Oregon Conifers Suffer Record Die-Off As Climate Crisis Hits Hard (theguardian.com) 116
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have discovered a record number of dead fir trees in Oregon, in a foreboding sign of how drought and the climate crisis are ravaging the American west. A recent arial survey found that more than a million acres of forest contain trees that have succumbed to stressors exacerbated by a multi-year drought. Images released by the US forest service show Oregon's lush green expanses dotted with ominous swathes of red. "It is stunning," said Daniel DePinte, an aerial survey program manager with the Forest Service who led the agency's Pacific north-west region aerial survey, noting that this year saw the highest mortality rate for firs in this area in history. These evergreen conifers are less able to survive in drought conditions than other heartier trees that line the landscapes.
He and his colleagues scanned the slopes from planes several times between June and October, detailing the devastation on digital maps. During that time, it became clear that this year would be unlike anything he had seen before. The report is still being finalized but dead trees were spotted in areas across 1.1m acres of Oregon forest. The scientists have taken to dubbing it "firmageddon." "The size of this is enormous," DePinte said. "A lot of people out there think climate change is just impacting the ice caps or some low-level island out there but it is actually impacting right here in our backyard," he added. "If this drought continues as climate change keeps on, and we continue ignoring what nature is showing us across the globe – it doesn't bode well at all." "It will be a different forest with a different feel and it will happen across the landscape as nature decides," DePinte said. "Nature is saying there is just not enough to support the firs, and they will overtime be eliminated from those areas." "Scientists have expected to see signs of stress in the forests, but the suddenness of the spike in mortality was alarming," adds the report. "Before this year, the largest area where dead trees was recorded in Oregon was in 1952 where die-offs were spotted across roughly 550,000 acres."
"The flood of warmth and light once guarded by a thick canopy can increase stream temperatures or make space for invasive species once kept out by shade. Some species will thrive in the shift. But others will perish." The tree deaths also heighten the risk of wildfires.
He and his colleagues scanned the slopes from planes several times between June and October, detailing the devastation on digital maps. During that time, it became clear that this year would be unlike anything he had seen before. The report is still being finalized but dead trees were spotted in areas across 1.1m acres of Oregon forest. The scientists have taken to dubbing it "firmageddon." "The size of this is enormous," DePinte said. "A lot of people out there think climate change is just impacting the ice caps or some low-level island out there but it is actually impacting right here in our backyard," he added. "If this drought continues as climate change keeps on, and we continue ignoring what nature is showing us across the globe – it doesn't bode well at all." "It will be a different forest with a different feel and it will happen across the landscape as nature decides," DePinte said. "Nature is saying there is just not enough to support the firs, and they will overtime be eliminated from those areas." "Scientists have expected to see signs of stress in the forests, but the suddenness of the spike in mortality was alarming," adds the report. "Before this year, the largest area where dead trees was recorded in Oregon was in 1952 where die-offs were spotted across roughly 550,000 acres."
"The flood of warmth and light once guarded by a thick canopy can increase stream temperatures or make space for invasive species once kept out by shade. Some species will thrive in the shift. But others will perish." The tree deaths also heighten the risk of wildfires.
Earth is overpopulated (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I mean we literally express our individuality by purchasing Mass market clothing and consumer goods...
Re:Earth is overpopulated (Score:4, Insightful)
the vast majority of us can't think for ourselves anymore if they ever could
You phrase this like it's bad. In the most dire situations, it sure can be, but those are life and death situations and focus is easily obtained. For the day-to-day, this practice is normal and even encouraged - it even has a term, and it's called 'offloading'.
Most real people are just plain too fucking busy to consider all aspects of all things that enter their life-space, and to ponder over them until they come to a personal moral conclusion. That's just simply not reality. This may have worked great in the 1800s (probably not even then), but it certainly does not fucking work anymore in the 2000s. There's just plain simply too much crap out there to process for any one individual to manage, and that's not even including their day-to-day at work, which is a whole other ballpark. To coin a meme phrase: Ain't nobody got time for that.
