Climate Change | Global Warming | BS or not?

Eric Frei · 8th March 2009, 07:32 PM

Now in 2009 after many years of the skeptics taking a beating finally some truths and evidence is starting to emerge about the real deal with climate change.

This doesn't surprise me at all.

Source: Fox Admits To Planting Political Brainwashing In Popular TV Shows

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In other words, Fox has embarked on a deliberate campaign, which could only have been done with the coordination of the script writers of each program, to force people to accept the pseudo-science of global warming by brainwashing them into accepting it as a reality.

Or this.

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Experiments have shown that less than one minute after the viewer begins to watch television, the brain switches from Beta level consciousness, associated with active and logical thought, to Alpha level, which is associated with passive acceptance and suggestibility. This is why advertisers spend billions a year on commercials as well as product placement within TV shows themselves.

I have written here and there around the forum about this topic but now decided to have a thread dedicated to it.

There's one clever cookie in Canada, Dr Tim Ball, interesting to see some of his research and data.

I dont disagree the planet is warming, however is new carbon credits schemes just another big business fuelled profit making scam or govt tax grab?

Done it · 10th March 2009, 01:20 AM

I've heard talks by Dr Tim Bell, very interesting.

Someone who doesn't get much recognition is John Tyndall, about 150 years before him.

Worth reading, The Weather Doctor Almanac 2006 John Tyndall

There's a wiki thing about him, John Tyndall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Makes you wonder how the world got along without the internet.

Eric Frei · 10th March 2009, 01:48 AM

Interesting read for sure.

He wrote, a long time ago too mind you...

Quote:

Tyndall thus concluded that water vapour, the strongest radiant heat absorber, is the most important gas controlling Earth's temperature. Without water vapour, he wrote, the Earth's surface would be "held fast in the iron grip of frost."

Applying his radiation studies to minimum nighttime temperatures and dew/frost formation, Tyndall correctly postulated that dew and frost are caused by a loss of heat through radiative processes. He even suggested these factors gave London a "heat island" — meaning the city was warmer than its surrounding areas.

Tyndall speculated fluctuations in water vapour and carbon dioxide could be related to climate change and the onset of ice ages. At century's end, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius applied Tyndall's discovery to the ice-ages riddle, mathematically showing that halving the atmosphere carbon dioxide concentration could lower European temperatures to an ice-age chill.

You know, I dont think there were even people present in Australia 50,000 years ago but climate change not hunters killed large creatures. I dont think the industrial revolution started till maybe the last 200 years.

Who killed our Australian giant marsupials? : News : The University of Melbourne

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Media Release, Saturday 12 August 2006

We determined that there is no evidence of humans butchering the marsupials. People were not even at the scene of the crime, with the oldest evidence of humans at the site at least 10,000 years after the giant mammals went extinct,” said Ms Jacqui Duncan of the Archaeology Program at La Trobe University

“The animals probably died of starvation during drought around 55,000 years ago," she said.

“This is a significant find – unraveling more clues to what actually happened in prehistoric Australia."

While the scientists think that drought is the most likely cause of the giant marsupial deaths at Lake Menindee, the search to confirm the real culprits of the continent-wide extinction continues.

Now a few years beforehand there was this type of thinking which came out of a USA university.

CU-Boulder Researcher To Discuss Ancient Australian Climate Change At Chancellor's Lecture Series March 7 | News Center | University of Colorado at Boulder

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Feb. 22, 2001

In the past several years, Miller and his colleagues have found evidence the earliest humans who peopled Australia some 55,000 years ago inadvertently disrupted the continent's food chain by burning vast areas of native vegetation. This appears to have resulted in mass extinctions of megafauna on the continent, he said.

The researchers used eggshells of large, flightless birds known as Genyornis to date changes in climate and ecosystems. More than 85 percent of Australia's megafauna became extinct in addition to Genyornis, including 19 species of marsupials weighing over 220 pounds, a hippo-sized wombat, a 25-foot-long and three-foot-in-diameter snake, a 25-foot-long lizard and a Volkswagen-sized tortoise.

Miller and his colleagues speculate that Genyornis and the other extinct mammals -- which fed primarily on shrubs and trees -- disappeared after centuries of burning by humans in the continent's interior changed the ecosystem's flora to primarily desert grasses. One of his research associates, Beverly Johnson, is a former CU graduate student of Miller's now at the University of Washington.

LOL, yeah right, like there's never any natural fires.

Done it · 10th March 2009, 10:53 PM

Yeah right.

Just before I posted that I was watching TV [my mistake]

There was a guy on the ABC raving on like he just discovered what Tyndall did 150 years ago, changed channels and got Jack Thompson going on about CarbonSMART® - Landcare Australia carbon trading, sequestration, carbon pool

I'm sick of it really, I wonder how many cow s###s equals a return flight to Hollywood.

Eric Frei · 11th March 2009, 12:31 AM

Bullshit, bullshit and more bullshit.

Me too, I'm so over greenies and carbonators!

Now on the salinity issue read this thread, the link goes to the post where things change ... and make sense.
Soil salinity - cause

Wasn't trees, it was the removal of our native grasses! And now along with what we are reading here it all links together.

Lets look at the eucalypt species.

Did you know they didn't appear till the aridity set in. So Australia was 1st getting dryer then the eucs came whilst the rainforest species withered. Then the eucs adapted to fire.

