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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.
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.
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.
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
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.