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Australia Earth Science

Bushfires Release Over Half Australia's Annual Carbon Emissions 70

Posted by BeauHD from the ahead-of-schedule dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The unprecedented bushfires devastating swathes of Australia have already pumped out more than half of the country's annual carbon dioxide emissions in another setback to the fight against climate change. Fires blighting New South Wales and Queensland have emitted a combined 306 million tons of carbon dioxide since Aug. 1, which is more than half of Australia's total greenhouse gas footprint last year, according to Niels Andela, an assistant research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and collaborator with the Global Fire Emissions Database. That compares with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service's estimate of 270 million tons in just over four months. "We have been closely monitoring the intensity of the fires and the smoke they emit and when comparing the results with the average from a 17-year period, they are very unusual in number and intensity, especially in New South Wales, for being so early in the fire season," said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Copernicus, the European Union's atmosphere observation program.
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Bushfires Release Over Half Australia's Annual Carbon Emissions More

Bushfires Release Over Half Australia's Annual Carbon Emissions

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  • Just to be clear, co2 emissions from forest fires are recaptured after the fire is done burning and the forest grows back. It is new growth + surviving structures that didn't burn all the way.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Humans bad.
      Green tax good.
    • That'd be fine, if the forest grew back overnight, recapturing all that CO2. Instead, it takes a decade or two for the new growth to recapture all that smoke. Not to mention, it'd be even better if we found some place for that new growth without burning down the original forest in the first place...
      • Indeed, hereâ(TM)s an excerpt from the guardian on parts of NSW (between Newcastle and Brisbane) that are presently in the path of the fire: âoe[These] reserves include the largest areas of subtropical rainforest on the planet, some warm temperate rainforest and nearly all the worldâ(TM)s Antarctic beech cool temperate rainforest. They are considered a living link to the vegetation that covered the southern supercontinent Gondwana before it broke up about 180m years ago.â If they go up

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by godel_56 ( 1287256 )

      Just to be clear, co2 emissions from forest fires are recaptured after the fire is done burning and the forest grows back. It is new growth + surviving structures that didn't burn all the way.

      Dumbfuck, we're in the middle of a decade or more long drought and the climate change crisis is happening NOW. Those trees won't be experiencing significant regrowth in the near future.

      • we're in the middle of a decade or more long drought and the climate change crisis is happening NOW.

        You're wrong about timescales. There won't be disaster by the end of the century at the rate we're going.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by agaku ( 2312930 )
          The problem is that global warming is leading to effects which lead to additional global warming for itself, accelerating the rate: For example, the permafrost soil defrosting leads to methane emissions, and methane is a severe greenhouse gas. Every fire we need to compensate, these are additional measures compared to the Paris agreement. So I urge everyone to stop emitting greenhouse gas now: Stop driving cars, booking cruisers, flying, and eating animal food. Avoid palm oil as well which often is containe

        • Australia is already experiencing a climate crisis you fucking moron. Do you work for the LNP? Or are you just American?

    • You are making an optimistic assumption that the conditions will be right for the forest to regrow. You would need decades of decent rainfall. Sadly, the more likely scenario is desertification.
    • So, that means after we fine - excuse me, carbon tax - Australia for the CO2 emissions, they will be eligible for a carbon tax credit in the future when the forests grow back, right?

    • Re:just to be clear.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2019 @02:08AM (#59555506) Homepage

      Just to be clear for idiots. When a tree burns down, it could be fifty years old and have stored a whole lot of carbon. When a new tree starts, it is a fucking seed and then a little twig and absorbs fuck all carbon compared to a fully grown tree and will take fifty years to catch up to the tree that burned down.

      The only thing that can be said about a catastrophically bad early fire season, is, well, it is all burnt out and there is nothing left to burn. Now comes the dust and more carbon release as a result of biological breakdown. Also to be clear the forest will not grow back until it rains, so dust will be real bad for NSW and Queensland, on the plus side the dust is iron rich and will blow out to sea and generate more plankton growth, but also the risk of algae blooms especially with warmer water.

      Overall a huge surge in carbon outputs that are not over yet, still a ways to go for the end of the bushfire season that will take decades to catch up. That first little seedling, yeah, it absorbs fuck all carbon and you know fucking what, the fire season has got months to go yet, so expect more and December is not the hottest, the hottest is yet to come, let me guess you were also waffling on about solar minimum, climate change is over, well guess what, solar minimum and record temperatures in December.

      • just to be clear.. it's Bushfires (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2019 @02:54AM (#59555528) Journal

        the fire season has got months to go yet, so expect more and December is not the hottest, the hottest is yet to come, let me guess you were also waffling on about solar minimum, climate change is over, well guess what, solar minimum and record temperatures in December.

