WHEN(not if) Greenland melts...

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by burritos, Mar 12, 2008.

  1. burritos

    burritos Senior Member

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    what's the likelihood that a forest/vegetative carbon sink develops, and will its impact potentially offset the CO2 excess in the air? Of course a forest won't pop up over night, but in a span of 100 years, a significant forest could develop, no? Plus a growing forest/tree consumes more CO2 than a stable one, no?
     
  2. NoMoShocks

    NoMoShocks Electrical Engineer

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    Maybe Iceland, which I believe is actually green right now, will freeze, such that Iceland will really be Ice and Greenland will really be green. Someone must have been expecting this to eventually happen when they first named them, right?
     
  3. EJFB1029

    EJFB1029 New Member

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    The southern part of Greenland will have some sporatic small forests and stuff that it never had before, they are actually growing vegetables they never had been able to before, but as far as a total greening of Greenland, won't be possible for a few hundred years, if the current trend of warming continues.

    Greenland was named that by the first settlers to try to bring in immigrants, but only the southern part has been able to sustain small communities of settlers, most of their food is imported from Denmark.
     
  4. qbee42

    qbee42 My other car is a boat

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    Rising ocean levels will reduce land area around the globe. This may offset some of the newly exposed soil from under the ice.

    Tom
     
  5. chogan2

    chogan2 Senior Member

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    If you could instantaneously carpet Greenland with a thriving US Southern Pine forest, it would knock 5% off current manmade atmospheric carbon releases until it reached maturity (say 100 years). But being a northern forest (slower growing) it would be likely to absorb less than that. And of course, once it matured it would stop absorbing carbon.

    Area of Greenland, sq mi. 836109
    Acres/sq mil 640
    Area in acres 535109760
    Tons of carbon absorbed in growing forest 1
    Gigatons absorbed per year 0.53510976
    Gigatons of atmospheric carbon currently being produced by man, per year 10
    Reduction in annual increment 5%
     
  6. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    But if we constantly pruned that forest, it'd never mature. Then we just bury the wood or use it to offset coal buring and voila. :)

    Of course, it's never quite that simple, but it could be done. In the main we just need to stop burning so much bloody coal. Nice to see you around again, Chogan. :)
     
  7. markderail

    markderail I do 45 mins @ 3200 PSI

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    Forest in Greenland ? Not in our lifetimes.


    Told my SO that I'd like to go the Greenland as a eco-tourist / vacation.
    Keep in mind record snowfall here in Quebec. Like 4x more than previous year.
    My SO thought I was totally *nuts* wanting to visit the Arctic when we seem to live it.
     
  8. Devil's Advocate

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    you mean the way it was when Eric the Red sailed the seas!
     
  9. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    Nah, it was never a thriving mature boreal forest in his time either. Not nearly to the extent that burritos is talking about. Even Iceland did not have that kind of soil formation and tree cover.
     
  10. burritos

    burritos Senior Member

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    Why would it stop absorbing CO2? I thought that the plant respiration consisted of converting CO2 to O2 for us aerobics to breath. Of course they consume more CO2 when needing building blocks for their own development, but when fully matured they have a net consumption of CO2 no?
     
  11. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    It's no longer expanding and thus creates as much as it consumes. It's the arrival of a dynamic equilibrium. Before that it's a carbon negative endeavor.
     
  12. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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  13. chogan2

    chogan2 Senior Member

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    Well, maybe it's more a question of what you define to be a mature forest. A mature (but still growing) forest will absorb carbon on net. As long as it's still growing (adding woody material, on net). That's where you see people saying things like, well, mature forests absorb carbon. By mature, they just mean old and still growing.

    But no trees grow to the sky. If I take "mature" to mean "not growing", that is, where decomposition of dead trees exactly offsets new growth, then no, there's no net carbon absorption.

    I guess as a practical matter, I should take back what I said. Most people equate mature forest = big tall trees. So, under the common definition, I was wrong.
     
  14. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    mature forests still sequester carbon because they will actually add about a foot a decade in soil caused by decomposition of the leaves. the soil will be carbon rich as well
     
  15. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    It's a huge balancing act. By adding quality soil you will also likely increase the number of microbes and fungi that live in the soil and respire thus producing CO2 and consuming oxygen (some do this) as part of their metabolic processes. In a healthy ecosystem this is usually a wash and despite high and lows in the cycle the average levels of oxygen and CO2 "balance" out. It is similar to a plant who,during photosynthesis, uptakes CO2 for the Calvin cycle then subsequently uses O2 for respiration except that this is done within a single organism. Some plants do this more efficiently than others so the amount of CO2 to O2 used and given off will vary by plant type, photosynthetic process (C3 vs C4 vs CAM) and the concentration of CO2 and O2 in the imediate vacinity of the plant. :)

    Photosynthesis and respiration formulas are as follows:

    3CO2 + 6H2O -----> C3H6O3 + 3O2 + 3H2O

    C6H12O6 + 6O2 ----> 6CO2 + 6H2O + Energy
     
  16. TimBikes

    TimBikes New Member

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    Eric the Red indeed. He sailed around 980 according to Wikipedia. My read on this study is that a warm climate in Greenland at around that time is indeed consistent with the evidence...

