Report finds temps rising in Colorado River basin, West
By Paul Foy, Associated Press
Friday, March 28, 2008
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Around the same time that the American West started heating up five years ago, Colorado started losing its lodgepole pine forests to a beetle infestation.
"The population built up rapidly and exploded; it takes out the mature trees," said Ingrid Aguayo, an entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service, which estimates that about 60 percent of the lodgepole pines have turned red and brown.
"Now we're seeing a new carpet of forest coming up," she said.
Scientists can't be certain that global warming is to blame, but evidence appears to point to that.
Now, a report based on government temperature data shows that over the past five years, average annual temperatures in the Colorado River basin - the heart of the West - have risen by 2.2 degrees, or about twice as fast as the global rate.
The report is from the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, a coalition of local governments, businesses and others working to protect the climate, and the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council. It says the West is heating up faster than any other region in the continental U.S. with more catastrophic wildfires among the consequences.
"It's already begun. We are already seeing the effects, and scientists are telling us it's going to get markedly worse," said Stephen Saunders, the organization's president in Louisville.
Climate change researchers are hesitant to ascribe a single cause for the warming, but they agree that it is happening.
"By and large, there is a very detectable warming in this region," said Martin Hoerling, a meteorologist at the NOAA-funded Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder. His own research suggests the West could heat up a lot more, possibly by 5 degrees by the midpoint of the century, depending on the level of greenhouse-gas emissions.
Comments
Posted by pak on March 28, 2008 at 8:01 a.m. (Suggest removal)
650,000 years of ice core data show CO2 increase is a lagging indicator, occuring after warming, not before. We are coming out of the midevil cooling period and the warming is natural cycle of the sun. The lodgepoles are dying because they are old and never got cleaned out by natural forest fires. Yes, man is partly responsible for dying lodgepoles, but only because of man's control of wildfires.
Posted by Marshdale on March 28, 2008 at 8:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)
It all political. Scientists getting government research money are reluctant to say global warming is at least in part, human caused for fear of losing the cash coffer for research, especialy when we have a conservative leadership in the US. The numbers are there folks. We are having an affect on our climate. It does not take a genius to look at CO2 graphs from the last 200 years that are correlated with the beginning of the industrial revolution, and compare those CO2 graphs to ones from previous warming periods. The rate of CO2 increase since the industial revolution is markedly steeper. I find it puzzeling how people can think that 6 billion of us don't have an effect on our climate. Wake up! The science is there!
What we do about it is a different story. The economic ramifications of modifying our transportation systems, power grid, etc are astronomical. This is not just a government problem. Yes they can help, but it is going to take a monumental effort on all sectors of society to slow this runaway train down.
Posted by Quagmate on March 28, 2008 at 8:24 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"The report is from the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, a coalition of local governments, businesses and others working to protect the climate, and the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council."
This has as much validaty as a tobacco company report saying smoking doesn't cause cancer. This isn't news, it's an advertisment.
Posted by HolierThanThou on March 28, 2008 at 8:46 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The only difference between the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, and the tobacco companies is the fact that those environmental organizations are non-profits started by volunteers who suffer from an excess of altruism while the tobacco companies are run by rapacious profiteers.
Other than that, any idiot can tell you that they're all the same.
Posted by greenleaf on March 28, 2008 at 8:51 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Quagmate,
I'm sorry, you aren't comparing apples to apples as you imply.
The tobacco companies had their selfish interests at heart, they weren't trying to look out for the rest of us.
The above mentioned coalition has, as some of its members, local governments. These are the same people you and I elected. I don't remember being allowed to vote for anyone in the tobacco industry.
Without seeing a list of businesses that participated, it's impossible to see to what degree they are watching out for their own interests. If they are in the wind-generation business, you might have a point with that part of the membership. If they are in the coal generation industry, they might be trying to influence the debate in a more conservative manner. We just don't know!
As for NRDC, this is a non-profit environmental group, that, while it has an obvious bias, it is, well, a non-profit group! This again is dramatically different when compared to a tobacco company trying to protect its assets!
So Quagmate, I respectfully suggest that you re-examine your logic. I believe it has a glaring flaw.
Posted by DahmersCookbook on March 28, 2008 at 9:27 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The beetle was planted by loggers.
Posted by nowhearthis on March 28, 2008 at 9:43 a.m. (Suggest removal)
This article simply reports that collected data shows an increase in temperature in the region. The reason that they haven't reported a cause is probably that they just got the numbers and haven't gotten a chance to investigate the "why" thoroughly. You're right, that shows such bias!
There's so much money in climate research. Those researchers are so rich with funding! I hear they can even afford to get health insurance now! People who try to debunk results based on funding are fools.