Now some boffins reckoned the adaption to fire was because the aboriginals started burning. But that has been laughed out because aboriginals have only been here 40K years and a species wont evolve that fast. If they were not exposed to fire and all of a sudden aboriginals started burning them ... then the logical conclusion would be that the trees would die because no way are they going to radically evolve to survive over night.... let alone be here 40,000 years after getting torched.

There's some great info in this link to a book called Australian Rainforests islands of green in a land of fire

So salinity, fires, native grasses and a dryer continent has been the norm for millions of years.

Eric Frei · 19th March 2009, 11:33 PM

Another great site that also looks at the other side of the argument.

CO2 Science

Eric Frei · 28th March 2009, 01:56 PM

Not quite a documentary, but fun to watch.

YouTube - Gary The Global Warming Goat

clementine · 28th March 2009, 04:17 PM

Wealllll, they got me going, and I think the truth is a big money cover up!

Exponential decay?

1st, They have me thinking that the planet is about to roll over, due to us all, or should I say, those profiteering bastud MF's that won't leave us alone to live naturally.

Then I'm made to contemplate that this might be a naturally re-occuring event in the planets life cycle.

Shoot!

Eric Frei · 2nd April 2009, 10:37 AM

Sadly the Australian Government is hell bent on destroying the little industry we have left with a Carbon trading scheme (tax) that will no doubt further decrease our competitiveness on the global market.

When the BS circulates even from the educated no wonder there's a great deal of difficulty having people see through the smoke and mirrors.

Recently I read this ...

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“Since the world started burning coal carbon dioxide has doubled and we have a huge impact on the environment. Our research shows how these levels can be reduced,”

Now that came from a Professor David Glasser here.

But he is seriously wrong.

Read this, it is intense but has information from the big names associated in the historic CO2 records.

Exposing the Global Warming Myth - CO2 Levels Doctor Bulldog & Ronin

Now what many of the alarmists dont tell you is that when CO2 levels fall to around 220ppm (currently we're around 385ppm) plants struggle. Glass house growers have been using CO2 as "fertilizer" for years, in fact there's equipment that actually makes CO2 for their glass houses.

Greenhouse Carbon Dioxide (Co2) Enrichment Products at Home Harvest Garden Supply

Now going back to Professor Glasser's statement, it's suggesting that pre coal burning CO2 levels were below 193ppm which is utter rubbish.

Done it · 2nd April 2009, 08:24 PM

Here's a new one.

Natural carbon capture encourages scientists - Yahoo!7 News

clementine · 3rd April 2009, 11:44 AM

Has anyone seen this:

Who killed the Electric Car?

Saw it the other night, remarkable how they got rid of them battery cars so quick ( as they were about to become popular ) and how the oil company bought the patent for the new battery technology to make sure we all need oil for a few more years!

3 hundred trillion dollars of oil still in the ground! $300,000,000,000,000

And we're gonna get to use it all before we are allowed to progress to sustainable technology!

Therrin · 4th April 2009, 06:28 PM

I've heard several different times that the eruption of the volcano "Mount Saint Helens" put more filth and crap into the air than all of the man-made emissions of the entire continent, ever. (some accounts claim the whole world's emissions)

And that's just from one eruption. They say ("they"), that volcanic eruptions in general have been putting more polutants into the atmosphere and causing more general widespread chaos and destruction to the planet than all of mankind has ever or will ever add to the mix for tens of thousands of years.

Me, I'm pretty convinced that what's happening globally is a cycle that occurs regularly. Except that our miniscule little lives arent used to seeing these changes take place, so while we can see evidence of a turn coming, we are haughty enough to think that we're actually in control or responsible for it somehow.

Eric Frei · 4th April 2009, 07:24 PM

I think too our technology allows us to measure it ... back in 1790 who'd give a rats ass or know how ppm CO2 was in the air.

Eric Frei · 14th May 2009, 10:09 PM

Read the article!

Source: Global Warming Inadvertently Curbed In Past By Lead Pollution, Scientists Find

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Scientists now assume that as a result of the significantly higher levels of lead pollution in the 1970s and 1980s – resulting from the use of leaded petrol and due to lead emissions from power stations – the great majority of all mineral dust particles were contaminated with lead and as a result more heat escaped from the earth than at present. "This probably led to global inhibition of rises in temperature to some extent, whereas today almost the full greenhouse effect is kicking in," says Curtius.

But a return to the lead emission levels of the late 20th century is hardly desirable. Lead is a toxic heavy metal that can cause severe damage to health. "However, with the benefit of hindsight we can now explain why there has been a trend towards more rapid temperature rises in recent years; it is because mankind has cut back its emissions of lead and sulphates," claims Borrmann.

HolmenTree · 28th May 2009, 03:51 AM

Google James Lovelock. This 90 year old Brit has written excellent books on the global warming and other earthly issues. I am convinced he is the "authority" on this subject.
One of his theorys is in the near future [very near] all land around or close to the equator will be reduced to scrub and desert. Only places like New Zealand, Canada and northern Europe will be prime for vegetation and habitation.
But there is good news in his thinking, he is not a doomsdayer but a genuine realist.
Cheers,
Willard Holmen.

HolmenTree · 30th May 2009, 12:57 PM

If you can't find the "right" James Lovelock on Google , try Professor James Lovelock.

stargazer · 30th May 2009, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolmenTree

Google James Lovelock. This 90 year old Brit has written excellent books on the global warming and other earthly issues. I am convinced he is the "authority" on this subject.
One of his theorys is in the near future [very near] all land around or close to the equator will be reduced to scrub and desert. Only places like New Zealand, Canada and northern Europe will be prime for vegetation and habitation.
But there is good news in his thinking, he is not a doomsdayer but a genuine realist.
Cheers,
Willard Holmen.