So yea, we certainly don't think for ourselves anymore for crap that doesn't personally and immediately matter -- instead we offload that minutia to our personally selected and trusted information processing sources, and they distill it down into a more concise and actionable format. If you want to point your finger, I think you need to look at those "trusted information processing sources" that people are literally relying upon (again, they have no time for this themselves, and to ask such is unreasonable). In today's terminology, we tend to call these people "journalists", and yes, I agree, as a whole they've been fucking up quite a solid bit lately. But don't worry, these are mostly just the death knells of a dying cable news industry, and once this time has passed, we'll be back on more stable ground -- we'll of course have to sort out which actual journalist bloggers are worthy of paying subs, but that should eventually work itself out.
So hey, yea good post. Turns out you're absolutely correct. Funny.
Cheers!
Re:Earth is overpopulated (Score:4, Insightful)
" as a whole they've been fucking up quite a solid bit lately. " Bullshit, it isn't the trust sources of journalists that are fucking up, it is the reliance upon untrusted sources such as social media. You want people to slow down and consider things, stop the constant attention diversion antics of the "information" industry.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit, it isn't the trust sources of journalists that are fucking up, it is the reliance upon untrusted sources such as social media
Oof... Okay, here we go....
Re: (Score:2)
the vast majority of us can't think for ourselves anymore if they ever could
You phrase this like it's bad.
Don't look around much, do you? I can sympathize, it's scary. And we all know how pretending scary things aren't real never has any negative consequences.
Most real people are just plain too fucking busy to consider all aspects of all things that enter their life-space
And the beatings will continue until morale improves.
You're confusing listening to experts (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is we insist on having personal automobiles and a giant network of roads to drive them on instead of walkable cities and High-Speed rail.
I hate cars and refuse to own or drive one anymore. I strongly favor walkable urban areas and mass transit.
That said, there were indigenous people living at the far reaches of nowhere long before they were displaced by "pioneers." And that happened before personal automobiles existed.
We mostly do that because the car companies told us to and the vast majority of us can't think for ourselves anymore if they ever could.
This seems to be a reaction against car companies, meaning your dialectic is still driven (forgive the pun) by car companies.
Re:Earth is overpopulated (Score:5, Informative)
We're not even close to overpopulated.
Yeah we are. Automobiles aren't the exclusive issue and completely eliminating them won't prevent us from fucking the planet. We are depleting fish stocks at record rates. We're farming with such intensity that the land itself is being destroyed. Our entire modern lives depend heavily on hydrocarbons to the point where you can't do so much as sit down on something that isn't in some way made or brought to you without the assistance of burning oil. We crave energy, not to drive around, but to do basics such as heat our houses. We burn through a phenomenal amount of natural gas just to produce fertiliser for the farm land we've destroyed.
Whether we're overpopulated is born out in the decisions we make as a species. And we are a species that in a time of crisis burns fossil fuels to make power for calculations which we then use for nothing practical other than a perceived store of value. That is us. That is human nature. That is what it means to be human, and the world cannot support a species that acts like this in the volume in which we exist.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Earth is overpopulated (Score:5, Insightful)
Need to read up on demographics. Rich high emitting countries have mostly reached the demographic transition into negative growth, not enough births to to maintain existing populations. To some extent this is made up by immigration, in some countries.
The transition has occurred because as child mortality rates fall, there is first a lag. Falling child mortality is accompanied by falling adult mortality, and the combination leads to a temporary leap in population. However the cause of the fall in mortality is due to economic growth and improved standard of living - public hygiene and health care. This is accompanied by rise in women's education and workforce participation. Women then stop having so many children because they have less time, and because they can be confident that they will all survive.
Conclusion: you want to lower population, the magic control lever is education of women and economic growth. All the experience of the historical period is that compulsions and incentives of various sorts have little or no effect. Birth rates have fallen dramatically even in countries and periods where there was little or no access to contraception, and risen where there were no incentives. People find ways of making decisions about fertility whatever governments want. What drives it is primarily social and economic issues.
I recommend 'The Human Tide' for a clear and entertaining account of all this.
