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Japan Earth

Japan's Cherry Blossom 'Earliest Peak Since 812' (bbc.com) 163

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The cherry blossom season, Japan's traditional sign of spring, peaked at the earliest date since records began 1,200 years ago, research shows. The 2021 season in the city of Kyoto peaked on 26 March, according to data collected by Osaka University. Increasingly early flowerings in recent decades are likely to be as a result of climate change, scientists say. The records from Kyoto go back to 812 AD in imperial court documents and diaries. The previous record there was set in 1409, when the season reached its peak on March 27.

"In Kyoto, records of the timing of celebrations of cherry blossom festivals going back to the 9th Century reconstruct the past climate and demonstrate the local increase in temperature associated with global warming and urbanization," according to an earlier paper published in the scientific journal Biological Conservation. Since about 1800, the data suggest the peak date in Kyoto has gradually been moving back from mid-April towards the beginning of the month. This year, the season began in Hiroshima on March 11, eight days earlier than the previous record, which was set in 2004, according to Japan Forward.

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Japan's Cherry Blossom 'Earliest Peak Since 812'

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  • But is it time to start building the climate engineering aircraft? [sciencedaily.com]

    From my time on this planet, if there is one thing I'm absolutely certain about, we will not cut emissions to anywhere near the level that would be required to stop climate change. I actually do no think we will cut them at all beyond what would happen anyway as renewables become more economical than oil.

    It just won't happen. Everyone wants 'the government' to fix the problem but when you ask who is prepared to give up foreign holidays, or d

    • by denzacar ( 181829 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:20AM (#61219784) Journal

      Besides going into the whole ocean acidification thing [wikipedia.org] which this doesn't solve but actually promotes...

      You are being a useful idiot.
      That unsigned piece of garbage you linked? Scroll down to references. The part that says "Peter J Irvine, David W Keith".

      Well, Dave ol boy's bread and caviar is running a business [wikipedia.org] where his main preoccupation is coming up with clever ideas how to keep those N. Murray Edwards tar sands oil dollars coming in.

      Carbon Engineering is funded by several government and sustainability-focused agencies as well as by private investors, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and oil sands financier N. Murray Edwards.[5][6][7]

      That's why he publishes crappy "studies" which are then PR-usable by people spreading FUD about renewable energy and pushing for more and longer use of fossil fuels.
      Something for oil industry to point at and claim that burning tar ain't really that bad, all things considering.

      BTW, this is the same guy who claimed that WIND POWER WILL CAUSE EVEN MORE GLOBAL WARMING. [slashdot.org]
      Oh yeah... That's also bullshit, in case you're wondering. [slashdot.org] Poor science, poor math, bullshit all the way down.

      Oh... And that "brimstone miasma dispensation by heavier than air winged aero-crafts" idea?
      That's AGAIN [slashdot.org] - Dave ol boy doin some good ole self-dealin.
      Author of the "study" is Gernot Wagner, an economist and a co-director [wikipedia.org] of Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program - with David W. Keith.

      It is pure nonsense BTW.
      It talks about tens of thousands of flights of non-existent planes (12000 flights in 2035, 60000 in 2047), which would have to be designed and built, reaching the number of around 100 planes, flown from some 40 global bases, spreading millions of tons of SO2 all over the globe...
      We're talking pan-global cooperation just so we could produce more acid rain, while also burning wast amounts of oil as money is being shoveled into aircraft industry's pockets.
      All of which does a big fat ZERO to actually reduce the carbon already in the air OR the continuous pumping and dumping of more carbon into the atmosphere, directly damaging more than just climate. [theatlantic.com]

      It's a mad scientist's masturbation fantasy for a Jules Verne world of an Empire Earth with no borders, where ecology is not yet a word.
      Which is what Dave ol boy and his ilk are.
      Dangerous kooks with mad scientist megalomania who will shill for anyone who'll pay them to create their PR slides and other FUD.
      Don't be his useful idiot.

      You want to geoengineer like a big boy? Plant some fuckin trees and demand more parks.

