Climate Change / Global Warming Discussion

[mspohr]

Why New Forests Are Better at Sequestering Carbon Than Old Ones | Pacific Standard

But why are younger forests better at storing carbon? One reason, the researchers write, may be that newly deforested areas are open and sunny and are easily recolonized by fast-growing species. These plants are able to extract carbon from the air and incorporate it into their biomass more quickly than mature trees that must contend with more neighbors and less sunlight.

Another U.K. study, published just last month in Quaternary Science Reviews, found that a period of cooling during the 16 and 17 centuries called the Little Ice Age was caused by forest regrowth following the deaths of millions of indigenous people in the Americas due to European colonization.

 

[nwdiver]

But why are younger forests better at storing carbon? One reason, the researchers write, may be that newly deforested areas are open and sunny and are easily recolonized by fast-growing species.

Yes; Hence my insistence that before attempting to grow more forests we get better at managing the ones we have. There's a lot of old sick forest in CA that needs to be culled and replanted but people think chopping down old, sick or even dead trees is heresy. We did a lot of damage from ~1950 - 1990 with super aggressive fire fighting.

 

[Off Shore]

Haven't dropped by this thread for a while. The tree topic is interesting, but the bot attack prior was pretty sad. You guys really ought to use that I button more.

Netflix is currently offering "The Impossible Flight," the story of the Solar Impulse II, the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the planet. It has everything: range anxiety, battery management issues, and ~11 MWh of clean energy proving a better future is possible. Here's a trailer.

"What we do in the air we can do on the ground. And that is our message."

 

[Swampgator]

And again: You are DEAD WRONG!!!

View attachment 425827


Source: Arctic Sea Ice Minimum | Vital Signs – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

Source: Arctic sea ice decline - Wikipedia


Additional sources below. All based on real Climate Science:

https://skepticalscience.com/Arctic-sea-ice-melt-natural-or-man-made.htm

https://skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm

https://skepticalscience.com/himalayan-glaciers-growing.htm

You must be a little slow. The graphs you posted make my point. Sea Ice extent in the arctic in 2019 same as 2012.

 

[Swampgator]

Climate scientists are starting to weigh in on the overreaction/misleading presentation of the simplistic "planting trees best way to cure climate change" message that some have taken from the Science article:

• 
  Michael E. Mann

@MichaelEMann
Replying to
@prizzotweet
This study is already being misrepresented and overstated. In very best case (likely unachievable) we are talking about offsetting only 1/3 current emissons. As my colleague & friend
@GreatLakesPeck
just pointed out:
Quote Tweet

Jonathan Overpeck
@GreatLakesPeck
· 22h
+ Just to be super clear - to save the planet, we need to rapidly exit the fossil fuel burning era, plus reduce other greenhouse gas emissions ASAP, AND remove CO2 from the atmo via many more, not fewer, forest trees. CO2 capture won’t work by itself.


Michael E. Mann on Twitter

So let's replant and protect forests AND rapidly replace fossil fuels with cheap carbon-free renewables, "electrify everything" in transportation, etc.

Michael Mann is an activist. He stopped being a scientist years ago.

 

[DriverOne]

... that before attempting to grow more forests we get better at managing the ones we have...

Why not both?

Also, I believe a forest will store far more carbon than grassland. I would love more forests for aesthetic reasons alone.

I fully agree that this is a distraction; stopping emissions is the most effective priority.

 

[mspohr]

Yes; Hence my insistence that before attempting to grow more forests we get better at managing the ones we have. There's a lot of old sick forest in CA that needs to be culled and replanted but people think chopping down old, sick or even dead trees is heresy. We did a lot of damage from ~1950 - 1990 with super aggressive fire fighting.

Nobody I know in California is against good forest management. They've done a lot of thinning in the area where I live. The forest here was clear cut during the Comstock mining era and grew back as a thick unhealthy forest. After thinning to about 10-20 trees an acre it's much healthier.

 

[mspohr]

Michael Mann is an activist. He stopped being a scientist years ago.

An activist who understands science and uses it to make his point.

 

[mspohr]

When Will the Planet Be Too Hot for Humans? Much, Much Sooner Than You Imagine.

It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today.

