I can’t find the words to describe the illogic behind the EPA with this ruling. Perhaps it is best to say that bureaucrats don’t understand anything but regulations and leave it at that.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to several people close to the matter. Story here.
To celebrate, surfacestations.org volunteer Gary Boden sends along this poster:
But there’s an interesting twist, just two days ago, the University of Wisconsin says that CO2 is accelerating forest growth. Of course, bureaucrats wouldn’t understand this, because they can’t regulate tree growth. Oh, wait.
From the University of Wisconsin-Madison press release:
Greenhouse gas carbon dioxide ramps up aspen growth
Dec. 4, 2009
The rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be fueling more than climate change. It could also be making some trees grow like crazy.
That is the finding of a new study of natural stands of quaking aspen, one of North America’s most important and widespread deciduous trees. The study, by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota at Morris (UMM) and published today (Dec. 4) in the journal Global Change Biology, shows that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the past 50 years have boosted aspen growth rates by an astonishing 50 percent.
“Trees are already responding to a relatively nominal increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 50 years,” says Rick Lindroth, a UW-Madison professor of ecology and an expert on plant responses to climate change. Lindroth, UW-Madison colleague Don Waller, and professors Christopher Cole and Jon Anderson of UMM conducted the new study.
The study’s findings are important as the world’s forests, which cover about 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface, play an important role in regulating climate and sequestering greenhouses gases. The forests of the Northern Hemisphere, in particular, act as sinks for carbon dioxide, helping to offset the increase in levels of the greenhouse gas, widely viewed as a threat to global climate stability.
What’s more, according to the study’s authors, the accelerated growth rates of aspen could have widespread unknown ecological consequences. Aspen is a dominant tree in mountainous and northern forested regions of North America, including 42 million acres of Canadian forest and up to 6.5 million acres in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Aspen and their poplar cousins are considered “foundation species,” meaning they exert a strong influence on the plant and animal communities and dynamics of the forest ecosystems where they reside.
“We can’t forecast ecological change. It’s a complicated business,” explains Waller, a UW-Madison professor of botany. “For all we know, this could have very serious effects on slower growing plants and their ability to persist.”
Carbon dioxide, scientists know, is food for plants, which extract it from the air and through the process of photosynthesis convert it to sugar, plant food.
Previously, scientists have shown that plants and trees in growth chambers respond to levels of carbon dioxide well above levels in the atmosphere. The new study is the first to show that aspen in their native forest environments are already growing at accelerated rates due to rising ambient levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“It’s a change hiding right in front of us,” says Cole, a biologist at UMM. “Aspens respond to all sorts of things we had to account for — water, genetics and other factors — but the strong response to carbon dioxide surprised all of us.”
The study measured the growth rates of 919 trees from Wisconsin forests dominated by aspen and birch. Trees ranging in age from 5 to 76 years old were sampled and subjected to tree-ring analysis. Comparing the tree-ring data, a measure of annual tree growth, with records of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the researchers were able to correlate increased rates of growth with changes in the chemistry of the air.
The surprising increase in growth rates for the trees sampled in the study is coupled, the authors note, with moist conditions. By contrast, aspen in the western United States do not seem to grow as fast as those in the American Midwest, most likely due to recent extended periods of drought. Also, while the researchers found that aspen grow much faster in response to elevated carbon dioxide, similar effects have not been observed in other trees species, notably oak and pine.
Findings from the new study, the authors note, could augur revisions of the estimates of how much carbon northern temperate northern forests can sequester.
“Forests will continue to be important to soak up anthropogenic carbon dioxide,” says Waller. “But we can’t conclude that aspen forests are going to soak up excess carbon dioxide. This is going to plateau.”
“Aspens are already doing their best to mitigate our inputs,” agrees Cole. “The existing trees are going to max out in a couple of decades.”
The new study was funded by the National Science Foundation and UMM.
This study kind of nulifyes using tree rings as proxies for temperature. Seems that things like water, CO2, sun light etc. have as much or more of an impact on tree growth than temperature. So what proxies are still plosibly accuriate?
Gee doesn’t Keith Briffa’s study PROVE the actual atmospheric CO2 has DECLINED since 1960. After all the above aspen study and the Duke University study prove correlation between tree growth (ring size) and CO2 while the Mauna Loa CO2 data is compromised by nearby volcanoes and therefore can not be trust. Therefore we most look to Mother Nature to tell us the truth – Trees are green and obviously would never lie.
Reading through some of the publications from Brookhaven’s Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment at
http://www.bnl.gov/face/
they have reached the same conclusions as the U of WI researchers, that C02 enhances the growing capablities of many trees; you just have to also read through the other conclusions of all the nastiness they claim will also occur.