I haven't read him yet, but find it funny that only the British empire will survive, in his view.

HolmenTree · 31st May 2009, 03:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stargazer

I haven't read him yet, but find it funny that only the British empire will survive, in his view.

What he is saying is human population and food production will shift to the southern and northern parts of earth.
Not just the British empire will survive but also Russian,Scandinavian, the southern part of South America. Most of the USA population will have to move to Alaska!
I know alot of the American people still have bitter sentiment against the British. Hell even us Canadians burnt down your White House and you blamed it on the British.

The Americans can take credit for ending WW2 in 1945 with the bomb backed with the help from German scientists. But it was the British who trained and backed Norwegian commandos to sabotage and destroy Nazi heavy water plants between 1942 and 1944. Which stopped Germany from getting the bomb first.
Yes Long live the British empire.

stargazer · 31st May 2009, 03:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolmenTree

What he is saying is human population and food production will shift to the southern and northern parts of earth.
Not just the British empire will survive but also Russian,Scandinavian, the southern part of South America. All the USA population will have to move to Alaska!
I know alot of the American people still have bitter sentiment against the British. Hell even us Canadians burnt down your White House and you blamed it on the British.

The Americans can take credit for ending WW2 in 1945 with the bomb with the help of a German scientist. But it was the British who trained and backed Norwegian commandos to sabotage and destroy Nazi heavy water plants between 1942 and 1944. Which stopped Germany from getting the bomb first.
Yes Long live the British empire.

I know of no resentment. And I truly admire what the Norwegians did, very daring mission. IIRC they had a snow eater chinook that made leaving almost impossible. And I admire most things Canadian.

I just thought it was funny that people like to imagine their own little world is special. Perhaps global warming will alter ocean currents and the British Isles will freeze solid.

Far as I know we were under a mile of ice here ten or twenty thousand years ago, so I guess global warming has been going on at least that long. I'm not worried. Hey, maybe I'll own ocean front property when the ocean rises! I'm far enough north and cold enough to appreciate a little global warming. I've read that the woolly mammoths frozen under that ice died with tropical vegetation in their mouths. Makes more sense then imagining such big animals were able to feed on ice and snow. So maybe just like the weather, warm and cold periods alternate.

The volcano in Alaska recently spewed forth such large amounts of sulfur and carbon dioxide that satellites were tracking the clouds which went right over me here in Maine. Didn't see any cities showing up in those satellite pictures. Guess man better control and tax volcanoes! Much worse pollution!

Just because things change doesn't mean it's a disaster. During the last warm up mankind thrived. That period was much warmer than anything we have now. Then the mini ice age killed off Greenland, and things contracted. Could be a natural cycle. Could be caused by a cycle in the sun, in which case taxing us to death won't help. In fact, that sort of heavy taxation is a much greater and more realistic threat to the survival of our system.

Didn't you have an unusually cold winter last winter? We sure did! And the summer before. And I just burned a lot of firewood in the last week, glad I cut more than usual. If we rush out and do something stupid and irreversible to stop global warming just as a cooling period starts, what then?

I believe the gloom and doom is fear mongering, so people will buckle under and accept anything. Big big money maker and control thing.

HolmenTree · 31st May 2009, 04:11 AM

Well said stargazer.
Yes we had a long winter here and its still colder then normal.
I heard an interview from Professor James Lovelock on CBC radio the other week and I am definitely going to read his books , alot of your questions the interviewer asked him and he seemed to make alot of sense of them.

Eric Frei · 31st May 2009, 10:29 AM

'Enjoy life while you can' | Environment | The Guardian

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'Enjoy life while you can'

Climate science maverick James Lovelock believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam. So what would he do? By Decca Aitkenhead

In 1965 executives at Shell wanted to know what the world would look like in the year 2000. They consulted a range of experts, who speculated about fusion-powered hovercrafts and "all sorts of fanciful technological stuff". When the oil company asked the scientist James Lovelock, he predicted that the main problem in 2000 would be the environment. "It will be worsening then to such an extent that it will seriously affect their business," he said.

"And of course," Lovelock says, with a smile 43 years later, "that's almost exactly what's happened."

Lovelock has been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory in an old mill in Cornwall since the mid-1960s, the consistent accuracy of which have earned him a reputation as one of Britain's most respected - if maverick - independent scientists. Working alone since the age of 40, he invented a device that detected CFCs, which helped detect the growing hole in the ozone layer, and introduced the Gaia hypothesis, a revolutionary theory that the Earth is a self-regulating super-organism. Initially ridiculed by many scientists as new age nonsense, today that theory forms the basis of almost all climate science.

For decades, his advocacy of nuclear power appalled fellow environmentalists - but recently increasing numbers of them have come around to his way of thinking. His latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, predicts that by 2020 extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation; that by 2040 much of Europe will be Saharan; and parts of London will be underwater. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report deploys less dramatic language - but its calculations aren't a million miles away from his.

As with most people, my panic about climate change is equalled only by my confusion over what I ought to do about it. A meeting with Lovelock therefore feels a little like an audience with a prophet. Buried down a winding track through wild woodland, in an office full of books and papers and contraptions involving dials and wires, the 88-year-old presents his thoughts with a quiet, unshakable conviction that can be unnerving. More alarming even than his apocalyptic climate predictions is his utter certainty that almost everything we're trying to do about it is wrong.