But Arctic permafrost contains 1.8 trillion tons of carbon, more than twice as much as is currently suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere. When it thaws and is released, that carbon may evaporate as methane, which is 34 times as powerful a greenhouse-gas warming blanket as carbon dioxide when judged on the timescale of a century; when judged on the timescale of two decades, it is 86 times as powerful. In other words, we have, trapped in Arctic permafrost, twice as much carbon as is currently wrecking the atmosphere of the planet, all of it scheduled to be released at a date that keeps getting moved up,

The IPCC reports also don’t fully account for the albedo effect (less ice means less reflected and more absorbed sunlight, hence more warming); more cloud cover (which traps heat); or the dieback of forests and other flora (which extract carbon from the atmosphere). Each of these promises to accelerate warming, and the history of the planet shows that temperature can shift as much as five degrees Celsius within thirteen years. The last time the planet was even four degrees warmer, Peter Brannen points out in The Ends of the World, his new history of the planet’s major extinction events, the oceans were hundreds of feet higher.*

 

[mspohr]

European colonisation of the Americas killed 10% of world population
While Europe was in the early days of the Renaissance, there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60 million people. But the first European contact in 1492 brought diseases to the Americas which devastated the native population and the resultant collapse of farming in the Americas was so significant that it may have even cooled the global climate.

This human tragedy meant that there was simply not enough workers left to manage the fields and forests. Without human intervention, previously managed landscapes returned to their natural states, thereby absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. The extent of this regrowth of the natural habitat was so vast that it removed enough CO₂ to cool the planet.

The lower temperatures prompted feedbacks in the carbon cycle which eliminated even more CO₂ from the atmosphere – such as less CO₂ being released from the soil. This explains the drop in CO₂ at 1610 seen in Antarctic ice cores, solving an enigma of why the whole planet cooled briefly in the 1600s. During this period, severe winters and cold summers caused famines and rebellions from Europe to Japan.

 

[Swampgator]

European colonisation of the Americas killed 10% of world population
While Europe was in the early days of the Renaissance, there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60 million people. But the first European contact in 1492 brought diseases to the Americas which devastated the native population and the resultant collapse of farming in the Americas was so significant that it may have even cooled the global climate.

This human tragedy meant that there was simply not enough workers left to manage the fields and forests. Without human intervention, previously managed landscapes returned to their natural states, thereby absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. The extent of this regrowth of the natural habitat was so vast that it removed enough CO₂ to cool the planet.

The lower temperatures prompted feedbacks in the carbon cycle which eliminated even more CO₂ from the atmosphere – such as less CO₂ being released from the soil. This explains the drop in CO₂ at 1610 seen in Antarctic ice cores, solving an enigma of why the whole planet cooled briefly in the 1600s. During this period, severe winters and cold summers caused famines and rebellions from Europe to Japan.

Nice fantasy based on a study in Nature where the authors put forward a speculative model.

CO2 lags temperature change in the long term history of the earths climate. It does not cause them. But so many in the CAGW religion believe CO2 is the control knob for Earths global temperature. They just cling to that dogma in the face of real evidence to the contrary.

 

[Brando]

ocean warming, coral dying, overfishing, plastic pollution overwhelming, air pollution killing and people argue weather perhaps the most chaotic system. Burn it all and wonder what could possibly go wrong.

 

[ohmman]

CO2 lags temperature change in the long term history of the earths climate. It does not cause them. But so many in the CAGW religion believe CO2 is the control knob for Earths global temperature. They just cling to that dogma in the face of real evidence to the contrary.

What's the solubility of CO2 in the oceans relative to temperature? I suggest starting there, and you'll begin to understand.

 

[ggies07]

European colonisation of the Americas killed 10% of world population
While Europe was in the early days of the Renaissance, there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60 million people. But the first European contact in 1492 brought diseases to the Americas which devastated the native population and the resultant collapse of farming in the Americas was so significant that it may have even cooled the global climate.

This human tragedy meant that there was simply not enough workers left to manage the fields and forests. Without human intervention, previously managed landscapes returned to their natural states, thereby absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. The extent of this regrowth of the natural habitat was so vast that it removed enough CO₂ to cool the planet.

The lower temperatures prompted feedbacks in the carbon cycle which eliminated even more CO₂ from the atmosphere – such as less CO₂ being released from the soil. This explains the drop in CO₂ at 1610 seen in Antarctic ice cores, solving an enigma of why the whole planet cooled briefly in the 1600s. During this period, severe winters and cold summers caused famines and rebellions from Europe to Japan.

