Almost coinciding with climate alarm skeptic Steve Koonin's WSJ piece ('The Right Way to Ditch The Paris Agreement'), WSJ p. A12, Dec. 16) we learned of a new study by Ella Walsh and colleagues at Oxford University. They showed that warming temperatures in western Canada over the past six decades have driven increased rates of weathering reactions that release CO2. (Physics Today, December)
This ought to be a shot over the bow of climate alarm minimalists or skeptics like Koonin and Bjorn Lomborg given this was preceded (22 yrs. ago) by an even more alarming article in Eos (‘Progress Made in Study of Ocean’s Calcium Carbonate Budget’, Vol. 83, No. 34), from August 20, 2002. That paper noted that sedimentary carbonates represent the largest reservoir of carbon on Earth. The author also noted that “a third of the anthropogenic CO2 that has been added to the atmosphere since the middle of the 18th century has been absorbed by the oceans."
This means that the oceans, acting as CO2 reservoirs, have actually masked the worst effects of global warming. And that when their saturation point is reached, the spillover effect will be rapid and calamitous indeed. The analysis of Walsh and colleagues follows up on this, using water chemistry data collected from rivers in the Mackenzie River basin in Canada between 1960 and 2020.
The basin, which includes several smaller river watersheds, covers an area of about 1.8 million km2, roughly 20% of Canada. A modeling study published over a decade ago had estimated that increased temperatures, rainfall, and vegetation, all associated with climate change, would produce weathering reactions in the basin that would draw more CO2 from the atmosphere over time. The rocks’ silicate and carbonate minerals react with CO2 to form bicarbonate, which dissolves in river water and is ultimately delivered to the ocean.
According to lead author Walsh the contribution of sulfide weathering wasn’t factored into those estimates. Oxidation of sulfide minerals, like pyrite, produces sulfuric acid. To wit, we now know that acid reacts with carbonate minerals to release CO2 and dissolved sulfate to river waters. The research team analyzed the sulfate flux for individual river basins, known as catchments, within the larger system. “By looking at this catchment scale, we were able to look at what some of the possible drivers are, why some catchments have greater increases than others,” says Walsh.
Walsh and colleagues extrapolated their findings in order to reckon how much CO2 flux in the Mackenzie River basin would result from different climate change emissions scenarios, as shown in the graph. The increases—possibly several teragrams of carbon per year by the end of the century—are large enough to warrant consideration for future carbon budgets and climate models. But the high spatial variability means that accurately representing such fluxes would require conducting similar studies across other regions. Walsh says that understanding how weathering processes are affected by climate change may also be important for assessing concerns about future water quality. (E. V. Walsh et al., Sci. Adv. 10, eadq4893, 2024.)
None of this matters a whit to Steve Koonin who wrote in his WSJ piece that Trump must be adamant about withdrawing from the Paris Accord. In his specious words:
"The Paris Agreement foundered on fundamentals....Mr. Trump should highlight its failings and the absent evidence of a climate emergency as part of an explanation for our country's exit from the Agreement."
But given Trump lies like he breathes does Koonin really think it will be gulped down by Americans? Well, for sure the ones who voted him back in after his insurrection will take his BS drug once again. But if he complies watch for the rest of us to remain as he torches other climate agreements as well and sending this planet careening into more climate catastrophes.
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