The atmosphere is changing much faster than ever before.  The rate of CO2 in ppm. increased by 25% in 2024. Explore declining carbon capture by plants with world recognized expert Dr. Pep Canadell, Chief Research Scientist  CISRO Australia & Exec. Dir. of the Global Carbon Project. Computer guru and security expert Richard Power says global warming is a threat far more serious than terrorism.  A critical conversation with Richard, recorded in 2007.  It is spooky how much this interview speaks to right now.

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

 

FULL INTRODUCTION

Every day brings news shocks and horrors. Did you miss this one: the atmosphere is changing faster, much faster, than ever before.  The parts per million rate of increase of the prime greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, increased by 25% more than the increase in 2023.  That unexpected jump means faster ice loss, sea level rise, record heat and more extreme weather – in two words: climate change.  Yes, fossil burning emissions also set new records, but nowhere near enough to explain the new burst of carbon in the air.

New science reveals the cause: natural systems soaking up our excess carbon are declining, on both sea and land.  This frightening development takes us closer to a series of climate emergencies, no matter what other human stories fill our minds.  We explore declining carbon capture by plants with a world recognized expert: Dr. Pep Canadell, Chief Research Scientist for CISRO Australia and Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project.

The new Trump Administration dumped Pentagon plans for climate change.  It’s all “a hoax” they said. But climate is a national security threat.  Denial is also a national security threat. In these days, when car vandals are labeled “terrorists”, computer guru and security expert Richard Power, advisor to top corporations, says global warming is a threat far more serious than terrorism.  We dive back into a critical conversation with Richard, recorded in 2007.  It is spooky how much this interview speaks to today.

PLANTS ARE CAPTURING LESS OF OUR CARBON POLLLUTION…

…that is a big problem.

PEP CANADELL

I know, I know.  The world seems to be on fire right now. With a one-man tornado, who can pay attention to anything? But suppose, just suppose, in this riveting human drama, the natural world goes bad, oblivious to human affairs.  Suppose there was a way to measure that, to really know about changes that affect our lives.  That would be science.  But even there, we can discover false assumptions and strange new truths.

For climate change, the root is carbon dioxide.  But understanding global carbon is not easy.  Fortunately, we have as our guide a world-recognized scientist.  Dr. Josep Canadell is Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project, and Chief Research Scientist at Australia’s premier research institute, CSIRO.  Known to all as “Pep”, Dr. Canadell is author of more than 240 peer-reviewed science papers.  In 2021, Reuters named him the 8th most influential climate scientist in the world.  His science journalism in The Conversation gets millions of reads.

From Canberra Australia, we welcome Pep Canadell back to Radio Ecoshock.

Listen to or download this half hour interview with Pep Canadell in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

 

Dr. Canadell just published a Perspective article in the latest issue of Science.  It is called “Looking beyond the trees for carbon storage”.  That accompanies a new study from Yinon M. Bar-On from the California Institute of Technology.  Dr. Bar-On’s 2018 PhD thesis was published in PNAS as “The biomass distribution on Earth”.  It was ground-breaking and heavily cited.  That was the paper that found “the mass of humans is an order of magnitude higher than that of all wild mammals combined.”

Bar-On’s new paper is “Recent gains in global terrestrial carbon stocks are mostly stored in nonliving pools” doesn’t sound very exciting.  But it provides new visions of where carbon is stored, and how it leaks out.  The Abstract says, for example:

“Analyzing global observational datasets of changes in terrestrial carbon pools,  we found that ~35 ± 14 gigatons of carbon (GtC) have been sequestered on land between 1992 and  2019, whereas live biomass changed by ~1 ± 7 GtC. Global vegetation models instead imply that  sequestration has been mostly in live biomass. “

I assume this means all existing vegetation models – “dynamic global vegetation model” (DGVM)” – in the carbon cycle field now have to be recalibrated.

A BIT OF BETTER NEWS

There is some good news: the soil carbon is more stable than we thought, which could mean it will leak out fairly slowly, although we don’t know for sure – as the new heating experiment progresses here on Earth.

“Most terrestrial carbon gains are sequestered as nonliving matter and thus are more persistent than previously appreciated, with a substantial fraction linked to human activities such as river damming, wood harvest, and garbage disposal in landfills.” (Bar-On et al 2025).

