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Analyzing Climate Change On Carbon Rich Peat Bogs
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."
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.
Please always provide a unit. Thank you.
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.
Or those prone to go childish on this topic.
My irony meter just exploded.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
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.
This experiment seems to require them to measure what is in the biodome's atmosphere so I am assuming they are sealed off from the outside atmosphere. Thing is, nobody has ever managed to get a large sealed biodome to stay stable for more than about a year, without fresh air they turn into giant glasshouses full of rotting organic material. Perhaps this one will be different since there are no humans living in it but my prediction is it will rapidly collapse into a rather smelly single celled ecosystem. If OTOH it does work, it may turn out to be very useful for space exploration.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Atmospheric CO2 partial pressure is at an all time high (post industrial revolution) for as far back as we can measure.
You contradict yourself - first you say that deep ice core data shows that temperature rises and atmospheric CO2 concentrations are linked, then you claim that "no one has proven ... if they just happen to appear together". I'll save you the trouble - the former is the accurate statement, although it's not exclusive to CO2; any molecule that absorbs IR in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas, which makes the biggest culprits CO2 and water vapour. There are many others that are considerably worse than CO2 (hundreds, sometimes thousands of times more potent as IR absorbers) that are mitigated by low concentrations.
It's very easy to demonstrate with a simple science experiment that you can do yourself at home with a plastic bottle, a thermometer, a stopwatch and a lamp. Seal the bottle then point the lamp at it and leave it for 10 minutes. Measure the temperature inside after this time has elapsed. Now open the bottle and breathe in and out, sealing your mouth around the neck for as long as you can manage it (until all the oxygen is gone) - ie, vastly increase the concentration of CO2 and water vapour inside the bottle. Seal it up and then wait for the temperature inside to fall to the same level as the air was in the first experiment (your breath will obviously be warm, so you want to start from the same air temperature). When it's back to the same level turn the lamp on and wait another 10 minutes and record the temperature. Record your results.
The chemistry of IR absorbing gasses is not controversial. It only seems to be when it's politically inconvenient. Suddenly the idea that CO2 absorbs IR radiation just because it's in the earth's atmosphere rather than in a lab setting is "merely anecdotal".
Most radiation that falls on the earth *is* reflected (our albedo is quite high), and even then, much of the re-radiated IR from the earth's surface is also lost to space - this is not new or controversial information.
"We need to understand climates change and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it" is probably the most hilariously inaccurate and naive statement I think I've ever read on slashdot. Not only is it one of the most ridiculous "head in the sand" conclusions drawn from a fundamental misunderstanding of basic science (if the first part of the comment is anything to go by), but it's contradicted by extensive evidence to the contrary by a number of widely famous examples. The most obvious of these would be the depletion (and subsequent re-establishment) of the ozone layer and the corresponding changes to the climate that were observed and reversed in response to human actions.
If all the people on earth disappeared the climate would indeed continue to change in response to events that occur - the only difference is that there would be no further changes from anthropogenic factors. The fact that it responds to natural changes does not mean that humans have no effect on it. Again, you seem to misunderstand the way that the climate works.
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.
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 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.
I demand News for Nerds !! What nerd cares of peat and bogs ?? No nerd !! Only a hippie cares of peat and bogs !!
It depends on the state. The North Carolina legislature, for example, has just thrown out any climate models that don't solely rely on historical data.http://www.wnf-sourcing.com
I don't know where exactly your figures relate to, but the 2011/2012 winter was the warmest I have experienced here. Of course I have only been here (in MN) for 10 years. It may have been different down in 'the Cities'.
I'm from The Netherlands and we see our climate changing aswell. The seasons are much more unpredictable.
why do they also have to heat it?
An unproven model (in the engineering sense) itself may still be more dangerous than the putative phenomenon. Yelling "fire" in an unlit theater might be an analogy.
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.
The moose were supposed to have died in the story, of warmth, during the last 5 years.
Just as it was getting colder and colder.
So looking at the last 8 years is reasonable.
Since the last 10000 years had a temperature stretch of 4C,
were they trying to find out what happens 40000 years from now? 26000 years ago there were Neanderthals around, so 40000 is not a blip.
Really. Look, grown ups appear to believe that moose perished of warmth during a 2C cooling.
Maybe I was wrong to call it childish.
A child would be smarter than that.