This book also discusses this time period and gives the same reasons:

Historical Perspectives on Climate Change

This intriguing volume provides a thorough examination of the historical roots of global climate change as a field of inquiry, from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century. Based on primary and archival sources, the book is filled with interesting perspectives on what people have understood, experienced, and feared about the climate and its changes in the past. Chapters explore climate and culture in Enlightenment thought; climate debates in early America; the development of international networks of observation; the scientific transformation of climate discourse; and early contributions to understanding terrestrial temperature changes, infrared radiation, and the carbon dioxide theory of climate.

 

[SR22pilot]

Nice fantasy based on a study in Nature where the authors put forward a speculative model.

CO2 lags temperature change in the long term history of the earths climate. It does not cause them. But so many in the CAGW religion believe CO2 is the control knob for Earths global temperature. They just cling to that dogma in the face of real evidence to the contrary.

The past ice ages were driven by changes in solar radiation due to the orbit of the earth. The CO2 content varied due to changing ocean temperatures. That was very different from today where CO2 is leading and where the rise has been much more dramatic. Orbital impacts are well understood and aren't involved in what is happening right now. You act as if this is something new that scientists haven't considered. I agree that a lot of AGW believers mess this up.

By the way, have you ever thought about what happens if either side is wrong? If the climate scientists are wrong we have cleaned up the air while stimulating jobs in the energy area and driving down the cost of energy that gives power to remote areas. Solar and wind are ideal for remote areas much like cell phones are better than landlines. So we wind up with quieter cars and more energy independence and a stimulated economy. The middle east gets hurt but I'm not going to lose sleep over that. If the denier community is wrong and we have done nothing, much of the world starves. According to the US military, there will be major issues due to human migration on a much larger scale than today. Florida eventually becomes devastated by flooding. There is a major extinction of species. Well, I think you get the idea.

We have driven CO2 levels out of the range they have been in for the last 800,000 years. That scares me. I don't like experimenting with the earth.

 

[Swampgator]

What's the solubility of CO2 in the oceans relative to temperature? I suggest starting there, and you'll begin to understand.

I understand it pretty well.. When the oceans warm , Co2 is released per Henry's law. When the oceans cool, they absorb more CO2. CO2 lags temperature changes in the historical record.

 

[ohmman]

I understand it pretty well.. When the oceans warm , Co2 is released per Henry's law. When the oceans cool, they absorb more CO2. CO2 lags temperature changes in the historical record.

I'm glad you can see how atmospheric CO2 is causal and also can lag the gross temperature change. Nice work.

 

[Swampgator]

"By the way, have you ever thought about what happens if either side is wrong?"

Of course I have. This is a major talking point for CAGW adherents.

Don't misunderstand my position: Sustainable energy will be positive for lots of reasons. And it will happen because of market economics, without resulting to poverty inducing energy restrictions. It will be wonderful to not spew pollution into the air every day.
I own a Tesla. We have more common ground than you may think. I just do not adhere to the CAGW theory. Lot's of reasons for that though. Most CAGW adherents have no idea what they are talking about. They just spew out garbage they read (mostly headlines) and when challenged label perfectly rational people with opposing ideas "deniers". Then they do google search (rigged) and regurgitate talking points from skeptical science. (who always appears, conveniently, at the top)

Almost none of them I have ever spoken to know what ECS is. They don't know that CO2 has been much higher than today's level for MOST of Earths history. They don't know that today's GMT is not the highest it has ever been. Not by a long shot. They don't know what GMT even stands for. They don't know know that the CO2 radiative forcing effect is logarithmic instead of liner. They don't know what logarithmic means.

I could go on.........

BTW, I do know lot's of CAGW skeptics do the same. You should see how they knee jerk react to me if I post something positive about Tesla, or solar energy.

 

[Swampgator]

I'm glad you can see how atmospheric CO2 is causal and also can lag the gross temperature change. Nice work.

Nice you can have it correct either way. That's a nice world to live in.

 

[mspohr]

The wrong kind of trees: Ireland's afforestation meets resistance

The wrong kind of trees: Ireland's afforestation meets resistance

From having just 1% forest cover in 1900, Ireland now has 11%, covering 770,000 hectares. It has just committed to planting 8,000 more hectares each year to reach 18% coverage.

Forestry companies concede some plantations were too thick and sited too close to homes but that the system is now improved, affording greater space and biodiversity, with at least 15% of trees that are not Sitka spruce.

John O’Reilly, the CEO of Green Belt, Ireland’s biggest private forestry company, said Sitka grew three times faster in Ireland than Scandinavia, driving a sustainable sector that generated jobs, created essential building materials and benefited the environment. “The faster it grows, the greater the quantity of carbon it will sequester from the atmosphere.”