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I know someone with graduate degrees in planetary science using remote sensing and in ecology. Even though he had done no climate science research he was asked on several maybe more occasions to lecture on global warming. I got interested from another state and binge read
whatever I could find from both sides. I wrote him with a bunch of questions and links. He got very mad and refused to speak on the subject ever again or even give a copy of his speeches. I doubt he has given the agnostic or skeptical scientific articles as much time as the conventional, or any at all.
The wildfires there in 2012 burned areas which had not experienced wildfires in some time. As I recall, as notable, the figure was at least 500 years, and more like 1,000.
That is simply not possible. The north park pines (where the fires were) are mostly lodgepoles (or were). The average lifespan of P. contorta is 150 years. Lodgepoles need fire to reproduce. So there had to be fires within the last 150 years in order to have a lodgepole forest in the first place. Please do the math.
Pine beetles have been around forever. They were a major contributor to the Yellowstone fires back in the 1980s. Same scenario as RMP. The lodgepoles there were pushing 200 - 300 years old, thanks to years of fire suppression. Then the beetles got established in the 1960s (go ahead, say it). By the 1980s many pines, especially the lodgepoles were dead. Throw in some lightning and Yellowstone got rejuvenated the old fashioned way.
Does the scientific community know enough to be sure about what to expect on short and long term solar activity? A number of solar activity specialists are predicting sustained perhaps large temperature reduction impacts. The impact of cloud cover changes? Some evidence increased cloud cover is occuring and moderating projected increases. Deep ocean temperature cycles? I doubt it is fully sorted out.How to explain temperatures rising 1/3rd to 1/6th the models expected rate in last 2 decades and not exceeding the peak measured 17 years ago? It may be a short term break but it wasn't predicted. And there are
other important questions.
"It has been our experience that lockdowns and quarantines do not help control Ebola as they end up driving people underground and jeopardizing the trust between people and health providers. This leads to the concealment of potential cases and ends up spreading the disease further." [1]
There is more to saving Colorado than just her ecosystem and natural beauty. Also the life that might be lived here. Whether fracking or other issues, any number of potentially negative influences from within or without which will have a distinct impact on this society. Like it or not, one could not just confine all their time to the woods and expect to be left alone.
The west Africa country of Sierra Leone is a long ways from Colorado, but what is being practiced there could well be inflicted on the entire state of Colorado and even this nation. The intention of authorities—headed by the United States, with now some 3,000 US military troops so deployed—is to "lockdown" that entire nation for 3 days. With everyone mandated to remain only at home, awaiting those coming door to door to remove who they like.
This trend is becoming more widespread, with anyone having paid attention noticing that our government increasingly has no inhibitions in unconstitutionally 'locking down' streets, interstates, schools, neighborhoods, and even recently the entire city of Boston, MA. That transpiring in Sierra Leone is unprecedented. And possibly but practice for that to come.
It might be noted that the disease of Ebola has ebbed and flowed in Africa for decades. That it is as seemingly serious there now speaks to a number of things. But these massive quarantine measures are obviously not being deployed simply to stop a transmittable disease. For one, the given time for this nationwide 'lockdown' is but three days, when the incubation period for Ebola is far longer. So such measures nonsensical from that standpoint.
At least four people suffering Ebola have been transferred from overseas to hospitals in the US, but not in the same location. Rather dispersed with, I believe, one in Nebraska.
Saving Colorado entails any number of things. While some things may be beyond our easy control, in this nation state rights still means something, with any state in this union free within limits to make choices for itself. Witness legalized cannabis. Also Colorado as a state which legally recognizes the primacy of local jurisdictions within it. If such as our forests and their struggles and even death are influenced by factors far beyond our state borders—as with all the many coal-fired power plants and China—we can still take positive steps here, and strongly set an agenda.
Colorado first would suggest that at least in this one spot on the planet someone does care about a civil and healthy society—and beyond all others will take steps to insure that.
So, this thread will be about how each single one of us can start here in Colorado and now to save not only Homo sapiens, but all the living beings on this planet.
You felt good about yourself when you wrote that didn't you? You appear to me to in the self actualization phase of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Most people never achieve this level, many people manufacture false demons in their minds so they can imagine themselves saving the world from these demons, in an effort to achieve self actualization.
Although you don't say it, and you may not understand the subtle distinction, you are promoting the idea of not just global warming, but specifically anthropogenic global warming. Although natural global warming no doubt exists, as does natural global cooling, I do not believe in anthropogenic global warming, I don't believe that carbon dioxide at concentrations of 300, 600, or 900 PPM has any significant effect on atmospheric temperature. But then I only have a degree in Chemical Engineering, and thus do not have a vested interest in perpetuating hysteria about AGW.
So anyone who disagrees with you and Gawker is an idiot, anyone who agrees is a sophisticated intellectual. Now there's a conversation starter. The George Carlin school of debate. LOL.
As I have stated ad nauseam, the science around artificial global warming (AGW) is not settled (it never is). There is no "consensus". Consensus is a phantom. See Global Warming Petition Project.
The public polls do not reflect the intelligence, or lack thereof, of the American public. It reflects a successful propaganda machine with billions (and the U.N.) behind it. They pursue a philosophy of "say it enough times and it becomes the truth". Well, truth is not subject to the forces of democracy. If a million people say 2 + 2 = 6, and only 10 people say 2 + 2 = 4, so what? Those 10 people are correct, not the others.
