Pine Forest Vapor Particles Can Limit Climate Change 124
Solo-Malee writes "New research suggests a strong link between the powerful smell of pine trees and climate change. Scientists say they've found a mechanism by which these scented vapors turn into aerosols above boreal forests. These particles promote cooling by reflecting sunlight back into space and helping clouds to form."
Freebreeze to the rescue (Score:2, Insightful)
So we just need to produce pine fresh aerosol to fix the global warming? Well thats ironic to say the least.
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So we just need to produce pine fresh aerosol to fix the global warming? Well thats ironic to say the least.
Why? An analogy I have seen is climate as a car speeding towards a cliff, and that waiting to get more data isn't enough.
The suggested solution have been to remove the foot from the pedal and eventually the car will come to a halt.
If I were to agree with the analogy I wouldn't just release the gas, I would hit the brake. That would be an active solution.
Actively trying to prevent global warming by releasing chemicals that reverse the effect of greenhouse gases would be like braking.
The problem is that there
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This may be true, but is ultimately just hypothetical speculation, since we have no examples from history of species on earth that destroyed themselves.
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This may be true, but is ultimately just hypothetical speculation, since we have no examples from history of species on earth that destroyed themselves.
Noted paleontologist Gary Larson thinks otherwise [hubimg.com].
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May I introduce you to the concept of verb tense. "Destroyed" is past tense, and connotes something that has occurred in the past. If, in fact, we had destroyed ourselves in the past, for any reasonably accepted definition of destroyed, I highly doubt that you or I would be in any state to talk about the matter since we would, in fact, be destroyed along with the rest of the human race.
Whether or have already done things that may have made our
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The animals aren't the biggest issue though. The big issue is plants. You may have noticed they're slightly less mobile, and IIRC the "climate line" is currently moving by an average of a quarter-mile per year. Easy enough for most non-arctic animals to migrate to remain within the same climate band, but *very* few plants can spread that fast. Most are doing good to make in a couple hundred feet. It's the die-off of the plants at the bottom of the food chain that will be a bigger problem for most anim
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You must be new here, or don't you remember the whole Aerosols are bad for Ozone and contribute to global warming form the 80's and 90s.
Re:Freebreeze to the rescue (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's not aerosols that were bad for the ozone layer but rather the chlorofluorocarbons used as a propellant to aerosolize the contents most spray cans up until the late 1970s. The most well known of these was freon, created by DuPont.
Re:Freebreeze to the rescue (Score:4, Informative)
You must be new here, or don't you remember the whole Aerosols are bad for Ozone and contribute to global warming form the 80's and 90s.
An aerosol is "a colloid of fine solid particles or liquid droplets, in air or another gas" [wikipedia.org]. The particular aeorsol (CFCs) referred to by parent is explained by a sibling post, so no need to repeat here. Point is, that an aerosol can be almost anything gaseous or that can be made fine enough to behave sort of "gas like", including dust, VOCs, smoke, etc. That's how the term is used in TFA: terpenes -- not CFCs -- are the substances "dissolved" in air.
Re:Freebreeze to the rescue (Score:4, Insightful)
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"However, I *personally* do not fully attribute that change to anthropocentric causes."
Argument from personal incredulity is a fallacy.
"I am firmly opposed to knee-jerk high cost outcome-vague reactionary measures that serve to drastically affect the economic stability of the nation, or even the world."
However, you have no idea whether these claims
1) knee-jerk
2) high cost
3) outcome-vague
4) reactionary measures
are actually the case. Care to cite any that are any of these?
You also presume without evidence the
Re:Freebreeze to the rescue (Score:5, Funny)
Prepare to get roundly vilified for your reasonable approach to climate change. The Priests of AGW don't take kindly to heretical thinking such as reason and logic.
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>If people were really concerned about the environment then it would be irrelevant if global warming was man made or not, if a natural climate changed with lead to catastrophic consequences we would still have to do something about it.
