On Sun, 10 Oct 2004, a Guardian article was quoted that was titled
> Scientists bewildered by sharp rise of CO2 in atmosphere for second year
> running
Although such a sharp and sudden increase is probably best explained by one-off contemporary natural events, the impetus it provides to meditate on the various ways in which global warming might possibly accelerate reminded me of one they left out. On a recent segment on "NOW With Bill Moyers and David Brancaccio," they interviewed a scientist from Berkely who set up an experiment in an alpine meadow in the Rocky Mountains. He and his team suspended heaters on wires over a tract of land in order to make it five degrees hotter and see what happened over the course of many years. The result, which was kind of shocking, was that carbon was leached out the soil directly into the air, a process hitherto not foreseen, and which if true in general, would mean global warming would happen much faster than any current model predicts.
You can see the entire transcipt at:
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript338_full.html
The segment is short, near the end, and easy to find: search for John Harte, the name of the scientist in charge of the experiment.
Michael