Nature in the News

whyulittle

feargale wrote: »

1. I can't find the answers.

Once you click on an answer, it should go green (or red) depending on your answer.

emo72

i beat everyone?

You got 10/10
Well done! You’re ruffling our feathers…
How did you do?
You beat 100% of others.
Challenge your friends

_Tombstone_

New Thrush found in India.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160120141540.htm

keps

Uk Survey this week-end... numbers may be affected by warm/wet weather.


Today's Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/29/mild-winter-rspb-big-garden-birdwatch-garden-birds

keps

A long but touching article on parrots and PTSD

today's NYT



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/magazine/what-does-a-parrot-know-about-ptsd.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below

_Tombstone_

This Is How Hummingbirds Regulate Their Body Temperatures in Flight

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Deplorable

http://www.radiokerry.ie/news/severed-deer-heads-discovered-in-killarney/

It seems severed Red Deer doe heads have been found in Killarney National Park. The word I got is that poachers are suspected. As a cull is ongoing it's probably a moot point but at least don't just dump the heads guys.

OpenYourEyes

A piece (and pictures) of a Robin taking small fish from a stream:

http://birdguides.com/webzine/article.asp?a=5496

I seem to recall someone on boards having seen the same thing a couple of months back!

OpenYourEyes

A piece (and pictures) of a Robin taking small fish from a stream:

http://birdguides.com/webzine/article.asp?a=5496

I seem to recall someone on boards having seen the same thing a couple of months back!

Keplar240B

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35496350?post_id=10208513248819366_10208513248779365%3FSThisFB

The assumption that planting new forests helps limit climate change has been challenged by a new study.
Researchers found that in Europe, trees grown since 1750 have actually increased global warming.
The scientists believe that replacing broadleaved species with conifers is a key reason for the negative climate impact.
Conifers like pines and spruce are generally darker and absorb more heat than species such as oak and birch.
The authors believe the work has implications for current efforts to limit rising temperatures through mass tree planting.

recedite

Correlation is not causation. Call me a skeptic, but I would not be inclined to believe that a slightly different shade of green on the leaf of a tree would have any measurable effect on global climate.
Looking for further details, I can only find this photo of the "junior researchers" posing for a photo, which reminds me of a group of students at the young scientists exhibition in RDS. Which can sometimes throw up interesting new research, but often just showcases data which has been made to fit some student's crazy idea.

I'd be inclined to think that any global warming recorded post 1750 was almost entirely due to people burning coal, and the industrial revolution. And the same increase in forestry that they refer to, was due to people burning more coal and less wood. And while the researchers are undoubtedly aware of all that too, they will also be aware that their hypothesis cannot be proved either right or wrong.

OpenYourEyes

recedite wrote: »

Looking for further details, I can only find this photo of the "junior researchers" posing for a photo, which reminds me of a group of students at the young scientists exhibition in RDS. Which can sometimes throw up interesting new research, but often just showcases data which has been made to fit some student's crazy idea.

.....the study was published in Science though....one of the top two journals in the world......and you've spent two lines talking about a picture you googled...........a picture that looks fine to me - maybe your reading of the word 'junior' biased your interpretation of it? Would you feel better if they weren't smiling and were all wearing labcoats and glasses? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't only one of the studies authors in that picture? How may pictures of the authors do you think the anonymous peer-reviewers for Science went through and how were those pictures weighted versus the methods and interpretations of the results in the actual study, do you think?


It's long been known that a lot of foresty has been planted on peat soils, which did more harm than good of carbon sequestration. Forestry in Ireland can also be implicated in the decline and/or the speed of decline of species like Curlew, Hen Harrier and other upland species. The negative effect discussed here is much less intuitive. It is something I learned about before, but never gave it much consideration beyond a local scale - but obviously a lot of things acting on a local scale add up!

recedite

OpenYourEyes wrote: »

It's long been known that a lot of foresty has been planted on peat soils, which did more harm than good of carbon sequestration.