I think you're missing the forest for the trees - if global warming were not man-made then it would still be a crisis, but a crisis we would have no particular reason to believe we could fix - after all we're talking millions(billions?) of times more energy per year being a
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Why? An analogy I have seen is climate as a car speeding towards a cliff, and that waiting to get more data isn't enough. The suggested solution have been to remove the foot from the pedal and eventually the car will come to a halt. If I were to agree with the analogy I wouldn't just release the gas, I would hit the brake. That would be an active solution. Actively trying to prevent global warming by releasing chemicals that reverse the effect of greenhouse gases would be like braking.
The problem is that there is a political movement that is more concerned with reducing human impact on the environment than with actually saving it, they give fuel to the other side that doesn't care about the environment but just want the hippies to leave their back yard.
If people were really concerned about the environment then it would be irrelevant if global warming was man made or not, if a natural climate changed with lead to catastrophic consequences we would still have to do something about it.
Too bad the environment is not so discreet a system as your car. If we are brilliant at one thing, it is underestimating the unintended consequences of our actions. So no, let's not rush out an fill the air with pine forest vapor.
Re:Freebreeze to the rescue (Score:5, Informative)
weve already been warned that GLOBAL warming causes LOCALIZED cooling.
FTFY.
Seriously, what about the polar vortex don't you understand? Although the eastern USA had historic lows last month, the global average temperature was the hottest January on record.
If you really want to understand how the science works (which I doubt), watch Peter Hadfield's excellent series of YouTube videos. [youtube.com] He cuts through the hype on both sides of the debate. This should be required viewing for policy makers and "armchair experts" alike.
It's also fairly entertaining.
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Seriously, what about the polar vortex don't you understand?
Probably just as much as the global warming alarmists do, seeing as they predicted the opposite result [blogspot.com] before it happened, but of course are now claiming that they knew all along that this was a possibility. That assertion has been thoroughly debunked [wiley.com], by many actual scientists [columbia.edu], but that doesn't stop anti-science people like you from making your specious claims to support your ideological agenda.
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I've just spent 20 minutes perusing the links you've provided. Thus far, I'm not terribly impressed. Tell you what... I'll spend an hour reading/viewing whatever source(s) you want, and in exchange, you spend an hour with the video series in my post above.
Deal?
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I've just spent 20 minutes perusing the links you've provided. Thus far, I'm not terribly impressed. Tell you what... I'll spend an hour reading/viewing whatever source(s) you want, and in exchange, you spend an hour with the video series in my post above.
Deal?
I post links to peer-reviewed scientific research papers and excerpts of peer-reviewed science (with links to the original papers), and you want me to watch a bunch of propaganda videos headlined by the discredited hypocrite Al Gore?
No deal
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headlined by the discredited hypocrite Al Gore
Clearly you haven't spent more than 5 seconds with the videos, otherwise you would know that they are not "headlined" by Al Gore... actually Mr. Hadfield is rather disdainful of Mr. Gore.
As for your "peer reviewed" links... the first is to a blog called "Hockey Schtick" -- 'nuff said.
Next up is a link to a paper about something vaguely climate-related, but which has no direct bearing on the rather nebulous "point" you claim it debunks:
Probably just as much as the global warming alarmists do, seeing as they predicted the opposite result [blogspot.com] before it happened, but of course are now claiming that they knew all along that this was a possibility. That assertion has been thoroughly debunked [wiley.com],
I'm still trying to parse-out what this actually means...
Your third link
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As for your "peer reviewed" links... the first is to a blog called "Hockey Schtick" -- 'nuff said.
Typical warmist ad hominem BS. The article has references to the peer-reviewed papers it quotes.
Next up is a link to a paper about something vaguely climate-related, but which has no direct bearing on the rather nebulous "point" you claim it debunks:
Reading comprehension, maybe? The paper points out that while annual variations in the jet stream make it seem stable, multi-decadal variations are significant, and historically occur with regularity. The paper PREDICTED the dips in the arctic vortex we've seen this winter, while climate change models did NOT.
