Analyzing Climate Change On Carbon Rich Peat Bogs 163
eldavojohn writes "A new report (PDF) from Climate Central shows that climate change has been affecting some states more than others for the past 100 years. As you can see from a video released by NASA, things have become most problematic since the 70s. Among the states most affected is Minnesota, where moose populations are estimated to have dropped 50% in the past six years. Now the U.S. Department of Energy is spending $50 million on a massive project at the Marcell Experimental Forest to build controlled sections of 36 feet wide and 32 feet tall transparent chambers over peatland ecosystems. Although peat bogs only account for 3% of Earth's surface, they contain over 30% of carbon stored in soil. They aim to manipulate these enclosures to see the effects of warming up to 15 degrees, searching for a tipping point and also observing what new ecosystems might arise. The project hopes to draw attention and analysis from hundreds of scientists and researchers around the globe."
My two cents... (Score:5, Insightful)
I seriously hope people reduce pollution for the sake of reducing pollution, regardless of whether it helps fight "climate change", "global warming", "intergalactic global warming", or whatever you want to call it. Regardless of the cause, cut pollution for the sake of cutting pollution.
I hope people take these studies with a grain of salt. There seems to be so much conflicting information out there as to what the cause is or how to reduce it, it seems hopeless. So I'll say this again. Cut pollution for the sake of cutting pollution.
Re:My two cents... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is so conflicting about people pumping up 75million years worth of hydrocarbons, burning it all over a period of 200 years, releasing a shit load of greenhouse gasses in the process, and nature going out of whack because of it?
Everybody is trying to figure out what the possible consequences of this are going to be, some predicting the end of the world, others wondering what could possibly go wrong, we've been burning fossil fuel as fast as we can for the past 50 years, and we're still here, right? Wouldn't it be more conservative to play it on the safe side, and find a way away from our gasoline addiction, instead of trying to be the kind of conservative when keeping up the unrestrained growth, consumption, and related pollution? The fact that there are probable consequences of all of this pollution, especially on a scale as large as this, should encourage us to play it safe.
Re:Somewhat welcome news (Score:5, Insightful)
A climate model does the same thing but with many more dimensions. The legislation is based on the notion that climate doesn't change and hence historical trends will be sufficient for predicting future climate. This, as another poster accurately quipped, is like a GPS based on travel times from a 100 years ago.
Winning hearts by confusing minds. (Score:3, Insightful)
Cut pollution for the sake of cutting pollution.
Problem is, a large number of people don't consider CO2 to be a pollutant [youtube.com].
There seems to be so much conflicting information out there as to what the cause is or how to reduce it, it seems hopeless
Yep, life is messy and it's often hard to find a candle in the dark [wikipedia.org], it's full of blatant self serving liars such as the one in the linked video who on the surface appear to be reasonable common sense folk, to deal with with this avalanche of intellectual dishonesty from proffesional propogandists, and avoid being drafted into their particular army of useful idiots [wikipedia.org], you can either...
1. Pick the side that best matches your politics/religion/fetish/wallet/eye-shadow/whatever and then firmly plant your fingers in your ears and start humming loudly.
2. Try to appease both sides from a seat on the fence. That's just the starting position, until you get past it, it's the equvalent of "who cares, lets just all be friends". If you actually care about the issue go back and re-choose from option 1 or 3 only.
3. Attempt to understand the issue to the point where you can routinely spot bullshit from both sides of the emotional divide, then draw your own conclusions. (see sig for further details).
If you picked option 1, you can stop reading now and use a dart board to negate your (valid) concerns. The third option is a bitch. The modern world is extrodinary evidence that it gives the best answers but stubornly refuses to deliver absolute certainty about anything. It also requires humility, time, work and critical thinking so from a practical stand point every one of us goes for option 2 in the majority of cases. (if you were redirected here from option 2 the only way out of an infinite loop is to admit you don't care enough to throw a dart)
As always if you don't understand a subject the best place to start looking is here [wikipedia.org]. For a more nuanced understanding you need to look at what the scientific community are talking about [realclimate.org]. As a young man and HS drop out this is where I went wrong, I was interested in science and since the internet had not been invented, my next best option was the public library or the news stand.