Did you know that 97% of all atmospheric CO2 is naturally occurring? So mankind accounts for 3%. No one has ever demonstrated a measurable increase by direct measurements. All CO2 measurements have been indirect (tree rings, etc.). Why? Because CO2 is very quickly sequestered by plants. Hence the larger tree rings. Get it? Yes, the columbine will flourish and the elk will have more to eat. So the 3% that we emit is not around long enough to contribute much to the greenhouse effect.
I could post scientific articles until Y3k, and you true believers out there will remain unconvinced, so not going to waste time. Environmentalism has become nothing more than a religion, and a fanatical one at that. Which is funny since most true believers dismiss us non-believers as religious fanatics. Talk about psychological transference.
Some notable quotes:
"My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models." - Freeman Dyson
"Society's emissions of carbon dioxide may or may not turn out to have something significant to do with global warming--the jury is still out." - Edward Teller (Nobel laureate)
"The geologic record suggests that climate ought not to concern us too much when we’re gazing into the energy future, not because it’s unimportant, but because it’s beyond our power to control." - Robert Laughlin (Nobel laureate)
Thank you for the FOX News lecture.
Let's start with your Freeman Dyson selective quote. Dyson has also written that: "[one] of the main causes of [global] warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas." He also wrote: "[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have." And: "I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does."
And then the Edward Teller quote. Point 1: Do we want to wait until it's too late to find out? Point 2: I think Teller may not be up to date on the data...after all, he's been dead for 11 years.
As to the Robert Laughlin quote, I would remind him that climate changes in the geologic record (I have 2 degrees in the geological sciences, including an emphasis on invertebrate paleontology) match up well with periods of extinction.
Let's start with your Freeman Dyson selective quote. Dyson has also written that: "[one] of the main causes of [global] warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas." He also wrote: "[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have." And: "I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does."
And then the Edward Teller quote. Point 1: Do we want to wait until it's too late to find out? Point 2: I think Teller may not be up to date on the data...after all, he's been dead for 11 years.
As to the Robert Laughlin quote, I would remind him that climate changes in the geologic record (I have 2 degrees in the geological sciences, including an emphasis on invertebrate paleontology) match up well with periods of extinction.
Wow, did you really do that? The actual quote from Dyson's 2007 essay is "One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas." You added [global], a major misrepresentation of what he was saying. Dyson has made it clear that he believes any warming is not global, but restricted to the polar regions. The Dyson quote I used was provided to illustrate skepticism surrounding cause, effect, extent, etc., in the scientific community. And it is widespread.
More selective Dyson quotes, "I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic.", "I just think they don’t understand the climate. Their computer models are full of fudge factors.", "I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain.".
The data hasn't really changed much since Teller passed. The computer models have still not been validated.
So what does your degree in invertebrate paleontology tell you about your own statement, "... match up well with periods of extinction."? So what caused those climate change extinctions? SUVs?
I also have a degree in the earth sciences, and one in computer science. So what? Thousands of people with science degrees are in disagreement on AGW (and just about everything else). See Robert5 above.
P.S. I haven't watched FOX News in years, but if you must have a demon, well FOX is as convenient as any.
That is simply not possible. The north park pines (where the fires were) are mostly lodgepoles (or were). The average lifespan of P. contorta is 150 years. Lodgepoles need fire to reproduce. So there had to be fires within the last 150 years in order to have a lodgepole forest in the first place. Please do the math.
Pine beetles have been around forever. They were a major contributor to the Yellowstone fires back in the 1980s. Same scenario as RMP. The lodgepoles there were pushing 200 - 300 years old, thanks to years of fire suppression. Then the beetles got established in the 1960s (go ahead, say it). By the 1980s many pines, especially the lodgepoles were dead. Throw in some lightning and Yellowstone got rejuvenated the old fashioned way.
Lodgepoles are indeed a "fire" species. I often quote a friend who was a career forester who said, "There are only two kinds of lodgepole forests--the ones that are going to burn and the ones that are burning." It's pretty much true. It's true that the Yellowstone fires of 1988 got started in tinder-dry dead and dying lodgepole forests. I was in Yellowstone in the early 1980's and I saw the extent of the beetle-killed lodgepole firsthand. I was also there in 1988, less than 3 weeks before the fires began. A note about Yellowstone '88: tens of millions of taxpayer dollars were spent to try to control the Yellowstone fire complex. What the US taxpayers got for it was the saving of the Old Faithful Lodge and some other historical buildings in the Park, which was done with a few ground crews, a handful of fire trucks and a little air support. Everything else spent in Yellowstone that year was pure waste done for political posturing. The fires went out when it snowed.
All of that said, what is happening in forests all across the Rocky Mountain West, and the southern Rockies, in particular, IS pretty unprecedented. The pine beetle, which has, indeed, been around forever, is doing something that is highly unusual. The winters have been so mild, and spring, summer, and fall temperatures so abnormally warm, that the beetles are actually producing two hatches per season. That has increased infestation rates exponentially. Drought and abnormally warm temperatures over a protracted period of years are also exposing normally beetle and disease resistant trees to infestations and die-backs fairly atypical for those species. Two examples are piñon pine and Englemann Spruce--two trees that are dying in unprecedented quantities in the southern Rockies--those two species being ones that normally live hundreds of years. Whatever one may believe the cause of dramatic warming in the southern Rockies climate should be attributed to, there can be no question that what is happening now is highly unusual in even the very long historical context of looking at centuries of tree ring data. Viewed that way, it can no longer be called a "normal" event.
Location: northern Vermont - previously NM, WA, & MA
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After reading the first and second post, I figured the direction of this thread would be something like this....
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Colorado first
