Department of Energy Stopping Important Global Warming Research Project

For over a decade, scientists have been working on a federally-funded research project called ‘Free Air CO2 Enrichment’ (FACE) to determine the effect of carbon dioxide on forests. Millions of dollars have already been spent pumping elevated levels of CO2 into experimental forests, and scientists say they’re on the cusp of receiving key results that may be crucial to our understanding of how global warming will affect the planet. But, the Department of Energy is ready to cut the trees down, saying they need the funding for other things.

From The Huffington Post:

That plan has upset some researchers who have spent years trying to understand how forests may help stave off global warming, and who want to keep the project going for at least a couple of more years.

“There has been an investment in these experiments and it’s a shame we are going to walk away from that investment,” said William Chameides, an atmospheric scientist at Duke University, where one of the experimental forests is located. “There is no question that ultimately we want to cut the trees down and analyze the soil. The question is whether now is the time to do it.”

Ronald Neilson, a U.S. Forest Service bio-climatologist in Corvallis, Ore., said the experiments should continue because they still have potential to answer key questions about how rainfall and fertility affect how much carbon a forest will store long-term _ essential to understanding how forests may soften the blow of climate change.

The Energy Department is insisting that cutting down the trees now and digging up the soil will allow the first real measurements of how much carbon various parts of the trees have been storing. They also say that ending the experiments will allow them to forward the funding to new research that will examine the effects of higher temperatures, changes in rainfall and variations in soil fertility.

Some of the scientists associated with the project say that if it’s stopped now, all of the time spent on this all-consuming project will be for nothing. Ram Oren, associate professor of ecology at Duke University and principle investigator of the experiments there, says “To stop an experiment that cost $55 million, $10 million before it reaches its real conclusion makes no sense to me.”

What’s the deal with the Bush Administration lately? It seems as if this is yet another part of their recent hackjob on the environment, destroying progress and ensuring that Obama’s task of cleaning up their mess is even more difficult.

Link [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Duke University

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