Trees make no difference to carbon sequestration in the long run. They store carbon as biomass while they are growing. Then later they release the same carbon; as logs burning in a fireplace or rotting on the forest floor.

If you take carbon that was stored in a past era (eg peat or coal) and release it by burning in the current era, then you make a difference.

magicbastarder

recedite wrote: »

Trees make no difference to carbon sequestration in the long run. They store carbon as biomass while they are growing. Then later they release the same carbon; as logs burning in a fireplace or rotting on the forest floor.

your scenario does not allow for replacement of the tree when it dies/is chopped down.
burning wood *is* carbon neutral, but you're failing to see the wood for the trees, so to speak.

OpenYourEyes

recedite wrote: »

Trees make no difference to carbon sequestration in the long run. They store carbon as biomass while they are growing. Then later they release the same carbon; as logs burning in a fireplace or rotting on the forest floor.

If you take carbon that was stored in a past era (eg peat or coal) and release it by burning in the current era, then you make a difference.

They release the same carbon when they're burned - they don't release the same carbon when they die and are left in situ. A huge amount of that carbon gets tied up in the soil. The trees don't evaporate when they die!

recedite

OpenYourEyes wrote: »

The trees don't evaporate when they die!

Obviously not, but soil organisms feed off the logs and release C02 as part of their metabolism.

Anyway that is not what the research was about. Its about solar radiation. It alleges that evergreen trees increase global warming by being more efficient than broadleaf for absorbing the suns energy.
By that logic, solar panels are also causing global warming and climate change. We should remove all solar panels from houses, then cut down the forests and replace them with fields of shiny mirrors.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

recedite wrote: »

Obviously not, but soil organisms feed off the logs and release C02 as part of their metabolism.

Anyway that is not what the research was about. Its about solar radiation. It alleges that evergreen trees increase global warming by being more efficient than broadleaf for absorbing the suns energy.
By that logic, solar panels are also causing global warming and climate change. We should remove all solar panels from houses, then cut down the forests and replace them with fields of shiny mirrors.

Not quite. The trapped energy from solar panels goes elsewhere and is not simply absorbed.

recedite

Moses Faithful Slime wrote: »

Not quite. The trapped energy from solar panels goes elsewhere and is not simply absorbed.

Where do you think it goes? It goes towards warming your house and the planet, as opposed to being reflected back up into space in a shorter wavelength.
That is how the the greenhouse effect works.

Capercaillie

recedite wrote: »

Correlation is not causation. Call me a skeptic, but I would not be inclined to believe that a slightly different shade of green on the leaf of a tree would have any measurable effect on global climate.
Looking for further details, I can only find this photo of the "junior researchers" posing for a photo, which reminds me of a group of students at the young scientists exhibition in RDS. Which can sometimes throw up interesting new research, but often just showcases data which has been made to fit some student's crazy idea.

I'd be inclined to think that any global warming recorded post 1750 was almost entirely due to people burning coal, and the industrial revolution. And the same increase in forestry that they refer to, was due to people burning more coal and less wood. And while the researchers are undoubtedly aware of all that too, they will also be aware that their hypothesis cannot be proved either right or wrong.

Determining causation with a high number of interconnecting variables like climate change is difficult. However You criticize the "junior researchers" yet you come up with your own totally bias hypothesis that leaf size has no effect.

Jayzesake

recedite wrote: »

Correlation is not causation. Call me a skeptic, but I would not be inclined to believe that a slightly different shade of green on the leaf of a tree would have any measurable effect on global climate.

There is no doubt that the degree of reflection (the 'Albedo Effect') of various parts of the planet surface does play a very big part in raising the temperature of the planet and contributing to climate change, just as greenhouse gases do. That fact was the basis of Lovelock's theoretical experiment and paper 'Daisyworld'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisyworld

Therefore it is only logical and common sense to conclude that dark conifers would absorb more heat than pale-leaved broadleaves.