    "Radiocarbon dates of emergent organic remains along the western margin of Istorvet ice cap (70.8�N, 22.2�W) indicate a time when the ice cap was smaller than at present. This ice cap, similar to others in east Greenland, exhibits “historic†moraines ~1-2 km in front of the presently retreating ice margins. At Istorvet, ice margin retreat has exposed a thin (~8 cm) organic horizon and in situ plant remains in bedrock cracks lie less than 10 m away from the present ice margin (453 m asl in 2006). Clusters of multi-species vegetation also were found on two nuntaks (to 719 m asl) located ~3 km from the historic drift limit. All organic remains were located in protected bedrock lees. On the west side of the ice-cap, vegetation is sparse but present at elevations near the ice margin. Both the ice cap geometry and the presence of overrun organic remains indicate past temperatures at least as warm as those at present. At Istorvet plant remains yielded 12 number of radiocarbon dates. These ages, when converted to calendar years, range from A.D. 400 to 1014, with the largest concentration from A.D. 800 to 1014. This work hones the conclusion of Funder (1978) who reported general climate deterioration since 800 BC. Moreover, it indicates warm conditons at this latitude at the time of Norse colonization of Greenland."
     
  17. TimBikes

    TimBikes New Member

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  18. chogan2

    chogan2 Senior Member

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    Anyone interested in an even-handed analysis of this winter should look at the NOAA website:

    NCDC: Climate of 2008 - February

    For the US, this is the coldest winter since way back in ancient history, to the year 2001. For the earth as a whole, by NOAA's accounting, it was the 16th warmest since they've been keeping records. It seems a little premature to dismiss global warming at this point. The interested reader should check out NOAA's El Nino/La Nina page. We're in the middle of a La Nina (cold western pacific waters) event, which is usually associated with lower US temperatures, and usually lasts on the order of two years.
     
  19. fairclge

    fairclge Member

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    From the web
    site an "NPR site"
    This web site writes about that during the time of the Vikings first landing in Greenland, the world climate was much warmer and over time became colder.

    So, is Greenland as warm now as it was during the first Vikings settlement?
    :bolt:


    ttp://www.wbur.org/special/dispatches/greenland/vikings/defaultoriginal.asp

    Legend has it that the Viking Erik the Red sailed to Greenland around 985 A.D., while in temporary exile from his Iceland home for homicide. He returned to Iceland with fabulous tales of pastures and a valuable wild animals in a land he named Greenland. Twenty-five boats with some 500 people are said to have returned with him, eventually building two settlements on the big island. The exact details are lost to history, but the outlines of this story has been proven true by archeologists this century who have excavated Viking remains at two sites on Greenland's west coast.
    There were about 2,500 inhabitants in Greenland's two Viking outposts. For more than 400 years they lived primarily on meat and milk from sheep, goats, and cows. For wood and iron implements, they traded polar bear and caribou skins and walrus hides and tusks. They launched at least one expedition to North America, landing in modern-day Newfoundland and setting up a short-lived colony. However, for a variety of reasons, probably including the devastation of the Plague in Europe and a waning interest in Greenland's luxury products, the settlements lost touch with the old country.
    The last known record of the Greenland Vikings was in 1408, when a traveler reported a wedding there. Several centuries later, in 1721, Hans Egede, a Norwegian-born Legend has it that the Viking Erik the Red sailed to Greenland around 985 A.D., while in temporary exile from his Iceland home for homicide. He returned to Iceland with fabulous tales of pastures and a valuable wild animals in a land he named Greenland. Twenty-five boats with some 500 people are said to have returned with him, eventually building two settlements on the big island. The exact details are lost to history, but the outlines of this story has been proven true by archeologists this century who have excavated Viking remains at two sites on Greenland's west coast.
    There were about 2,500 inhabitants in Greenland's two Viking outposts. For more than 400 years they lived primarily on meat and milk from sheep, goats, and cows. For wood and iron implements, they traded polar bear and caribou skins and walrus hides and tusks. They launched at least one expedition to North America, landing in modern-day Newfoundland and setting up a short-lived colony. However, for a variety of reasons, probably including the devastation of the Plague in Europe and a waning interest in Greenland's luxury products, the settlements lost touch with the old country.
    The last known record of the Greenland Vikings was in 1408, when a traveler reported a wedding there. Several centuries later, in 1721, Hans Egede, a Norwegian-born missionary sought out the colonies. To his surprise, they were gone, a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Researchers and history buffs have offered many possible explanations for the disappearance of the Greenland Vikings, including raids by Inuit or European pirates, assimilation into Inuit communities and starvation. Many modern archeologists believe that climate change played a role. Recent studies of ice cores from Greenland show that the 15th century, when the colonies probably died out, was a period of climate deterioration across the Atlantic. But these researchers say their explanation must be more nuanced than simply that it got cold and they died. For starters, that wouldn't explain why the Inuit survived these lean years.
    missionary sought out the colonies. To his surprise, they were gone, a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Researchers and history buffs have offered many possible explanations for the disappearance of the Greenland Vikings, including raids by Inuit or European pirates, assimilation into Inuit communities and starvation. Many modern archeologists believe that climate change played a role. Recent studies of ice cores from Greenland show that the 15th century, when the colonies probably died out, was a period of climate deterioration across the Atlantic. But these researchers say their explanation must be more nuanced than simply that it got cold and they died. For starters, that wouldn't explain why the Inuit survived these lean years.
     
  20. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    I thought Jared Diamond covered the fall of the Greenland Norse quite well. It was not just climate change but a combination of factors. Factors that can be seen in todays societies as well. Degradation of local forests and soils due to the Norse ignorance of local geography and ecology and their dedication to old world farming and ranching methods, attention and resources spent on increasing wealth of the church and high officials, ignoring environmental cues, and a degradation of social ties (networks) with the mainland where many of their goods came from.

    Climate change was rarely the single factor that led to a civilazational downfall BUT it did play an very integral part in many collapses and at a minimum exacerbated many more. From what I have read anyway.