It follows that what you say about birth restriction is quite wrong. Its futile to start with, it would have no effect, as history of such attempts show. Its not necessary, because birth rates are already falling in the rich countries. And its misdirected. Population growth globally is happening in the poorer countries, as you would expect from the above account. They have been in the rising phase of the demographic transition.
What is needed for them is to speed up economic growth to the max. That will in turn lead to lower mortality, more education of women, and lower the birth rate.
Of course, to produce rapid economic growth in poor countries, what is needed is more energy. This can only be supplied (and is only being supplied) by conventional fossil fuels. So the climate alarmists position is totally wrong headed. They may be right that population is a problem. But they are totally wrong about what to do about it. In fact, if you succeed in making it harder for poor countries to increase their conventional energy use, all you do is delay the point at which fertility falls,which leads to continuing increases in population, and this turns in short order in greater demand for cars and concrete.
China has been through this transition, and birth levels are now below replacement.
The solution, if the problem is population, is to get the poor countries through the demographic transition to under 2 births per woman. At that point population will start to fall automatically. But the only way there is through an economic growth which means increased CO2 emissions in the short term.
Malthus was wrong, because he did not take into account the factor of economic growth. Today's greens are recycling a theory which described the world before 1600, but which was obsolete even in the early 19c when it was written.
Re: (Score:2)
The very fact that they are poor countries means they don't emit much CO2, so for the short term one can probably ignore their output. However, one needs to be careful that rich countries are not just exporting CO2 production. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant fraction of the CO2 some of these poor countries emit is used to manufacture goods for richer countries. Rich countries can still low
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say it's more that poor countries can't burn much fossil fuel since they are poor. It's not like they are holding back since they love being poor.
Also still doesn't really change my point. We can globally reduce CO2 while allowing these countries to continue current practices. Again, it's not like they are currently holding back.
Now if you have a more ambitious plan to somehow enrich these countries
Re: Earth is overpopulated (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's not misdirection. They're just stating the basis of their actual beliefs without realizing it.
They don't want to conserve anything themselves, mind you. They want to continue to live as they feel comfortable. They want others to do with less, and want most of them to die.
It's largely just an extension of envy.
Re: (Score:2)
Feel free to depopulate yourself.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Congratulations, you just described the status quo for the whole of what we call "the developed world".
You realize that the West is already in negative-replacement territory, right? You need 2.1 births per woman, with modern medicine, to maintain a population. The US, Canada, Europe, Russia, China... all well below that number.
The only places with higher replacement rates than that are places in Africa and a couple in South America and Central Asia. (These people then move to the developed countries en mass
Re: (Score:2)
Lol you have to be kidding. That's next level dumbfuck action. Do you have linkable proof?
Re: (Score:1)
It's been posted here on the front page.
Re:Earth is overpopulated (Score:4, Funny)
Right on here on Slashdot?! Oh wow. I didn't realize this place had recently turned into a reputable source of information. My bad.
Re: (Score:3)
It's been posted here on the front page.
That statement is comparable to saying that everything you read on Wikipedia is the ABSOLUTE TRUTH
Re: (Score:3)
Here's a citation for China doing it [energytracker.asia]
here's one for Russia [themoscowtimes.com]
here's why it's a bad idea [environmentaldefence.ca]
Collectively the three links above explain why you're an internet incompetent.
I found them all with google in about as long as it took you to cry about needing a citation for something everyone who cares about these issues already knows about. You are like someone who can't do basic 2+2 type math complaining that nobody will explain the calculus. You aren't even qualified to participate in this discussion, and refuse to self-
One of the things I find strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
your belief in the importance and consequence of voting is truly touching (and a bit embarrassing). i hate to break it to you but who you vote doesn't matter at all. not one iota. sure, voting for the irrelevant puppets of your "choice" might make you feel good, but you will be fucked just the same.
Re: (Score:2)
So you don't vote then, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense, voting gave us the eco-bills to attempt to save the environment. It also gave us the repeal of abortion rights so a vocal religious minority can virtue-signal heaven that they belong there by standing on the backs of women whom they oppress.
