Global Warming Opens Up Antarctic Waterways

[senormechanico]

You can certainly count me out of the "global warming enthusiasts club".

[SailOar]

Climate Change Impacted By Deforestation Of Amazon Rainforest | University Herald

More than one-tenth of trees and plants from the Amazon rainforest have been removed since the 1960s by humans, according to a recent study.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that this widespread removal of trees has contributed to a rise in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, increasing the potential impact of climate change. According to the study, deforestation of the Amazon rainforest has accounted for 1.5 percent of the increase in carbon dioxide levels seen since the mid-nineteenth century....

If this deforestation had not taken place, the rainforest would store 12 percent more carbon it its vegetation, and cover a much larger area, researchers added....

[SailOar]

China is building a Great Wall of Trees to fight climate change and the encroaching Gobi Desert | Quartz

China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but it is also engaged in a massive tree-planting program that has helped to offset tropical deforestation, and suck some of the climate-changing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Reforestation efforts in China, combined with regrowth on abandoned farmland in Russia, have helped offset most of the loss in above-ground biomass carbon lost to tropical deforestation since 2003, according to a new study in the academic journal Nature Climate Change....

Analyzing two decades worth of satellite data, researchers found that the amount of carbon absorbed in vegetation had increased by about 4 billion tons since 2003, even as tropical forests have shrunk in Indonesia and Brazil, and pest infestations and wildfires have cleared forests in Canada and the United States...

Critics of China’s plans note that net tree cover continues to fall in the country. That’s due in part to the fact that many of the new trees are non-native fruit and rubber tree plantations that require large amounts of water, and are monocultures prone to disease and pests. According to Global Forest Watch, China has been suffering a net loss of about 523,248 hectares (1.29 million acres) of tree cover a year since 2011. Since 2008, that yearly amount appears to be dropping....

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by senormechanico

You can certainly count me out of the "global warming enthusiasts club".

I don't know anyone who's actually enthusiastic about the prospect, except maybe the deniers who joke that a warmer planet will be nicer, open up the north for boating, etc.

[LakeSuperior]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

A couple of years ago, when this sort of non-sailing, non-productive thread broke out a few times, I asked the mods in the thread to shut it down. Of course I was spitballed by other posters, and like gun-nut threads, was told by the mods that these topics were fair game, as long as everyone was being 'nice'. Apparently politeness has a higher value than accuracy, truth or respect.

So... I'm with you. I don't think AGW or climate-change has ever been a productive topic for CF. But since they do permit it, and people feel comfortable spouting denier nonsense about the science... game on. You seem to enjoy contributing as well.

Your hypocrisy defies all logic and reason!!

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I don't know anyone who's actually enthusiastic about the prospect, except maybe the deniers who joke that a warmer planet will be nicer, open up the north for boating, etc.

Having just survived one of the longest, coldest, snowiest Maine winters on record, I'd like to go on record as firmly in the pro warming camp, at least for New England. About a month longer growing/sailing season would be really nice, and it would cut down drastically on my home heating bill too. Though there are quite a few folks who'd deny it in public, I think that most Mainers agree with me on this subject. Let's see, would I prefer to spend all day shoveling snow in freezing conditions, or be out gardening and getting the boat ready for an early launch? I can understand why Pacific Islanders or Floridians living a foot above sea level may have a different opinion, but I think that there are very few people who live in New England who would object to winters being less like the one we just experienced and more like the milder winters Al Gore promised us. I got all hopeful and excited when he brayed that "our planet has a fever," should have known better than to trust anything a politician had to say!

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

Your hypocrisy defies all logic and reason!!

I disagree. I'm boringly consistent about this.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by jtsailjt

Having just survived one of the longest, coldest, snowiest Maine winters on record, I'd like to go on record as firmly in the pro warming camp, at least for New England.

And California is rolling into a record drought. I wonder how they feel about it.

[LakeSuperior]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

A couple of years ago, when this sort of non-sailing, non-productive thread broke out a few times, I asked the mods in the thread to shut it down. Of course I was spitballed by other posters, and like gun-nut threads, was told by the mods that these topics were fair game, as long as everyone was being 'nice'. Apparently politeness has a higher value than accuracy, truth or respect.

So... I'm with you. I don't think AGW or climate-change has ever been a productive topic for CF. But since they do permit it, and people feel comfortable spouting denier nonsense about the science... game on. You seem to enjoy contributing as well.

You post the above "shut it down" when you have just spent 5 full time weeks posting on this "unproductive" thread. Why not find something else productive to do instead of wasting your time? Why are you here? Answers please.

[highseas]

Winter,what winter?British Columbia has had its warmest winter on record.Snowpack is almost nonexistant this season.We are running out of water here.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

You post the above "shut it down" when you have just spent 5 full time weeks posting on this "unproductive" thread. Why not find something else productive to do instead of wasting your time? Why are you here? Answers please.

I didn't post 'shut it down', senor_mechanico did and I sympathized.

AGW, climate change, whatever you want to term the current concern (or lack thereof) about human changes to the atmosphere - everyone knows it's a divisive hot-button 'religious'-grade topic. Has about nothing to do with cruising or sailing, and Lord knows a bunch of mainly older white male boat-owners aren't going to have a productive debate, it will always be a mess. Yet it's allowed here.

Why do I post? I cannot fathom the amount of ignorance and political blinkering that causes a (presumably) sane person to accept all the anti-science rot put out by the lobbyists for the status-quo.

Your turn. Why are you here?

[LekiM]

ReefMagnet, SV Third Day and others,

So, I live my life, when not on the water, in front of a computer. As such, it is generally a nice distraction to be involved with threads on CF because staring at Fortran and numbers all the time is a challenge. But threads like this are disruptive and I'd THOUGHT I'd learned to tune them out. But, hearing stuff like this from folks I'm likely to run into on the dock broke my will.