But based on the the expected EPA ruling, will these government funded researchers and agencies be charged with polluting in their FACE experiments?
Dan Olner (02:16:14) :
….Fire in barbecues: good. Fire in your house: bad. Not sure how things are in the US, but in the UK we work *really* hard to mitigate against the latter. That doesn’t mean we’re trying to ban barbecues.
Reply:
They are here in the good old USA.
The one example about smoking by Tyler is too good – in explaining mass hyteria without understanding the facts. Like in smoking, open air smoking will not cause passive smoking… how many understands this?
Is EPA going to safe Obama’s face at Copenhagen?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126013960013179181.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
Regulate CO2 and destroy the US economy.
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-destroy-us-economy-regulate.html
Dan Olner (05:03:50) :
Dan Olner (02:16:14) :
Nobody is saying co2 is a poison.
Bill Tuttle: “Nobody except the EPA…”
No, they’re not. They’re saying it’s potentially dangerous. They’re saying it’s a greenhouse gas that, in large concentrations, will cause dangerous global warming. This stuff about banning breathing is all very amusing, but I just don’t see how this is a complicated distinction to make.
Wrong, Dan-O. They are, in fact saying that greenhouse gases are endangering people’s health and must be regulated. Are, not will. Now, not potentially. Certainly even an Alarmist, as confused as they are, can grasp the difference? Could be wrong about that.
Passing by the US Senate, the will of of the majority of the American People and driving his own agenda at any price:
Obama May Visit Climate Talks Armed With CO2 Ruling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&sid=aPQY79dCbgV4
Interesting.
Lets step back a bit and suppose we have three things with varying degrees of correlation between them A, B and C.
A is climate and B is CO2.
C is solar activity.
It seems to me that when you have three variables within a system you have to be careful not to assume that B causes A and C.
Why should it cause C?
Well, we have too many strong correlations between A and C for C not to be related in any way and C is eternal so it woudl take a pretty flight of fancy for either A or B to cause C.
We all ready have a good correlation between sunspot activity and climate e.g. the Maunder Minimum and cold weather.
Now we have a new piece of research published by NASA which says there is a very strong correlation extending over 850years between Nile records which were always vitally important to the agriculture (it is a river culture) and aurora observations in the northern hemisphere. Aurora activity is linked to solar flares.
850 years is a pretty enduring co-incidence.
Now it may be that CO2 contributes something to warming but if it is the primary driver of warming then we have to discount solar activity and write of all these correlations as simply co-incidence.
If solar activity were an internal part of the systems then that is possible but how can anything happening in the earths climate affect solar activity?
So do we investigate if solar activity drives CO2 and that drives temperature, or do we investigate if solar activity drives temperature and temperature drives CO2 ? the fact that CO2 may feedback some warming due to “green house” effects is OK. The problem is to believe it is the primary driver when CO2 lags temperature and neither tempeature nor CO2 can drive the solar activity.
So, next step. Do we have an correlations between solar activity and the climate on other planets?
If so then we have a strong case to suggest that the sun is driving our climate and we’d better find the cause because we are pushing co-incidence too far to believe these correlations to be pure co-incidence and even further to find either the earth’s climate or CO2 to be the driver.
Of course, there could be some other factor that is the cause of Solar activity… but I’ll bet it is not man.
Oh, there have been some work on causative mechanisms which usually seek to relate solar activity to clouds.
This bring us to the work at CERN:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/175641-climategate-revolt-of-the-physicists
So, since I am evidently a denier and a flat earther, according to some politicians and AGW advocates, please tell me where my logic is wrong.
On the other hand if there are any links between solar activity and the climates of other planets, please let me know.
They won’t ban breathing – they’ll tax it. When I’m fitted up with my licence and my carbometer, I wonder if I will get a credit for the noxious gas that I can sell to my local market gardener.
For Canada, the USA, Australia, and the EU there is a simple answer to the restrictions on CO2. The replacement birth rate is 2.1. The birth rate in the USA is 1.3 and in some of the EU as low as 0.8. Given these facts the solution is simple. Get rid of all foreigners, toss out every single non-citizen and require embassies and foreign visitors to pay huge CO2 fees. We can substantially drop our CO2 emissions, decrease racial tensions AND decrease our unemployment rate all at the same time painlessly. It is a three way win for politicians. E-mail your politicians today!
/Advert
By doing this, the EPA is now officially no longer (if indeed they ever were) about protecting the environment. Their one and only “purpose” is maintaining and further strengthening their own power. Control C02 and you control energy. Control energy and you control everything. Orwell’s prophecy is coming true.
We can’t forecast ecological change. It’s a complicated business. For all we know, this could have very serious effects on slower growing plants and their ability to persist.