Your third link leads to a PDF that I can't even open
It's a 2010 paper that does the same thing as the previous paper, showing the variations in the polar
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And AGW almost caused a hurricane last fall.
I never failed to be amused at how AGW fanatics warp every single data point to say the sky is falling.
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Seriously, what about the polar vortex don't you understand? Although the eastern USA had historic lows last month, the global average temperature was the hottest January on record.
Odd, it seemed like a normal localized cold snap that hits anywhere between Washington State, and as far south as Florida on a semi-regular basis. Hell, I remember being in Florida a few years back during a similar cold snap where they were spraying the citrus trees to stop crop damage. And of course, I didn't hear anything about this "polar vortex" when it was blanketing Europe and Russia a few years ago, and we had a luckily and remarkably mild winter for the first in 3 odd years. The winter before tha
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Check the math. This is not actually true.
Link please. While I'm happy to check math, computing it all from the raw data (which I don't know the locations of in the first place) is rather more effort than I've got time for.
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You can't get the raw data, at least not all of it. Even if you did get it it a nightmare of to get it into anything like a useful format it's filled missing and malformed data. You can get the produced and adjusted data, Wood For Trees [woodfortrees.org] is probably the best place. You can make all kinds of interactive graphs of with boat loads of different datasets and processing filters.
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Regardless of whether you believe in global warming or not, humans have managed to add enough CO2 to the atmosphere to change the PH of the oceans. You may recall the oceans being at the base of the food chain. Science, learn it or else.
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http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/14/... [cnn.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/s... [noaa.gov]
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/s... [noaa.gov]
You're welcome.
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Which ones are the Ents?
Complicated (Score:5, Insightful)
The world keeps amazing us because the way it works is ever more complicated than we thought.
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If people would stop there hard lined views that border to be religious extremism. When it comes to everything science says has to be true.
There are so many things that cause the planet to work, and have yet to be understood.
Trouble is... people will read that as "Science is wrong!"
(Or, worse "Science is just an opinion and I've got an opinion too!")
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Summing up: "Science" may be wrong about some things but the scientific method is always correct (and *always* leads to the truth).
Re:Complicated (Score:4, Insightful)
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FTFA:
"In a warmer world, photosynthesis will become faster with rising CO2, which will lead to more vegetation and more emissions of these vapours," said lead author, Dr Mikael Ehn, now based at the University of Helsinki.
"This should produce more cloud droplets and this should then have a cooling impact, it should be a damping effect."
So yes, they always put out some of these volatiles, but the amount varies depending on climatic conditions and the health of the trees.
Where's the news in this? (Score:3)
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Yes [wikipedia.org], and I suspect that any plant with a "smell" will do it.
Mother Nature Seems To Love Irony (Score:5, Interesting)
The blight of the Mountain Pine Beetle has caused collosal damage to the pine forests of western North America, thwarting any supposed vapor particle limitation of climate change:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Aha! So it's actually ENTOMOgenic climate change.
Someone get the torches and the pitchforks, we've got some scapebeetles to lynch.
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Aha! So it's actually ENTOMOgenic climate change.
Nope. Those beetles are able to survive in these regions because of the lack of hard freezes to kill them back (global warming) and they're able to attack the trees because they have been weakened by drought (global warming, deforestation).
The pines are losing out to man-made climate change like everything else.
From my house, you can see somewhere from dozens to hundreds of dying pines. I can see a lot of pines from here on a hill in Lake County, CA. None of them look good.
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Nope. Those beetles are able to survive in these regions because of the lack of hard freezes to kill them back (global warming) and they're able to attack the trees because they have been weakened by drought (global warming, deforestation).
