Are Carbon Sinks Turning Into Carbon Sources?
Ten-year warming window closing Sydney Morning Herald, May 12, 2007 Climate change change may have passed a key tipping point that could mean temperatures rising more quickly than predicted and it being harder to tackle global warming, research suggests. Scientists at Bristol University say a previously unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in recent years is due to more greenhouse gas escaping from trees, plants and soils. Global warming was making vegetation less able to absorb the carbon pollution pumped out by human activity. Such a shift would worsen the gloomy predictions of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned last week that there is less than a decade to tackle rising emissions to avoid the worst effects of global warming. The prediction came as an equally stark warning was issued that global warming was contributing to increased conflict over dwindling resources. At the moment about half of human carbon emissions are re-absorb