In the face of the impossibility of forecasting the future of non-linear systems, the rational course of action is to examine the past for similar conditions.
The past has featured times of warmer temperatures and higher levels of CO2. At those times did the eco system collapse? Did it converge on fewer species of flora that out-competed slower growing specimens? I don’t think so.
It is very disappointing that scientists always feel compelled to ensure their statements somehow reflect the party line. Just once I’d like to see an ecologist come out and say, “Wow, if it warms and there’s more CO2 available, there will be a green explosion of the globe!”
Water intoxication / water poisoning.
“Drinking too much water can eventually cause your brain to swell, stopping it regulating vital functions such as breathing, and causing death.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6263029.stm
CO2 dangerous. Dammit, I knew I should have sold those Coca Cola shares!
EPA: Greenhouse gases endanger human health
Dec 7 12:42 PM US/Eastern By DINA CAPPIELLO and H. JOSEF HEBERT
EPA Press Conf
MichaelC58 (05:07:05) :
I have just emailed a complaint to the head of EPA – Ms Jackson, jackson.lisa@epa.gov that CO2 is not a pollutant and the reasons. Why don’t all bloggers do the same and put pressure on EPA to reconsider.
I like your suggestion. Early this year and then again last month I sent a four-page letter to the EPA. I mention the possibility that a quiet sun may portend a cooling earth, and I end the letter with::
After all, who wants to finance an agency that enacts regulations that (a) worsen not alleviate adverse natural phenomena, and (b) destroy the world’s economy in the process. Given the cost associated with maintaining the EPA, I believe the EPA has not justified its existence. As such, if I were king, I’d abolish the EPA right now. However, if (a) natural global cooling is our future, and (b) to retard or prevent nonexistent global warming the EPA enacts regulations that have an ancillary effect of contributing to a downturn in the economy, it won’t be just me and a few others calling for abolition of the EPA, it will be an army.
From Lisa Jackson – ” EPA will stand ready to help Congress craft strong science-based climate legislation that fulfills the vision of the President . ”
Also , from Lisa Heinzerling , EPA’s policy councel on climate change – “Cost benefit analysis is a deeply flawed device that has never been the environmentalist’s friend .” ( Thanks to today’s American Spectator )
Folks , this the mindset we are up against . I was under the impression that cost benefit analysis was mandated in the EPA’s charter . It is clear that the EPA is ignoring its mandate , especially in relying on the obviously flawed science from the IPCC , for that is indeed what they use . Although it has been perfectly clear for months , the EPA has disregarded any comments that ran counter to the President’s will . We should alert our Representatives and Senators to the deceitful arrogance of this rogue agency .
How stupid can these warmers be?
Just another money collection scheme..
White House announced to set a mandatory limit on carbon-dioxide gas that many scientists say could lead to dangerous climate shifts if left unchecked.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aPQY79dCbgV4
Natural gas is the cleanest of all the fossil fuels. Composed primarily of methane, the main products of the combustion of natural gas are carbon dioxide and water vapor, the same compounds we exhale when we breathe.
http://www.naturalgas.org/environment/naturalgas.asp
robert brucker (08:08:16) :
When co2 is deemed a pollutant by the EPA, will hospitals and surgery centers be able to continue to use co2 to insufflate abdominal cavities for laparoscopic surgeries? Look at all the pollution! They will probably require some expensive scavenging systems. We use a lot of co2 in ORs daily
The General electric Anesthesia machines can be ordered with a CO2 canister. Unless you have a normal amount of CO2 in your blood gases, you will die.
This testing of a CO2 law by the Carbon Cartel is a hoax. Who decides who can produce oxidized carbon and who gets punished?
Even a compost pile for an organic gardener is a polutter.
About the age of 10, people will see this scheme as riddled with contradiction. Walking and exercise create toxic gas. Human metabolism is illegal.
Mods,
Did my last post make it through ? I didn’t even get a “your comment is awaiting moderation .”
Webb and Inhofe warning Obama not to sign anything at Copenhagen!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2009/dec/02/webb-warns-obama-taking-action-copenhagen/
OK , I’ll try again . Lisa Jackson said ” EPA willstand ready to help Congress craft strong , science-based climate legislation that fufills the vision of the President ”
Lisa Heinzerling , now EPA’s senior counsel on climate change, wrote in 2004 “Cost-benefit analysis is a deeply flawed device that has never been the environmentalist’s friend. ”
By preempting Congress and ignoring cost-benefit analysis , which I think is mandated in its charter , the EPA is proving itself an activist , rogue agency which has exceeded its bounds . Furthermore , they have relied on the IPCC’s flawed science for their ruling . It is time to rein them in .
If the EPA and it’s head wish to hold thier breath from now on, it’s perfectly ok with me.