On the day we meet, the Daily Mail has launched a campaign to rid Britain of plastic shopping bags. The initiative sits comfortably within the current canon of eco ideas, next to ethical consumption, carbon offsetting, recycling and so on - all of which are premised on the calculation that individual lifestyle adjustments can still save the planet. This is, Lovelock says, a deluded fantasy. Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better, but they won't make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable.

"It's just too late for it," he says. "Perhaps if we'd gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don't have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can't say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do."

He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. "Carbon offsetting? I wouldn't dream of it. It's just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you're offsetting the carbon? You're probably making matters worse. You're far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests."

Do he and his wife try to limit the number of flights they take? "No we don't. Because we can't." And recycling, he adds, is "almost certainly a waste of time and energy", while having a "green lifestyle" amounts to little more than "ostentatious grand gestures". He distrusts the notion of ethical consumption. "Because always, in the end, it turns out to be a scam ... or if it wasn't one in the beginning, it becomes one."

Somewhat unexpectedly, Lovelock concedes that the Mail's plastic bag campaign seems, "on the face of it, a good thing". But it transpires that this is largely a tactical response; he regards it as merely more rearrangement of Titanic deckchairs, "but I've learnt there's no point in causing a quarrel over everything". He saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all - renewable energy.

"You're never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours," he says. "Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time."

This is all delivered with an air of benign wonder at the intractable stupidity of people. "I see it with everybody. People just want to go on doing what they're doing. They want business as usual. They say, 'Oh yes, there's going to be a problem up ahead,' but they don't want to change anything."

Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from less technology, but more.

Nuclear power, he argues, can solve our energy problem - the bigger challenge will be food. "Maybe they'll synthesise food. I don't know. Synthesising food is not some mad visionary idea; you can buy it in Tesco's, in the form of Quorn. It's not that good, but people buy it. You can live on it." But he fears we won't invent the necessary technologies in time, and expects "about 80%" of the world's population to be wiped out by 2100. Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, he says. "But this is the real thing."

Faced with two versions of the future - Kyoto's preventative action and Lovelock's apocalypse - who are we to believe? Some critics have suggested Lovelock's readiness to concede the fight against climate change owes more to old age than science: "People who say that about me haven't reached my age," he says laughing.

But when I ask if he attributes the conflicting predictions to differences in scientific understanding or personality, he says: "Personality."

There's more than a hint of the controversialist in his work, and it seems an unlikely coincidence that Lovelock became convinced of the irreversibility of climate change in 2004, at the very point when the international consensus was coming round to the need for urgent action. Aren't his theories at least partly driven by a fondness for heresy?

"Not a bit! Not a bit! All I want is a quiet life! But I can't help noticing when things happen, when you go out and find something. People don't like it because it upsets their ideas."

But the suspicion seems confirmed when I ask if he's found it rewarding to see many of his climate change warnings endorsed by the IPCC. "Oh no! In fact, I'm writing another book now, I'm about a third of the way into it, to try and take the next steps ahead."

Interviewers often remark upon the discrepancy between Lovelock's predictions of doom, and his good humour. "Well I'm cheerful!" he says, smiling. "I'm an optimist. It's going to happen."

Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, he explains, when "we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn't know what to do about it". But once the second world war was under way, "everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday ... so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose - that's what people want."

At moments I wonder about Lovelock's credentials as a prophet. Sometimes he seems less clear-eyed with scientific vision than disposed to see the version of the future his prejudices are looking for. A socialist as a young man, he now favours market forces, and it's not clear whether his politics are the child or the father of his science. His hostility to renewable energy, for example, gets expressed in strikingly Eurosceptic terms of irritation with subsidies and bureaucrats. But then, when he talks about the Earth - or Gaia - it is in the purest scientific terms all.

"There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that's just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That's the source of my optimism."

What would Lovelock do now, I ask, if he were me? He smiles and says: "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan."

His website is here.

Lovelock: Home.

I like how the man talks, a straight shooter and knowing more than the average Joe means he has less time to entertain their rhetoric. I too for some time now have lost my patience with the green eco tree huggers and carbon BS schemes, I too have for a long time now said technology is the way ahead, and nuclear power seems the cleanest!

With nuclear power who says who can have it? Oh, only countries USA approves of perhaps.

Which brings about the true problem, politics. Politics in all it's forms (yes religion is just a form of it) is the hurdle, it is politics that makes a terrorist want to nuke USA.

Energy is lost over distance, to deliver say electricity over distance means larger cables and higher voltage, our trans continental lines are 500Kv. If you are thinking to have a central nuke station owned by say UN delivering energy globally you have that issue of getting the power there. So having smaller stations in closer proximity would be better. Anyway, all of that is outside of my role however it's time to take the pressure off people and their economies with these idiotic ideas of carbon credits tax etc.

stargazer · 31st May 2009, 09:59 PM

There can be no gain, only loss in synthesizing food. Food is an energy source. It would require energy to make it. Human nutritional needs are extremely complex. Life supports life.

If we will have huge arid areas then why not use the extreme sun available to grow food, even if only algae? That is the most efficient way. In fact, plants are a form of solar power.