Here's the deal: Climate modelers and climate scientists (and NO. NOT AL GORE) are NOT in the business of conspiring to make BS smell like roses. How do I know this? Because I'm a researcher at an oft-named institution and spend 50% of my time working with climate models and the other 50% at sea measuring things to test the models.

In fact, right-this-minute, I'm able to write this message because a large statistics script I wrote is cramming thru model data and it gives me a few minutes of time to sit back and stretch.

What do I (we) NOT do? We don't spend all of our time scrambling to make bad work look good and create excuses for data or results. Ever. If something is tested and it doesn't look right, we ask "why", do the best job we can of answering that, and then ask our peers to assess if our work holds water and conforms to the scientific method. Making up excuses and hand waving and conspiring and politics and religion and all that? There's no damn time. Between work and sailing, and maintenance and yard work. There's no WAY I could do that and keep a straight face, nor could my colleagues.

Science is competitive: If I WERE to try to publish BS with perfume on it, and it got attention, what do you think would happen? Well, another scientist with similar credentials to mine would be MORE than happy to point it out in a most grandiose way with the result that MY credibility is knocked, as well as that of my co-authors. That is bad. And the one who caught it would be lauded as a true peer capable of holding us all to account.

So am I worried about people with political agendas finding faults? Nope.

"But you don't know how all the rest of the scientists do & behave". I am deeply involved in this at high levels. Not gloating. It is what it is.

What DO we do? We work to find out what is wrong with our models, why, what it means, and how to fix it. The models represent, to a large degree, our ability to take as much of what we understand about the Earth system and use a (-giant-) computer to help us (1) find gaps in the knowledge, and (2) test what the current state-of-the-science is able to say about how the parts respond to one another, and most importantly (3) try to constrain the uncertainty. The last one is likely the most important.

What else do we do? We work to make BEST use of observations, and feed back to those who design experiments and take observations on what we can use, and what their data mean within a Global context.

That paper that SV Third Day pointed to? It was using observations to help constrain the validity of model output by addressing what is one of the two most important remaining parts of Earth system models that STILL NEED WORK: The heat exchange between the different parts of the Earth. Namely, the ocean and atmosphere. THIS IS WHY THAT PAPER WAS IN A HIGH PROFILE JOURNAL. Because it dinged an important nail on the head. And not in ANY way because it invalidates models or undermines the integrity of the science. THAT interpretation is 199% the work of media intermediates who want clicks and attention and they're really good at that.

That the authors of the original paper (which I'm sure was NOT read by Mr. Day) found that observations of heat transfer are able to explain recent 'wiggles' in the global mean temperature and that this transfer is not currently well accounted for in climate models. WE KNOW THIS. WE NEED FOLKS LIKE THESE GUYS TO HELP US SORT IT OUT (yes I'm raising my voice, just a little). I'm glad they did.

If what they found is reproduced (which is an important step in the scientific method), then folks like me can go into the Fortran in these models and figure out how to better represent the observations in a way that will reduce the uncertainty (See? Uncertainty. It matters.)

Now, the thing about our work getting attention outside of science is the presence of a single absolute certainty:
People will always interpret it almost exactly the way they want to and will spout it out like gospel as soon as they can form a complete sentence.

Why does this happen? I'm not totally sure, but I think there are two reasons:
1) Non-scientists are not able to extract proper context from a research article so there's no way to truly evaluate the meaning of snippets of text. This is a problem. It is recognized.
2) The folks who transmit this into to the public NEED the agenda to maintain the attention of their intended audience.

Posting figures and links and posts to things on forums like this does little more than indicate where you get your information. That's all. This thread has not been a debate.

Lastly, I hold my colleagues at NOAA and NASA and similar institutions in the highest regard; and am continually stop-in-tracks impressed with their integrity and how talented and capable they are as scientists and engineers. To project your agendas or politics onto them in such a way that calls this into question (as has been done here) is so thoroughly misguided that I instantly lose the ability to take you seriously and have an instant sense (only for an instant) of wanting to grab your hair and rub your face in all the parts of your lives that rely so heavily on how good they really are just to humiliate you.

... but then I come to my senses and realize that all of this is hard to understand. And ultimately we can only fall back on what we believe. And if you've let your beliefs be preyed upon by characters with ill intent, then I feel sorry for you. And beyond that, I'd still rather be on the water. And I still love being around boats and people who like boats, so I make a point of NEVER discussing what I do lest it take away from any of that.

QED.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by LekiM

So, I live my life, when not on the water,......

Probably the best post ever on this subject..

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by conachair

Probably the best post ever on this subject..

+1

Originally Posted by LekiM

...That paper that SV Third Day pointed to? It was using observations to help constrain the validity of model output by addressing what is one of the two most important remaining parts of Earth system models that STILL NEED WORK: The heat exchange between the different parts of the Earth. Namely, the ocean and atmosphere. THIS IS WHY THAT PAPER WAS IN A HIGH PROFILE JOURNAL. Because it dinged an important nail on the head. And not in ANY way because it invalidates models or undermines the integrity of the science. THAT interpretation is 199% the work of media intermediates who want clicks and attention and they're really good at that...

What is the other part of the Earth system model still needing work?

[Lake-Effect]

Perfect timing, LekiM.

LS, I'm going to enlarge on my answer to the following:

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

Why are you here? Answers please.

Because of people like LekiM, and the NOAA and NASA scientists he acknowledges, doing actual science, for not alot of money, and very little respect. Only to have their work sh1t upon and their integrity and very character attacked, because of political and business factions who will take any approach, no matter how low or false, to fabricate doubt about the climate science that they cannot scientifically challenge.

Because science itself is under attack. It's like poking our own eyes out.