I keep hearing that the "lack of hard freezes" is what kills them back, how odd that it's still a problem in places like Alberta, where the temperature easily gets down to -30 to -50C, and they *still* survive. Seems that there's something wrong with the belief that cold kills them, and they're surviving anyway.
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Last I heard there were over 30 thousand species of plants and animals where the records are good enough to show they have significantly shifted their range in response to the warmer climate. Trees on low plains will need to
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Similar to the effect of H. sapiens.
Woohoo, I'm AGW-neutral! (Score:5, Funny)
From anyone who's ever hiked - duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone knows this - it's why you see that bluish haze above northern forests (Maine, looking at you) in the summer, the turpenes coming off the trees make natural smog in the sunlight.
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hat bluish haze above northern forests (Maine, looking at you)
Duh, that's pot smoke (Maine, looking at you). :p
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To be fair, he said 'blue', not purple [youtube.com].
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Ronald Reagan was right! (Score:2)
Terpenes [wikipedia.org] are a well known component of aerosol away from cities, and studied since many years. Nothing new in the headline, after all...
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"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." [rationalwiki.org] Terpenes [wikipedia.org] are a well known component of aerosol away from cities, and studied since many years. Nothing new in the headline, after all...
Yes, these are the terpenes that Reagan and James Watt (Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, not the inventor) were referring to. While they were sorta correct that you can't eliminate all the VOCs that contribute to smog by curtailing their emission by human activities, it was presented in the "complete solution or nothing at all" sort of fallacy. The whole thing got widely ridiculed -- albeit for the wrong reasons, even though it deserved it -- and Reagan distanced himself, throwing Watt under the bus. Or
I learned 2 things from this article... (Score:5, Funny)
I learned 2 things from this article...
(1) Apparently cars with pine tree air fresheners really *are* cool...
(2) The actual cause of winter is all the christmas tree smell caused by growing them in the first place, and winter goes away after we cut them down, hold them hostage for a couple of weeks, and then release them, after which it starts warming up again...
Science: It's not just for breakfast any more!
trees (Score:1)
Who would have thought? (Score:2)
misleading title (Score:1)
Banned in NYC (Score:2)
The nannies do not want you or your trees vaping as the young'uns might start smoking.
powerful smell of pine trees (Score:1)
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Why new research into climate change? Haven't we been told the science was settled?
We still need to refine the climate models so we can predict exactly how big a disaster the idiots are going to create.
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Re:Ha ha ha! (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Luthier, I can heartily suggest planting more HARDWOOD forests. To balance nature a bit from the overplanting of pine by the lumber industry and to ensure a future supply of hardwood for NICE things like furniture, guitars, baseball bats, etc. quit planting damn pines! Hardwoods are dissappearing in favor of the quicker growing weed; the pine tree. In nature, we had forest fires from dry weather, lightning strikes and bored Indians to control pine forests. Now we are out of balance and the price of hardwood is a sure reflection of that. Houses need to be built from better materials anyway, papercrete, dirt,rock,recycled materials and things more suited to lasting construction than found in stick houses.
Think Hardwood.
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The Asian pine beetle might take out a significant portion of the U.S. pine forest. We'd need a replanting effort to fill in the gap. Good luck getting that through our scientifically illiterate Congress. And the accountants masquerading as CEOs won't find next quarter's profit in replanting hardwood.
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> Fucking Asians.
Mmmm. One of my favourite hobbies :)
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The Asian pine beetle might take out a significant portion of the U.S. pine forest.
One reason for the spread of pine beetles has been mild winters over the last few decades, allowing more larva to survive. The harsh winter of 2013-2014 may have put a serious dent in the pine beetle population.
+1 #planthardwoods (Score:1)
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working." -Pablo Picasso
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Pinecaster! Great shades of Commander Cody!
I use basswood as a replacement for spruce tops on archtop guitars.
"Bored Indians"? Please explain (Score:2)
Can you show that "bored indians" are significant contributors to forest fires any more than "bored white men", "bored black men", "bored Hispanics", etc.??