Re: (Score:1)
If:
1) voting matters
And
2) a minority of voters wanted to (and did) end abortion against the will of the majority...
How can (2) occur if (1) is true?
One of those things must be incorrect. Simple logic.
Re: (Score:2)
"Strangely", you ignore the other part of his argument about voting - i.e. you agree with that part.
Meaning that the rest of your argument questioning voting is BULLSHIT.
As for what you mendaciously present as a paradox, nobody has the time to teach US political history to someone with a 7-zero ID.
Start reading here. [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
That's two-party, big tent politics for you.
Pro tip: the other tent really sucks, too. The only winners are the oligarchs and corporations. So teach your children to grow up to be oligarchs and corporations.
Re: (Score:1)
Pro tip: the other tent really sucks, too.
Tell me you're white, American, male and politically ignorant without saying that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just because you feel offended by my superior telepathic powers, doesn't make my statement neither incorrect NOR an ad hominem.
The phrase you are actually looking for is "politically incorrect".
You know, like in that story about a stupid guy who got swindled by a couple of crooks who got him to rock out with his cock out through the entire town - until some kid shouted out "That motherfucker's dick is smaller than mine! I should be the king, not him!"
Saying someone has a tiny little dick, a huge fuckin ego
Re: (Score:2)
As I was saying before some pathetic little white American snowflake dude with a tiny penis got offended...
Pro tip: the other tent really sucks, too.
Tell me you're white, American, male and politically ignorant without saying that.
Re: (Score:1)
One of the things I find strange is leftists routinely assuming they know better what's good for people than those people know themselves.
Re: (Score:1)
"If there’s a defining feature of modern progressives’ self-image, it’s the idea that—by dint of their supposedly superior education, their association with like-minded members of global elites and their immersion in the various rites of the contemporary secular religion—they are more knowledgeable and virtuous than you, the inferior classes."
"Democratic leaders, and the academic, corporate and media people who sustain them, nurture their luxury beliefs, comfortable in the conv
Re: (Score:2)
As opposed to those on the right? Or are you saying those on the left aren't people?
Re: (Score:2)
What? Maybe read it again?
Let me put it more expansively in case the pronouns confuse you:
People on the left seem to believe that they (the people on the left) know what's best for everyone, asserting repeatedly like the op that they (people on the left) know what's best for others, better than those others know what's best for themselves.
(To be clear, this IS nevertheless intellectually consistent with a worldview that, at least in the US, is formulated around letting some authority - usually the US feder
Re: (Score:2)
That sounded just the same to me. You seem to be assuming? claiming? anyway, asserting that those on the right don't do exactly the thing you are asserting those on the left do. I don't see that at all.
OTOH, my sympathies (I'm rather non-political) are with the left, so it's possible that I have a biased view. But I don't think so. (And I'm not claiming that those on the left don't behave in the way you are asserting they do, I'm just claiming that they're no worse or more extreme about it than those on
Re: (Score:2)
Is that you have a shitload of people who live in rural States because they like the Great outdoors but who vote Republican when the Republicans are pretty obviously not going to protect that Great outdoors they love so much and that they live in a rural state for.
I think that when you live in the Great Outdoors, you often get a sense that it's just huge and resilient, and whatever we humans do is insignificant. And it makes talk of climate change and green policies kind of laughable.
As for the oceans? Not so clear. Sometimes you think they're huge and you can just dump anything you want and it'll be an insignificant speck. Other times, you're on a beach and you see so much plastic and other human waste, mile after mile.
(I myself think climate change is a serious thr
Re: (Score:1)
> when you live in the Great Outdoors, [some] often get a sense that it's just huge and resilient, and whatever we humans do is insignificant.
Sure, life is resilient, but the change-over may be make life miserable for humans, much if it in ways we can't fully predict, being we don't have prior experience rebooting a planet's biosphere.
Re:One of the things I find strange (Score:4, Insightful)
What does not calling people out on their idiocy/hypocrisy have to do with wondering why they vote against their own interests? The two are unrelated, unless you think they vote against their own interests purely because they want to stick it to the people who think they are idiots, in which case, well, they are still idiots now aren't they?
