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Though I agree with Bob that human influence is merely one of many factors in the current die-off of lodgepole and whitebarks (and several other things), I do have to correct the oft-touted meme about the ratio of volcanic CO2 output versus human output of CO2. Humans actually put out around 120 to 200 times the amount of CO2 per year that volcanoes do. Volcanic activity releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year, versus human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amounting to about 27 billion tonnes per year.
Though I agree with Bob that human influence is merely one of many factors in the current die-off of lodgepole and whitebarks (and several other things), I do have to correct the oft-touted meme about the ratio of volcanic CO2 output versus human output of CO2. Humans actually put out around 120 to 200 times the amount of CO2 per year that volcanoes do. Volcanic activity releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year, versus human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amounting to about 27 billion tonnes per year.
I don't agree with this attitude though that somehow forests are some sanctified place where no one can live. Where do people live then? That whole attitude smacks of elitism. Where does that guy live? Does he apologize everyday for the land his home sits on? So if it's a crime then where is everyone supposed to live and why?
Yeah, well I think it's a crime that a huge portion of the United States Forest Service's budget--supposedly to be used to protect, manage and enhance our publicly-owned National Forests--is, in fact, being used to defend PRIVATELY OWNED structures located on PRIVATE LAND against wildfire because the owners thereof are so g*****d selfish and/or stupid that they build their homes in the middle of a fire-prone tinderbox, and then expect the taxpayers to bail their sorry ***es out when the inevitable fire threatens their property. I think it is a CRIME that our tax dollars are being wasted and Forest Service firefighters having their lives put at risk to defend man-made crap built in high-risk fire areas that the public doesn't even own. The fools who build in such places should be left to their own devices to defend their property against inevitable fires. Not having all that man-made crap snuggled up to the National Forests would also make it much easier for the Forest Service to actually manage the forests in the way that they could be much healthier, and avoid things like massive beetle-kill in the future.
By the way, though it is not a Colorado issue, I think the same "you're on your own for being stupid" rationale should be applied to the morons who build in oceanfront areas where such development leads to beach erosion.
Though I agree with Bob that human influence is merely one of many factors in the current die-off of lodgepole and whitebarks (and several other things), I do have to correct the oft-touted meme about the ratio of volcanic CO2 output versus human output of CO2. Humans actually put out around 120 to 200 times the amount of CO2 per year that volcanoes do. Volcanic activity releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year, versus human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amounting to about 27 billion tonnes per year.
But back to our regularly scheduled pine beetle infestation...
I don't believe I said that volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans do...I said (accurately) that one medium-sized eruption produces more CO2 than all the cars on the planet do in a year. The point is that there are large-scale natural producers of CO2 that were making large quantities of it for millenia before we showed up with our cars and power plants.
Then there's the significant amount of greenhouse gas produced by animal emissions around the planet, which make lots of CO2, NO (which is more persistent and has greater UV capture than CO2), and of course CH4. And the dinosaurs and other creatures that abounded on the planet in earlier ages made a whole lot of those gases, too.
The effects of the prolonged sunspot low will be far more significant to the climate than man's coal-burning.
Insects like the pine beetle will take advantage of warmer temperatures regardless of the cause, and there's a lot of historical evidence that planetary temps naturally rise and fall without man's help. The most pompous among us (like that a**clown Al Gore, flying around the planet in a fuel-slurping private jet and consuming $3,000 of electricity a month in his enormous mansion, all while lecturing the rest of us on our need to conserve) would have us believe that we are in control of, and therefore responsible for, the natural forces that dominate the planet. Yet they are so insecure in their position that they fabricate false scientific data and lie to support their positions. In reality, we're barely capable of nibbling at the margins.
I don't believe I said that volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans do...I said (accurately) that one medium-sized eruption produces more CO2 than all the cars on the planet do in a year. The point is that there are large-scale natural producers of CO2 that were making large quantities of it for millenia before we showed up with our cars and power plants.