        And it's dry. Winter was dry, usually summer is steamy. This year summer is dry, really dry. The eucalyptus trees are seeping their blue oil into the air and all it takes is some dumb fuck asshole with a cigarette to flick it out a window when they're driving to burn everything.

        Bushfires belong to the bush which has evolved to burn so that the seed casings have fertile soil and clear skys to grow into when rain eventually comes. Forests haven't evolved to burn and forests aren't bush, the bush isn't lush, it piles up leaves and bark that burn easily. It's only when you realize that the seed pods are burning as well that the fires we have are more severe than the fires that usually cause evacuations of houses and bowels.

        You never can get used to it, it's fucking terrifying.

  • There are lots of reasons to be sad and complain about wildfires. CO2 emissions is not one of them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Unless it contributed to global warming. Forests take time to grow back, that is if the climate isn't altered such that the usual rainfall required to regrow the forest hasn't been forestalled by the climate change. Having a sense of time is so important, it prevents you from spouting nonsense.

      • Forests take time to grow back, that is if the climate isn't altered such that the usual rainfall required to regrow the forest hasn't been forestalled by the climate change.

        It's ok, we aren't expecting disaster from global warming any time soon. There is time for forests to grow back.

    • CO2 emissions is not one of them.

      Other than the fact that you don't give a fuck about the climate why are CO2 emissions not something to be concerned about in a bush fire?

      Do you have an empathy limit in your body that means you only have one fuck to give per disaster?

      • Do you have an empathy limit in your body that means you only have one fuck to give per disaster?

        I have empathy, but I also know science. Why don't you? Seriously, what is your problem?

        • I have empathy, but I also know science.

          One of those two things is plainly false. If you know science then fucking act like it and maybe give a damn about CO2 emissions.

          • If you know science then fucking act like it and maybe give a damn about CO2 emissions.

            "Giving a damn" is orthogonal to "knowing science."

            Is there anything else you'd like me to clarify for you sir?

    • More CO2 means more droughts and higher temperature summers for Australia which means more bushfireswhich means more CO2... I think you get the picture. I guess eventually there won’t be any bush left to burn, so no more bushfires then? Downside is we have a fair ways to go.

      • More CO2 means more droughts and higher temperature summers for Australia which means more bushfireswhich means more CO2

        As others have mentioned, the CO2 will be removed from the atmosphere. Learn science before hysteria. I hope you get that picture, but I doubt you will.

  • Another tangible example of the planet accelerating to the next great extinction event.

  • I assume bad things are climate change and good things are just weather, but it's hard to tell sometimes.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Basically one side tries to address the problem, and the other side makes up conspiracy theories bs so they can use the one side's attempt to address the problem to get or maintain power. Some of the funding also comes from groups that would be affected by any legislation that addresses the issues.

        So they all have agendas and all want power. Go figure.

        One way to reduce some of this is to have fire breaks so fire can't spread. Ideally this should be done by cutting the trees and using the wood, though controlled burning to create a fire break is likely better than not having the break.

        I agree, but people will chain themselves to trees to stop you.

        Sometimes the solutions aren't as good as we could wish

        Sometimes life keeps getting objectively better and radical solutions seem unnecessary.

        • Clearly a dumb American. Back burning is a way of life over here, no one is going to chain themselves to a tree to stop it. Of course our conservative right-wing government doesn’t like funding our fire brigades enough to make this feasible. Dry weather conditions and an extremely early bushfire season also meant there was less opportunity.

          Guess your just another clueless yank mouthing off when you know nothing.

    • Last year’s bushfires were weather. This years bushfires areclimate change.

      What’s different? A whole lot of FACTS. I could go through them, but your probably,y our PM trolling people on Christmas and he’s too dumb to know anything that isn’t sung at him by his fellow cultists. So what’s the point?

  • Why Australia do not have an Early Warning Fire Detection System, like these: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]

    • Because in comparison to Spain, Australia is almost mind-bogglingly big and remote. For a scale that may make sense - the largest individual farms in Australia are more than twice the area of Barcelona. http://bit.ly/QVApHC [bit.ly] doesn't seem to work fantastically for me, but it's a good enough indication.

      The "Gospers Mountain" fire (the large one relatively close to me) has burned about 500,000 ha - and the adjacent fires which merged with it raise the total for that "group" to 800,000 ha.

