I meant to address the “water cycle” exchange.
Yes, the Earth cycles water. However, that does not address the point when people talk about water supplies. They’re talking about access to fresh drinking water. Only part of that comes from the water cycle putting water back into the reservoirs. The repeated draught conditions in places (such as southern California, or Houston, Texas) supports that concern. Another part of that is having water that is not contaminated by pollutants.
The economics of plastic versus wood desks are not particularly complicated. First, in a competitive industry like furniture making, the price is basically equal to the cost of production. The cost of producing a wood desk includes many things - the price of the timber, the labor needed to cut it down, mill it, the price of the stain and fixtures, and the cost of transportation and retailing. If wooden furniture has gotten more expensive than plastic, I speculate that it is due to the higher labor intensity of wood than plastic and higher transport costs.
What is hard to understand is how it is relevant to the debate on whether the Earth’s resources are limited.
Maybe someone out there can explain this: Whenever the Antarctic “ozone hole” appears on NASA’s colored maps, it is always surrounded by corresponding areas of high levels of ozone. Averaged out, I don’t see a net loss. What appears to be happening is nature, for whatever reason, takes ozone from one place and puts it in another. I asked Cecil this question six months ago and never received a response.
Part of the reason wood prices keep rising is that the kind of wood the lumber industry needs - old growth forest- is being destroyed by…the lumber industry. Certain persons in the industry have pointed out that there are more trees in America than there were when the pilgrims landed, and they are absolutely correct. The problem is that those trees are largely unusable for another 50-100 years - they are too small to use for much else than particle board.
Blake- you asked me for "any reason why you posted that comment about global warming? Does anyting in this thread or the column lead you to believe that anyone doubts global warming?
What leads you to believe that in a world with longer life expectancies and more leisure time than ever before and a population that is due to start falling within 50 years that the world is likely to become a hell, rather than continuing to get better?" You have followed that up with comments about extinction.
To answer you (and maybe some others)- the belief that some entertain that global warming is not a problem is reason sufficient to post. 1) Global warming IS cyclical, but the rate of change is crucial. According to a recent critique of the current EPA report on CNN, 8 of the hottest 10 years on record occurred in the last 50 years. Look down the road: while some critters might be able to migrate to new climates without too much difficulty, no plant can. And would the newly warmed topsoil of Montana support the same biomass and type of crops that now sun-scorched Kansas used to. It isn’t a question of whether the earth’s biosphere will survive any damage we’re doing, its whether WE will. 2) The rate at which we (globally) pollute and otherwise alter our environment is not decreasing, but increasing. Ditto population growth, especially in the developing nations. Combine that with the prediction that some have made that 50 years from now we may have heated up the globe by enough to cause all kinds of global havoc, and I see hell, not salvation.
You asked also about the cost of blacksmithing, rhetorically of course, but I love to educate: Any industry has startup costs in infrastructure, capital and training that decline as the industry becomes more efficient and competitive, causing price declines. Prices continue to decline as demand increases. These prices, of course, are relative costs, not adjusted for inflation, which may raise the absolute cost. As an industry goes into decline, dissapearing economies of scale, decrease of competition, and dwindling demand cause
prices to rise. Blacksmithing is an industry that has passed its peak - most products made by blacksmiths are available in some substitute form by mass-produced items or are not in high demand. There are not many blacksmiths, and they are not as highly trained as those of the past. Low demand, Low competition, and high startup costs per project = High cost.
Charlee, I’m just guessing but perhaps its akin to the dynamics around a Black hole-the high concentration of ozone is because it is rushing in to fill a void, right before its destroyed by CFC’s. Besides, I’m sure Cecil has researchers hot on it…
Whoa, WHOA, WHOA. Think about what you say before you say it. For starters, they only reason Phoenix is so green is that there are no real restrictions on people in terms of irrigating and such. Groundwater withdrawals reached quite a pitch in central AZ in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, with groundwater levels falling by hundreds of feet in some cases (and if you want to hear about the surface affects of those kind of withdrawals I can tell you about it). Only lately, since agricultural land has been converted into residential, have groundwater levels slowed or even rebounded in some cases. However, they are still about 150 feet down in the east valley, and over 300 feet in the far west valley (don’t argue with me, I’ve measured these with my own grubby hands). This is not due to any kind of de-desertification, but rather a decrease in groundwater withdrawal rates.
Before the white man came around, the natives here used gravity-driven irrigation, building a network of canals (many of the current canals in this area were built on theirs) to do so. The Salt River ran with more water back then, with flow being reduced by damming and increased losses to the aquifer in the last 100 years or so.