You are of course correct to note that CO2 has been produced and existent in our atmosphere since...well, in many ways since we had an atmosphere. Also, mea culpa if I took your particular comment out of context.
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Then there's the significant amount of greenhouse gas produced by animal emissions around the planet, which make lots of CO2, NO (which is more persistent and has greater UV capture than CO2), and of course CH4. And the dinosaurs and other creatures that abounded on the planet in earlier ages made a whole lot of those gases, too.
All true, but also that needs to be taken in the context. Shy of catastrophic events, evolutionary pressures tend to create dynamic equilibrium over large time scales, with various species die-backs while others thrive. Generally, climate variations would occur over fairly larger periods which species would adapt (or not adapt) to. Niche areas in the ecosystem tended to get filled by newly evolved plants animals that were able to seize on the opportunity left by those that couldn't keep up.
The problem we're having now is not simply one of having too much additional CO2, etc, being put in to the atmosphere, but that ecosystems are becoming less capable of removing / reclaiming those materials. Reasons include how quickly we have increased the amount of such materials into our air and water, how many biomes we've disrupted that re-absorb those materials and generally our interference in processes that tend, over time, toward the most efficient exchange of "resources."
There's always been lots of greenhouse gasses in the air. The difference now is that we're tipping the scale, and doing so too quickly for natural evolutionary processes to "correct" for it. Frankly, the Earth couldn't care less and life has survived quite a few devastating events, but it doesn't mean that we are going to.
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The effects of the prolonged sunspot low will be far more significant to the climate than man's coal-burning.
I don't really know much about the effects of the Sun's magnetic field on our climate, but I'd certainly be interested in reading some of that data.
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Insects like the pine beetle will take advantage of warmer temperatures regardless of the cause, and there's a lot of historical evidence that planetary temps naturally rise and fall without man's help. The most pompous among us (like that a**clown Al Gore, flying around the planet in a fuel-slurping private jet and consuming $3,000 of electricity a month in his enormous mansion, all while lecturing the rest of us on our need to conserve) would have us believe that we are in control of, and therefore responsible for, the natural forces that dominate the planet. Yet they are so insecure in their position that they fabricate false scientific data and lie to support their positions. In reality, we're barely capable of nibbling at the margins.
And yet there is indeed an unsettling trend right now toward changes in our climate (regardless of the cause) that will impact human civilization for at least the next several generations. The impact may not be catastrophic (though I'm sure Hollywood would like to keep us thinking they will be) but the consequences will certainly be major drivers in the quest for resources and security.
Pine beetles, depressing as they are for Coloradans from an aesthetic (and probably economic) point of view, are merely evolutionary pressures attempting to "correct" for overgrowth. They are aided by temperature and other climatic conditions that may have no direct correlation with Coloradan forests but are part of a very intricate web of biological and climatological "behaviors."
As for our part:
"If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."
- Thomas Jefferson
Precisely. If we live within a world of strong natural forces, it should be obvious that it is one of balances that are forever in adjustment. And, that no matter the cause or responsibility, that addition to or subtraction from will have an effect, large or small.
Thus we now experience a rapidly warming climate, exponentially so, which many species will not have time to adapt to, and we add in how much more CO2, with its known effect?
"If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."
- Thomas Jefferson
It was exactly that sort of reasoning on the part of the US Forest Service that led to decades of unnatural fire suppression that facilitated terrific pile-ups of natural fuel in Yellowstone Park that would normally have burned off. The 1988 conflagration that resulted was a great example of why it isn't always best to extinguish any and all fires.
On a more recent note, if your mortgage principal balance is $500,000 and the house's market value has fallen to $300,000, "if [y]our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without," you might be better off to let it burn like a banker on a Salem witch's pyre...
Idunn...who says we have "exponential" warming? I don't believe that is true at all.
Dirty scientists and their malicious plots to prevent human progress in an effort to preserve their reputations and millions of dollars of grant money...why can't they go out there and get real jobs, like everyone else?