Then we have many gigatons of carbon stored in the trunks and branches of all woody plants.  That has been the focus for the public, and for climate models we count on.  This new work by Bar-On and his six colleagues finds carbon below ground level is more important for the atmosphere than all the forests and grasslands we counted on.  It also means a super-important pump that has been capturing up to a third of every ton of carbon we emit – is grabbing less – and heading toward emitting more from the soil.

That means our calculations of how much carbon could go into the atmosphere before 2 degrees of warming is reached are no longer correct.  We have a much smaller margin for carbon emissions (if any).  It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this Bar-On et al study!  There is a game-changing difference in the whole carbon cycle, and it is not in our favor.  You will hear more about this in next week’s Radio Ecoshock.

There is an unseen universe of living things under the ground.  Even before we get to bacteria, for every human on the planet, there are roughly 60 billion tiny worms, the nematodes. Like all life on Earth, they are made out of carbon.  The underground contains many times more carbon than the total in our atmosphere.  It’s fate may determine our future, and whether we have a future.  Yet hardly anyone will hear about this.

CLIMATE CHANGE WILL ACCELERATE

The headline in an article at phys.org is: “Climate change ‘will accelerate’ owing to decline in natural carbon storage, says study”.  That is based on this paper: “Natural sequestration of carbon dioxide is in decline: climate change will accelerate” by James and Samuel Curran, 15 January 2025.  More on that next week too.

If living plants are less important than organic carbon in the soil, here is what we really need to know:  Has microbic life, that breaks down carbon in soil, – has it increased with warming, thus speeding up release of that deeper pool of carbon?  It is scary that we do not really know.

The common presumption is that bacteria in the soil will increase with warming.  But a February 2024 study from scholars at the University of Vienna finds types of bacteria will change, but not necessarily an increase in living carbon from that source.  There is so much we do not know about how this planet operates when humans turn up the thermostat.  See this explainer at Science Daily.

The balance of carbon going into or out of the soil seems to have changed just since the 1990’s.  Global plant capture goes up and down.  But the trend over decades is down, meaning they capture less and less.

The study by the Currans (cited above) says:

“This analysis confirms that the rate of natural sequestration of CO2 from the atmosphere by the terrestrial biosphere is now declining, having reached a peak in 2008. Previous to that date, sequestration had been increasing by as much as 0.8% per year in the 1960s and, if the trend had continued, would have reduced current annual increments in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by over 30%.”

WILDFIRES AND CARBON IN THE ATMOSPHERE

On another note, in an earlier Perspective in Science Canadell pointed out wildfires released unprecedented surges of CO2 emissions – in Siberia in 2021 and Canada in 2023.  He confirms those events accelerate climate change.

We find this in an October 2024 study with G. Hugelius and other authors including Canadell. in “Global Biogechemical Cycles” (AGU):

“The net CO2 sink in Boreal forests and wetlands is largely offset by fires and inland water CO2 emissions as well as CH4 emissions from wetlands and inland waters, with a smaller contribution from N2O emissions.”

Environmental journalist Stephen Leahy has a good article about all this: “Is Our Luck Running Out?  Nature is being less helpful with our carbon pollution” (March 21, 2025 on substack).

WORRY ABOUT OCEAN CARBON

Also, not all soil carbon goes up into the atmosphere.  Some is taken away be water, ending up in the ocean.  If the ocean contains many times more carbon than either the land or the atmosphere, is that stable?  Should we worry about ocean carbon?

The ocean contains more than ten times the amount of carbon stored in the soil.  Humans don’t address that.  Some think we can change carbon in the sea, in a positive way toward cooling.  Geoengineering by iron dumping to promote plankton was one such attempt, but the results are difficult to measure with any certainty.

In 2009, scientists from New Zealand and Australia, along with other international collaborators, conducted the Southern Ocean Iron Release Experiment (SOIREE), using a research ship to test whether adding iron to the Southern Ocean would stimulate phytoplankton blooms and lead to carbon sequestration.   The experiment did produce a phytoplankton bloom,  but the vast majority of the bloom was consumed by zooplankton near the surface, and the carbon dioxide absorbed by phytoplankton did not sink to the ocean floor in large quantities as hoped.

