Global Warming | Fact or Fiction?

[Alceste]

It's where the rain clouds are coming from that is the problem. Most of the mercury that pollutes our lakes comes hundreds of miles away in the southern USA and is carried up by the jet stream. Pollution from China can reach the West Coast of North America... and the highest levels of mercury are found in the Arctic and Antarctic food chains... as far from industry as you can get.

Please make sure to check before you assume it's pristine.

wa:do

OK. I have a little card in my wallet that lists concerns by species - not just toxin accumulation but population pressure and fish farm concerns - I try to stick to that. It's academic though, since all I catch are little dog fish. I throw them back.

 

[painted wolf]

OK. I have a little card in my wallet that lists concerns by species - not just toxin accumulation but population pressure and fish farm concerns - I try to stick to that. It's academic though, since all I catch are little dog fish. I throw them back.

One of my goals is to do as much gathering (and possibly hunting later) as reasonable to supplement our diets. So, I've had to be aware of potential risks due to pollution. Like, no gathering within so far from a road, due to car chemicals and road salt runoff.

I don't get to do as much gathering as I used to now that I live in a more urban setting. But when I lived in the middle of nowhere next to the national forest it was a veritable bonanza.

wa:do

 

[Alceste]

One of my goals is to do as much gathering (and possibly hunting later) as reasonable to supplement our diets. So, I've had to be aware of potential risks due to pollution. Like, no gathering within so far from a road, due to car chemicals and road salt runoff.

I don't get to do as much gathering as I used to now that I live in a more urban setting. But when I lived in the middle of nowhere next to the national forest it was a veritable bonanza.

wa:do

Good pickings around here too. I'm building up a library of wild food books
but still sticking to the obvious things (like berries) for the time being. I want to go out with an experienced mushroom picker a few times before I strike out on my own. I got a great book last week, turns out a lot of the "weeds" I've been picking out of the before garden are edible.

The biggest bang for your buck around here as far as gathering is concerned is oysters and clams. I used to hate them but I'm overcoming that by sheer force of will.

Apart from staying away from busy roads, train tracks, farmers fields and anywhere else likely to have been sprayed, I don't worry too much about pollution because it's inescapable.

 

[Alceste]

Don't know where that wink came from.

 

[painted wolf]

Good pickings around here too. I'm building up a library of wild food books
but still sticking to the obvious things (like berries) for the time being. I want to go out with an experienced mushroom picker a few times before I strike out on my own. I got a great book last week, turns out a lot of the "weeds" I've been picking out of the before garden are edible.

Absolutely... and you can enhance that with edible landscaping.

As for mushrooms, I'd rather grow... too much danger in foraging, even for experts, unless you stick to the most easily spotted of species. You can learn to plug most mushrooms and grow them yourself.

The biggest bang for your buck around here as far as gathering is concerned is oysters and clams. I used to hate them but I'm overcoming that by sheer force of will.

We are pretty lucky with the amount of edibles that can be found on our shores... periwinkles, muscles, clams, oysters, lobster and more. But we have to keep an eye out for red tide and Amnesiac Shellfish Poisoning... and keep an eye on population levels. Wild oysters especially, are in decline out here.

Apart from staying away from busy roads, train tracks, farmers fields and anywhere else likely to have been sprayed, I don't worry too much about pollution because it's inescapable.

I just like to minimize my risks. I can't escape it, but I can minimize my exposure levels.

wa:do

 

[painted wolf]

In an article published in this months EARTH magazine geoscientists are using current and historical trends in the Midwest and Southwest to predict a new and more powerful dustbowl.
EARTH Magazine: Return of the Dust Bowl

Haboobs walloped Arizona last summer. Locals long ago adopted the Arabic word for a major dust storm, but even old-timers say they can’t remember anything quite like this year’s aerial assaults.
One that struck Tucson in July reportedly towered more than 1.6 kilometers in the air, had a 160-kilometer breadth and featured scouring winds of up to 112 kilometers an hour. Phoenix was hit three times, including a haboob in July that topped out at about 1.2 kilometers and stretched 80 kilometers. The massive dust storms knocked out power, grounded flights, caused car accidents and, perhaps most significantly, gave us a glimpse of the potential future of the American West.
Researchers from a variety of disciplines concur on this forecast: Over the next two or three decades, the American West — from West Texas to New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and on into Southern California, Nevada and Utah — will transition to a climate that may make the 1930s Dust Bowl seem mild and brief.

This year in Arizona

wa:do

 

[Alceste]

In an article published in this months EARTH magazine geoscientists are using current and historical trends in the Midwest and Southwest to predict a new and more powerful dustbowl.
EARTH Magazine: Return of the Dust Bowl


This year in Arizona

wa:do

Jeez. That's so depressing. We've got our own kind of desertification going on up here thanks to pine beetles, which are thriving due to warming temperatures.

It fries my socks that people still deny that the climate is changing. Are they blind?

 

[Jeremy Mason]

Jeez. That's so depressing. We've got our own kind of desertification going on up here thanks to pine beetles, which are thriving due to warming temperatures.

