Anon

The Ancient Trees of the Amazon
By LiveScience Staff

posted: 14 December 2005
10:13 am ET

http://www.livescience.com/environme...old_trees.html


Trees in the Amazon grow slower and are older than scientists thought, a discovery that has implications for computer models of climate change.

Up to half of all trees greater than 4 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter in Amazon tropical forests are more than 300 years old, the study found. Some are 1,000 years old.

"Little was known about the age of tropical trees, because they do not have easily identified annual growth rings," said study team member Susan Trumbore of the University of California at Irvine. "No one had thought these tropical trees could be so old, or that they grow so slowly."

The conclusions result from radiocarbon dating methods. The results were reported last week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The finds have implications for the role the Amazon plays in determining global carbon dioxide levels. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, acting like a blanket to trap solar energy near the surface.

Trees and other plants soak up carbon dioxide, cleaning the air.

Because the trees are old and slow-growing, the Amazon forests, which contain about a third of all carbon found in land vegetation, have less capacity to absorb atmospheric carbon than previous studies predicted, Trumbore and her colleagues said.

"In the Central Amazon, where we found the slowest growing trees, the rates of carbon uptake are roughly half what is predicted by current global carbon cycle models," Trumbore said. "As a result, those models—which are used by scientists to understand how carbon flows through the Earth system—may be overestimating the forests’ capacity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."

The oldest known tree is a bristlecone pine in California. At an estimated age of 4,700 years, it is nicknamed Methuselah after a Biblical character purported to have reached the age of 969.

* See the Oldest Thing on Earth
* 2,000-Year-Old Seeds Produce Sapling
* World's Oldest Noodles Alter View of Ancient Diet

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So if the models are 50% overestimating the removal of carbon dioxide, where is it all going?

And why isn't global warming occuring MUCH faster than the eggheads that buy into that psuedo-religion predict?

I'll tell you why, because the scientific community just flat out DOES NOT KNOW anywhere near enough about our environment or it's history to be making sound predictions, LET ALONE, reccomending ways to 'fix' the 'problem', if indeed there even IS any problem.

This is exactly the kind of scientific find that ought to give the tree-huggers serious pause and reason to question the soundness of their beliefs, but of course, it won't....

Jay

May be we are inhaling carbon* and exhaling oxygen??

*I know its a stupid answer !

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barrowaj

The climate models are based off of empirical observation of carbon dioxide levels though, not projected output.

We do know that 1) carbon dioxide levels are higher now than they ever were, an increase which began after the industrial revolution, and 2) that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that leads to more solar energy trapping. We can also try to model the way this change will happen in the future, which depends on a lot of unknowns, like the one mentioned in the article you posted. But knowing 1 and 2 is enough to be able to tell that continuing to produce CO2 will continue to heat up the planet.

Global warming is a reality, not a conspiracy theory. The evidence is all over the scientific community. The argument that we don't know enough about the climate to recommend any changes just isn't true, and the argument isn't being made by any credible group of climatologists.

Shek

Let's see the study with empirics that support your position. Every study that's been posted shows a time lag of about 800 years between CO2 and temperature. That blows the Industrial Revolution is evil thesis out of the water. Please don't post any bivariate eye candy, as that only screams omitted variable bias, which means it's unreliable in both importance and significance.

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Swift Sword

Given the forestry practices in the Amazon Basin, I would not be suprised if the trees cited as evidence are clear cut by the time anybody gets back there to verify the conclusions

I do not buy into the Global Warming case as articulated but the Anti Global Warming crowd has failed to demonstrate how air pollution is somehow a good thing. Most evidence seems to point to the contrary regardless of whether climate change is the issue or not.

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Shek

I agree here. The green crowd would do much better to frame the argument in practical terms rather than ideological terms. Increased smog, increased asthma in kids, etc.

barrowaj

The fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas isn't deduced off of historical temperature and CO2 records. Its based off of the IR absorption spectra.

Those warming periords that have 800 year lags between the start of the warming and the rise in CO2 actually last 5000 years. So it would be incorrect to conclude that CO2 doesn't cause the warming. Instead what the data shows is that solar radiance or some other warming factor causes a release in stored CO2, which further increases the warming. At some point the feedback of CO2 uptake kicks in and reduces the gas levels, facilitating cooling. The difference between then and now is that we've gone to higher CO2 concentrations then we had before, and we've reduced the ability of our biosphere to reabsorb the CO2.

The problem with trying to reframe the emission argument in terms of other pollutants is it isn't necessarily a solution to global warming. Our cars are much much cleaner than they were 30 years ago. But we can put all the catalytic converters that we can on cars and its still not going to lower CO2 emissions. Don't get me wrong, I think its important to have scrubbers on powerplants and catalytic converters on cars, but that doesn't really have an effect on CO2.

Anon

READY,
FIRE,
AIM!!!!

Right Barrow?

Your type is far more dangerous to warming or cooling because you don't know what the hell you're doing, you just do it cause it feels right.

The law of unintended consequences is on it's tippy toes screaming out loud about this issue.

Can't you hear him?

Anon

Oh, and Barrow, do you realize that the 'data' you're relying on is utterly insufficient to make any sweeping conclusions?

Obviously....no.

Ballguy

M21 Sniper quote

So if the models are 50% overestimating the removal of carbon dioxide, where is it all going?

And why isn't global warming occuring MUCH faster than the eggheads that buy into that psuedo-religion predict?

I'll tell you why, because the scientific community just flat out DOES NOT KNOW anywhere near enough about our environment or it's history to be making sound predictions, LET ALONE, reccomending ways to 'fix' the 'problem', if indeed there even IS any problem.

This is exactly the kind of scientific find that ought to give the tree-huggers serious pause and reason to question the soundness of their beliefs, but of course, it won't....[/quote]


I think you have far overstepped your bounds in questioning science. Until you can remotely understand the fact of global warming, don't make yourself look like a fool.

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dalem

Okay Professor, why don't you explain the basics of "global warming" in general, and "human driven global warming" in specific, to us in a few brief sentences?

-dale

Shek

Let's see your facts and statistics. So far, human driven global warming appears to be religion rather than science on this board, because no one has yet to produce evidence beyond pretty little bivariate graphs that "prove" HDGW. The only papers that have been produced show a huge lag of hundreds of years between CO2 levels and temperature, and I haven't seen models that take into account all the possible inputs in order to isolate the effect of each input. Simple, controlled reactions in the lab are not the same as the complexity of the laboratory called Earth.

Ballguy

You guys have already lost. Now let me streamline my info.

Shek

No need to streamline. Raw data is fine, and in fact, preferable. Make sure it addresses correlation AND causality. Include both the importance and significance of the statistics. Thanks.

Ballguy

Effective arguments take a while to create when it comes to you all.

I was thinking, you all remind me of the chemical industry that attacked Carson after she published Silent Spring.