      There's a group about 2

  • Active measures needed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by I am not a Bicycle ( 6231610 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2019 @06:54PM (#59554954)
    Part of the reason why Green activists shouldn't downplay or pooh-pooh active measures, including climate engineering that might be considered, somewhat literally, pie-in-the-sky science-fiction. If sunlight-refracting aerosols sound too nebulous for comfort, subject to the vagaries of wind currents, how about orbiting solar shades that can be unfurled at will? This doesn't have to built in one piece but made out of a constellation of satellites that could do double duty as the usual GPS and wireless communications gear. The material could be nanometres thin and still deflect enough sunlight to reduce the luminosity of the sun.
  • Because the carbon in the cellulose that makes up plants comes from CO2 in the atmosphere. So the only thing burning plant matter does is put it back into play in the atmosphere as CO2. As long as the rate at which new plants pull it out of the atmosphere keeps up, balance is maintained, and it's net carbon neutral.

    In that respect, the vast majority of CO2 emissions are natural [newscientist.com]. CO2 from fossil fuel emissions are only about 3% of total global CO2 emissions. The difference is that nearly all other emis
    • Natural CO2 emissions may have been neutral in 1900, but we've cut enough down enough trees and increased the forest fire rate enough that it'd be out of balance even without considering fossil fuel combustion or volcanoes.

      EVs do make a difference. Being 90% efficient, compared to the 30% efficiency of an ICE, is a huge energy savings. Even if it's charged by electricity from a fossil fuel plant, the fossil fuel plant can scrub pollutants out of the emissions, unlike the particulates and NOx that come out
    • The plant matter that formed coal was deposited before microorganisms breaking down wood have evolved. More recent hydrocarbon deposits are usually seabed sediments. The plankton is now the major source of CO2 absorption. Th plant matter on land would have to be actively buried underground, subject to anaerobic breakdown.

    • So it's not the mere fact that CO2 is being released into the atmosphere which makes it bad. It's the fact that CO2 is being released in excess of the ability of natural processes to remove it which makes it bad. Fossil fuel CO2 emissions are new, and plants haven't been able to keep up with the increased production of CO2 (from carbon which used to be buried underground).

      I've seen claims that the plants and other sequesterization mechanisms got ahead of volcanic emissions and have been gradually lowering t

      • Still, I recall an article here, just a few years ago (but pre-Trump), about NASA finally getting around to adding an "increased CO2's effect on plant metabolism" factor to their models.

        Hopefully. I'm surprised it got published at all.

        https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g... [nasa.gov]

    • Because the carbon in the cellulose that makes up plants comes from CO2 in the atmosphere. So the only thing burning plant matter does is put it back into play in the atmosphere as CO2. As long as the rate at which new plants pull it out of the atmosphere keeps up, balance is maintained, and it's net carbon neutral.

      Pretty sure it takes more than a few days to regrow an entire forest...

      PS: It's also the middle of a drought. Not the best time to be regrowing a whole forest without any water.
      (Cue the CO2 makes plants grow faster crowd)

  • I was watching "The Pacific" with Sam Neill recently, and the indigenous Australians were speaking reverently about burning off weeds and such as part of their culture. Seemingly related article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming/ [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      No native population attempts to burn off millions of hectares at a time. That happens when local agricultural meets regional drought, something that happens every few decades in Australia. Climate change makes that worse because it is expected to produce more and longer droughts.

      • No native population attempts to burn off millions of hectares at a time.

        The HELL they don't. American Indians, for instance, cultivated whole western states that way.

        For instance: Climax forest has low biodiversity and particularly low population of meat animals. They also run to things like Elk - big and rare. Deer much prefer the boundaries between woods and meadow, or the easy to navigate sheltered spaces under fir, while rabbits explode on grassland. (The spotted owl likes boundaries, too, nesting

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          Yes, but they didn't intend to burn million of hectares. That was a side effect.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrKaos ( 858439 )

          No native population attempts to burn off millions of hectares at a time.

          The HELL they don't. American Indians, for instance, cultivated whole western states that way.

          The current area burning is Australia is roughly equivalent to the distance from Seattle to Los Angeles. I don't think the Indians would take it that far.

        • Do you actually think those native americans burned million of hectares at once when they "set fire to a valley"?

          Or are you just spouting irrelevance? Or attempting to move some goal posts?

          • Do you actually think those native americans burned million of hectares at once when they "set fire to a valley"?

            Or are you just spouting irrelevance?

            I'm "spouting" what I heard from a Phi Alpha Theta history graduate, of American Indian descent, whose specialization included the locations, people, and period in question.

            One of the valleys in question is the Willamette, which is 3.3 million acres, a sliver over 1.3 million hectares. This is not to say they burned the whole valley at once. But it's also no

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