Ok, climates chage, this happens. It happened before people and industry were here and it will continue to happen when we are gone.
First they came for the peat bogs, and I did not speak out - because I was not a peat bog...
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
www.climatedepot.com
A long as these studies don't impact the production of my favorite, peaty single-malt Scotches... damn the environment, I need my Laphroaig, Ardbeg and Caol Ila!
Smits claims to have changed the micro-climate above & slightly around his community's restored rain-forest reserve for Orangutans.
+ http://www.TED.com/talks/lang/en/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html
Cf Smits' TED talk on the motivation, construction, & unexpected climate effects of his reserve, and then look for updates,
to see it there are more or, at least, if the previously reported effects are continuing to occur there.
Cut pollution for the sake of cutting pollution.
Problem is, a large number of people don't consider CO2 to be a pollutant.
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, 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, 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. For a more nuanced understanding you need to look at what the scientific community are talking about. 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
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Meanwhile it's said that elk population went up 50%.
No way they allow that experiment to yield dangerous results. The House will zero out that budget.
I'm sick and tired of people throwing around carbon as if it were carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Stop being lazy. Use the full term. For that matter, differentiate between carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. These two gasses react markedly differently in the atmosphere. Use proper scientific terms if you are going to present this as a scientific matter. If you can't be bothered, carry on with your religion.
Picking a single start point and a single endpoint is essentially guaranteed to get you skewed results. That's like saying (after a cold spell hit), "Hey, it was 20 degrees colder today than yesterday - the temperature is dropping by 20 degrees a day! We'll be hitting absolute zero soon!"
The Daily Show did a great job of making fun of this sort of data cherry-picking.
I am Melllvar, Keeper of the Tapes!
You and your fellows should stop posting about the topic forever. You have no understanding of even the most simple concept.
If you had seriously read the article you might have noticed that they mentioned that fall temperatures have a significant impact on the moose because they don't eat as much when it's warm (they overheat too easily), and they need to bulk up in the fall to prepare for winter. So if warmer weather lasts longer then the Moose delay the start of the bulking period and not enough food may be left when they begin the bulking or they might not have enough time between the start of their bulking period and the first snows. Interestingly, looking at the last 5 years of fall temperatures they are all significantly above average and above the trend.
That's ignoring the exploding parasite populations which are also weakening the moose.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Also, xkcd has covered it pretty succinctly.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
"Although peat bogs only account for 3% of Earth's surface, they contain over 30% of carbon stored in soil."
I hate sentences like this. Don't compare apples and oranges. What % of the Earth's surface is soil? Then, what % of soil is peat bog? Don't jump that step to make your conclusions look more dire than they actually are.
I want to save the environment as much as the next guy. But I want to do it with sound logic, numbers, and reasoning, not deliberately inflammatory statistics.
So if it's true of Minnesota it must be true of every square inch of the planet. Your playing the blind men and the elephant game. You might as well stick your head out the door and if it isn't raining declare there's a drought. It's called cherry picking data, the very thing the right always accuses climate scientists of doing. Worldwide averages are what count. If instead of Minnesota you picked Alaska and based the percentage of increase for the rest of the country based on those observations the southern half of the country would be like the Equator. The climate is far too complicated to base any conclusions on a single area's temperature.
"Watching the Deadliest Catch they said the annual Ice was the worst if not worse then in 1972."
In northern waters the worst ice comes right after the spring breakup when lots of icebergs drift south.
Why not go back a few thousand years?
I'm wondering f the Daily Show has addressed this?
"Ok, climates chage, this happens."
And when climate changes, fertile agricultural regions become infertile. Rainfall patterns change, making some regions prone to drought, or prone to flooding, or most joyfully, prone to both. Coastal regions have to be abandoned, putting millions of people on the move.
That's trillions of dollars in economic damage. Which is worth more than a dismissive "this happens."
Yet, it doesn't seem to have had had any effect.
Then, I read it was in the US, and had something to do with a few Moose dying off...
At least my Scotch supply won't be impeded!!!
Ahh....Balvenie!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No serious person is arguing that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas. The argument surrounds the magnitude of feedbacks. If there were no feedbacks, then a doubling of CO2 would have a net increase of .6C in temperature. It is the things like increases in atmospheric water vapor and change in landmass albedo which are being debated.
The last 15 years of recorded temperatures have been mostly flat with a statistically insignificant level of global temperature change. Yet CO2 as continued to increase at the exact same rate.
