Climate change and wildfire in the Pacific Northwest

Anyone who denies climate change have thoughts on the subject of wildfires "the worst season in decades?"

 

SWEET!

All jokes aside, these fires aren't hurting the "liberal" part of the state. But they are hurting the state of Oregon as a whole. We will all suffer as we have worse and worse fire seasons and other problems that come with a change in climate. But maybe climate change is a lie, and this is just some thirty or forty year cycle.

 

I don't read all of the global warming, er, climate change threads. But, I don't think I've seen anyone deny that climate change is real.

Personally, I believe that climate change has been occurring since the dawn of time. I'm not convinced that man is causing it.

Go Blazers

 

REPORT: Global Warming causes A&W Root Beer foam to dissipate faster

 

The lightning is setting off dry brush. We had a very low rainfall in the winter. I know that fire management changed policy right near that peak.

 

Good luck getting through to folks, but it won't work. A few weeks ago there was a similar thread about how May was the warmest one in recorded history globally. But the deniers have too much invested in their beliefs. They say facts aren't facts, research is bogus, and all ivestigators who have findings they don't agree with, are lying cheats. There is no discussion to be had when the other side has the wonderful argument of 'nah ahh, no way'. Good luck, but I'm out of this, they win.

 

My point was basically, It's not my home burning right now. It's not my cattle grazing land either. The places burning are Republican territory.

 

Must be due to gay republicans

 

I don't know about JFK, it's fun to read about, but I have never really looked too far into it.

But here is the deal with models, they are built to not have to deal with all the inputs. That's why so many have flaws. I understand this, I mean if you want to model how shiga toxin works, you use a ricin model. It is a totally different substance, but thought to act in a very similar way, on the same cellular pathways. Because of this, because we are dealing with unknowns, because models are used to simulate things that are too complex to accurately repeat, many will end up as dead ends, or at least not bare totally relevant results.

However, and please don't get caught up on just my first paragraph, that's why so many models are used. There are models that are built to study each individual aspect and glean as much information as possible. So, there may be a bunch of models that concentrate on what happens to excess CO2 in an environment (taken up by the ocean, by plants, increases in air...), then a different bunch of models look at other pollutants, other models look at what happens to the pH of the ocean, other models look at marine life, other models look at UV ray penetration, etc. Although some of those models may be off by a bit, off by a lot, or totally wrong, when so damned many of those models are all pointing to the same results in total, you can start to build a grand model or scheme of how man made pollutants are affecting the world.

You can nitpick and find models in that which are flawed, you can find models that show irrelevant information, and you can even find some models that disagree with the overriding theme or outcomes from the bulk of the models. You tend to harp on those few, the problems with the outliers, and give an overabundance of credence to the models that run contrary to the general outcomes of the models. But, we are talking about thousands of models, some highlighting small things, others more grandiose, that mostly seem to agree with two main points 1) the climate is affected by certain pollutants, and 2) mankind is responsible for a large portion of those pollutants.

If you don't believe in the efficacy of models, then you really don't believe in modern science. Because almost all of science is currently built off of models. The stuff that is simply observable has mostly been observed, models, be they biological, chemical or computer based are at the heart of science. It's a way to break down the information into bite-sized doses. One model looks at how sunlight refracts off of one gas, another models might look at how it reacts off of a different one, and a third model might look how refraction works in different gaseous combinations. If you are throwing out modeling, then fine, I understand where you are. If you are only throwing out modeling having to do with climate changes, then that's something different. You keep bringing up climate models as having too many variables, but that's not how they work, there are almost no models that look at the tens of thousands of inputs. There are models that look at a handful. Then there are papers that bring those many models together to build a coherent overview of the subject.

 

That's why models are so damned important, because there are so many variables. So you build a model that only accounts for a few inputs, a different model accounts for a few different ones, and so on. Pretty soon, you have a thousand models, each only accounting for a few inputs. This way, you can start to build a better idea on whole of how the environment is reacting. There is no need to look at how cutting down trees affects every model, as long as we have a host of models that are centered around how cutting down trees affect specific actions, such as 02, CO2 and soil erosion. THen, if we do enough studies about just cutting down trees, then we can boil it down to a few variables that are more easily carried over to other models, for example we may learn that trees hold onto X amount of carbon, that amount can then be easily used in other models. Break down the overall work into small bits that can be analyzed, then once the information is gleaned, we can build better more accurate future models.

 

I think they are wrong because the models are not reality. I understand this, but that does not meant that they aren't showing relevant information. One thing that is currently being looked at is that the ocean takes in more co2 than previously thought, so this meants that the results will take longer to show. However, it also means that the pH of the ocean will continue to change a little quicker than had been predicted leading to many of the things that we are seeing today with the dying coral reefs.

These models aren't right, but that doesn't mean they are all wrong, it just means that there are chunks that are unaccounted for or only partially accounted for. But still enough has been happening from the global temp rising, to ocean pH changing to show that even if these models are off, they are still on the right track.

 

But they learn a shitload from the models. They change bumpers, airbag positions, all sorts of stuff like that based on the efficacy of the models. But models will never exactly replicate the real world, they simply give evidence as to how the real world will react, so that smart people can learn from those lessens. You know, build a better car.