I've long since given up hope that i can make any argument that will lead such people to sane decisions. Now i'm just curious what rationale they use to act like such idiots.
And your response may not be a troll, but your signature certainly is.
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly it. According to a study, Nearly 4,000 individuals say they'd prefer to subtract $1, $10, or $100 from an opposing political party instead of donating the same or more to their own political party. [studyfinds.org]
Re:One of the things I find strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be realistic. You're not going to get these people to "vote the way you want" no matter what. So you might as well accurately describe them as the willfully ignorant, low intelligence, selfish assholes they are. If Global Warming and other environmental challenges are eventually defeated, it will be despite their (probably violent) opposition. When they benefit, as they have from programs like Medicare, Obamacare, a five-day work week, occupational health and safety laws and such, they'll accept their better life with ill grace, and spit in the faces of those who fought for it.
Screw 'em.
Re: (Score:3)
If you don't want to be called stupid, stop doing stupid things.
Re: (Score:2)
Both sides are insulting the other. The GQP seems to have a white power complex with all the racism that comes with it.
Re: (Score:2)
How has getting people you constantly insult and demean to vote the way you want being working for you so far?
You're the expert, you tell us.
And no, this isn't a troll...
Everything you write is a troll.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And then you get in your car and you listen to whatever psychopath took over when Rush Limbaugh died and then when you get home you turn on Fox News and plop in front of the TV and all the work that I did was undone.
Re:One of the things I find strange (Score:5, Interesting)
You didn't convince anyone of anything. They were being polite and wanted you to just shut up and go away. The easiest way to do that is agree with you so you'll stop bothering them.
I've lived in the heart of liberal San Francisco. I've lived in suburbs. I've lived in very liberal and very conservative places. The people in all these places are very much living in echo chambers. The difference is how they respond to ideas from outside their bubble. Generally, San Francisco liberals go ballistic and lose their shit while suburban conservatives mildly respond then tune you out. The end result is the same: you've been ignored and dismissed.
In your personal case, you just don't understand conservatives so you think in a mere _20 minutes_ you turned them from life long hard core conservatives into liberals. Ridiculous concept.
Re:One of the things I find strange (Score:5, Interesting)
rlsilvergun doesn't understand anything about anyone, or worse he does and he is aggressively trying to gaslight people whenever he can. I actually think its a mixture of the two, he is low information, low iq dope, that thinks he is smart.
Like here he is trying to convince people, in the US (key point) that if they like the great outdoors they should not vote GOP. That is completely bone headed. There is EXACTLY one driver of environmental destruction that universally applies and that is population density. If you care about having large unbroken living green outdoor spaces, you don't want the population growing. We are already demographically shrinking without immigration. Want to keep the USA green and beautifully - vote for low immigration quotas and secure borders! The only place you find even tepid support for that in US politics is within the GOP. Sadly outside of a populist faction within the GOP there isnt even much support for it there.
At the global level if we really want to curb population growth stopping migrants is key. No matter what we do otherwise there will also be a flow form impoverished places to wealthy ones if the opportunity exists. The people left behind in the impoverished places will never have any option but to replace the lost labor - or die in that situation. If you're parent in an impoverished place and you belive many of children are likely leave, you have more children. They way we break the cycle is basically limit legal immigration in the US and EU and make it clear that if you come here illegally you WILL be found and DEPORTED hastily. There are places where migrants COULD go to escape famine etc. Places like Russia that already have a population crisis. Russia would probably welcome it, but nobody is going to go Russia where they will likely be told do farm work or starve, and maybe starve anyway when they could go to the USA and get three squares and cot almost for certain.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but population density is not the only driver of environmental destruction. Merely one of the major ones. There's also the rate of use of resources, and which resources. (There can be legitimate arguments about which resources are less damaging, but all resource use is damaging to at least some degree.)