Or are you dismissing that possibility outright? You know, that it might be that one in a thousand papers are wrong (yours) when the other 999 (in the IPCC) are right, may be actually correct? Or is that unpossible?
You know what other models haven't been published? Ones from palaeontologists who have "proven" that mankind were alive at the time of the dinosaurs.
Including the majestic møøse
If you want to know what happens to a peat bog when it's heated for a year, you have to heat a peat bog for a year.
How else would you do it? Computer models?
Climate change within 100 years didn't happen before except after catastrophical events like continent wide volcanism or a large meteorite impact.
False: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard%E2%80%93Oeschger_event
This false claim that the climate has never undergone a natural fluctuation comparable to the currently postulated anthropogenic one is actually kind of useful: it clearly identifies political hacks who don't care a tithe for science but who are either willful liars or inexcusably ignorant of the Earth's actual climate history.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The moose were supposed to have died in the story, of warmth, during the last 5 years.
Just as it was getting colder and colder.
So looking at the last 8 years is reasonable.
Since the last 10000 years had a temperature stretch of 4C,
were they trying to find out what happens 40000 years from now? 26000 years ago there were Neanderthals around, so 40000 is not a blip.
The Neandertals are still neanderig around.
Your family never lived, your friends are dead and never were and your political system never happened.
On geological scales.
Your snide comments ignore the fact you cannot provide a link to any truly peer reviewed paper proving the modern disasters predicted ahead - all of them used data that was not generally published.
No model published has been able to predict anything about what the climate is doing, what sea levels are doing, etc. etc. - yet they are not afraid to make the most dire of forecasts, like four feet of sea level rise.
So be careful throwing that stone around, there are a LOT of glass walls where you are standing.
You and the rest of your cult buddies have lost the ability to scare the world with fairy tales, you'll have to actually come up with something concrete and based on REAL science.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Anyone who's not an idiot clicks the back button when they read the words "that hasn't been published". Or do you believe in a global scientific conspiracy to suppress publication based on "secret agendas" of all of those evil scientists?
I am Melllvar, Keeper of the Tapes!
Yeah that's nice. So, in breaking news people are migratory and always have been. But we like to build next to large bodies of water which put us at risk. We like large bodies of water because it triggers this idea that we have access to the basic essentials to let us survive. When I bought my house, I did enough research to where I was buying it to make sure I was 50ft above the highest recorded geologic flood stage known for my area. Which is pretty amazing, considering I'm in the great lakes region.
Then again they always were pretty good at keeping the flood plains around here clear. And there hasn't really been a serious flood since they built the dam, though it can only take 24".
Om, nomnomnom...
"the blind men and the elephant game" == climate science
You know what would have helped this article summary a lot? I would have enjoyed more rambling about random effects of global warming, and more random links.
Because, nothing makes me enjoy a global warming summary more than a link to an article about the grey wolf re-population efforts having effects on moose populations in Minnesota. It's so topical! It's so fresh! There should be more of these on every summary.
And eight links without descriptions or context really aren't enough. From now on, I think every single letter in the entire summary should go to a different page. Just load those links up! Really pack those links in there, so that people are getting the full effect of the hyper-web!
"Yeah that's nice. So, in breaking news people are migratory and always have been."
The last time people migrated in the numbers we're seeing today, the Roman Empire collapsed.
"But we like to build next to large bodies of water which put us at risk"
We like to drink. We like to eat. That tends to constrain where we settle.
The last time people migrated in the numbers we're seeing today, the Roman Empire collapsed.
Really? History seems to disagree with you. The most recent would be WWII, before that it was the mass deaths due to the plagues in europe and people trying to escape mass death.
We like to drink. We like to eat. That tends to constrain where we settle.
Not really. We like to make things easy. Nothing is stopping you from living on the arctic tundra, except knowing how to survive.
Om, nomnomnom...
"We like to make things easy."
Sure. It's only laziness that's caused 300 million people to live in the Ganges delta region.
Ok, they will take the bog, warm it up, find that there is less carbon, and proclaim to the world that see we told you so.
Global warming does X to the carbon bla bla bla.