It fries my socks that people still deny that the climate is changing. Are they blind?

I lived in Summit County, Colorado and beetle kill is rampant there as well.

Pictures of Mountain Pine Beetle Kill Trees In Summit County Colorado

 

[painted wolf]

We are trying everything possible to keep these invasive tree killers out of our state.
We have banned the bringing of firewood and raw wood from out of state...
Planted "bait" trees along major roadways, they are the preferred targets of the invaders, so hopefully they will act as early warning systems...
Researching possible bio-remediation tactics, should they arrive.

Given how much of our economy is tied to our wilderness, it's a pretty terrifying prospect.

wa:do

 

[Alceste]

We are trying everything possible to keep these invasive tree killers out of our state.
We have banned the bringing of firewood and raw wood from out of state...
Planted "bait" trees along major roadways, they are the preferred targets of the invaders, so hopefully they will act as early warning systems...
Researching possible bio-remediation tactics, should they arrive.

Given how much of our economy is tied to our wilderness, it's a pretty terrifying prospect.

wa:do

We're sunk. It's way too late for BC. It's totally unrecognizable compared to what it was like when I was a young whipper snapper driving through the mountains every summer. It's like an endless forest graveyard.

I hope you succeed in your efforts. I can't tell you how depressing it is to see one of the most beautiful natural landscapes in the country completely destroyed over the course of a few short years.

 

[painted wolf]

We're sunk. It's way too late for BC. It's totally unrecognizable compared to what it was like when I was a young whipper snapper driving through the mountains every summer. It's like an endless forest graveyard.

I hope you succeed in your efforts. I can't tell you how depressing it is to see one of the most beautiful natural landscapes in the country completely destroyed over the course of a few short years.

If you're lucky the trees will come back as beetle populations crash due to lack of food. But the forests will never really be the same again.
Much like the forests after we lost the American Chestnut and the American Elm. But so much worse for you because you don't have the species diversity to start with.

wa:do

 

[Alceste]

If you're lucky the trees will come back as beetle populations crash due to lack of food. But the forests will never really be the same again.
Much like the forests after we lost the American Chestnut and the American Elm. But so much worse for you because you don't have the species diversity to start with.

wa:do

True, the vulnerability of a lot our forests is the result of stupid forestry practices, such as clear cutting entire, relatively biodiverse old growth forests and re-planting a single species for millions of acres.

 

[painted wolf]

True, the vulnerability of a lot our forests is the result of stupid forestry practices, such as clear cutting entire, relatively biodiverse old growth forests and re-planting a single species for millions of acres.

And your higher latitude... the closer one gets to the north pole the lower the tree biodiversity you have. Also, the further west you are the lower the tree biodiversity you have. And of course the higher in elevation you are the lower the tree biodiversity.

The total number of species isn't much lower than here... 50 vs. 70+ (Here they didn't count anything that grew less than 20ft. in the wild as a "tree" hence the +)

I'm willing to bet what really prevents large mixed woodlands is the combination of elevation and latitude. You have the Rocky Mountains to contend with. Which means your places of highest biodiversity are going to be limited to the coastal southerly area.
Higher elevations and latitudes are going to be dominated by pine, hemlock and firs. No one else can survive it.

wa:do

 

[Alceste]

And your higher latitude... the closer one gets to the north pole the lower the tree biodiversity you have. Also, the further west you are the lower the tree biodiversity you have. And of course the higher in elevation you are the lower the tree biodiversity.

The total number of species isn't much lower than here... 50 vs. 70+ (Here they didn't count anything that grew less than 20ft. in the wild as a "tree" hence the +)

I'm willing to bet what really prevents large mixed woodlands is the combination of elevation and latitude. You have the Rocky Mountains to contend with. Which means your places of highest biodiversity are going to be limited to the coastal southerly area.
Higher elevations and latitudes are going to be dominated by pine, hemlock and firs. No one else can survive it.

wa:do

That sounds about right. I'm on the island though - we haven't had a beetle problem locally - the majority of the trees here are either cedar or Douglas fir.

I didn't know about the lower biodiversity going further north and west. North makes sense due to the progressively harsh conditions, but what causes the lack of biodiversity going west? Is it the barrier of the mountains isolating ecosystems at different altitudes from one another? (Just guessing).

 

[work in progress]

Jeez. That's so depressing. We've got our own kind of desertification going on up here thanks to pine beetles, which are thriving due to warming temperatures.

It fries my socks that people still deny that the climate is changing. Are they blind?

