{"id":68345,"date":"2024-05-23T18:33:54","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T23:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68345"},"modified":"2024-05-23T18:33:54","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T23:33:54","slug":"trillions-of-tons-of-carbon-are-missing-from-climate-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68345","title":{"rendered":"Trillions of Tons of Carbon Are Missing from Climate Models"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-header\">\n<h3 class=\"post-title unpublished\"><a href=\"https:\/\/guymcpherson.substack.com\/p\/trillions-of-tons-of-carbon-are-missing\">Trillions of Tons of Carbon Are Missing from Climate Models<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"available-content\">\n<div class=\"body markup\" dir=\"auto\">\n<div id=\"youtube2-t2L7C-Jjdys\" class=\"youtube-wrap\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;videoId&quot;:&quot;t2L7C-Jjdys&quot;,&quot;startTime&quot;:null,&quot;endTime&quot;:null}\" data-component-name=\"Youtube2ToDOM\">\n<div class=\"youtube-inner\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/t2L7C-Jjdys?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0\" width=\"728\" height=\"409\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Draft script<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p>From\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/science\/environment\/a60502570\/trillions-of-tons-of-carbon-missing-climate-models\/\" rel=\"\">Popular Mechanics comes this headline on 22 April 2024: Trillions of Tons of Carbon Are Missing from Climate Models<\/a><\/em>. The story begins with three bullet points: (1) While the world\u2019s soils are home to lots of organic carbon\u2014such as leaf litter and animal waste\u2014inorganic carbon, which is often in the form of solid carbonates, can also leak into the atmosphere. And it isn\u2019t accounted for by current climate models; (2) A new study focuses on the role of soils as both a storage for and emitter of carbon, and found that 23 billion [metric] tonnes of inorganic carbon could escape soil over the next 30 years; and (3) Good land management\u2014as well as other practices, such as afforestation and improved rock weathering\u2014can help slow down this significant source of CO<sub>2<\/sub>.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the lede: \u201cThe sole purpose of people and programs combating climate change is finding ways to keep carbon\u00a0<em>out<\/em>\u00a0of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/science\/environment\/a42419040\/what-are-atmospheric-rivers\/\" rel=\"\">atmosphere<\/a>.\u201d The first paragraph continues: \u201cPlanting trees is a big help, as their woody roots lock away carbon for decades, and companies are hard at work trying to find artificial means of sucking greenhouse gasses from the air and sequestering it underground. But in this obsession with tracking CO<sub>2<\/sub>\u00a0levels, one significant source of both emission\u00a0<em>and<\/em>\u00a0storage has been overlooked\u2014the soil.\u201d A minor detail is worthy of mention: Planting trees is not necessarily a big help, as I pointed out previously in this space.<\/p>\n<p>The article goes on: \u201cthe top two meters of soil beneath our feet currently hold roughly 2.3 trillion [metric] tonnes of inorganic carbon\u2014five times more than all of the terrestrial plants on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/science\/environment\/a60333710\/earth-rotation-leap-second\/\" rel=\"\">Earth<\/a>\u00a0<em>combined<\/em>.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trillions of Tons of Carbon Are Missing from Climate Models Draft script: From\u00a0Popular Mechanics comes this headline on 22 April 2024: Trillions of Tons of Carbon Are Missing from Climate Models. The story begins with three bullet points: (1) While the world\u2019s soils are home to lots of organic carbon\u2014such as leaf litter and animal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[112,141,9104,34638,32966,1091],"class_list":["post-68345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-carbon","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-modelling","tag-co2-levels","tag-nature-bats-last","tag-soil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68346,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68345\/revisions\/68346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}