{"id":301,"date":"2009-02-14T19:05:30","date_gmt":"2009-02-15T03:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/?p=301"},"modified":"2009-02-14T19:05:30","modified_gmt":"2009-02-15T03:05:30","slug":"ipcc-scientist-a-vicious-cycle-of-carbon-spikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2009\/02\/14\/ipcc-scientist-a-vicious-cycle-of-carbon-spikes\/","title":{"rendered":"IPCC Scientist: A &#8220;Vicious Cycle&#8221; of Carbon Spikes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For a while now, we&#8217;ve been hearing that greenhouse gas emissions are still off the charts, which is to say increasing beyond the U.N.&#8217;s worst-case scenario for global warming. Now a Stanford researcher has laid out some specific scenarios&#8211;and they&#8217;re not pretty.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Stanford - Chris Field\" href=\"http:\/\/fsi.stanford.edu\/people\/christopherfield\/\">Chris Field<\/a>, who is working on the next <a title=\"IPCC - Reports\" href=\"http:\/\/ipcc.dfinet.ch\/ipccreports\/assessments-reports.htm\">IPCC report<\/a>, said &#8220;There is a real risk that human-caused climate change will accelerate the release of carbon dioxide from forest and tundra ecosystems, which have been storing a lot of carbon for thousands of years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science at Stanford, and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, issued a warning for members of the <a title=\"AAAS  main\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aaas.org\/\">American Association for the Advancement of Science<\/a> (AAAS) in Chicago today: &#8220;We don&#8217;t want to cross a critical threshold where this massive release of carbon starts to run on autopilot.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And yet, that would appear to be path that we&#8217;re on. As Field told the AAAS symposium, &#8220;We now have data showing that from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries, like China and India, saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So what would some of the consequences be? &#8220;Tropical forests are essentially inflammable,&#8221; Field said. &#8220;You couldn&#8217;t get a fire to burn there if you tried. But if they dry out just a little bit, the result can be very large and destructive wildfires. It is increasingly clear that as you produce a warmer world, lots of forested areas that had been acting as carbon sinks could be converted to carbon sources. Essentially we could see a forest-carbon feedback that acts like a foot on the accelerator pedal for atmospheric CO2.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The loss of functioning forests worldwide is already estimated to account for about 20% of carbon emissions. But field also warns of another carbon burst from decomposed plants that have been locked in permafrost for tens of thousands of years. As if all that weren&#8217;t plenty, Field says the accelerated forest destruction and melting permafrost could combine to create a &#8220;vicious cycle&#8221; of accelerated carbon emissions.<\/p>\n<p>Field sums up by saying: &#8220;We now know that, without effective action, climate change is going to be larger and more difficult to deal with than we thought.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Chicago symposium is being held to address new developments since the last IPCC interim report, in 2007. A formal update is due out next year. Field is co-chair of the IPCC&#8217;s Working Group 2, which is assessing the impacts of climate change on social, economic and natural systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For a while now, we&#8217;ve been hearing that greenhouse gas emissions are still off the charts, which is to say increasing beyond the U.N.&#8217;s worst-case scenario for global warming. Now a Stanford researcher has laid out some specific scenarios&#8211;and they&#8217;re not pretty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[151,193,301,435],"coauthors":[],"series":[],"affiliates":[],"programs":[],"collections":[],"interests":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-business","tag-cryosphere","tag-emissions","tag-ipcc","tag-policy"],"acf":{"template_type":"standard","featured_image_type":"standard","is_audio_post":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.13 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>IPCC Scientist: A &quot;Vicious Cycle&quot; of Carbon Spikes | Climate Watch<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2009\/02\/14\/ipcc-scientist-a-vicious-cycle-of-carbon-spikes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"IPCC Scientist: A &quot;Vicious Cycle&quot; of Carbon Spikes | Climate Watch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For a while now, we&#039;ve been hearing that greenhouse gas emissions are still off the charts, which is to say increasing beyond the U.N.&#039;s worst-case scenario for global warming. 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