Climate Changes

BTW, isn't it nice to be able to have this kind of dialog. I just wish the leaders of the world could just talk this openly.

And amen to PETA and ELF sucking!

Hey Cher, that same thing has happened in Michigan. They have clear cut for many years, but it was always the trash trees for pulp. Things have changed here and it's really getting people upset. The state has decided, in their infinite and greedy wisdom, to go in and clear cut the Oak and Maple stands. They've cut down trees that will take a hundred years or more to even begin to replace. That type of cutting is simply for the money, as that wood was so valuable. What then makes it even worse is that they keep planting Jack Pines (a trash pine) in the place of the Oaks and Maples. Nothing lives in the Jack Pines except maybe the Snowshoe Hares. But this is done because they get federal money for calling those Jack Pine plantings "Kirtland Warbler nesting areas", an endangered species. We now have literally millions of acres of Jack Pine "nesting areas". All for about half a dozen nesting birds. The Whitetail Deer is starting to get pretty scarce around here because of this. Most are now found only on private land, because the private land still has the Oak trees and other natural cover.

I'm done ranting now.

Ron

Those have to be shortest oak trees I have ever heard of. How's the soil quality over there?

I have 5 oak trees in my back yard that tower over a 2 storey house. They're beautiful trees, give off lot's of shade, ect... but watch out! Their acorns can give you a nasty bump on the head if one happens to fall on your head... and bare feet in the grass is very uncomfortable (acorns everywhere!)... they're fun to throw in the fire though. They sound like pop corn

This is a fascinating thread.
I guess, we all care. My well is going dry. I live in Floriduh. The water table is three feet below the ground. They are building so fast, the water table is going down and down.
Using, and treating rain water is illegal, so I keep secrets. Making a solar still is simple. No filters,, just solar evaporation. Discarded glass door panes make one unit.
My wife is from the left coast. When I met her, she described herself as an Eco Feminist. Ok. Her friends were that also. I drew a conclusion. I then met her friends and found myself turning off lights in unoccupied rooms. I told her I was a conservative.
I love trees. I used to hold a liscence as a liscensed arborist. Once I was doing tree work. I repaired trees. I would climb with a rope and saddle, chain saw, lines, and spend all day in the trees. Sort of Bonsai on a larger scale. One day, I was doing tree work after a major storm. The last royal elm in Cape Cod had taken a serious hit and split. I was in the tree with a drill, auger, threaded rods and a very large woman wearing a very large leather jacket went up to the tree.
We were in the tree, our lines draped to the ground. We were cutting specific limbs, taking the weight off the crown, to thread rod through the tree and pull the split together. It was very old growth, very wide for a tree that close to the ocean. This woman ordinance chained herself to the tree, wearing a sign....SAVE THE TREE! She had trapped our lines and we could not go up, or down. The emergency personell who responded could not cut the chains. It was about 40*, raining, we were miserable, the tree was in a fragile state,
She meant well. It has to start somewhere, excess leads to desolation. Our ignorance condemns the future. We did cable the leaders of the tree, threaded rod the main stem, and the tree survived untill the next hurricane there. It was a valiant effort on all parts, including the person, who, without asking, drew a conclusion.
My wife, who still leaves lights on in empty rooms loves trees. So do I. She loves to plant, to rejuevenate the soil, and create a balance with vegetation feeding each other species. Then she saw what an hurricane can do, first hand. Trees squash homes, destroy lots of things when they fall on them, especially large ones. We had our trees pruned. I supervised the pruning. I like to think our trees will be there after the big one. Minus branches, but still there.
I have observed over at least the last 40 yrs, things are different. I know jewelery, I do not really know about how to run the globe. I do try to keep trash from piling up, and I do think, if I throw it into a watershed, it will end up some where. It just doesn't go away. I try to live in my needs, and laugh at my wants. I do not always succeed.
This is a great thread. I hope others read it.

The view from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada -- climate change? Or year-to-year variability? You decide.

January 26,2003, view from my front door:


Three years later -- January 24,2006, view from my front door:

Just read this article:

Baffled Scientists Say Less Sunlight Reaching Earth

Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor

After dropping for about 15 years, the amount of sunlight Earth reflects back into space, called albedo, has increased since 2000, a new study concludes.

That means less energy is reaching the surface. Yet global temperatures have not cooled during the period.

Increasing cloud cover seems to be the reason, but there must also be some other change in the clouds that's not yet understood.

"The data also reveal that from 2000 to now the clouds have changed so that the Earth may continue warming, even with declining sunlight," said study leader Philip R. Goode of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "These large and peculiar variabilities of the clouds, coupled with a resulting increasing albedo, presents a fundamental, unmet challenge for all scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth's climate."

Cloud changes

Earth's albedo is measured by noting how much reflected sunlight in turn bounces off the Moon, something scientists call earthshine. The observations were made at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California.

The findings will be published Jan. 24 in Eos, a weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.

On any given day, about half of Earth is covered by clouds, which reflect more sunlight than land and water. Clouds keep Earth cool by reflecting sunlight, but they can also serve as blankets to trap warmth.

High thin clouds are better blankets, while low thick clouds make better coolers.

Separately, satellite data recently showed that while the difference between high and low clouds had long been steady at 7-8 percent, in the past five years, for some unknown reason, the difference has jumped to 13 percent. High, warming clouds have increased while low clouds have decreased.

Research shows condensation trails, or contrails from jet airplanes, fuel more high-altitude clouds. But they have not been shown to account for all the observed change.

What about global warming?

Earth's albedo appears to have experienced a similar reversal during a period running from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.

Goode's team says there may be a large, unexplained variation in sunlight reaching the Earth that changes over the course of two decades or so, as well as a large effect of clouds re-arranging by altitude.

How do the findings play into arguments about global warming and the apparent contribution by industrial emissions? That's entirely unclear.

"No doubt greenhouse gases are increasing," Goode said in a telephone interview. "No doubt that will cause a warming. The question is, 'Are there other things going on?'"

What is clear is that scientists don't understand clouds very well, as a trio of studies last year also showed.

"Clouds are even more uncertain than we thought," Goode said.

Hey Doc! Glad to see that there are still some that think in color instead of just black and white....

thought this was interesting...
not realy about climate change... or maybe it is...

It's about New Zealand's prehistoric Kauri forests which thrived 50,000 years ago
www.ancientkauri.co.nz/history.html

Nobody knows.

We are such a naive species. Save the planet! We can't save something that we are just starting to understand and destroy at the same time. The earth will just flick us off of her back like we were fleas. The she'll start over.

We are too minute to destroy earth, earth will destroy us. Opposable thumbs don't make us the end all.

Pessimism rears it's ugly head with me tonight.