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Volume 3 Number 4:  15 February 2000

Editorial
An Affront to All That Is Logical: We describe how illogical it is to attempt to limit anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Journal Reviews
A Thousand-Year History of Rainfall and Drought in Africa: An 1100-year reconstruction of rainfall and drought variability applicable to equatorial east Africa reveals several periods of drought over the past 700 years that were more severe than any that have occurred over the past century of global warming, once again demonstrating that predictions of more extreme weather events as a consequence of increasing global temperatures is not supported by real-world data.  On the other hand, the paper presents evidence that the decadal-scale variations in rainfall regime may have been caused by variations in solar radiation intensity.

Climate Models Fail to Adequately Calculate Atmospheric Solar Radiation Absorption: An analysis of surface and satellite observations reveals that current climate models inadequately represent the absorption of solar radiation in the atmosphere.

Climate Change of the Twentieth Century: Natural or Anthropogenic?: Some of the contributing authors to the IPCC report that concluded, with respect to the modest global warming of the past century, that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate" are now drawing conclusions that sound like they are repudiating that statement, even though they say they are not.

Decadal to Centennial Variability in the North Atlantic: A study of sediments from the southern Caribbean produces an 825-year record of climate variability that appears to be driven by variations in solar processes and is itself a driver of drought variability in North America.

Recently Discovered Source of Atmospheric Solar Radiation Absorption Is Quantified: O2×O2 and O2×N2 collisions in the atmosphere are found to absorb a significant amount of solar radiation and, according to the author, should therefore be included in atmospheric models used to simulate climate change.

Future Trends of Carbon Sequestration by the Terrestrial Biosphere: A study of the potential impacts of continuing increases in air temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration indicates that, with more of the same, earth's terrestrial biosphere will be tremendously enhanced in terms of its net productivity, i.e., size and prowess.

Terrestrial Biosphere Heals Itself: A study of the atmospheric O2/N2 trend from 1978 to 1997 reveals that, over this period of time, the terrestrial biosphere yearly sequestered an amount of carbon equivalent to all of the carbon that was released to the air as a consequence of tropical deforestation, due to a concomitant increase in the size and/or prowess of the rest of the planet's plant life.

Plant Growth and Carbon Sequestration in Terrestrial Ecosystems: Model Calculations Based on Empirical Observations: A data-constrained model of the effects of historical increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration and nitrogen deposition on terrestrial carbon sequestration comes up with a dozen intriguing conclusions.

Temperature Effects on Carbon Cycling in a Grassland Ecosystem: Soils of upland grasslands in the United Kingdom artificially warmed to 2.8°C above ambient at a depth of 2 cm exhibited equivalent increases in root birth and death rates, indicating that global warming of similar ecosystems would likely not lead to any changes in soil carbon storage.  Hence, we conclude that concurrent atmospheric CO2 enrichment would lead to enhanced carbon sequestration due to its aerial fertilization effect, which would operate independent of the null temperature effect.

Competition and Chaos: Sources of Enhanced Ecosystem Species Richness: Mathematical modeling of species interactions in the face of limited essential resources suggests that self-induced population oscillations driven by competition among species, as well as external environmental perturbations, typically tend to enhance ecosystem species richness.