      A single 10-year-old tree [urbanforestrynetwork.org] will suck up some 22 kg of CO2 per year.
      Planting a forest of those is around 2.5 tons of carbon sucked up annually, per acre.

      I.e. At 45000000 tons of CO2, that we're putting out annually as a species, in 10 years we could be breaking even by planting some 18000000 acres of new forests.
      That's a mere 72843 square kilometers of new forests - or about one Czech Republic of new forests.
      Or less than a square kilometer of new forests per every 100000 humans on the planet.
      I.e. One new park per every 100k people on the planet.

      Or if you want it another way,

      • Well this is the sort of informative response I was looking for. All Iâ(TM)m saying is that I donâ(TM)t believe politicians will do anything about emissions. Yes they will talk a lot and sign climate accords but Iâ(TM)ve seen this stuff for 20 years and emissions keep growing. And the reality is that the middle class doesnâ(TM)t want to do anything about it either. I have friends who pay a few bucks into some rubbish third world tree planting carbon offset scam and see that as permission
        • No idea why you are ranting that much.
          You have an idea how much flight contributes to CO2 in percent of all?

          Guessed so ...

      • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @04:28AM (#61219876)

        I.e. At 45000000 tons of CO2, that we're putting out annually as a species, in 10 years we could be breaking even by planting some 18000000 acres of new forests.

        I beg your pardon? 45 megatonnes? We're putting out annually as a species perhaps 45 GIGAtonnes. So please adjust all your numbers by three orders of magnitude. So you're asking for 73 MILLION square kilometers of new forests, or, 53% of total land area in form of new forests (and that includes Antarctica)? Good luck with that.

        Or if you want it another way, should every US family plant 20 trees we'd zero-out the entirety of global emission of CO2.

        From your own numbers, should every US family plant 20 trees, they'd zero-out about only 1% of that family's annual CO2 emissions, which is around 45 tonnes per US family per year. It's not even compensating for that family's emissions, not to mention fixing the rest of the world.

        • I.e. At 45000000 tons of CO2, that we're putting out annually as a species, in 10 years we could be breaking even by planting some 18000000 acres of new forests.

          I beg your pardon? 45 megatonnes? We're putting out annually as a species perhaps 45 GIGAtonnes. So please adjust all your numbers by three orders of magnitude. So you're asking for 73 MILLION square kilometers of new forests, or, 53% of total land area in form of new forests (and that includes Antarctica)? Good luck with that.

          Or if you want it another way, should every US family plant 20 trees we'd zero-out the entirety of global emission of CO2.

          From your own numbers, should every US family plant 20 trees, they'd zero-out about only 1% of that family's annual CO2 emissions, which is around 45 tonnes per US family per year. It's not even compensating for that family's emissions, not to mention fixing the rest of the world.

          Then I guess we'd better get hot, if you'll pardon the pun, with technological solutions. Bitching and berating don't seem to be doing the job.

          • Industrial technological solutions have a potential for several orders of magnitude higher density of CO2 absorption than forests, so they would work. But of course avoiding emitting CO2 in the first place should be easier for now. There's still lots of fairly-low-hanging fruit like getting rid of coal and most of oil.
    • I was going to mod you, but I think I'll comment instead.
      Listen: so far as I'm concerned, if our species has to go back to an agrarian, subsistence existence, where you live and die within a days' walk of where you were born, with tech like it's 1900, then no, nobody is going to go for that. We have to find better solutions than just giving everything up, and people need to stop fighting those solutions, stop with the conspiracy theories that 'the government is trying to control us and keep us down' or wha
  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @12:57AM (#61219576) Journal

    Since about 1800, the data suggest the peak date in Kyoto has gradually been moving back from mid-April towards the beginning of the month.

    1800 was far too early to have seen any impact from AGW, indicating other factors are influencing this trend.

    • Global warming could not have affected climate in Japan? Perhaps not global, but Japan was entering the mechanized era. Many people today are not aware of the extent of coal pollution during the Steam era and what it did to local climates and local health.

      • Many people today are not aware of the extent of coal pollution during the Steam era and what it did to local climates and local health.

        That's true, I am not aware. What did coal pollution during the steam era do to local climates?

