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."
Somewhat welcome news (Score:5, Interesting)
So in a sense the fact that scientists in the U.S are still able to openly conduct this sort of research is good news, even if the discoveries they make are bad.
Re:Minnesota Temps wend DOWN during the last 8 yea (Score:5, Interesting)
The link you provided only lists temperature by month, which are you referring to? Isn't this the very definition of cherry picking data to prove your point? Why look at only an 8yr period when there is data going back to 1895?
If we can pick our point first and then choose the data, look at this study which says MN has experienced the highest temperature increase over the last 40 years. http://www.startribune.com/local/158771045.html
Nobody said the temperature has increased 15C, the article only says that is what the experiment is testing up to (actually it doesn't say 15C or 15F). This is standard engineering practice to stress test a system beyond the "norms" to simulate longer periods of time than is reasonable to test.
Declining Meese Populations (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if the decline is real, or if it's a sampling error. From the paper:
We estimated moose numbers and age/sex ratios by flying transects within a stratified random sample of survey plots (Figure 1). Survey plots were last stratified in 2009.
Could the stratification of plots be a source of error? I am not sure. They did account for viability bias:
We accounted for visibility bias by using a sightability model (Giudice et al. 2012).
But, did they properly account for a number of other sources of error (e.g. migration; herd location; etc)? I'm not saying their method is flawed, just that I cannot tell from the paper whether or not other reasons for the change in data.
Re:Like they need another alarmist plot point (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok,. climate changes. Within ten thousands of years. Climate change within 100 years didn't happen before except after catastrophical events like continent wide volcanism or a large meteorite impact. And you know what? After such events, regularly 50 percent or more of all higher lifeforms vanished. Those events occur about every 100 million years and are called major extinction events [wikipedia.org].
In textbooks from the 1960ies, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was given at 280 ppm. When I was in school, we learned that the CO2 level in the atmosphere is 330 ppm. Today we are at 400 ppm. So we managed to increase the CO2-level for 40 percent within 50 years. And today we have the highest amount of coal, gas and oil usage in history, far higher than in the 1960ies, pointing to an even higher increase in CO2 emittance than ever. If you still believe, we can't change the world wide climate, you have to have very strong arguments for the contrary. Just some handweaving "It won't be that bad as predicted" won't suffice.
I live in the Alps. We have the lowest glacier coverage here since recorded history (which partly goes back to the Roman Empire). Ötzi the Ice Man [wikipedia.org] came uncovered after 5300 years in the ice of the glacier, because the glacier was at an all time low at that time -- obviously at least the lowest level since 5300 years. Don't give me anything of "anecdotical evidence", when we can measure the change.
Re:My two cents... (Score:5, Interesting)
We've done a lot worse than just burn the coal and oil. Hell, most of the substances we use everyday just do not exist in nature and there are billions of pieces of plastic floating in the oceans that weren't there 50 years ago. You don't get mercury pouring into the oceans if you just leave a planet without intelligent life.
But, that aside, just what precisely do you think will change? You're going to stop the world using oils, plastics and fuels before they run out anyway? Not a chance. It will not happen. It took decades to convince people not to use CFC's in large quantities but we still use them, and only converted because it was legislated, enforced and (to be honest) wasn't that much of a hassle in the first place. Cutting out the large items is actually orders-of-magnitude more difficult and unlikely to happen. And, actually, enforcing a "veggie-only" law and outlawing meat for everyone would actually do more, be cheaper and be accepted just as much (i.e. virtually zero).
Anything we build to replace those plastics and oil that we used will also require HUGE quantities of exactly those at first in order to scale up to the point where we replace them. Don't believe the hype about "sustainable" plastics because they are pretty much unusable for all the things we NEED to use plastics for, and cost SO MUCH ENERGY we can only supply it by burning fossil fuels or uranium. It's the "electric car" phenomenon all over again - you're just shifting the use of those materials and energies somewhere else instead, not actually "saving" anything.
Pretty much the only viable solution, when you take human nature into account (and not just ordinary individuals, who can do more eco-friendly things than governments ever do, but just the fact that you can't convince a country to stop using oil any more than you can outlaw meat), is to let them burn it all off.
Do the damage now. Do it as fast as possible. 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, and we won't have any excuse for not doing things differently. We'd actually lose quite a lot of things we take for granted up to and including our own lives in some cases (you can't sustain population numbers like we have now without the medicine and energy use we currently have). But that's the only "logical" outcome when you look at how the world works.
Stop faffing about pretending that an extra few years of oil before we suddenly make everything eco-friendly is going to make ANY difference at all. Just burn the stuff now. All of it. Run out the plastics until the prices rises to stupendous levels and we're forced to go back to older ways (which included chopping down and burning tress, I'd like to point out), reduce the population, or revert society back to an age where people couldn't guarantee food for themselves, let alone homes.
The problems of eco-destruction are nothing to do with climate change, animal extinctions or anything else. The problem is that when we run out, you have instantaneous anarchy and a dark-ages effect of not being able to do 1% of the things we take for granted. But actually, the BIGGEST problem is that our population would be decimated worldwide almost overnight. We can't grow, transport, store and treat enough food to feed people without consuming oil and oil-products galore. And have you seen the amount of fertile land it takes to sustain one person in even a third-world country? There simply isn't enough.
So stop TRYING to pretend we can actually do anything practical which doesn't lead to the same population decimation +/- 5 years anyway, accept it and burn the damn stuff up now finding alternatives. Hell, if that means space missions to find more resources (e.g. methane or something else we can burn) and other places to live, then do it. Do it now. Stop hanging around and pissing away resources on eco-initiatives that DO NOT WORK while waiting until the point that there isn't enough f
Other Factors (Score:4, Interesting)
Moose populations are probably a poor indicator, especially in areas near the edges of their normal habitat. These are affected by deforestation, marsh draining, and more importantly, do not mix well in areas that also have deer (or so I'm led to believe) due to a disease frequently found in deer feces.
