Pine Beetles Make Global Warming Worse

Seen from a certain vantage point, ours is an ugly world, beset with terrorism, human trafficking, starvation, oppression -- the list goes on an on. Of course, we could also make a list of lovely things -- music, flowers, babies, starscapes -- and those should be enjoyed.

But in our view, to enjoy the beauty at the cost of ignoring the ugliness is irresponsible.

So let's take a look at one nasty bit, the epidemic destruction of North American forests:

The mountain pine beetle, an insect pest, is destroying massive swaths of American lodgepole pine. But that's only the beginning of the bad news.

Far worse from a climate perspective is the fact that, as Joe Romm reported earlier this year, beetle tree kills are releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than forest fires:

Global warming has created a perfect climate for these beetles. Milder winters since 1994 have reduced the winter death rate of beetle larvae in Wyoming from 80% per year to under 10%, and hotter, drier summers have made trees weaker, less able to fight off beetles.

No wonder the carbon sinks are saturating faster than we thought — unmodeled impacts of climate change are destroying them.

Insect outbreaks such as this represent an important mechanism by which climate change may undermine the ability of northern forests to take up and store atmospheric carbon, and such impacts should be accounted for in large-scale modelling analyses.

Can you see the cycle?

1. Beetles infest trees
2. Trees die and can't absorb CO2
3. More C02 in atmosphere brings milder winters and drier summers
4. Trees are weakened by climate change

1. Beetles infest more trees
2. More trees die and can't absorb CO2
3. Etc.

As our planet's surface -- including both oceans and forests -- becomes less able to absorb all the excess carbon dioxide that we humans keep pumping into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates, the only possible outcome is accelerated global warming.

Then we risk a runaway climate feedback cycle, potentially resulting in as much as 6^oC warming by 2100. 

So, enjoy the beauty, smell the flowers, kiss the babies, rejoice in living. But take a little time, as well, to learn more about threats to our beautiful world and think about the challenges we are presenting to those babies.

Now is the time for us and our leaders to take action and change course, away from danger and toward a better and more responsible future for all.

Mike Treder

Comments

[Tom Craver]

Bad news about the beetles - but I don't think you should assume this has to be a positive feedback situation.

Yes, there'll be a burst of CO2 as the existing trees die and decay. But unless those forests turn to desert, SOMETHING is going to grow in their place, absorbing CO2.

New growth stores carbon faster than old growth, if you have full ground coverage. So if we were to log out the dying trees, bury them in the desert, and dense-plant new trees, we'd actually have a faster rate of CO2 capture.

Every few years we'd have to go in and thin them out - but that's another addition to carbon sequestration.

[Tihamer Toth-Fejel]

My officemate recommended that we all print out all the blogs we read, and make sure we don't recycle them, but make sure that the hardcopy ends up in land fills to sequester the carbon.

Other than the extra input of energy required (and water) to make the paper (and oil derivatives to deliver it to our printers), I cannot come up with a reason why he's wrong.

Keith Henson points out that once diamondoid mechanosynthesis gets started (pretty soon, if this year's experiments by Philip Moriarty are successful) then people are going to suck all the CO2 out of the air in order to build their diamondoid cars, airplanes, 100 mile high skyscrapers, space piers, etc. (Diamond is an engineer's best friend).

Frankly, I think Henson is correct. Global warming is the least of our problems.

[Chris Phoenix]

Tee, I hope you and Henson are right, and I think you probably are -- but I'm just not willing to bet the planet on it.

Let's start acting as if MM won't come along in time to fix global warming; if it does, then the problem will be even easier to solve.