And population numbers is also significant. Folks living in a city are less destructive to the environment per person (given equal use of resources) than folks living in the country, or even suburb
Re: (Score:1)
> Republicans also seem to be pushing for a high rate of population growth.
Uh, ok?
There is no way to push for population growth. Ask China how that is working out for them after their demographically disastrous one child policy.
Population can be controlled through higher standards of living, medical care, improved longevity and especially education, in particular for women, and with easy access to birth control to go with the rest of it. Essentially giving people the freedom to choose how they live and
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps not, but limiting access to birth control sure seems like trying to (increase population growth).
Re: (Score:2)
Now socially we're going to want less people because from an economic standpoint with new technology and automation we're just not going to need all these people to work and it's really hard to let mo
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How has getting people you constantly insult and demean to vote the way you want being working for you so far? And no, this isn't a troll...it is an intervention.
No different than any other attempt by anyone to change someone's political viewpoint.
What are the facts? (Score:5, Interesting)
"More than a million acres of state forest contain trees that have succumbed to stressors exacerbated by a multi-year drought"
All forests contain dead trees. There is disease in all forests. Saying a large land area has diseased trees doesn't inherently communicate with useful specificity the severity of the problem.
The linkage to climate change is unclear. Is it an assumption or is there specific evidence supporting conclusion that climate changed caused a specific drought and that drought is responsible for the observed outcome?
Re:What are the facts? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, spot on. West Coast droughts are quite normal and occur at irregular fairly widely spaced intervals. There is no reason to think there is anything unusual about this one, its just another in a long series. When the official says he has never seen anything like it, well no, he may not have. But that does not mean its unusual, its just he is looking at one in a series of fairly infrequent events and has not been around long enough to see earlier ones.
Notice one other thing. People, as in this piece, claim that a given event like a drought or heat wave is being caused by climate change.
This is completely confused. Climate change is not a thing that can cause anything. The correct way to put it is that a drought or other event is a sign of climate change. The argument should be that what we are looking at is sufficiently unusual that it marks a change of trend. For instance, droughts are happening more frequently, lasting longer. This is a sign that something in the climate has changed.
So instead of invoking climate change as a cause, the argument should be that this is unusual enough or has other markers which make it an indicator of climate change. I don't believe this has been done either in this case, or in the cases of the European and UK heat waves last summer, or the Pakistani floods. The argument always starts from a tacit assumption that the normal state of the weather is uniform and static. That there are no prolonged periods of unusual heat or drought or rain - or cold. So when they occur they are alarming and a sign of long term disaster.
Experience of the planet and some knowledge of history should tell us this is not true. Extreme weather is perfectly normal, there is no reason to think its getting any more common. The distribution is not a tight high peaked normal one. Its long tailed. This is a planet with lots of oceans, lots of currents, lots of air streams, lots of cyclical processes. There will be, and always have been, quite dramatic short term weather events in some parts of it. They are not all that common, but they are not signs of anything.
There is no point running around crying that the sky is falling, we have to (for instance) ban fossil fuels, reduce earth population by half, consign half the planet to wilderness.... etc etc. The events are not signs of civilization threatening climate disaster. They are just what is to be expected from the state of our planet and the dynamic weather system, and they will continue to happen as they always have regardless of what we do about CO2.
You don't believe this? Well, look at the climate history of the last few hundred years in Europe. Start with Lamb. Look at England, for which we have reasonable records. Never mind the Medieval Warm period, start in 1600. The variability, the occurrence of extreme periods, will come as astonishing news after reading a media dominated by climate alarm and written by journalists with no knowledge of history.
But 30 years ago it was common knowledge, and it is still true.
Re:What are the facts? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the system is evaluated purely from shitty records of events over the centuries, sure, it probably seems like shit is as fucked up as ever.
However, the climate, chaotic system as it may be, has definite inputs and outputs.
The idea that CO2 is not the lever that dials this place from unsuitable-for-life to great-for-human-civilization to unsuitable-for-human-civilization is borne of a clear rejection of very established science.
I'll gladly agree with you that predictions of events is hard. But trends are not. And even in a chaotic system, increasing the energy budget of the system is going to have some predictable results when the system is evaluated as a whole.