Re:Somewhat welcome news (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not just "openly" conducting the research, they're doing it with money from the government. So actually the situation is even better than you think.
Yes - as I said, it is fortunate that in some countries research which contradicts the prevailing view of the government and it's financial 'contributors' (such as the Heartland Institute) is allowed to continue, at least outside of North Carolina. In Australia such intellectual honesty is not permitted - governments threaten errant scientists with a loss of funding, while denialists openly threaten their lives and the lives of their families.
The government not only approves of what they do - it actually pays them to do it!
"Approves" is not the word you are looking for - tolerates, for the time being, might be more realistic description
(Don't worry! This source of funding does not in any way influence the results. Honest. There's no pressure to produce results that help to get more grant money in the future.)
I'm not actually that worried about the big money affecting the science - various attempts have been made (e.g. Lindzen ) but failed. The big money owns the policy makers and will continue to do so despite the blindingly obvious truth that the science is giving us.
Re:Somewhat welcome news (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, so things are going to hell in a handbasket and if we continue burning pretty much anything we are all doomed. Right?
There is one huge problem with this. People are pretty subborn about strong beliefs. So much so that they tend towards behaviors that will induce other people with different beliefs to kill them and they go willingly to their deaths rather than abandon their beliefs. You know, the whole "Give me liberty or give me death" sort of thing. Joan of Arc, etc. Got it?
So where are the "climate martyrs?"
Let's start with with something simple: Resolved: Coal burning power plants will kill millions of people if not billions if they are not turned off right now. Can we agree with that? No? I thought this was pretty much settled science... Well, let's just pretend that this is an established fact in some people's minds, OK? So, if it is that critical to the lives of millions of people why are these power plants still operating? How many dedicated martyrs would it really take to shut down all the coal burning power plants in the USA and keep them that way for at least five or ten years? Fewer than 100 people, I assure you. Possibly only 10. Can we not find 10 people whose beliefs are strong enough in destructive (and fatal) human-induced climate change to do this job?
No, we cannot. There aren't 10 people that could get together and agree on this course of action. Now it is understood that humans do not work well together without a strong leader, and other than perhaps Al Gore there is no strong leader in this area. So we are clearly lacking leadership. But I would say that even more importantly we are lacking strong conviction. Early Christians were martyred by the hundreds because of a religious belief and often killed in incredibly bizzare and painful ways to make it obvious to the upcoming victims that this was not a course they wanted to pursue - and yet they did because of the strength of their beliefs. Nobody wrote about the undoubted thousands that repented, confessed and were excused from the "final proceedings" but it is certain that there were plenty of those. All we have records of are the multitudes that did not cast aside their beliefs.
It is also important to understand that should the climate be changing solely because of human induced causes that the folks (likely martyrs) that were to stop it - by destroying the fabric of the carbon-spewing economy we have - would be hailed as saints and saviors in a pretty short period of time. People would certainly be able to go proudly around saying that their parent, brother or sister was one of the few that tipped the balance in favor of human survival.
So where are the martyrs? Does no one have strong enough beliefs that they are willing to step up and take direct action? Apparently not.
The other side of this is, of course, that should a few people find strength in their beliefs and embark on a campaign of destroying the carbon-spewing economy and the climate still continued to shift in undesirable directions these people (and their relatives and offspring) would be considered destructive fools, traitors to the human race and causing unimaginable suffering in the name of a mistaken belief. I really do not think this would have any affect on folks with very strong beliefs but it is a sobering thought for the rest of us sitting around watching.
Re:Somewhat welcome news (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, used to determine the greybody temperature that is the base from which the Greenhouse Effect proceeds to warm the planet? Since the energy influx that has to be in balance with outgoing radiation is TOA insolation less radiation that is directly reflected to space due to albedo, raising albedo directly reduces the greybody temperature. It (as you can see, given a 7% modulation over 15 years as determined by two distinct NASA experiments that track it, one satellite based and the other the Earthlight project) is actually by far the largest direct modulator of expected surface temperatures and an absolutely trivial computation suffices to show that the 7% change translates into a baseline greybody temperature shift of roughly 2 K.
As for the other assertions, obviously we look at different graphs for sea ice -- the SH is over the 30 year mean and has been for a rather long time. The NH has been lower, but this winter meandered up well within a S.D. of the 30 year mean. If you google a bit, you can actually see the variation year by year over the last decade or more, all on one graph. And I'm not mistaking cycles for linear trends -- I'm saying that nobody knows why the albedo has increased, just as nobody knows why it was a minimum during the heating of the 80s and 90s. Oh, and while you're worrying about explaining how you can tell what is a linear trend and what is cyclic in the absence of any sort of serious baseline for data or workable theory, you might think about the NASA report that stratospheric H_2O has (again for unknown reasons) dropped by roughly 10% over the last five years. That has a strong net cooling effect too -- predictions (from the NASA papers) estimate roughly 0.5 K, which is interestingly on the same close order of as the total "warming" observed post 1945. One might be tempted to conclude that warming was correlated strongly with albedo variations and variations of stratospheric water vapor -- or not. But either way the physics of both is perfectly clear, and any halfway decent climate model that includes the measured albedo as a parameter should be showing strong cooling.
But they're not, even though this is bone-simple physics even more fundamental (and prior to) the GHE. I wonder why?
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