a non-political climate change thread

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To really analyze data and draw a conclusion you need to understand the limitations in your data. If you are interested try this book. Dark Data: Why What you Don't Know Matters, by David Hand. I really enjoyed it and marked a few pages to refer back to in my work.

Amazon.com: Dark Data: Why What You Don’t Know Matters: 9780691182377: Hand, David J.: Books

Amazon.com: Dark Data: Why What You Don’t Know Matters: 9780691182377: Hand, David J.: Books
www.amazon.com

It starts with his neighbor pouring white powder on his street in London. When he asked the neighbor what the powder was his neighbor said "Elephant Repellant". When he said there are no elephants here...his neighbor replied "yes see how well it works!". What we don't know is very important to the conclusions we arrive at...is the neighbor wrong?

For a text book it is really a fun read, non stop examples (I don't remember that being true of any of MY college textbooks!)

Fly fishing is completely filled with "dark data".
 
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I lived on the Washougal River then in the area from 1976- 20016. At the beginning of that period fall rains would start in mid September and be regular until November when it started raining nearly daily. Now fall rains start in late September or early October and the constant rain doesn't start till Christmas.
Anecdotal and not entirely accurate, but mostly accurate and enough to say that something is going on.. won't speculate as to why.
 
_WW_ said:
I refuse to mow in November, December, January, and February on general principal.
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I only mow in the late fall/early winter to clean up the leaves. Works unless there is snow on the ground, e.g. for the last two years.
 
I mow from late March until Halloween. This has never changed.
 
1x Jan/Feb
2x Mar
4x+ Apr-Oct.
1xNov

32-35 mows a year was a number commercial groundskeepers used to use.⁹
 
Mossback said:
I have been in the horticulture game for over 40 years, and I can now reliably grow a large number of plants that we had zero chance of growing when I started. Discussed this many times with friends of similar experience in the business and they agreed.

Don't know if this means something or not, but I do know I have a much broader plant palette to choose from than I did 30 years ago.
:)
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As far as metrics for the layman I think this is an excellent one. I too have noticed this. It's not cause I'm a better gardener that these things now grow in my garden.
 
I mow my lawn but don't gather the trimmings. This has helped to build a thick layer of thatch. Moss grows in winter and spring and I don't remove it either. Via this method I'm locking up carbon in my lawn.
 
DimeBrite said:
I mow my lawn but don't gather the trimmings. This has helped to build a thick layer of thatch. Moss grows in winter and spring and I don't remove it either. Via this method I'm locking up carbon in my lawn.
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It's all about sequestration so you need to mulch to make an anoxic layer. Anoxic layers suck up carbon...way to go.
 
Peat bogs trap an enormous amount of carbon. Every NW yard should have one. They also filter run off water before it reaches salmon spawning streams.
 
DimeBrite said:
Peat bogs trap an enormous amount of carbon. Every NW yard should have one. They also filter run off water before it reaches salmon spawning streams.
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Flooding and drainage create anoxic layers for C sequestration; in duck hunting we call it moist soil management (MSM). Levees and dams reduce MSM. But before you get excited about the Snake River dams the gradient is too high. The MO around St Louis has tonnes of C capacity if we remove the levees.
 
longputt said:
Flooding and drainage create anoxic layers for C sequestration; in duck hunting we call it moist soil management (MSM). Levees and dams reduce MSM. But before you get excited about the Snake River dams the gradient is too high. The MO around St Louis has tonnes of C capacity if we remove the levees.
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You mean that place that just got record rainfall? More than 7 1/2 inches fell in just 6 hours.
 
longputt said:
When I posted this, as a joke, I thought wait a second is global warming all bad?

I doubt I’ll see 2040 so you can thank me now for my out of control carbon emissions!
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In 2040 I'll be 69, I imagine around that time the only thing left on earth that I'll be all that interested in is my Wife and what I call the Golf course, the first 1/4 mile of river above Reynolds Pass on the Madison. It's an easy fish with little to no wading..
Who knows, maybe by then they'll have a shot that will keep my spry into my 80s?
But it sure doesn't feel like it some days now.
 
People have expectations on how they deserve to live.

Often preferring convience accompanied by minimal thought.

Conservation requires effort and larger understanding of your role in the big picture.

We as a culture are capable of neither.

After working as a sustainability consultant for a large arch firm, pushing this rock up the hill every day....

I have landed on...

Do your personal part, however big or small. Encourage others. Dont be a dick and know when to just talk about fishing.
 
I'll never understand the whataboutisms as a reason for not doing shit. Thankfully, not everyone thinks that way.

This statement was made in one of the previous posts. It is indicative of what a lot of people think about the impact of climate change. If we don’t DO SOMETHING NOW we are doomed. What is worrisome about that kind of thinking is two fold. Indeed human activity may be accelerating climate change but it is a given that the earth’s climate has always been dynamic so some form of change is inevitable. However when solutions to mitigate the effects of whatever change is forthcoming rely more on fear than a real understanding of the dynamics of the earth’s climate, we significantly raise the probability that whatever solutions are posited will likely be insufficient or worst, create unintended consequences.

Here’s just one example (of countless) that illustrates the “fear” aspect of climate change doomsayers. We’ve all seen and read the doomsday articles about the “unprecedented drought” in the West caused by climate change. Yet, in 1540, well before any widespread use of fossil fuels, Europe experienced unprecedented (at least as documented historically at the time) drought.

https://joannenova.com.au/2022/08/t...-burned-and-no-one-blamed-coal-or-beef-steak/

Why the fear now? Europe and its brown trout survived.

Two, proposed solutions to any problem really do need a lot of “whataboutisms”. I would commend those who are anxious “to do something now” become familiar with the “Cobra Effect” or the idea that seemingly logical solutions can often have unintended consequences.

https://fee.org/articles/the-cobra-effect-lessons-in-unintended-consequences/

Whatever climate change solutions you might want to support really do need your conscious effort to partake in some “Whataboutisms” to at least think about the potential unintended consequences.

In thinking about this, a real world example that I experienced personally came to mind. Back in the 1980s, I was an USAF law enforcement officer stationed in the Philippines. There was a saying about theft of property on both Clark AB and Subic Naval Base: Everything is already stolen, they just haven’t figured out how to get it off the base yet. Indeed thefts of government property was a big issue. So a program was initiated to recruit and pay confidential sources to facilitate the recovery of stolen property. It worked well from the standpoint that the more we paid, the more property we recovered. Unfortunately, it didn’t deter thefts, but instead incentivized them. Over the few years I participated in the program thefts increased dramatically as did recoveries. The bad guys had developed an effective scheme. It really didn’t matter what they stole, even if it had no value, they got paid when the property was recovered. It took several years for officials to figure out the incentives were having the opposite effect. When we stopping paying sources for property recovery, property theft dropped precipitously.

Be aware of the “Cobra Effect” as it is real.
 
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