If so much extreme sun will be available, why not use more solar energy? Silicon is plentiful. New amorphous film technology produces energy (today, right here at my home) in clouds, rain, and shade; even all three at once. Further in the future we may see HP style inkjet printers "painting" solar panel onto surfaces. Imagine fighting to park in the sun instead of the shade; roof, hood, and trunk painted with solar panels.

Excellent point Ekka about the energy cost of transmission. Never mind that super cooled low loss transmission technology, too energy costly. The answer is widely distributed production. Centralized production also invites terrorism.

Different areas have different conditions. The US scores the highest on consistent wind (especially the midwest), there are people living now with homemade wind power. Yes, they have computers.

The southwest has tons of solar power without "waiting for global warming". The northeast has running water everywhere and water power beats the pants off wind and solar. The northeast was at one time driven by primitive wooden water wheels. We can be more efficient today.

To dismiss these sources of energy is irresponsible. Remember that all energy used in the world except nuclear comes from the sun, one way or another. May not be practical in London. Maybe "global warming" will fix that.

"Synthesized" food is not synthesized if it is made from food.

"Quorn is the brand name of meat substitutes that are made from a vat-grown fungus. Some people have dangerous allergic reactions to the fungus and suffer nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and occasionally hives or difficulty breathing. Some people react the first time they eat Quorn, while some react only after building up a sensitivity.
Medical studies have proven that Quorn's fungal ingredient is an allergen, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency still allow its sale. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit food-safety organization based in Washington, D.C., has heard from more than 600 consumers in Europe and the United States who have suffered reactions to Quorn.
Despite what some of the manufacturer's (Marlow Foods) marketing materials indicate, the fungus used in Quorn is only distantly related to mushrooms, truffles, or morels. While all are members of the fungus kingdom, Quorn is made from a less appetizing fungus (or mold) called Fusarium venenatum.
CSPI urges consumers to avoid Quorn and urges natural-foods retailers like Whole Foods not to sell this product that is dangerous to sensitive individuals."

Gee, I sound cranky this early Sunday AM!

HolmenTree · 1st June 2009, 02:08 PM

Excellent James Lovelock post you presented there Ekka. I see you have the Lovelock bug too!
I have his books on order at our local public library, but my timing is off because I'm smack in the middle of my busy tree season.Presently don't have the reading time that I get in my winter off season.

Eric Frei · 1st June 2009, 08:11 PM

Dont know if you read this one but forests aren't always making gains anymore.

Amazon Rainforest dumps 3 billion tons of CO2 into atmosphere

Seems that there's a net loss from trees en masse.

Thinking outside the box means planting more trees in vulnerable areas means CO2 loss.

Tree-Killing Hurricanes Could Contribute To Global Warming

Quote:

ScienceDaily (May 10, 2009) — A first-of-its kind, long-term study of hurricane impact on U.S. trees shows that hurricane damage can diminish a forest’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming, from the atmosphere. Tulane University researchers from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology examined the impact of tropical cyclones on U.S. forests from 1851–2000 and found that changes in hurricane frequency might contribute to global warming.

The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, and release it when they die -- either from old age or from trauma, such as hurricanes. The annual amount of carbon dioxide a forest removes from the atmosphere is determined by the ratio of tree growth to tree mortality each year.

When trees are destroyed en masse by hurricanes, not only will there be fewer trees in the forest to absorb greenhouse gases, but forests could eventually become emitters of carbon dioxide, warming the climate. And other studies, notes Tulane ecologist Jeff Chambers, indicate that hurricanes will intensify with a warming climate.

“If landfalling hurricanes become more intense or more frequent in the future, tree mortality and damage exceeding 50 million tons of tree biomass per year would result in a net carbon loss from U.S. forest ecosystems,” says Chambers.

The study, which was led by Tulane postdoctoral research associate Hongcheng Zeng, establishes an important baseline to evaluate changes in the frequency and intensity of future landfalling hurricanes.

Using field measurements, satellite image analyses, and empirical models to evaluate forest and carbon cycle impacts, the researchers established that an average of 97 million trees have been affected each year for the past 150 years over the entire United States, resulting in a 53-million ton annual biomass loss and an average carbon release of 25 million tons. Forest impacts were primarily located in Gulf Coast areas, particularly southern Texas and Louisiana and south Florida, while significant impacts also occurred in eastern North Carolina.

Chambers compares the data from this study to a 2007 study that showed that a single storm – Hurricane Katrina -- destroyed nearly 320 million trees with a total biomass loss equivalent to 50–140 percent of the net annual U.S. carbon sink in forest trees.

“The bottom line,” says Chambers, “is that any sustained increase in hurricane tree biomass loss above 50 million tons would potentially undermine our efforts to reduce human fossil fuel carbon emissions.”

Study contributors include Tulane lab researchers Robinson Negrón-Juárez and David Baker; George Hurtt of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire; and Mark Powell at the Hurricane Research Division, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For more information contact Tulane’s Office of Public Relations.