CARBON FARMING?

Back in 2011, I interviewed a Vermont carbon farmer, Abe Collins. He was part of “the soil carbon challenge”, along with Peter Donovan.  They attempted to get “carbon farming” recognized in the New England carbon trading scheme.  Then it seemed like tree planting became a more popular solution.  With this new study, were these carbon farming folks on to something?

 

 

FOUR DEGREES

I covered the conference “Four Degrees Or More? Australia in a Hot World” back in 2011.  When Pep Canadell and I last talked in 2018 we dared to ask: is even 2 degrees C of warming just a dream now?  Just recently, the Government of France announced they were planning adaptation for 4 degrees.  Is it madness to think this civilization could survive a world 4 degrees hotter global mean temperature?  Pep Canadell does not think we will go that far.  Early presumptions of 4 degrees C assumed humans would continue to burn lots and lots of coal.

 

 

Pep Canadell says we are not going to 4 degrees because coal is on the decline.  Personally, I disagree – after seeing figures that coal burning reached a record high in 2024.  While America and Europe scaled back coal, China continues to build new coal-fired power plants and coal is India’s main strategy for the future, according to the Modi government.  Renewables are coming, but not here yet, with enough power to completely phase out coal.  Oil and gas burning continues at massive rates and greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 were higher than ever before.

According to the Mauna Loa Observatory, in 2024 CO2 increased by 3.58 parts per million.  That is the biggest jump ever recorded, something like 25% higher than 2023.  The EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service reports a lower number, an increase of  2.9 ppm in 2024.  Either way, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is climbing faster than ever.

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CLIMATE CHANGE IS

THE BIGGEST NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT

RICHARD POWER

“We’ve tipped, but that doesn’t mean it’s over.”

– Richard Power on Radio Ecoshock

Two decades ahead of it’s time, this 2007 interview with Richard Power speaks so well now.  Whether the new fear is autonomous killer drones or city-busting nuclear suitcases, the real mega-threat to humanity and all life in this Epoch – is climate change.  Here Richard explains his journey from Cyber-security threat analyst for major corporations to climate realist.  Richard advised major corporations and appeared on TV networks, and mainstream news like the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. This interview from Radio Ecoshock September 21st, 2007 speaks to us now.  So little has changed, for those of us who peer into the future.

Listen to or download this 23 minute interview with Richard Power in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

 

Richard Power was Director of Global Security Intelligence for Auditors and Risk Management company Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.  After this interview he was appointed Distinguished Fellow & CyLab Director of Strategic Communications at Carnegie Mellon University.  In retirement after 2015, Richard became a Yoga teacher.  You can find him on LinkedIn.

In the Richard Power interview I refer to this document:

“An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its Implications for United States National Security”

by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in California (2003).  They looked at “The Day After” scenario, where the North Atlantic current known at AMOC slows or stops and both New England and UK/Northern Europe get much colder, as befits their latitude without a warming current.

UNDERGROUND SCIENCE – TALK TO ME

Just so you know: communication with scientists iced over in recent weeks.  A French scientist arriving in Houston last week – representing the top science institute – was investigated and then turned back by border authorities.  They downloaded his phone, found criticism of Trump Administration cuts to science, and confiscated his laptop.

Another American science conference is already advising burner phones for attendees.  Abstracts for all presentation will not be published in advance.  Even the Abstract is a secret for those in the room.  Underground science, that is where things stand in America.  The radicalized FBI and the whole machinery of government is attacking science, individual scientists, and whole Universities.  Brainy heroes are the new villains, they say.

By necessity, you will hear more voices from Europe and Australia on Radio Ecoshock.  Fortunately, we already have a full stock of over a thousand interviews with top scientists and experts on the program.  I’m combing through those for voices we need to hear again.

This is a good time for your listener suggestions.

In these crazy times, while big systems shift, who do we need to hear?  Send your ideas and guest suggestions by email to this address: radio at ecoshock.org.  Or just send an email to report local developments where you are.  What are people saying?  What is going on?  You can use the Contact form on this site if you prefer.

We will get through this better together.  I’m Alex.  Thank you for listening, and yeah, keep caring about our world.  Please donate to help keep this going if you can.