[atbell]

So I haven't been posting much on this site, but I'll try and get back into it about now. Stupid economy's had me pretty damn busy lately, not to mention making a move a third of the way around the world.

In this time I was able to get a paper of mine finished, submitted and accepted to a conference on global climate change that takes place at the university of McMaster (Hamilton, ON) in May.

here's the link, which I can't officially post yet ... n00b

cctc.mcmaster.ca/index.php/cctc/2009

For those who are currious my paper takes an unconventional approach to the climate change problem. In about 2006 I wondered what would happen if global warming was considered a thermodynamic problem and not a CO2 problem. The methodolgy doesn't ignore the CO2 part of the problem but it does reduce the roll that it plays in the global energy balence system.

My overall exploration is to see how much energy human activity is causing to build up in the atmosphere. The paper that I finished explores this in terms of deforestation.

I started with the bio-chemistry of photosynthesis which is well understood and essentially beyond debate. This balenced reaction relates solar energy uptake to CO2 uptake.

The next step was to find estimates about the amount of CO2 that forest cover absorbs per year. I figured these numbers would be acurate enough for a first model, I think I used 1000 metric tonnes / year / km2 of forest.

Using both of those things it wasn't hard to assign forest cover an energy absorption value (in kJ / year / km2).

Numbers about the area of forest destroyed per year are a bit more difficult to find so this is where my confidence about the model's assumptions starts to lag. If good numbers can be found about forest destruction then the above energy absorption value can be used to figure out how much less energy is absorbed per year due to any amount of deforestation.

Finnally, the tie to global warming is the most difficult to 'prove'. Since the amount of energy not being absorbed by destroyed forest cover is known it is a fact that the energy needs to go somewhere. I don't know where it goes.

If the energy did stay in the atmosphere and acurate numbers for the mass of the atmospher are known then the direct effect on global warming can be determind.

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Summary / Conclusion

Deforestation is likely to have two effects on global warming. Firstly less forest cover means there is more CO2 in the atmosphere which contributes to the green house effect. Secondly less forest cover means there is more solar energy in the atmosphere which needs to be dispursed or stored. Since energy storage is frequently heat it's possible that the extra energy has a heating effect on the atmosphere.

The calculations in the paper suggest that the amount of extra solar energy is enough to contribute significantly to global warming but not enough to be considered a major cause.