Factoid:
Ice cores in Antarctica have recently shown that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher today than at any time in the last 420,000 years.
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Factoid:
According to D. James Baker, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, annual average global surface temperature has been above the long term average 20 years in a row, with 1998 the hottest year on record.
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Trees Grow Faster With More Carbon Dioxide
If atmospheric CO2 increases as expected, trees will absorb more of the greenhouse gas and grow faster. But that can't prevent global warming, scientists say.
Start Date: 5/25/99
Trees subjected to higher-than-normal concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) grow up to 25 percent faster, according to a recent study conducted at Duke University in North Carolina.
Reporting in the journal Science on May 14, 1999, Evan H. DeLucia of the University of Illinois, author of the study along with Duke's William Schlesinger, said trees grew more vigorously during a two-year period in which they were subjected to a CO2 level of 560 parts per million (ppm), compared with the current atmospheric average of about 360 ppm.
DeLucia said that his research was prompted in part by the expectation that continued burning of fossil fuels could increase the global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide by 35 to 50% by the year 2050. If this happens, the increased greenhouse effect could produce significant global warming, with potentially serious consequences.
Plants absorb and sequester CO2 as they grow. That CO2, in the form of various carbon compounds, remains locked in wood until the wood either disintegrates or is burned. DeLucia wanted to know what effect, if any, increased tree growth might have on cutting down the anticipated increase in CO2 over the next 50 years.
He concluded that global forest growth might absorb about half the increase in CO2 -- good news, but not as good as hoped. "Trees alone are not going to solve this problem for us," DeLucia says.
 Excelsior, Michael Lindemann's new novel (written under the pen name Michael Paul), depicts a wholly plausible near future in which human cloning is both widespread and widely abused; terrorists have access to target-specific biological weapons; recreational space travel is commonplace; and mounting pressures of global climate change, environmental decline, population growth and civil unrest inspire radical new approaches to urban security.
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Humankind's Grave Impacts on the Natural World
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Antarctic Summit on Fishing, Environment, Tourism
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La Nina Probably Contributed to Huge Tornadoes
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