More of the article at the link.

other than sources with a bias ...

and dont get me wrong ... do NOT interpret this to stop you from posting such ... they all create the opportunity for debate ..

ken

If I happen to see in my Twitter feed an article posted about trees, I post the link on here for discussion. I post articles from anything from the NYT to the Wall Street Journal. I didn't know there was a bias to being concerned about trees dying. :<

Thank you for commenting on the actual content of the article.

"While the trees grow at high elevations that were once most inhospitable terrain, mountain warming has allowed beetles to survive there. Federal officials are gathering seeds from disease-resistant bristlecone pines in hopes of growing new trees that can survive."

When they have to use "warming" as a reason, it loses credibility pretty fast in my own eyes.

One could easily argue the fact that we got involved with preventing natural fires...

The dispute, I thought, was the reason behind the warming, not the warming itself.

Lou: the article notes "the cause as a combination of factors, from a hotter, drier climate in many places to logging, land clearing, changes in fire prevention and management policies, insect attacks and diseases." Do you not think it's possible that some trees are dying because of increasing temperatures?

What I am not sure about is, how do they know that the large trees are dying faster? Have they been counting the rings and recording when trees die for decades?

I believe Lou saw the word warming, and because it does not fit in with his prism of how he views what is going on, he called it not credible.

In the meantime, NPR (a notoriously biased source, of course) had a fascinating interview with the founder of the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive this past weekend. Google NPR: Saving Ancient Trees with Clones for the program and/or the name of the organization and you'll learn about the work they're doing to preserve the DNA of some of the planet's oldest trees.

The other two authors of the Science article are working out of Australia.

Perhaps someone who has access to the article and has read it can let us know what kind of data the conclusions are based on.

BTW, I agree that the NYTimes does not always get their science articles quite right.

-m

The exponential function, that we fail to grasp, is in play.

The trees will be fine. Different, yes. But, they have survived things just as bad as our Tera-forming.

Then they can diversify again until the next set of primates with fire shows up :-)

I believe Ken was referring to the NYT as a biased source, rather than Science. The OP referenced a secondary source, the NYT. One reason primary references are so important is because they avoid a layer of bias that is present in secondary sources. As biologist, I can assure you that it is quite common for secondary sources to introduce an enormous bias when covering research articles. It's really disheartening to see how far removed headlines can be from the actual research results. Without reading the primary reference, it is difficult to tell what kind of bias, if any, was introduced by the blogger. I will try to get a copy of the original Science article.

Alex

It would bother me a great deal if the headlines are distorting the science. IMO the results of science are the closest thing we have to the "truth" about our world.

Anybody watch the "Prophets of Doom"? They say we are in a "mass extinction" (the sixth on planet Earth, IIRC) and this one is being caused by humans. Hopefully this extinction will include Homo sapiens! Planet Earth would be better off without our species. I do not hold humans in any special or particularly high regard. Most of us are barely evolved beyond our animal nature.

Eventually, biodiversity will be restored, lots of new lovely flora and fauna will evolve, and once again the earth will be a Garden of Eden.

"Dismissing out of hand things that make us uncomfortable by claiming bias has become a terribly dangerous American habit."

These statements are so true!!!

I'm okay with Homo sapiens being on the Earth, if we could only use our intelligence to support life and create abundance, rather than deplete and destroy. If we can somehow fit into the Garden of Eden too.

OMG, this is so true. I used to have an article in Discover magazine saved which had an interview with a scientist who studies ice flow at the south pole. Apparently Michael Chriton wrote a fiction book in which he misintrepreted the data and one of our Representatives, Inhofe if I recall, went running with this idea polar ice was expanding. Oh I need to find that link again. Good times.

For the moment.

Here we recently had the highest Puget Sound water levels since records began being kept 113 years ago.

bboy - in spite of the Seattle Times and other media warning us to expect more record-breaking water levels in Puget Sound as a result of global warning, a local atmospheric scientist explains that this record was just the result of the convergence of several events: king tides due the the lining up of the earth and moon, low atmospheric pressure and on-shore winds.

BTW, I am convinced that human-caused global warming is real.

The cause for action has been undermined by some agendas and data fudging, political affliliations, and omg yes media bias. That's unfortunate. Our technology has advanced so quickly we haven't been able to keep up with unforeseen impacts. Our scientific methodology is now blurred by reliance on suggestions by studies, instead of repeated results. We become disenchanted when we see them disproven in retrospect and then become suspicious of the next. Add to that our species is the only one on earth who has a propensity to foul it's own bed, so to speak. Whether we are contributing to climate change or not is a moot point, really. Even if we weren't.....it's time to clean up our act just as a matter of responsibility because there are other very provable aspects of degradation to our environment to which we have contributed. And this statement is coming from a very conservative person, not a liberal. It's a sheer matter of population pressure and easily visible anymore in one lifetime. Given human nature, I'm not terribly optimistic.

While I am sure the picture of the plants is suppose to say that CO2 caused global warming. There is nothing in the picture to support that conclusion. What is the time intervals? Were they take at the same time intervals? What was the growth environment? What is the temperature of the experiment? This type of presentation is what the media likes, but offers no proof of the concept they want you to believe.

Secondly I believe man is affecting the environment, but not in the way the algorians want you to believe.

As our populations increase each population center becomes a small heat engine, that influences the movement of air around that heat source. If you don not believe this watch a storm cross a big city. It is quite common to see a solid storm front approach the city die off as it crosses the city and reform when it has passed. In Indianapolis I have watched the storm create a "Bubble" around the city and the back fill after the front line of the storm pass the city.

Here in eastern North Carolina it is quite common to see a storm come up from the south split and half go to the east of RDU, and the other part to the west.

That causes pockets of high precipitation and areas that gets no precipitation.

If the urban heat engine were not there the weather pattern would be distributed more equally across the area.

Has there been any studies of the effect of the Mid Atlantic cities on the storm patters in the eastern US. If there are, where are they. Definitely not publicized as that would provide no excuse for increase taxes or government regulation.

While Knuttle seems to have missed the "meaning" (whatever it is) of the picture, the comment about the picture (by itself) not supporting any conclusion is right on target.

Let's say that this thread was from someone who's home had just been washed away by a flood. The original poster, in this scenario, came here to tell us about a trend of floods wiping out whole communities. Now, you come along and post a picture of a guy who is forced to live with only 10 ounce of water per day, another guy who is forced to live with only 20 ounces, one with only 40 ounces, and the final with 80 ounces of water per day. I guess you would consider the picture relevant to the conversation? Would you find it somehow "enjoyable"? And finally, would you consider the picture "a scientific fact"? Well this scenario has a lot in common with your posts above.

I don't know if you don't fully understand the topic of this thread or meant the picture to be some political cheap-shot, but your picture doesn't add anything of relevance to the topic. In fact, it appears to be an attempt to fool the unsuspecting laymen into believing that there is a direct correlation between carbon dioxide levels and plant health without limits and without caveats. It certainly doesn't take into consideration the numerous other factors involved.

Just as people refused (and some still do to this day) to believe that the Earth isn't flat, there are those that seem to want to push the idea that pollution has no consequences. What's really shameful is that many of the large energy companies, with a huge interest in hiding the reality, put out the idea that pollution has no consequences and the foolish buy into the idea wholeheartedly. We are fouling our own bed (as someone wrote above) and the pitiful thing about it is that some among us think it's entertaining or good for us.