This whole farce called "man made" global warming is nothing more than the one world order crowd trying to make the entire
planet a utopia for everyone. Sorry, not going to happen. What the h*ll they going to do in a few years when the cooling
cycle hits?
dozens of mines have opened in areas where it wasn't viable as late as 10 years ago due to coverage 40 metres deep of ice that has since disappeared making the opening of these mines viable for the 1st time.
While I do not deny that the Alps glaciers, the polar and anpolar ice caps, etc. melting, I have to wonder a couple things
* Is there regional cooling occurring somewhere at a similar rate, just not as evident because there are no newly formed glaciers yet?
* Might it be related to global climate shifting, more so than just heating?
* Might the fact that the glaciers are shrinking result in the fact that there is less ice to cool the air, and thus the amount of cooling those giant ice cubes have aided in the global scheme of things be diminished somewhat exponentially, in the same way as a bunch of small ice cubes is nowhere near as effective as a large one of the same volume at maintaining temperature?
Don't look at me, I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just thinking out loud.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The way the measure temps is laughable
I suggest that what you are doing is trying to understand the issue by reading people like Anthony Watts and their manafactured contraversies are confusing you. Here's a link to a very simple NASA experiment you can do yourself, it anhilates the ashpalt and concrete argument, Watts' recation to that debunking was to start issuing false DCMA take downs to hide it. Watts is just wrong and refuses to aknowledge it for political/financial reasons, however the database that Watts has is the best available survey of the current state of US wether stations, so he has contributed something positive. Unfortunately there is a lot of potential for error in his own survey so it's unlinkely it would be very useful as a way of measuring improvement (or otherwise) of the infrastructure.
This is not to say that the urban heat island effect is a fantasy, it's just that climate scientists discovered it decades ago because it's fucking obvious!!!! In fact the MET reseach center that was at the center of the climategate beat-up and accused of "tampering with the raw data" has spent over two decades maticuosly transcribing the raw data set (multiple times with different transcribers to cross-check) and looking for precisely these kinds of anomolies. Unlike Watts and his army of amature photographers they are world renowned experts in sources of observational error wrt to weather staions and they back that up by frequently publishing in top tier journals such as Nature and Science. It's extremely tedious work and is replicated by an independent team using different statistical methods at NASA. These are the two main historical temprature sets, the enourmous amount of work that goes into verifying them is why the rest of the scientific community trust and applaud them.
I am fed up with these idiot scientists
The cure for that is to get your information from the horse's mouth
I blame scientists for this
Which is exactly what the anti-scientists who manafacture these 'contrversies' want you to do, they paint scientists as both complete morons, omnipotent conspirators or grant leeches hoping you will buy one or the other demonization and join their army of useful idiots. The 50 or so stink-tanks in the US who generate most of these climate myths, they have powerfull supporters in congress such as senator Inhofe. They use the exact same play book that was used for decades to deny that smoking causes cancer, it's the same play book creationists use. Why is it the same play book? - Because some of these stink-tanks such as the heritage foundation are paid to do it by the three different groups of deniers. Winning heats and confusing minds, it's how these stink-tanks earn a living.
Now as for the supposed claim (didn't RTFA) that AGW has caused Moose populations to drop dramatically, if the orginal work was published in a peer-reviewed journal I'm inclinded to think the journalist added that bit of confusion all by himself. A hard core cynic might even think it was inserted to distract from the real cause of the Moose decline but it's much more likely that the journalist was just manafacturing his own little contraversy to grab eyeballs and/or appease sponsers. If you want good investigative journalisim that gets to the bottom of these 'climate contraversies' I highly recommend Peter Sinclair's youtube series climate crock of the week.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
And by "other nobel winnint scientists", what, other than their winning a nobel prize (the peace prize famoulsy won by Al Gore counts?), makes you think they know about climate science?
If I give you data then it is data. It could be fabricated. This, though, for you, is impossible? Why?
All that graph actually says is that in one location there was more O18 in the dim and distant past than today.
That isn't, however, temperature. It's not the globe and it's not any proof of what you implied.
* Is there regional cooling occurring somewhere at a similar rate
No, though that is what happened durring the MWP, hence why it's warmer *globally* now than it was during the MWP.
* Might it be related to global climate shifting, more so than just heating?
Climate heating IS a climate shift.
* Might the fact that the glaciers are shrinking result in the fact that there is less ice to cool the air
No, that's not how that works. If there were no oceans, you may have a point. But we're the blue planet for a reason and it's not that we swear a lot :-).