HolmenTree · 2nd June 2009, 02:55 PM

Myself having felled trees for a living in the worlds largest tract of forest [Boreal Forest] for over 20 years in north central Canada. I can give an example of it's dark colored spruce and pine heating up the earth. While working in this forest at temps -30 C below, I noticed snow melting off the dark colored spruce needles in the bright mid day sunshine even though it was -30 below at the time.
Snow and ice reflect heat from the sun back into the upper atmosphere and I am sure white sand desert would do the same. This dark conifer Boreal Forest which stretches all the way around the earth's northern hemisphere absorbs alot of heat. Especially in the summer months when there is no snow on the ground. Too bad the Boreal wasn't a light colored decidious forest especilly in these times of global warming.

stargazer · 2nd June 2009, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolmenTree

Myself having felled trees for a living in the worlds largest tract of forest [Boreal Forest] for over 20 years in north central Canada. I can give an example of it's dark colored spruce and pine heating up the earth. While working in this forest at temps -30 C below, I noticed snow melting off the dark colored spruce needles in the bright mid day sunshine even though it was -30 below at the time.
Snow and ice reflect heat from the sun back into the upper atmosphere and I am sure white sand desert would do the same. This dark conifer Boreal Forest which stretches all the way around the earth's northern hemisphere absorbs alot of heat. Especially in the summer months when there is no snow on the ground. Too bad the Boreal wasn't a light colored decidious forest especilly in these times of global warming.

Needle trees also slow down radiational cooling. Try sleeping outside under the open sky and comparing it to sleeping under a canopy of needles. Much warmer under some nice thick evergreens.

Pines are the warmest, you get that nice thick carpet of needles underneath as well.

HolmenTree · 3rd June 2009, 04:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stargazer

Needle trees also slow down radiational cooling. Try sleeping outside under the open sky and comparing it to sleeping under a canopy of needles. Much warmer under some nice thick evergreens.

Pines are the warmest, you get that nice thick carpet of needles underneath as well.

Good points stargazer. You folks on the eastern US seaboard don't have alot of conifer "needle trees" left do you? Just mostly hardwood now.

Bob Tooley · 4th June 2009, 01:28 AM

It seems like every agency in the government needs to justify it's existence by creating a 'scare' campaign now and then. They throw the West Nile Virus at us one year..but what do you hear about it now ? Did it just go away, or did they wear out it's popularity and they now have some 'new' and improved campaign ? The forest services need to throw a new insect 'epidemic' at us every so often because they can't fund extra money if there aren't 'some' problems they just 'have' to deal with. One year it's Gypsy moth, the next it might be spruce bud worm... and even though nothing gets done about any of them...they do get their headlines..and often their funding, and you don't hear about a 'retired' insect until they need to pull it out of moth balls and re-present it as a new 'cause'... Asian Longhorn Beetle has been replaced by the Emerald Ash Borer, and as soon as they find something new to play with, these insects will be long forgotten... just as a hundred before them have.. They don't want to deal with Dutch elm disease anymore because there are so few elms left, the public 'impact' wouldn't be great enough to create a 'panic'... which equates to the inability for requesting additional funding needs.
Getting past the smoke and mirrors in this 'political game' is really difficult because you don't know how to separate the truth from the sensationalism.

stargazer · 4th June 2009, 09:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolmenTree

Good points stargazer. You folks on the eastern US seaboard don't have alot of conifer "needle trees" left do you? Just mostly hardwood now.

Here in Maine we have a good mix. Any place that is disturbed (cleared) tends to sprout thick evergreens. This is the "pine tree state" and pines grow remarkably well here. Spruce, fir, pine and hemlock. I've noticed that Atlantic Canada is pretty heavily cut off, and I guess some parts of Maine are as well. But the young stuff grows pretty fast. A lot of the cutting in my area is thinning, not clear cutting, which leaves good seeding and encourages tall growth.

Bob Tooley · 4th June 2009, 11:52 PM

One of my secondary interests is in the science of geology, with regard to the 4.5-billion year time line, and one thing becomes evident... everything we are seeing today has happened before. Today we have the ability to monitor a number of things with a much higher degree of accuracy, so these findings may be new, but the now-alarming issues being monitored may be quite old.
For years I questioned the issue of crude oil being a fossil fuel, because at the extreme depths which oil is found, and the regions where these deposits are located..couldn't have come from prehistoric plant remains, and now the new findings are that crude oil is most likely a percolated hydrocarbon. I believe most of the controversy in the Global Warming sciences stems from the interpretation of new findings as to how they differ from 'what is normal', because we don't have any past written records to compare them to. In science, you can't just write in anything that isn't fact-based so there are a number of 'blank' areas which can be subject to all kinds of speculation in the not-yet-fully-defined formula of the Global Warming issues. I think the jury is still out on this one until a few more substantiating facts are uncovered.

10th March 2009, 01:20 AM	#2
Done it Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia. Posts: 784	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? I've heard talks by Dr Tim Bell, very interesting. Someone who doesn't get much recognition is John Tyndall, about 150 years before him. Worth reading, The Weather Doctor Almanac 2006 John Tyndall There's a wiki thing about him, John Tyndall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Makes you wonder how the world got along without the internet.

10th March 2009, 10:53 PM	#4
Done it Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia. Posts: 784	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Yeah right. Just before I posted that I was watching TV [my mistake] There was a guy on the ABC raving on like he just discovered what Tyndall did 150 years ago, changed channels and got Jack Thompson going on about CarbonSMART® - Landcare Australia carbon trading, sequestration, carbon pool I'm sick of it really, I wonder how many cow s###s equals a return flight to Hollywood.

