our descendents face a disaster of 
unimaginable proportions.  We are sitting on the edge of feedback loops that 
will cause a huge dieoff in the human population.  We need a 180 degree turn 
in how we are living on this planet, which is where I think Permaculture has 
so much to offer.  However, at the rate we are going it may be necessary to 
begin tinkering with the planetary systems and engage in eco-engineering on a 
big scale. The prospect is scarey, because we could easily do more harm than 
good with large scale projects, but if things get bad enough governments may 
perceive that they have no choice and start some big projects going.  Some of 
the ideas floating around are to release iron shavings into the ocean to 
cause an increase in algae which absorb CO2. Another idea is to get sulpher 
into the upper atmosphere to help offset global warming.
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: lgaffney@bigpond.com
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 5:58 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] - GLOBAL WARMING:- A different 'take' on it


Thank you Travis
The Ruddiman Paper is the kind of thing I was after.

1.    A quote from the Website of the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology:-
"While it might seem simple to determine cause and effect between carbon 
dioxide 
and climate from which change occurs first, or from some other means, the 
determination of cause and effect remains exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, 
other changes are involved in the glacial climate, including altered 
vegetation, 
land surface characteristics, and ice-sheet extent." 
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html

2.    The Ice Core Data confirms the Link between Temperature Change & CO2. 
This 
is not an issue.
But it is fair to say that their is still some discussion as to why 
historically 
at least CO2 appears to lag behind temperature. 

3.     A  Theory that proposes that Life on Earth of which Forests are/were a 
largish subset may have something to do with regulating Global Climate makes 
this Permaculturalists Antenna stick up. 

Any other contributions relating to the specific theory?


Laurence Gaffney


Message: 6
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:00:45 -0400
From: Travis Miller <wyrdbrew@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] GLOBAL WARMING:- A different 'take' on it
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <FAF88E16-04B3-4906-993A-86B5920EED40@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed

I recently read a paper on a theory that anthropogenic warming  
actually started thousands of years ago.  The gist of the paper is  
that anomalous quantities of CH2 and CO2 have been  dated to the  
early part of the holocene period.  The methane increases are along  
the same timeline as the increased use in domesticated ungulates and  
the CO2 increases are on the same timeline as deforestation by humans  
for use as farmland.  The hypothesis is that the domestication of  
animals and clearing of land got the global warming ball rolling and  
extended the cyclical warm period between glaciation and that we'd be  
well into an ice age if it wasn't for human activity.  Essentially,  
agriculture created global warming and industrialization made it more  
severe.  I'm not a climate scientist but the data and the basic  
premise seemed to make sense.

Here is a link to the paper on Stanford's website.

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/ 
Ruddiman2003.pdf

This may have some bearing on discussion of how Permaculture can and  
should be used as part of a mitigation response to climate change.

Travis

"It is never to late to be what you might have been."
- George Eliot


Message: 2
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 09:28:12 +1000
From: "Laurence Gaffney" <lgaffney@bigpond.com>
Subject: [permaculture] GLOBAL WARMING:- Is CO2 the Primary Cause?
To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <002901c77afe$be0d6820$0200000a@default1zw8fr1>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hello All

Over the past couple of months I have come across a different take on the 
cause 
of global warming.
 
Essentially the Theory is that deforestation is destroying the Earths Ability 
to 
regulate temperature.

Mollison has long argued that forests have an effect locally on weather (See 
TREES AND THEIR ENERGY TRANSACTIONS in Chapter 6 of his Permaculture 
Designers 
Manual) 
Some of this chapter was sourced I think from the 1983 article titled Forest 
Weather by Bayard Webster (see Link)
http://idrinfo.idrc.ca/Archive/ReportsINTRA/pdfs/v12n4e/110782.pdf

At a Mollison /Lawton Permaculture Design Course in Melbourne Australia (Jan 
07) 
students were referred to the following Article:-
http://www.stevenbloemen.be/downloads/files/WaterAgainstGlobalWarming.pdf

This is not a good article and is wrong in fact in a number of places. It may 
suffer from poor translation. However it does outline the Theory.

More significant is an article entitled "The Biology of Global Warming and 
its 
Profitable Mitigation" published in the SUSTAINABILITY NETWORK UPDATE - No 
64E 
funded by the Australian CSIRO.
http://www.bml.csiro.au/SusnetNL/Network%20Letter%2064E.pdf

This Theory seems to make "Common Sense" to me.

Can anyone out there debunk this Theory for me please?.

Laurence Gaffney
Australia
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