brenthutch 444 #26 July 22, 2016 "or go off on some other discrediting direction." Right on cue. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
billvon 3,120 #27 July 22, 2016 > I just said the effect would be from benign to beneficial. Looks like I was right. ============= Russian wildfires put key climate resource at risk July 22, 2016 by Maria Antonova Phys.org Russia's practice of leaving massive wildfires to burn out of control in sprawling stretches of Siberia puts at risk a key global resource for absorbing climate-warming emissions: its trees. The blazes are consuming millions of hectares of pristine Boreal forests in Russia, which are second only to the world's tropical jungles in capturing planet-warming carbon emissions. At the same time, the drier and harsher conditions associated with a warmer climate—last June was the hottest ever recorded—are contributing to the fires becoming ever bigger and more common. Russia's forests annually absorb a net 500 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, said Anatoly Shvidenko, who spent decades in the Soviet forestry system and served as an expert for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). That figure is the equivalent to the emissions put off over a year by 534 coal-burning power plants. With expected climate change and current levels of forest protection in Russia, "forest fire danger and carbon emissions will double or triple by the end of the century," added Shvidenko, saying authorities pay less attention to the problem now than in the 1990s or the Soviet era. The thinning forests are most evident in northern Siberia, where fires can ravage plant life and shallow roots, making it impossible for trees to regrow for centuries. . . . In Russia, 43 million hectares of forest managed by the national forest agency was lost between 2000 and 2011, mostly in the Far North, Shvidenko said, an area almost the size of Iraq. This, combined with growing wildfires, could alter the role of Russia's forests as a carbon sink, currently second only to the world's tropical forests. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-russian-wildfires-key-climate-resource.html#jCp =========================== Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
