Climate change update: Things may be worse than experts believed

Clearing trees in a peatland forest for a palm oil plantation in the 

Central Kalimantan province on Indonesia’s Borneo island in 2014

The Washington Post writes on new research has has identified what has been a large but overlooked source of carbon dioxide emissions due to human activities. This one is unsettling. WaPo writes:

A new study finds a large, previously unknown contribution to climate change through human conversion of peatlands for agriculture.

Long before the era of fossil fuels, humans may have triggered a massive but mysterious “carbon bomb” lurking beneath the Earth’s surface, a new scientific study suggests. If the finding is correct, it would mean that we have been neglecting a major human contribution to global warming — one whose legacy continues.

The researchers, from France’s Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences and several other institutions across the globe, suggest that beginning well before the industrial era, the mass conversion of carbon-rich peatlands for agriculture could have added over 250 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of more than seven years of current emissions from the burning of fossil fuels for energy.

The new finding of an “ignored historical land use emission” suggests that even now, we lack a complete understanding of how the Earth’s land surfaces are driving and modulating the warming of the planet. That’s troubling, since the use of land to trap and contain greenhouse gases is set to play a critical role in the Paris climate agreement.

WaPo points out that peatlands are a type of wetland where dead plant matter only partly decay due to wet conditions. Normally peat slowly pulls carbon out of the atmosphere. But if it is disturbed decay resumes and carbon dioxide is released into the air. Draining peatland and using it for agriculture restarts the decay process. An expert estimates that CO2 from peatland amounts to ~10% of the carbon that humans have emitted from burning fossil fuels since 1850 based on the current study.

The new study is incomplete because it only considers Northern Hemisphere peatlands from the year 850 until now. And, it is possible that CO2 emissions could have been lower if humans had turned to draining peat only after once all other good land was in use. Further research and analysis is needed to better estimate how big this effect has been. 

Question: Are humans playing Russian Roulette by not taking climate change seriously, e.g., when special interests block or minimize climate change regulations, usually to protect profits.[1]

Footnote: 

1. A couple of days ago, the New York Times wrote this:

LONDON — During a contentious meeting over proposed climate regulations last fall, a Saudi diplomat to the obscure but powerful International Maritime Organization switched on his microphone to make an angry complaint: One of his colleagues was revealing the proceedings on Twitter as they happened.

It was a breach of the secrecy at the heart of the I.M.O., a clubby United Nations agency on the banks of the Thames that regulates international shipping and is charged with reducing emissions in an industry that burns an oil so thick it might otherwise be turned into asphalt. Shipping produces as much carbon dioxide as all of America’s coal plants combined.

Internal documents, recordings and dozens of interviews reveal what has gone on for years behind closed doors: The organization has repeatedly delayed and watered down climate regulations, even as emissions from commercial shipping continue to rise, a trend that threatens to undermine the goals of the 2016 Paris climate accord.

One reason for the lack of progress is that the I.M.O. is a regulatory body that is run in concert with the industry it regulates. Shipbuilders, oil companies, miners, chemical manufacturers and others with huge financial stakes in commercial shipping are among the delegates appointed by many member nations. They sometimes even speak on behalf of governments, knowing that public records are sparse, and that even when the organization allows journalists into its meetings, it typically prohibits them from quoting people by name.

Obviously, huge polluters like Saudi Arabia, Exxon-Mobile, etc., have no significant concerns about keeping the fossil fuels burning and the carbon spewing into the air. For the polluters, profit and power talks and risk of civilization collapse walks. After all, the rich believe they will always be able to take care of themselves. They could not care less about the rest of us.