All three sources of information on science conflate science with scams, speculation, and metaphysics. Even if you could somehow magically remove all the propoganda from amoral FUD factories trying to win hearts by confusing minds there is no way for an inexperienced amature-researcher to tell the difference between (say) Nature magazine and UFO monthly. So here is some advise from someone who desrted Uri Geller's army of useful idiots 32 years ago, and please feel free to use that grain of salt on it....
1. Find the primary source, if you can't, tag article as bullshit.
2. Compare the primary source to the article that lead you there, if they conflict, tag article as bullshit.
3. What is the track record of the primary source and is it peer-reviewed, ie: does it come from Nasa, the phycic hotline, or a random slashdot post such as this one?
4. Does other scientific literature from different primary sources confirm or debunk the claims?
5. Having done the above work in 1-4 you're now in a position where you actually have a reasonable understanding of the issue and you can pretty much ignore every thing other people say and make up your own mind confident in the knowledge you arrived at your position via reason.
6. Using the decision from 5 you can now apply it to any article discussing that particular 'talking point' and pretty much ignore them other than keeping an eye out for fundemental points you hadn't thought of (if that happens
Re:Somewhat welcome news (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, the fallacies come fast and strong with that one ;) My favorite is the deadpan "In region after region, if one model predicted a tendency toward more flooding, the other tended to predict drying," as if the two can't happen in the same region, and as if both aren't forecast predictions of a warmer climate. No, clearly a region must *only* flood or *only* experience drought! There's no way that the most intense precipitation events (the ones that cause flooding) can increase as moisture in the troposphere increases, and that evaporation rates and precipitation variability increases due to warmer temperatures as well as seasonal river flow rate variability increases due to reduced snow cover can occur, alongside already-being-observed northward shifts in the jetstream and other precipitation-pattern altering events. Definitely not! ;) Apparently he's picturing that people are predicting some sort of weird hybrid drought-flood instead of discrete drought events and flood events.
Anyway, no need to read an opinion piece by a solidly-in-the-minority individual; there are ample peer-reviewed studies on the accuracy of cliamte forecasts. Now, this comes with the caveat that in the 1970s and 1980s climate science was in its infancy, and even in the 1990s there was a lot that was still being learned. And, as appropriate, the science in these time periods made clear their level of understanding, just as it does now, including discussions of mitigating factors, margins of error based on the unknowns, and so forth. The IPCC reviewed these papers in the TAR [grida.no]. Among the "well-established" conclusions (the highest confidence category): "Coupled models can provide credible simulations of both the annual mean climate and the climatological seasonal cycle over broad continental scales for most variables of interest for climate change. Clouds and humidity remain sources of significant uncertainty but there have been incremental improvements in simulations of these quantities."
The section has 416 peer-reviewed references, pretty much the whole of the modern literature on the topic. The problem with cherry picking and making un-peer-reviewed claims - aka, that entire article you linked - is that it's basically the opposite of the scientific process. Cherry picking a broad field of research and making un-peer-reviewed claims can allow someone to make virtually *any* argument in virtually *any* field, with the errors only obvious to those who work in the field. Aka, another term for it is "propaganda".
And yes, both sides do this to try to sway the public. The difference is that only one side actually has the field consensus on their side as well.
Re:Minnesota Temps wend DOWN during the last 8 yea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Somewhat welcome news (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only cherry picked (aka, of the countless papers on the subject, picking out the very few that support their point of view)... but it's not even peer reviewed.
Look, if you don't like how science works, just go ahead and say it: "I hate science". Just be honest about it and say it. Don't try to pretend like what you're doing is in any way accordant with science.
Re:My two cents... (Score:4, Insightful)
Run it out. Leave us with nothing. Then the 200 years of damage is unlikely to do much (on geological scales) to the planet at all long-term
Releasing hundreds of millions of years worth of CO2 in 200 years is going to do more damage than releasing it in 2000 or 200,000. The problem isn't the CO2, all that CO2 came from the atmosphere at one point. The problem is a rapid change in CO2 causing rapid changes in climate that species do not have time to adapt to.