11th March 2009, 12:31 AM	#5
Eric Frei Admin - Razor sharp and independent 2 X Diploma Level 5 qualified arborist Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 12,814	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Bullshit, bullshit and more bullshit. Me too, I'm so over greenies and carbonators! Now on the salinity issue read this thread, the link goes to the post where things change ... and make sense. Soil salinity - cause Wasn't trees, it was the removal of our native grasses! And now along with what we are reading here it all links together. Lets look at the eucalypt species. Did you know they didn't appear till the aridity set in. So Australia was 1st getting dryer then the eucs came whilst the rainforest species withered. Then the eucs adapted to fire. Now some boffins reckoned the adaption to fire was because the aboriginals started burning. But that has been laughed out because aboriginals have only been here 40K years and a species wont evolve that fast. If they were not exposed to fire and all of a sudden aboriginals started burning them ... then the logical conclusion would be that the trees would die because no way are they going to radically evolve to survive over night.... let alone be here 40,000 years after getting torched. There's some great info in this link to a book called Australian Rainforests islands of green in a land of fire So salinity, fires, native grasses and a dryer continent has been the norm for millions of years. __________________ Protect your rights to work - Join Australian Tree Association My businesses:- Qualified Brisbane Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding Brisbane \| Brisbane - Gold Coast Consulting Arborist

19th March 2009, 11:33 PM	#6
Eric Frei Admin - Razor sharp and independent 2 X Diploma Level 5 qualified arborist Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 12,814	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Another great site that also looks at the other side of the argument. CO2 Science __________________ Protect your rights to work - Join Australian Tree Association My businesses:- Qualified Brisbane Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding Brisbane \| Brisbane - Gold Coast Consulting Arborist

28th March 2009, 04:17 PM	#8
clementine Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Shropshire, UK Posts: 509	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Wealllll, they got me going, and I think the truth is a big money cover up! Exponential decay? 1st, They have me thinking that the planet is about to roll over, due to us all, or should I say, those profiteering bastud MF's that won't leave us alone to live naturally. Then I'm made to contemplate that this might be a naturally re-occuring event in the planets life cycle. Shoot! __________________ Meddle not in the affairs of dragons - for you are crunchy and taste of chicken!

2nd April 2009, 08:24 PM	#10
Done it Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia. Posts: 784	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Here's a new one. Natural carbon capture encourages scientists - Yahoo!7 News

3rd April 2009, 11:44 AM	#11
clementine Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Shropshire, UK Posts: 509	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Has anyone seen this: Who killed the Electric Car? Saw it the other night, remarkable how they got rid of them battery cars so quick ( as they were about to become popular ) and how the oil company bought the patent for the new battery technology to make sure we all need oil for a few more years! 3 hundred trillion dollars of oil still in the ground! $300,000,000,000,000 And we're gonna get to use it all before we are allowed to progress to sustainable technology! __________________ Meddle not in the affairs of dragons - for you are crunchy and taste of chicken! Last edited by clementine; 3rd April 2009 at 12:16 PM.

4th April 2009, 06:28 PM	#12
Therrin Former Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Bakersfield, Ca Posts: 2,512	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? I've heard several different times that the eruption of the volcano "Mount Saint Helens" put more filth and crap into the air than all of the man-made emissions of the entire continent, ever. (some accounts claim the whole world's emissions) And that's just from one eruption. They say ("they"), that volcanic eruptions in general have been putting more polutants into the atmosphere and causing more general widespread chaos and destruction to the planet than all of mankind has ever or will ever add to the mix for tens of thousands of years. Me, I'm pretty convinced that what's happening globally is a cycle that occurs regularly. Except that our miniscule little lives arent used to seeing these changes take place, so while we can see evidence of a turn coming, we are haughty enough to think that we're actually in control or responsible for it somehow.

4th April 2009, 07:24 PM	#13
Eric Frei Admin - Razor sharp and independent 2 X Diploma Level 5 qualified arborist Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 12,814	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? I think too our technology allows us to measure it ... back in 1790 who'd give a rats ass or know how ppm CO2 was in the air. __________________ Protect your rights to work - Join Australian Tree Association My businesses:- Qualified Brisbane Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding Brisbane \| Brisbane - Gold Coast Consulting Arborist

28th May 2009, 03:51 AM	#15
HolmenTree Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Manitoba, Canada Posts: 648	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Google James Lovelock. This 90 year old Brit has written excellent books on the global warming and other earthly issues. I am convinced he is the "authority" on this subject. One of his theorys is in the near future [very near] all land around or close to the equator will be reduced to scrub and desert. Only places like New Zealand, Canada and northern Europe will be prime for vegetation and habitation. But there is good news in his thinking, he is not a doomsdayer but a genuine realist. Cheers, Willard Holmen.

30th May 2009, 12:57 PM	#16
HolmenTree Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Manitoba, Canada Posts: 648	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? If you can't find the "right" James Lovelock on Google , try Professor James Lovelock.

31st May 2009, 04:11 AM	#20
HolmenTree Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Manitoba, Canada Posts: 648	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Well said stargazer. Yes we had a long winter here and its still colder then normal. I heard an interview from Professor James Lovelock on CBC radio the other week and I am definitely going to read his books , alot of your questions the interviewer asked him and he seemed to make alot of sense of them.