However there is perhaps a far more important issue at stake here. As it begins to dawn on more and more people that we have disturbed the natural balances of our planet to such a degree that even the stability of the climate is very seriously at risk, we are increasingly hearing (very welcome) voices proposing planting more trees as a way of drawing carbon down out of the atmosphere, and at the same time reducing related problems such as flooding. But some of those voices see no difference between exotic conifers and native woodland, since both absorb carbon and also help reduce flooding.

These people have completely missed the point, which is that the planet behaves in many ways as a living entity, with everything on it - biotic and abiotic - utterly connected. It is only by allowing ECOSYSTEMS to reform that we will have any hope of resolving the worsening and interrelated problems of climatic and ecological breakdown. Exotic conifers cannot be the basis for an ecosystem (not in Ireland, at least), while native broadleaves can.

magicbastarder

recedite wrote: »

Where do you think it goes? It goes towards warming your house and the planet, as opposed to being reflected back up into space in a shorter wavelength.
That is how the the greenhouse effect works.

i don't think anyone is claiming that heating your house with solar energy actually cools the planet; the benefit is that it doesn't heat the planet as much as heating your house using fossil fuels (as with that, you have both the direct heating from infrared heating from your house, plus the CO2 emissions involved in doing so).

recedite

magicbastarder wrote: »

i don't think anyone is claiming that heating your house with solar energy actually cools the planet; the benefit is that it doesn't heat the planet as much as heating your house using fossil fuels

That's a fair enough claim.
And by the same token, global warming since the industrial revolution has been caused by the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels. Not because coniferous forests expanded in the ages of cheap coal and oil.
What I take issue with is the notion that

..trees grown since 1750 have actually increased global warming..

_Tombstone_

TREEMETRICS WOODLAND LASER SCAN

Jayzesake

recedite wrote: »

...global warming since the industrial revolution has been caused by the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels. Not because coniferous forests expanded in the ages of cheap coal and oil.

Climate change (a more appropriate term than 'global warming' which tends to confuse many people) has largely been caused by the CO2 released by burning fossil fuels, but there have been many other substantial contributing factors. One of the most important, if not the most important, of these is large-scale deforestation.

That term includes replacing any type of indigenous forest with monocultural industrial plantations, whether that be conifers in Ireland, palm trees in indonesia, soya in Brazil, etc., etc. The fact that the native forests were removed here a few 100 years ago is irrelevent.

recedite

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

TREEMETRICS WOODLAND LASER SCAN

It seems to be measuring the thickness of the tree trunks, and colour coding them.

_Tombstone_

Wolves Have Different ‘Howling Dialects,' Machine Learning Finds

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wolves-have-different-howling-dialects-machine-learning-finds

_Tombstone_

Flies reared in the dark for 60 years give up their genetic secrets

On 11 November 1954, Japanese ecologist Syuiti Mori placed a dark cloth over a captive colony of fruit flies and began one of evolutionary biology's longest-running lab experiments. Sixty-one years and some 1,500 generations later, researchers have now identified dozens of genetic variations that may help the flies’ descendants to cope with life in total darkness

Two Australian Birds have learned to use Fire

black kites (Milvus migrans) and brown falcons (Falco berigora) picking up sticks burning at one end and dropping them into unburnt territory to scare out dinner.

OpenYourEyes

Ireland has topped the league table of worst offenders for the promotion of overfishing in the North East Atlantic according to a new report.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0211/767215-overfishing-new-economics-foundation/

OpenYourEyes

Ireland has topped the league table of worst offenders for the promotion of overfishing in the North East Atlantic according to a new report.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0211/767215-overfishing-new-economics-foundation/

_Tombstone_

OpenYourEyes wrote: »

Ireland has topped the league table of worst offenders for the promotion of overfishing in the North East Atlantic according to a new report.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0211/767215-overfishing-new-economics-foundation/

that's a stupid report. Ireland can take feck all out of them waters having given away the rights years ago.

25% increase on not alot for the irish. Nothing about all the other countries coming in first and clearing the place out.

We didn't need a stupid report to tell us its over fished.

Jaysus, its like the climate change reports for the last 30 years this fish stuff.