Your knowledge of history is neat. But knowledge of science and the physical properties of CO2 don't give one fuck what you think about history.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The reason I care, is simply from a systems perspective, it's fucking insanity to short circuit this planet's temperature regulation mechanism for the sake of energy when we have the technology, if not the political will, to fix the problem with the stupidly abundant energy source irradiating us at all times.
Fossil fuels are such a fucking crutch. Powering our technology with ancient biological carbon deposits feels like some kind of fucking steampunk spaceship.
When you add
Re: (Score:1)
Is the system chaotic or not?
If it is then no, you can't make meaningful predictions. If you can make meaningful predictions then it isn't chaotic.
I don't care which way you wanna go but you're trying to eat your cake and still have it on this one.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a misunderstanding of chaos theory.
You can make predictions under chaos theory (see attractors [stsci.edu]) it's just that you can't make predictions about where the system will be at a specific time and place in the far-enough away future.
Re: (Score:2)
To further expand on why, it's because chaos theory may describe how chaotic systems work internally, if you zoom the picture out and don't bother with the specifics, thermodynamics is boss.
And thermodynamics is very easy.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"The idea that CO2 is not the lever that dials this place from unsuitable-for-life to great-for-human-civilization to unsuitable-for-human-civilization is borne of a clear rejection of very established science."
No. The scientific evidence is that CO2 is a real but fairly minor factor in regulating the temperature of the planet. Water vapor is much more important.
The physical property of CO2 is that a doubling of ppm in itself would lead to about a 1 degree C rise in temperature. That is not catastrophic
Re:What are the facts? (Score:4, Informative)
Not according to this: [metoffice.gov.uk]
Climate sensitivity is typically defined as the global temperature rise following a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial levels.
There are several ways of defining climate sensitivity, depending on the timescales of interest. Two of those are: Transient Climate Response (TCR) . . . [and] Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) . . .
Climate sensitivity cannot be directly measured in the real world. Instead it must be estimated . . .
The 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fifth assessment report estimates ECS has a ‘likely’ range of 1.5 – 4.5C. It adds ECS is extremely unlikely to be below 1C and very unlikely greater than 6C. The wide range accounts for all evidence. The IPCC estimate TCR has a likely range of 1.0 – 2.5C and is extremely unlikely more than 3C.
Re: (Score:2)
No. The scientific evidence is that CO2 is a real but fairly minor factor in regulating the temperature of the planet. Water vapor is much more important.
Bullshit. Who the fuck moderated you up. This is a flat out lie.
CO2 is the the most important factor in planetary heat, period.
If you pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere, all the water in the world turns to ice in days.
Even a highschool student can deduce this once they learn what relative humidity measures.
The physical property of CO2 is that a doubling of ppm in itself would lead to about a 1 degree C rise in temperature. That is not catastrophic or even particularly noticeable.
Again, bullshit.
That's a prediction, that can only be made by models. I purposefully avoided modeling.
All we can really say about CO2, is that it is highly absorptive of long wave radiation, and do
Re: (Score:2)
The Anasazi lived at a time of constant CO2 concentration and were still done in by drought. Same with the Mayan civilization.
Long droughts were a thing in the west long before fossil fuels were in wide use.
Re: (Score:3)
As I said, if you evaluate the system purely from the perspective of "has bad shit happening been consequential?", then sure.
But the fact is, those events will become more frequent as you increase the energy budget of the system.
And you are increasing the energy budget of the system.
Only a fool would argue that.
Re: (Score:2)
Climate change is a reason. More energy in the system will generate more extremes. Now I can understand that you want people to empirically validate this reason, and they do. See https://www.science.org/doi/10... [science.org] for an example. It includes references going back almost 20 years.
Now let's entertain a hypothetical. Assume that 50 years the chance of an "extreme" drought in a given year is 5%. Now assume tha
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not personally involved in surveys of this sort in forestry, albeit I have participated in other sorts of surveying work. I would guess that during surveys that occur on a recurring and regular basis, dead trees and "red flag" trees are counted. Between different surveys, the delta of these sums are tracked along with other statistical data.
