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Analyzing Climate Change On Carbon Rich Peat Bogs

Posted by samzenpus on from the bogged-down dept.

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."

3 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Minnesota Temps wend DOWN during the last 8 years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    POLITICALLY SAVVY MOOSE

    You can go to our official records here

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/mn.html

    choose period Annual, 2004-2012

    and check that Minnesota annual temperatures went DOWN by about 2 degrees, two centuries worth of change, downwards, in 8 years.

    So those must have been politically savvy moose, who died of warmth while the temperatures went seriously down, and had their story surface just before elections...

    And 15C heating, when during the last 10000 years temps varied by at most 4C, and we are in global cooling, satellites show, since 1998

    The full satellite record, unedited, is here

    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss-land

    the 15C heating is really aimed at scaring children. Or those prone to go childish on this topic.

  2. Like they need another alarmist plot point by brainchill · · Score: -1, Troll

    Ok, climates chage, this happens. It happened before people and industry were here and it will continue to happen when we are gone. Deep ice core data even shows the similar increases in atmospheric CO2, etc during times that temperatures rise long before humans ever had industrial activities to create this effect ... it happens. No one has ever even proven conclusively whether these gases in the atmosphere are anything more than anecdotal evidence of human effect on the climate or even whether, for certain it's presence is actually a cause or an effect of climate change just that they appear to occur together. There are many ideas that try to prove that it's these gases that are trapping heat in the atmosphere but just recently (as reported on slashdot) it was proven that significantly less heat than was thought or expected was being trapped and most was being reflected and passed back out of the atmosphere ...... So here's the point I'm getting to ..... cleaning up trash, keeping the earth cleaner is never a bad thing but they are going significantly overboard and turning just this idea into a multi-billion dollar industry all of it's own and using it and regulations surrounding it as a method for controlling companies and altering their methods of production and it's gotten a bit out of hand. We need to understand that climates change and there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it .... if all of the people on earth disappeared this phenomenon would continue to happen so rather than trying to change it we need to learn to adapt to these changes.

  3. Re:Somewhat welcome news by Gordonjcp · · Score: 0, Troll

    The climate models in use thirty years ago when I was at school told us that by now, up here around 56 degrees north we'd be buried under a mile of ice, and that equatorial Africa would have a climate similar to Central Europe.

    The climate models in use twenty years ago when I was at university told us that by now, the Earth would be fried by intense UV because of the complete unstoppable destruction of the ozone layer, with arid deserts reaching from the Sahara to as far north as Denmark - where it wasn't all submerged under water from the melting icecaps.

    The climate models in use ten years ago when I worked on data visualisation for - among other things - weather modelling told us that by now, we'd be experiencing unprecedented storms, hurricane-force winds all year round, and bitterly cold winters and blistering hot summers that kill off all the arable crops.

    You'll have to forgive me if I don't entirely believe the climate predictions we hear today.