31st May 2009, 09:59 PM	#22
stargazer Semi-mature vigorous tree Join Date: May 2009 Location: western Maine, USA Posts: 63	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? There can be no gain, only loss in synthesizing food. Food is an energy source. It would require energy to make it. Human nutritional needs are extremely complex. Life supports life. If we will have huge arid areas then why not use the extreme sun available to grow food, even if only algae? That is the most efficient way. In fact, plants are a form of solar power. If so much extreme sun will be available, why not use more solar energy? Silicon is plentiful. New amorphous film technology produces energy (today, right here at my home) in clouds, rain, and shade; even all three at once. Further in the future we may see HP style inkjet printers "painting" solar panel onto surfaces. Imagine fighting to park in the sun instead of the shade; roof, hood, and trunk painted with solar panels. Excellent point Ekka about the energy cost of transmission. Never mind that super cooled low loss transmission technology, too energy costly. The answer is widely distributed production. Centralized production also invites terrorism. Different areas have different conditions. The US scores the highest on consistent wind (especially the midwest), there are people living now with homemade wind power. Yes, they have computers. The southwest has tons of solar power without "waiting for global warming". The northeast has running water everywhere and water power beats the pants off wind and solar. The northeast was at one time driven by primitive wooden water wheels. We can be more efficient today. To dismiss these sources of energy is irresponsible. Remember that all energy used in the world except nuclear comes from the sun, one way or another. May not be practical in London. Maybe "global warming" will fix that. "Synthesized" food is not synthesized if it is made from food. "Quorn is the brand name of meat substitutes that are made from a vat-grown fungus. Some people have dangerous allergic reactions to the fungus and suffer nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and occasionally hives or difficulty breathing. Some people react the first time they eat Quorn, while some react only after building up a sensitivity. Medical studies have proven that Quorn's fungal ingredient is an allergen, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency still allow its sale. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit food-safety organization based in Washington, D.C., has heard from more than 600 consumers in Europe and the United States who have suffered reactions to Quorn. Despite what some of the manufacturer's (Marlow Foods) marketing materials indicate, the fungus used in Quorn is only distantly related to mushrooms, truffles, or morels. While all are members of the fungus kingdom, Quorn is made from a less appetizing fungus (or mold) called Fusarium venenatum. CSPI urges consumers to avoid Quorn and urges natural-foods retailers like Whole Foods not to sell this product that is dangerous to sensitive individuals." Gee, I sound cranky this early Sunday AM!

1st June 2009, 02:08 PM	#23
HolmenTree Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Manitoba, Canada Posts: 648	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Excellent James Lovelock post you presented there Ekka. I see you have the Lovelock bug too! I have his books on order at our local public library, but my timing is off because I'm smack in the middle of my busy tree season.Presently don't have the reading time that I get in my winter off season.

2nd June 2009, 02:55 PM	#25
HolmenTree Over mature heritage tree Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Manitoba, Canada Posts: 648	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? Myself having felled trees for a living in the worlds largest tract of forest [Boreal Forest] for over 20 years in north central Canada. I can give an example of it's dark colored spruce and pine heating up the earth. While working in this forest at temps -30 C below, I noticed snow melting off the dark colored spruce needles in the bright mid day sunshine even though it was -30 below at the time. Snow and ice reflect heat from the sun back into the upper atmosphere and I am sure white sand desert would do the same. This dark conifer Boreal Forest which stretches all the way around the earth's northern hemisphere absorbs alot of heat. Especially in the summer months when there is no snow on the ground. Too bad the Boreal wasn't a light colored decidious forest especilly in these times of global warming.

4th June 2009, 01:28 AM	#28
Bob Tooley Semi-mature vigorous tree Join Date: May 2009 Location: Scarborough, Maine USA Posts: 128	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? It seems like every agency in the government needs to justify it's existence by creating a 'scare' campaign now and then. They throw the West Nile Virus at us one year..but what do you hear about it now ? Did it just go away, or did they wear out it's popularity and they now have some 'new' and improved campaign ? The forest services need to throw a new insect 'epidemic' at us every so often because they can't fund extra money if there aren't 'some' problems they just 'have' to deal with. One year it's Gypsy moth, the next it might be spruce bud worm... and even though nothing gets done about any of them...they do get their headlines..and often their funding, and you don't hear about a 'retired' insect until they need to pull it out of moth balls and re-present it as a new 'cause'... Asian Longhorn Beetle has been replaced by the Emerald Ash Borer, and as soon as they find something new to play with, these insects will be long forgotten... just as a hundred before them have.. They don't want to deal with Dutch elm disease anymore because there are so few elms left, the public 'impact' wouldn't be great enough to create a 'panic'... which equates to the inability for requesting additional funding needs. Getting past the smoke and mirrors in this 'political game' is really difficult because you don't know how to separate the truth from the sensationalism.

4th June 2009, 11:52 PM	#30
Bob Tooley Semi-mature vigorous tree Join Date: May 2009 Location: Scarborough, Maine USA Posts: 128	Re: Climate Change \| Global Warming \| BS or not? One of my secondary interests is in the science of geology, with regard to the 4.5-billion year time line, and one thing becomes evident... everything we are seeing today has happened before. Today we have the ability to monitor a number of things with a much higher degree of accuracy, so these findings may be new, but the now-alarming issues being monitored may be quite old. For years I questioned the issue of crude oil being a fossil fuel, because at the extreme depths which oil is found, and the regions where these deposits are located..couldn't have come from prehistoric plant remains, and now the new findings are that crude oil is most likely a percolated hydrocarbon. I believe most of the controversy in the Global Warming sciences stems from the interpretation of new findings as to how they differ from 'what is normal', because we don't have any past written records to compare them to. In science, you can't just write in anything that isn't fact-based so there are a number of 'blank' areas which can be subject to all kinds of speculation in the not-yet-fully-defined formula of the Global Warming issues. I think the jury is still out on this one until a few more substantiating facts are uncovered.

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