I would reckon that most likely they've observed, more-or-less as expected due to recurring drought conditions, a significant change in the number of trees observed
Re: (Score:2)
"Is the pattern of droughts we've witnessed in the past ten or twenty years a statistical outlier? "
NY Times article "In California, a Wet Era May Be Ending" indicates that the last 150 years (i.e., since about California statehood) has been unusually wet, and that current conditions are essentially a reversion to the norm:
"Equally as important but much easier to forget is that we consider the last 150 years or so to be normal," he added. "But you don't have to go back very far at all to find much drier dec
Re:What are the facts? (Score:4, Insightful)
"More than a million acres of state forest contain trees that have succumbed to stressors exacerbated by a multi-year drought"
All forests contain dead trees. There is disease in all forests. Saying a large land area has diseased trees doesn't inherently communicate with useful specificity the severity of the problem.
The linkage to climate change is unclear. Is it an assumption or is there specific evidence supporting conclusion that climate changed caused a specific drought and that drought is responsible for the observed outcome?
Actually your quote from TFS is specifically saying that prolonged droughts are stressing conifers and reducing their ability to survive causing a major die-off. This is a well known and thoroughly documented consequence of prolonged droughts and prolonged droughts tend to be the consequence of long or short term changes in climate which is also something we have known for centuries. On top of that there is a large stack of undisputed science (except by a few tinfoil hat aficionados) showing that we are currently in the middle of a long term climate change thanks to human CO2 and Methane emissions. There is nothing vague and woo-woo-fuzzy about that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who cares? (Score:1)
Nothing will get done about climate change until the red states are affected. And even then they will blame it on chemtrails or something.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Who cares about climate change. Theres life next to volcanic vents at the bottom of the sea.
Why don't you move into a pineapple located next to one and tell us how it works out for you
Re: (Score:1)
Wait, what?
Are you saying that to date, red states have somehow been magically protected from climate change due to their population's political leanings while blue states have been impacted already?
Fascinating concept. Do you go into further detail on your YouTube channel? I'd like to subscribe.
Re: (Score:1)
Hunter's laptop caused it, Elon said so!
Pine beetles (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Are they liberal or conservative beetles?
ONLY climate change can impact nature. There are no other options.
Re: (Score:3)
FTA It has happened before ... (Score:2)
... meaning there is an intentional 'climate change' spin on the reporting. More staggering is the sense that the world as it is now is how it should be forever. That doesn't make any kind of sense. If you roll back the decades/centuries guess what, the forests stretched for 10 times their current area and forest fires regularly swept through. To prattle on about climate change links to the disappearance of a relatively tiny remnant as being somehow important is typical about today's media. The Earth h
Arial Survey (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
post by a WingDing
I had a comment... (Score:2)
Not Enough Resources for Humans and Machines (Score:2)
Cut them NOW and replace them. (Score:2)
One of the big mistakes that western dem governors have made is to ignore the die offs and allow all of these trees to burn, 5-10 years after they died. All that does is add to the CO2. However, if we harvest these trees and replace them, we can re-start the forest in a way that theyw ill take up more CO2.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
intoxicaded and intoxicating, what a coincidence!
take a look at this, you fucking ignorant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: China (Score:1)
Re: China (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What a racist post (this isn't crime in USA?)
No, hate speech is legal here, only direct incitements to violence are illegal. In theory hate speech could get you watched, but in reality police departments are havens for white supremacy [brennancenter.org]. It's hard to find people who care about other people who are willing to be cops, so they mostly get bullies that peaked in high school (except for abuse, that usually peaks in marriage for cops.)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not sure the category "racist" applies. China has indeed been heavily expanding coal power of late when most believe they should be looking at alternatives. However, this doesn't mean that most of global warming is "their fault". Most industrialized nations are guilty in one way or another. Two wrongs don't make right; China making poor climate decisions is not a reason for the USA to ignore the problem also. Plenty of jerks to go around.
Re: China (Score:2)