Phys.org reports:
Ecosystems, mainly forest and oceans, remove around 54 per cent of CO2 emitted by deforestation and fossil fuel combustion each year. The concentration of atmospheric CO2 would increase more than twice as fast as observed if it were not for these natural sinks.
Scientists suggest in a pioneering study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change that national climate change policies could consider the contribution of each emitting region to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and place a value on regional ecosystems or sinks that absorb the CO2.
Update: That quote is from Australian politician Tony Abbott.
My favorite quote of the week (author??): The carbon market is the ‘non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one’.
I think this story fits that definition exactly.
Too, apparently the said microbes living in the soil of forests produce a lot of methane. Forests, thereby contribute to so called green house gasses.
I thought most of our oxygen came from plankton, and when the latter dies, it and the carbon in it, sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
Forests had remained essentially untouched for thousands of years before ‘civilization’ arrived, but not a single forest had accumulated an ever-growing reservoir of carbon. Maybe that’s because the compost microbes re-release the carbon gradually, so the forest is not so much a carbon capture system but a carbon catch-and-release system. That might explain why the scheme sounds so fishy.
I have a better idea. Let’s pay the nations that are producing the most CO2 (developed nations, China, and India) for helping to increase the growth and expansion of vegetation on a global scale.