        Japan was entering the mechanized era.

        Not until 1853.

        • The pollution wasn't measured as carefully or scientifically as it is now. Measurable effects such as the retreat of glaciers have been monitored since 1850. I see your point that full industrializatoin of Japan did not start until the latter part of the 1800's.

          Industrial cities, such as London during the steam era and today, have a "heat island" and are normally several degrees Fahrenheit than their surroundings.. Pollution is one of the factors that creates it, literally "darkening the sky" in the time of

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If you look at the raw data (linked in the summary, scroll down) you can see that it only really started to move quickly in the 1950s.

      Between 1800 and 1950 it only moved about week. Since 1950 is has moved about 2 weeks, so something like 4x the previous rate of change.

    • 1800 was far too early to have seen any impact from AGW, indicating other factors are influencing this trend.

      1800 was the peak in a graph that was moving slowly indicating something we already knew: phantomfive is a moron who doesn't know how to interpret a graph.

  • Ah for the days when we had people being pedantry about the length of a season [slashdot.org].

  • by mattr ( 78516 ) <mattr.telebody@com> on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:06AM (#61219760) Homepage Journal

    I was also thinking it has been a long time since seeing yukizakura (snowfall on blooming cherry blossoms) which is beautiful. It didn't even snow this year in Tokyo I think. Although actually there seems to have been yukizakura last year, then none for 10 years before that.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • by Vandil X ( 636030 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @08:08AM (#61220148)
    We have en entire geological record that shows that, during the 4.5 billion years the Earth has existed, our world has changed. That includes extinction events.

    It will continue to do so, regardless of human activity.

    "Oceans rise, empires fall" isn't just a Broadway song lyric. That's literally the way things work.
    • by jwdb ( 526327 )

      Mass extinction events are also natural. Doesn't mean I want to be part of the upcoming mass extinction that warming will cause.

      Agreed that the Earth will be fine. We won't necessarily be, however, and while I've no idea if that matters to you, it does to me.

    • And trees will die on their own, eventually. So it doesn't matter if we cut them down. Clearly, humans have a massive impact on the earth, and yet there are deniers who think we are tiny and puny and cannot affect nature in any way. Note that Europe once had a massive forest that is only in bits and pieces these days because of human actions. The Amazon forest is still there but anyone who thinks humans are too little and puny to ever destroy it entirely are naive, and those who think the loss of the Am

    • Sure! But none of that is very germane to the current conversation, filing your taxes, or whether you should bother to go to the toilet or just shit yourself. Earth will one day be uninhabitable to humans, with 100% certainty. We could make it tomorrow if we wanted to! We can make it far closer to when the sun gets out of hand if we try, too.
    • Temperature naturally changes gradually over 10,000 years. Humans sped that up to do it in 100 years, so no thanks, I don't want most of life wiped out in the next 20 years.

  • Do we have samples from 1200 years ago that could be sequenced to compare with the modern genetics?

    Cherry trees don't become ancient - they have a lifespan and must be replaced.

    Almost certainly the arborists in Japan are selecting prize specimens for the cherry blossom display. Frankly there are probably experts on ornamental cherry generics who weren't asked for input on this article.

    Never forget Gell-Mann.

    • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      That's assuming that cherry trees cultivated for particular properties become widespread, which may or may not be the case. But in terms of selection, is early blooming selected for, or is something like size or colour of blooms? Is selection for colour also selecting for early blooming? It might be that selecting for vibrant colour selects for later blooming.
  • You can't point to an event matching one from over six centuries ago and say it is evidence of catastrophic climate change now unless there was catastrophic change then.

    That said, it is not evidence to the contrary either. Having been as warm as it is now does not mean the rate of change is healthy, just that some conditions have been similar and did not indicate disaster.

    And that is why I think this is being framed as support for the claims of climate alarmists. Perhaps they think they have to prej

  • Spring can't move! Just last week everyone here proved that the only way to measure seasons was based on the calendar!! [slashdot.org]

    Clearly the Cherry trees should be basing their bloom on a fixed offset from March 21st.

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