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Can you show that "bored indians" are significant contributors to forest fires any more than "bored white men", "bored black men", "bored Hispanics", etc.??
It is well established [wikipedia.org] that fire significantly changed North American ecosystems following the arrival of native Americans around 12000 BCE. For instance, the tall grass prairie was created and maintained by fire, creating ideal grazing for bison, but pushing many other megafauna to extinction. Although there is no solid evidence that these native Americans were acting out of boredom, it is highly unlikely that they were white, black or Hispanic.
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Ah, yes. They did that not because they were bored but because that was their way of managing their environment. So the question is still valid.
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It is not provable that Indians functioned on the behalf of the environment, only the immediacy of their situation.
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We know that there were tribes who; for lack of anything better to do of an evening , would light pines on fire to watch the pretty colored fire. Oddly enough there were even some who had discovered popcorn and set president, I had always hoped it was the same tribes. Campsites were left messy and open trash pits left wherever they roamed.
Indians werent exactly the stewards of the land that the 70s ecology awareness commercials made them out to be .
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Of course the reason that hardwoods are rapidly disappearing is because their wood is so popular with craftsmen, and they can't grow or reproduce fast enough to keep up with demand. It often takes centuries to grow the same amount of hardwood as pine can produce in a few decades, and almost nobody cares about planting a crop that won't be ready to harvest for at least several generations. Hell, I had a great-(great-?)-grandfather who planted a Walnut "plantation" as a family investment. The plan apparentl
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Did anyone tell those impatient spoilded brats those trees were likely worth 5000.00 - $10,000.00 each standing? A slab of curly walnut 2.5 X 40 - 56 X 103 inches retails for $2690.00! [bigwoodslabs.com] Even a pine log cut from old-growth climax forrests are worth big bucks, you'd be amazed at how many scuba divers root around in the muck looking for dunderhead logs that were too dense to float from logging a century ago.
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The selling of the undeveloped land almost definitely included reaping quite a load of money for some lumber companies when the hardwood was sold.
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you'd be amazed at how many scuba divers root around in the muck looking for dunderhead logs that were too dense to float from logging a century ago.
For their sake, I hope they have salvage rights. Without them, they're undoubtedly breaking the law if they remove the logs, or anything, including old Coke bottles, etc.
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My family owns 160 acres of forest in the George Washington NAtional Forest: a "working" forest with a high proportion of hardwood. The problem is more complex than anyone wants to touch here. Basically though, trees are cut at "maturity" which is determined to be about 50 to 70 years. I was retiring up at the cabin there when a local woodcutter came by to "warn" me that I would need to cut my pine because of the pine bore beetle infestation that was sweeping the forest. Not only would I lose money, but I w
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Of course the reason hardwood is disappearing so fast IS supply cant grow fast enough to meet demand. Period.
Some do care and do plant hardwood trees, hardly enough.
Sorry to hear about the Walnut plantation. Walnuts are pretty susceptible to disease if not located in just the right conditions.
I have a few hundred board feet of rough cut walnut, aged 20+ years, bound for Telecasters, archtop backs and center stripes on 3 piece necks not to mention lovely veneers.
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To balance nature a bit from the overplanting of pine by the lumber industry and to ensure a future supply of hardwood for NICE things like furniture, guitars, baseball bats, etc.
We'll have plenty of cardboard from Ikea, plenty of plastic guitar hero guitars, and plenty of aluminim for bats for the next few centuries. No problem that I can see.
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Yes, but in a few months all those things are useless crap on their way to the dump. Not so with hardwood. In fact it may even increase in value.
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"bored Indians"... Really? In what sense is a "bored Indian" more natural than a lumberjack going about his business? The only sense I can think of is when one chooses to use "Indian" to mean "a savage" or some such similar nonsense.
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Indians burned pines for tribal entertainment to watch the pretty colored fire. Not all Indians, but enough to start far more forest fires than nature.