Thursday, November 13, 2014
I Love CO2
CO2
For some stupid reason I have always assumed that CO2 levels did not vary by any substantial amount across the globe (although I had understood that they were slightly higher in the Southern Hemisphere). But recently I have discovered that CO2 levels are fairly constant at the poles and at the equator ... see: Breitbart Article. (Read it, it is fascinating.) But this article also states that in the bracketed areas ... mainly in our boreal forests ... CO2 levels fluctuate by as much as 16 parts per million (ppms) throughout the year ... which I can infer to be + or - 4% off of the worldwide current norm of 396 ppms ... see: Carbonify Site. This, to me, is a surprisingly large seasonal swing ... greater than the secular trend over the last seven years.
This article also states that the reason for this unexpected regional variance is that our boreal forests are luxuriating in the increased levels of carbon dioxide that, in turn, are partially the result of our current burning of fossil fuels. It is like we are setting a banquet for the trees and plants there and that they are repaying us with the product of their more verdant growth ... more oxygen.
And the reason why the CO2 levels hardly vary at the poles is due to lack of vegetation there ... while, at the equator, vegetation is fairly constant and not subject to seasonal variation. But this leads us to another enigma ... how come the ice cover at the poles varies so dramatically across the decades ( I don't mean seasonally which is easily explainable) when CO2 levels don't. (In fact the ice cover at both poles is now back expanding.) Perhaps there are many other things at work here ... that 97% of the world's climatologists and Al Gore are not yet willing to acknowledge?
Nicely put.
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