So no, Phoenix is not a shining example of a place where the desert is being reclaimed, it’s just a man-made aberration. Want proof? Just look outside the metropolitan area.
This one hurts me a lot. Ow.
It looks like I’m gonna have to open up an “Ask the Geologist” thread in MPSIMS or something like that.
Earthquakes do not open up great rifts in the earth through which oil and water and gas ferociously to the surface. When a fault slips, very little (if any) opening is produced, except in some cases, and that only at the surface (where gas and oil would not be held, anyway).
Another one. Climatologists and global change scientists do not look at the past 100 years and claim to be able to tell you what the temperature’s going to be on Memorial Day in 250 years. You’re looking at too specific a type of information.
We have been keeping temp. records for the past 100 years or so, but we have more and more general types of information about the climate the further back we go. Dendrochronologists (people who study tree rings and other things related to trees to come up with indications of past climate) have put together fairly intact seasonal climatological records for the past 10,000 years. And then we can study deposits in the stratigraphic record to get more generalized (annual+) indications of climate through time. We can use our knowledge of how things have worked in the past, apply Uniformitarianism (states that things work today like they have always worked geologically), and various climatological theories to predict how the earth will change in reaction to the changes we have produced in environmental conditions. They try to figure out how the environment will change because of the amount of carbon we’ve taken out of storage (burning of fossil fuels removes carbon from the subsurface and inserts it into the atmosphere). Nobody pretends that we can produce a definitive answer to this question, although a lot of data supports the idea that global warming has been going on. The quandry is whether the warming trend is a background thing that would have been happening whether or not we were here (for example, during the middle ages, I don’t remember the exact timing, there was a “Little Ice Age” in at least Europe, during which temperatures dropped many degrees on average for several years), or whether it is a direct result of our meddling.
This one is also absolutely untrue. The problem is not that the soil is not fertile enough without forest, it’s that it is not fertile because there is nothing on top of it once they’re done harvesting the crops. Yield of a plot of land can be increased significantly with proper management of land (like letting fields sit fallow, etc.). Add on top of that the fact that rainforest soil is best suited for rainforest plants (in composition and many other properties), and you can see why growing other crops on it for a few years would be very damaging to it.
And good lord, the soil is not there because of the forest, the soil has the properties it does because of the forest. The soil is there because at one point natural weathering and erosional processes attacked rock somewhere in the geologic past, moving sand and clay, and starter plants lived and died in those early, undeveloped soils, helping accelerate weathering and furthering development of the soil. What do you think, the forest just sprung out of the rock, only then creating a soil?
The earth is warmer, by one degree over the past 100 years. The question is how much of this is the result of nature and how much by man. I feel the claim that man made carbon dioxide will be the main cause for an eight degree increase in 100 years is way out of line. The increased temperatures we have seen so far are caused as much by land use changes as anything else. This is confirmed by a report by the University of Maryland’s Eugenia Kalnay and Ming Cai last month:
Most scientists think the global warming trend is largely the result of human activities, principally the emission of greenhouse gases from power plants, cars and other sources. Land use change, such as the conversion of undeveloped land to housing or agricultural use, has been seen as an important but much smaller factor in this trend. However, the findings of Kalnay and Cai may force a reassessment of the relative importance of these two factors.
“Our estimates are that land use changes in the United States since the 1960s resulted in a rise of over 0.2 degrees F <> in the mean surface temperature, an estimate twice as high as those of previous studies,” said Kalnay, a professor of meteorology. “We expect to extend our study to obtain global results later this year, but these findings for the United States already suggest that land use changes may account for between 1/3 and 1/2 of the observed surface global warming.”
Before massive restrictions are imposed upon humanity, we need to know more than just, “Well, it could happen”. California not long ago mandated that 100,000 electric cars be sold in the state in 2003 due to global warming, a fine example of political engineering.
I know they are, and that is exactly the point I addressed earlier when I pointed out that more people have greater access to higher quality fresh drinking water today than ever before in history. And the situation is improving.
The lumber industry doesn’t need old growth forest. It is quite happy with plantation timbers.
>The lumber industry doesn’t need old growth forest. It is quite happy with plantation timbers.
Not in my country, they lobby continually for access to old growth.
I dare say they do lobby for that. I lobby my boss for more money too. Doesn’t mean I’m not quite happy with what I’m gettting, it just means I can always use more and I acn’t see why he doesn’t give it to me.
The fact that the industry lobbies for access to old growth doesn’t justfy saying they need old growth timber. That is simply not true.
ace22, excellent string of posts. Thank you.