I believe I've found the relevant paper here (http://landshape.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction#the_new_climate_theory_of _dr._ferenc_miskolczi - broken link). His explanation for ice ages is quite unique...there isn't one. In fact, all of his data is based on 60 years of recorded science (which is fine, though he then claims that this thermostatic state fluctuates within a window of...surprise...60 years), while ignoring thousands of years of additional evidence detailing warm and cool periods at various extremes and radically different atmospheric composition. He also ignores planetary science in general that shows us significant atmospheric effects in our own solar system that would violate his own theory (assuming, as increasing evidence shows, there were liquid water on those worlds.
Now I'll be fair. The man clearly has a far better grasp than I do when it comes to correlating the data he has available to him. But one man's theory against a mountain of accumulating evidence by thousands of scientists (most of which unlikely to be trying to advance their "religion" or "ego" by way of science...there are far more effective fields for those ambitions) does not disprove anything. He may be contributing very important data to the field. His theory may be a crucial component of understanding trends in planetary climate science. He is not, however, one man against the world in a fight where he alone has the answer and everyone else is a liar afraid that the bad old man of truth is going to take away their grant money.
On a final note, the author of that piece (Kirk Myers) is a self-proclaimed global warming skeptic that can scarcely offer a thread of unbiased journalism. The man is on a mission and rarely allows evidence to speak for itself, injecting emotionalism, drama and vitriol in to every article and blog entry he writes.
Some of the greatest discoveries in science came about because someone's hypothesis turned out to be wrong. Scientists, though human and prone to errors in judgement like anyone, tend to be scientists because the TRUTH is more important to them than money, ego, fame, glory, etc... In a community full of peer review and checks and balances, those that involve themselves in science "for the wrong reasons" tend to be fairly few.
And though I'm sure this will do nothing to prevent this thread from being shut down from my taking it somewhat off topic, I'd just like to add...PINE BEETLES!
(Yes, I do think the decision not to allow the forests to burn was a mistake that has only worsened the pine beetle problem. I do also think that was a human decision. Furthermore, the attribution of Thomas Jefferson was meant more as a metaphor about taking care of where we live than a literal reference to fire and poor forest management.)
Yeah, well I think it's a crime that a huge portion of the United States Forest Service's budget--supposedly to be used to protect, manage and enhance our publicly-owned National Forests--is, in fact, being used to defend PRIVATELY OWNED structures located on PRIVATE LAND against wildfire because the owners thereof are so g*****d selfish and/or stupid that they build their homes in the middle of a fire-prone tinderbox, and then expect the taxpayers to bail their sorry ***es out when the inevitable fire threatens their property. I think it is a CRIME that our tax dollars are being wasted and Forest Service firefighters having their lives put at risk to defend man-made crap built in high-risk fire areas that the public doesn't even own. The fools who build in such places should be left to their own devices to defend their property against inevitable fires. Not having all that man-made crap snuggled up to the National Forests would also make it much easier for the Forest Service to actually manage the forests in the way that they could be much healthier, and avoid things like massive beetle-kill in the future.
By the way, though it is not a Colorado issue, I think the same "you're on your own for being stupid" rationale should be applied to the morons who build in oceanfront areas where such development leads to beach erosion.
Fire is inevitable or could happen just about anywhere. There were a lot of people surprised a few years ago at the number of fires that happened in the southeast, but it happens there every 30-40 years.
As I see it, humans are a part of the environment not below it. We have to live somewhere and no matter where you live I believe there is some element of mother nature that will have to be dealt with, earthquakes, tornados, ice storms, hurricanes, fire, etc.
I have a lot of experience in Australia and fire is just a part of life down there. The trees purposefully shed their bark to start a fire eventually and probably at some point every 70-100 years it is going to have to be dealt with in whatever local area you live in. A lot of places I am familiar with burnt recently but it always comes back and regenerates.
I don't see the rockies as some kind of purposeful, pristine area that cannot be touched by man. If so who makes that assumption and what is the reasoning? If you go squat in the prairie it is no better down there. Down there you have dust, wind, grass fires, etc.
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Precisely
there's a climate science revolution brewing...
