Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News

Climate Science has reported that the narrow focus on carbon emissions as the dominate threat to society and the environment has unleashed unanticipated consequences (e.g., see Has The IPCC Produced A Hydra?). A recent (February 8, 2008) New York Time article by Elisabeth Rosenthal  “Biofuels Deemed A Greenhouse Threat” provide yet another example of the inappropriate and inaccurate focus on just one human influence on the climate system.

An excerpt from the article summarizes the issue,

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.

“This land use problem is not just a secondary effect — it was often just a footnote in prior papers,”. “It is major. The comparison with fossil fuels is going to be adverse for virtually all biofuels on cropland.”

Indeed, land use is not a secondary effect! This has been summarized in

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2005: Land use and climate change. Science, 310, 1625-1626

and reported in detail in the book

Kabat, P., Claussen, M., Dirmeyer, P.A., J.H.C. Gash, L. Bravo de Guenni, M. Meybeck, R.A. Pielke Sr., C.J. Vorosmarty, R.W.A. Hutjes, and S. Lutkemeier, Editors, 2004: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system. Springer, Berlin, Global Change - The IGBP Series, 566 pp.

It is time for the policy community to be more thorough in their study of the role of inadvertent human forcings and of deliberate mitigation policies on the climate system, and more generally on the environment.