Irishman, I know my posts have taken up a lot of space in this thread due to this multiple posting problem when the boards get slow but you attributed a quote to me here that was actually made by another poster.
As I’ve noted, I simply don’t have time this week to get into this debate in this level of detail which is why I posted lots of links where you can read it for yourself. If you refuse to look at it, I at least hope that others will and will thus not be taken in by Lomborg’s claims.
It is hopeless to argue this anymore with you because you clearly want to see everything in a vacuum. The point is that Lomborg is, knowingly or unknowingly…it seems largely knowingly, being used by the libertarian/right to argue against environmental regulations. Yet, his “research” has huge problems in its presentation of the state of the environment and where he is right about environmental improvement, he feels to address the reason for the improvement. If he did honestly, it would largely undermine the argument that most environmental regulation is largely unneccessary or counterproductive.
Why the hell are you bringing rights into it? Did I ever ever claim that Lomborg had no right to say whatever the hell he wants to? But others have the right to say he is largely full of shit which is basically what most serious scientists have said.
I don’t really know the answer to your question but here is a site with some info which does explain that there are two distinct effects that have occurred in anthropogenic ozone depletion: one is a fairly homogeneous depletion of the layer (resulting in a 5-10% reduction over the U.S.) and the other is the opening up of the ozone hole over the Antarctic.
Here’s a couple other good sites: http://www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/tour/index.html
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/sbuv2to/ozone_hole.html
A couple more things to think about in regards to the ozone hole that may or may not be relevant (I admit I am winging it here…this is in the realm of speculation as to why scientists are concerned about it and may or may not have anything to do with the correct explanation as to why they actually are):
Even if the net effect of the hole was just to shift ozone around, it could still cause problems because
(1) If you are in a region (such as New Zealand or southern Australia) where the ozone above you became depleted, it would not be much solice that there were other places where the amount had gone up.
(2) More uniformity will block more total UV anyway. As a simple example, assume the ozone was such that it blocked 80% and let through 20% of the UV when uniformly spread out. Then, 80% of the total UV would be blocked. Now, assume it “readjusted” so that there was twice as much ozone over half the earth and none over the rest. [The total ozone would thus still be the same.] In the region where there was twice as much, 0.20.2, or 4%, of the UV would get through and 96% would be blocked. However in the region with no ozone, 100% would get through. Thus, in net, 0.040.5 + 1.0*0.5, or 52%, of the UV would now hit the earth as opposed to the 20% of before. (This is a general principle with filters…You filter out more total light, UV, or whatever when the filtering material is more uniformly spread out than when it is heterogeneously distributed.)
Regarding Lomberg:
Lomberg isn’t perfect, but he is hardly the vile villain some try to paint him as being. He is still very concerned with pollution controls and such, but what his book does is point out that various “doomsday scenarios” that people have been feeding us for some time don’t have much factual evidence to them.
One can make plenty of decent arguements against Lomberg of different levels (such as his definition of increasing wealth, etc.) but sadly, a lot of effective criticism of Lomberg has come up short. Some of it borders on smear campaign.
The Scientific American piece for example, was remarkably vague. I couldn’t find Lomberg’s reply, but here is a guy quoting some of it
Skeptic magazine also did an article on Lomberg, with some replies by Lomberg. Neither was terribly effective, and in fact one contributing editor (Jim Lippard) to Skeptic magazine has said he found the wasselective and dishonest
Lomberg is not perfect, and there’s a boatload of criticizable stuff in his book. But at least for the first time there is some open discussion about some of the runaway panic trips some ‘environmentalists’ have spoon fed the world without challenge for years.
I monitor the NASA ozone maps almost daily and they just don’t describe the ozone scare that most people are freaked out about. The average concentration of ozone is about 300 DU globally, but daily local readings fluctuate tremendously, except in the equitorial regions where they stay in a 250-300 range year round. Ozone readings of 425 DU and more are very common at certain times of the year in the northern hemisphere. Isn’t this where most ozone depleting chemicals are released into the atmosphere? Ozone never drops to zero anywhere. The lowest levels in the Antarctic during the 2-3 month period of the ozone hole are above 100 DU, with anything below 200 being considered part of the “hole”.
I have also not been able to find any studies that show that UV levels at the earth’s surface have increased a significant amount. We should see some increase just due to the fact that there is less pollution in the air.
So jshore it appears that you have repeatedly attacked Lomborg on the basis of nothing at all. Every time you are asked what you mean you post somehting slightly more specific, but still fail to provide any evidence, simply saying that it’s out there somewhere.
I hope that this will allow people to see that your criticism of Lomborg is baseless, and is typical of all the criticsms you linked to.