In West Texas (and the northern half of Mexico if anyone's interested) the drought continues on, and is unprecedented according to the State's own climatologist:
Warming-Enhanced Texas Drought Is Once in “500 or 1,000 Years … Basically Off the Charts,” Says State Climatologist

After examining tree-ring data going back to 1550, researchers at Columbia University found that this year’s drought was only rivaled once in the last 461 years. According to the Palmer Drought Severity Index, a system for measuring wet and dry conditions, the last time Texas experienced a drought this bad was in 1789. The state’s climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon, explained the historical significance of the ongoing drought in an interview with CBS:

“This is basically off the charts. Based on past history, you wouldn’t expect to see this happening in maybe 500 or 1,000 years. One more year and we’re already talking about a drought more severe than anything we’ve ever had. And this will become for them, the drought of record.”
​

The drought, which Nielsen-Gammon says could stretch over a number of years, has devastated cotton crops, livestock, pumpkin crops, and, as the below CBS story points out, Christmas trees. The dry conditions have been exacerbated by a combination of human-caused global warming and La Niña, which pushes unusually cold air from the Pacific Ocean and causes drier-than-average conditions in the Southern U.S.


As Texas climatologist Katherine Kayhoe put it in an email to Climate Progress, dumping ever-increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is setting the conditions for turning extreme-weather events into history-setting catastrophes:

We often try to pigeonhole an event, such as a drought, storm, or heatwave into one category: either human or natural, but not both. What we have to realise is that our natural variability is now occurring on top of, and interacting with, background conditions that have already been altered by long-term climate change.
As our atmosphere becomes warmer, it can hold more water vapor. Atmospheric circulation patterns shift, bringing more rain to some places and less to others. For example, when a storm comes, in many cases there is more water available in the atmosphere and rainfall is heavier. When a drought comes, often temperatures are already higher than they would have been 50 years ago and so the effects of the drought are magnified by higher evaporation rates.
​

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

So what do the numbers tell us? With 58 votes we have at least one vote in every category with the majority, 80%, falling in either "Humanity is partially or mostly" to blame. I admit that I'm surprised to see that 10% believe that GW is totally humanities fault. Anyway, does this tell us anything? Or is it just meaningless data that at least seems kind of interesting?

 

[work in progress]

And while I'm on the subject of more bad news, about a week ago, new data started coming in to indicate that, inspite of recessions, greenhouse gas levels are rising to unprecedented levels:
Level of Heat-Trapping CO2 Reaches New High, Growth Rate Speeds Up, Methane Levels Are Rising Again | ThinkProgress

and if anyone listens to the weekly Radio Ecoshock show, produced for free by Vancouver area environmentalist - Alex Smith, his most recent episode about natural gas fracking, shows that there is growing evidence that fracking is causing uncontrolled releases of methane along with the gas that can be captured: Fracking Gas = Climate Crash

My homeland - Canada, is about to become the first nation to renege after signing the Kyoto Protocol 20 years ago. That tar sands oil money is just too good to pass up: Canada Backs Away From Kyoto Protocol Commitment

 

[work in progress]

So what do the numbers tell us? With 58 votes we have at least one vote in every category with the majority, 80%, falling in either "Humanity is partially or mostly" to blame. I admit that I'm surprised to see that 10% believe that GW is totally humanities fault. Anyway, does this tell us anything? Or is it just meaningless data that at least seems kind of interesting?

The Earth is going to do what it will regardless of what people believe in. The lack of attention and action on this issue shows that not enough people are aware and willing to do what it will take to ensure future survival on this planet.

The Earth is sick, and running a fever. And like most animals, the fever is a way of killing off the pestilence that has caused the infection. I am more inclined than ever to believe James Lovelock's dire prediction that there will be less than a billion people in the world at the end of this century, and no guarantee that any of the descendents of those survivors will live on to see the next one!

 

[Alceste]

So what do the numbers tell us? With 58 votes we have at least one vote in every category with the majority, 80%, falling in either "Humanity is partially or mostly" to blame. I admit that I'm surprised to see that 10% believe that GW is totally humanities fault. Anyway, does this tell us anything? Or is it just meaningless data that at least seems kind of interesting?

It tells us that the contributors to this thread are unusually well-informed: their responses are better aligned with the published research on climate change than in the general public.

 

[Alceste]

And while I'm on the subject of more bad news, about a week ago, new data started coming in to indicate that, inspite of recessions, greenhouse gas levels are rising to unprecedented levels:
Level of Heat-Trapping CO2 Reaches New High, Growth Rate Speeds Up, Methane Levels Are Rising Again | ThinkProgress

and if anyone listens to the weekly Radio Ecoshock show, produced for free by Vancouver area environmentalist - Alex Smith, his most recent episode about natural gas fracking, shows that there is growing evidence that fracking is causing uncontrolled releases of methane along with the gas that can be captured: Fracking Gas = Climate Crash

My homeland - Canada, is about to become the first nation to renege after signing the Kyoto Protocol 20 years ago. That tar sands oil money is just too good to pass up: Canada Backs Away From Kyoto Protocol Commitment

I know - it's appalling. When I was living in Europe, foot dragging on climate change was quickly becoming what Canada is famous for. ''Oh, you're from Canada - doesn't your country have the world's highest per capita carbon emissions?'' and ''What's with Canada trying to sabotage Kyoto all the time?'' and ''Oh, those filthy tar sands... THAT Canada...''

I can't wait until we get rid of Harper. He's such an embarrassment.