Socialists in a Panic
- Thread starter china
- Start date
hello LW ,I see the topics are just where I left them, nothing changes here except the wallpaper eh.
It's rather sad really, that you can't think of anything else to say on the subject but accuse people of not believing in climate change (is there even one person on this forum who doesn't? Anyone???) and that "hero Bush" nonsense. How many times have you repeated these now, 20? 30?
So pathetic. All that AGW propaganda out there and all you can do is keep repeating the nonsense again and again and again......
Well then you should have no trouble explaining it to the rest of us. Come now, no more excuses.
Uh, no. I would explain why you shouldn't.
But we can influence climate. Minimally that is. That's what the evidence supports.
Every species has its habitat.
That was the subject under discussion.
Eventually there will be a replacement for oil as a fuel, but that is a long time coming. As yet we can't do it, and there isn't even a viable replacement on the horizon, so they won't be replaced by cleaner companies any time soon, no matter how much we may want it.
And I'm not defending oil companies, just stating reality.
That replacement probably won't be long in coming once all the oil money is gathered up to create another dependency
Oh yes we can and do pollute the air.
How high a concentration are you talking about? If you go high enough, anything can harm, even oxygen can be toxic. But the little bit of CO2 that's currently in the atmosphere? Not to worry.
I'm old enough to remember the 60s. We weren't near that bad.
So then why do we have pine trees in the south where the winters never get that cold? They should have been wiped out centuries ago if that's the case.
OK, here's some education for you.
Beetles attack pines by boring into the inner layer of bark (where the sap flows) laying eggs, hatching larvae which then feed on it. Pines defend themselves against beetles by pushing them out with sap (pitch). When pines get old their metabolism slows down and so does their sap flow, making them more vulnerable to beetle attack. When this outbreak started BC had 4 times as many overmature pines as 100 years ago, making the pine forests quite vulnerable. As I said before, we had been fighting them off since the early '70's, primarily by logging infested stands and also by slash and burn of small outbreaks. As the years progressed the trees got older and more vulnerable and the number and size of infestations continually increased. These outbreaks happened all over the province, from south to north-central, east to west in the interior of BC. We were barely managing to keep up.
In October of 1985, temperatures dropped to -35 to -40 in the central interior of BC, before there was much snow cover and before the beetles had completed winterizing themselves. That had the effect of stopping a spruce bark beetle infestation that had been devestating the forests to the east of Prince George, and it hasn't started up again since. But the pine beetles bounced right back the next year and our battle against them continued.
In 1980 BC Forest Service personell noticed a dozen red (infested) trees just inside the boundary of Manning Part in southern BC. They notified the Parks personell who replied that they had millions of trees and since it was a park, they would let nature take its course. The next year there were 10 acres of infested trees and the BCFS again notified the Parks Dept. and received a similar reply. In 1982 there were 350 acres infested and the parks people finally realized they had a problem and the area was logged, the infestation stopped. (I had a part in that one.)
When the current infestation started in Tweedsmuir Park, the government had changed. The NDP had been elected with a lot of help from environmental organizations who had mounted major campaigns against BC logging practices. There was no way they would allow the infestation to be logged, no matter how much the Forest Service personell, industry, loggers, local communities and foresters begged, pleaded, warned. By the time the beetles reached the park boundary there wasn't a hope in hell of stopping them.
The contention that it was due to global warming is without basis. It's true that cold can have a detrimental effect on them, but as I said earlier, in the southern part of BC, it never gets that cold, and the frequency and extent of pine beetle outbreaks is much lower there than in the north-central interior. As well, back in the 1930's temperatures were as warm or warmer than now, and there was no such outbreak at that time.
We may have had a hand in the infestation by the fact that we've been fighting fire in our forests for many decades, a contributing factor in the overabundance of overmature trees. If we had gone into Tweedsmuir and logged out the infested trees, it would only have been a delaying of the inevitable. With the pine stands getting older and older with each passinig decade, and outbreaks becoming more and more frequent, it was just a matter of time before we couldn't contain them. We might have gained 10 years, 30, who knows, but eventually this had to happen. Extreme cold in October is quite rare. Could another such cold snap have stopped them? Possibly, but only for a while, because the underlying problem of too many old trees would still be there. I'm told that the pine beetle has been around as long as we've had pine trees, about 60 million years. There have been much warmer epochs during that time as well as much colder. The pines will be back.
That's all for tonight folks. I'll be back.
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Yes they are. They're used to test all sorts of hypotheses, by incorporation of many laws of reality. If a model produces repeated results under a set of conditions, and responds in a predictable way when you perturb it, then it's valid evidence, under the assumptions that the model uses. If it's not evidence, what do you call it? An experiment in a lab is a model. It's specific and highly constrained conditions that don't exist in reality. Models have correctly predicted many results in genetics, which is a highly dynamic study just like the climate.
But you're avoiding the real question. How do you attribute a cause in dynamical systems such as the climate to any event without using a model? Do you perform single factor experiments? How does that work when the real world includes multi-factor interactions? How do you even perform an experiment on the climate without a model?
Models incorporate laws of physics obtained by observation. That is, they are based on evidence. Before you can use results, you have to be able to prove that your model acts realistically. Going back to genetics, when they test crime scene samples, they have to run blanks. The blanks make sure that the process is legit. If you have DNA replication in a blank, then the results are invalid. That's no different from a climate model.
"The beetles killed the trees because global warming let them survive in a warmer Winter. In the past the cold Winters always killed the beetles. This is just one more thing that global warming is doing to us."
I'm far from an expert on the matter but I think that may be a bit of an oversimpification. To kill the Mountain Pine Beetle according to the scientists we need 6 weeks of minus 40 weather and early in the season if possible. In British Columbia we don't and never have had minus 40 for 6 consecutive weeks anywhere. Generally speaking we even get a mid winter thaw most places, even the Peace River many years. I'd be very surprised if a 0.74C change in temperature has allowed the M.P.B. to survive where it otherwise wouldn't. Anyone have any more evidence? (Anecdotal or statistical)
I'm far from an expert on the matter but I think that may be a bit of an oversimpification. To kill the Mountain Pine Beetle according to the scientists we need 6 weeks of minus 40 weather and early in the season if possible. In British Columbia we don't and never have had minus 40 for 6 consecutive weeks anywhere. Generally speaking we even get a mid winter thaw most places, even the Peace River many years. I'd be very surprised if a 0.74C change in temperature has allowed the M.P.B. to survive where it otherwise wouldn't. Anyone have any more evidence? (Anecdotal or statistical)
Under 40°C is what is needed for 100% bark beetle mortality. You don't need 100% bark beetle mortality to contain the spread of the species. But you do need it when other factors are changing. Warmer growing seasons has expanded the habitat that the beetles can invade, and it also speeds up the life cycles of the beetle. When that happens, you do need -40°C, which we don't and never got, except at very high elevations.
I think it was undergoing change anyway. In a sense it still is changing, being volcanic and all that. Not all transplants are bad. For instance, corn doesn't seem to have hurt anything in Europe or northern North America. Sometimes it happens without human aid, too.
Besides, I don't think the Polynesians knew any better. This day and age, humans should know better.
Really? You mean that's what the evidence you like supports.
Yup. You asked why the bug hasn't moved south. I mentioned that it's most likely comfortable here.
*Shrugs*
And eventually the sun will cook Earth. So what? Does that mean we still pollute the planet and expect it not to bite back?
... with an apparent bias.