Posted by Coco on March 28, 2008 at 10:09 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The last ice age was caused by a "mere" 5 degrees of cooling. Look what happened. A 5 degree increase in temperature will be devastating. Many societies have failed as a result of their failure to heed nature's warnings. We can look back at the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, Greenland Norse, Henderson Islanders and many others, and see that unrelenting pressure on nature, combined with drought, protracted war, waves of immigration (in our case most of which is illegal) is a major crisis waiting to happen. How severe will be told, and soon enough that we and our children will suffer. How can we fail to understand that if we take sequestered carbon out of the ground and put it into the atmosphere at levels far above what can be absorbed, severe consequences are just around the corner. Yes, humans are exacerbating the warming - that is the good news - it gives us the opportunity to do something about it. The other choice is to continue to go on our merry way and ignore the myriad of nature's warnings. Sticking your head in the sand is not going to do anything but expose something else.
Posted by Quagmate on March 28, 2008 at 10:15 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Just because it is a non-profit we should give them a pass? They aren't volunteers, they get paid and they get funding.
Don't make the assumption that "non-profit" means a bunch of altruistic unpaid volunteers are working for nothing.
Mortgage companies have non-profits they support, gas and oil companies have non-profits they support.
They went out looking for data to support an already stated position. They have an axe to grind just like the tobacco companies did and their research is just as biased and useless.
Local governments and businesses? Which businesses and governements? What sceintific methods were used if any? Like I wrote earlier this is an advertisment, not news.
In addition, the Pine Beetle population is cyclic, something that is left out of the article also.
Posted by nowhearthis on March 28, 2008 at 10:23 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Quagmate, could you tell me which "sceintific methods" you would like to have seen them use, or what methods you would deem acceptable to complete this type of study, if you were doing it yourself?
Also, this article does not say pine beetles are definitely the result of global warming, it just says that climate change is a possible cause. Please try and check your emotions at the door when reading it.
Posted by Quagmate on March 28, 2008 at 2:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Pine Bettle populations are cyclic - they are not related to the weather. That is not emotional, that is a fact, something this article clearly has little of. Drawing an inference between to two isn't sceintific.
Good question, what scientific methods were used? Was the temp taken every day for five years and recorded. Was it in 1, 5 or 300 spots. Was it done seasonally? Is five years long enough? Was it also warmer during the winter? Is this anlysis of existing weather data? Has it ever warmed up before? What was the 2.2 degree baseline shift from?
All we have is "government tempurature data" - which tells us nothing.
Accusing me of being emotional is an attempt to draw attention away from the facts and minimilaize my argument while personalizing the argument with emotion. Projecting your calm cool demeanear and characterizing me as some out of control wacko is transparent at best; the goal of having me resopond emotionaly was not reached, unless you consider laughter to be an emotion.
Posted by HolierThanThou on March 28, 2008 at 4:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I know this is a difficult subject for global warming deniers, so I'll write this slowly.
The measurements are done with thermometers, which record temperatures. Now they hang these outside where they will measure the temperature of the air outdoors.
Someone looks at the thermometer and records the temperature. These records are compiled by researchers who put them into computers using a thing called a spreadsheet. Then they run statistical applications on the temperature data. It fluctuates a lot.
The Sun is a heat source. Maybe you haven't noticed that. But it's true. If you go outside and stand in the Sun light you can feel its warmth. So, temperatures tend to get warmer during the day. But don't panic if it gets colder because that sometimes happens when a cloud floats over and obstructs the sunlight. The temperature also might get colder or warmer because of a thing scientists, also known as meteorologists and climatologists, call the weather.
Well, that's why we use all those statistical calculations to look at things like averages, average day time temperatures, average night time temperatures, average temperatures for seasons and parts of seasons, temperature differences, standard deviations, regression analysis, matrix algebra, matrix solutions of inconsistent systems, trends...whoa, them's a lot of numbers aint they?
I can see this is upsetting you global warming deniers. It's getting complicated and that makes you mad. Thinking and understanding stuff is hard work. Maybe you'd better leave it to the experts after all.
Then again, if you're a global warming denier, you will probably choose a conservative political commentator as your expert. And haven't they been right about so much stuff? Things like WMD in Iraq, the price of gas going down, how quick and easy the Iraq war was going to be, how Bush was going to balance the budget, save the economy, restore integrity, catch Osama bin Laden, and restore world-wide respect and admiration for America... Might as well eat it up. Far be it from me to expect you to change your diet now!
Like climate change, the threshold of stubborn ignorance required to remain a global warming denier is getting higher and higher.
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