Erosion is not the result of global warming. Erosion is the largest source of CO2 on Earth. It's an order of magnitude larger than all fossil fuel combustion combined.
http://soilcarboncenter.k-state.edu/carbcycle.html
Not picking on you specifically. It's a common misunderstanding. The media has badly misinformed people in an effort to push an agenda.
Your source and almost the entire amount of professional and informed review on this subject recognises the fossil fuels additional output is of great effect and danger to global climate.
a) Reduce erosion by 10%
b) reduce fossil fuel combustion by 100%
Soil oxidation and erosion should not be confused as the same process.
Well you probably certainly showed me. I'm glad we resolved that argument and can now continue doing nothing to solve problems like the destruction of arable soils.
It'll be interesting to see what boogeyman agribusiness can dream up after we've all switched over to solar and it can't shout about "muh fossil fuels" anymore.
It is "likely completely impossible" to reduce global soil erosion by 10% because when you consider that it includes all soil erosion globally (running off the sides of Mongolia.. Amazon.. Siberia.. etc.) -- I hope you can appreciate it is not what you took it to be at first glance.
62 gigatons of CO2 from soil erosion/oxidation
5 gigatons from fossil fuel combustion
If this were code paths and milliseconds, where would you start? I need to save 5ms, do I go for a 10% optimization in one function or do I eliminate a critical function? Hmm, would your brain really be this disconnected in that circumstance? Your conclusion is not rational.
You blame the source for your position. I know how the source arrives at fossil fuels. Soil science is in the agriculture department. You don't get far blaming the problem on farmers in a classroom full of farmers.
What I don't understand is how you manage to throw out all logic and reason on such a simple optimization problem. Your conclusions seem beyond reason. You can't look at that chart and draw your own conclusion? Did you even read the article?
"Across the country, farmers decided not to re-enroll 15.8 million acres of farmland in the CRP when those contracts expired between 2007 and 2014."
Hmm, 2007, hmmm,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01...
Brilliant idea. Let's burn the food and tear up new crop land to do it. We can actually make global starvation worse and increase atmospheric CO2 at the same time. It's like you have a vested interest in raising the price of corn at the expense of everything else. "LOL, we'll call it renewables!"
Maybe you aren't looking at solving the problem at all. Maybe you want to mislead everyone like the media does. Follow the money, as always.
The term is "organic matter oxidation/erosion", sorry ive not the time to explain at length what this term means when I already have highlighted its obvious meaning, but that is what you should revise if you wish to understand my correction to this thread. -- It is not a function which we know we have any significant control over.
Also engineering solutions to global environmental disturbance is no simple matter as shaving milliseconds here or there is. Even if the term "oxidation/erosion" meant what you took it to mean, and if we could adjust that global phenomenon as we wish we could, the effect and side effects of the adjustment are liable to further confound the aim to stabilise the system. (The system whose stability we depend on for everything, which can not be simply rolled back or upgraded)
>Maybe you want to mislead everyone like the media does.
Ive been observing media manipulation against knowledge of global warming, (and many other industrial wrongs) since the 1990s. Its an exasperating form of double-duping that after the achievement of the Copenhagen consensus, the oil funded message of denial started convincing people that it was the science which was a product of manipulation. As you are obviously thoughtful, open minded and concientious, i do hope you realise in time the true absurdity of the idea that AGW science is the product of manipulation and the oil industries are the victim of such a "green conspiracy".
"Before the industrial revolution, the main source of fluctuation in atmospheric carbon was from changes in biomass and soil organic carbon. Now, fossil fuel burning is the greatest factor in atmospheric carbon fluctuations."
Lots of carbon is absorbed into the soil and lots is released as part of the normal carbon cycle, with the net effect being:
"The soil organic matter pool is currently losing about 1 to 2 gigatons of carbon per year to the atmospheric pool."
> Erosion is not the result of global warming
If global warming causes more droughts, and droughts cause soil loss, then isn't global warming contributing to erosion?
Take permafrost, for instance. A small increase in the temperature might lead to an even bigger one. This is well documented.
Storms lead to weathering. Weathering is a carbon sink.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883292711...
>Your point is valid, but your cause and effect are backwards from chicob's.
Ice cream doesn't lead to hot summer days. It's the other way around. Erosion exposes further, deeper, top soil to erosion. By the time layer 1 is eroded to expose layer 2, layer 1 is already a done deal. You can pave over it if you like, but the CO2 is already gone. Close the barn! The horses escaped... too little, too late.