Brendans+Journal

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=Chapter 1 Summary, 8-29-10= The first chapter of this book is the same as almost every climate change book ever. It says "we have a problem", defines the problem, describes how we know that we have a problem, describes the consequences of the problem, and finally mentions a few possible solutions for this problem. It describes our problem as"the Earth is warming". Glaciers are melting, the sea level is rising, we have lots of hurricanes, etc. We know that these things are happening, and we are pretty sure that they are happening thanks to us, not just as part of the natural variation within weather. We are fairly sure that it isn't just a string of hot weather because, as we measure it, the climate has changed. Weather is different from climate in that climate is the average weather in any given place over several years. So, if you tend to get lots of rain in your day-to-day weather along with typically high temperatures and little change between seasons, the climate would be described as "tropical". The change in the world's average temperature is a rise of roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that is a lot when you consider that a change of 0.5 degrees was enough to cause a drought large enough to help wipe out the Mayan civilization. We can predict the future consequences of this temperature change by adding all of the data we have of the world into a simulation. This simulation takes into account all of the inputs, from heat from the sun to human greenhouse gas emissions to volcanic eruptions, all of the ways the inputs affect each other, from positive feedback cycles to negative feedback cycles, to project the output, our consequences. There are, of course, many more inputs, more interactions between said inputs, and many, many consequences. We have shifting sun-spots, clouds reflecting back light, man-made aerosols (which would reflect light), decay of past inputs as plants or the ocean absorb CO2, and much, much, much more. Carbon (my favorite element) is connected to climate change in that it is a greenhouse gas when in the form of CO2, and thus absorbs heat. Thanks to photosynthesis and Carbon's central role in life, carbon regularly cycles in and out of living beings (and the ocean). If these beings are eaten when they die, their carbon is stored and may, over the course of millions of years, be turned into fossil fuels. This keeps the amount of carbon in the atmosphere down. However, humans burn these fossil fuels to power their machinery, causing the stored carbon to be released during combustion. So, as human demand for energy goes up, often so does humanity's carbon output. Evaluating the risk from the potential for is difficult. We can't measure the aesthetic or intrinsic value of nature the way it is now, nor can we predict with great accuracy how the weather and climate will change and affect humanity. However, by entering information of past human actions and past environmental responses, we can get an idea of how the world will be affected. We know that a change of 6 degrees was enough to cause an ice age. We know that it will cost an immense amount to stop this change, and we know that we often miss various feedback cycles in our calculations. We don't know exactly how this will affect the world, but we know that we can live in the world the way it is now, and so we should try to keep it that way. Possible methods of doing that include switching to solar or wind energy, conserving energy, or directly combating the effects by spraying aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect light.

=Habitable Planet Journal Entry 9-07=

Despite living in North Carolina, I've seen my fair share of hurricanes. Floyd and Fran were both particularly memorable, though for different reasons. Fran hit back when I was very young, so I don't really remember it, just the stories my Mom tells of it. The factor that made Fran so deadly was its fast winds, which ripped the shingles off of our roof. Floyd, I remember more clearly (we ended up riding the storm out at school), and I remember that the rain that accompanied Floyd was devastating. Now, these two hurricanes always puzzled me, since both did immense amounts of damage, but through different mediums. Before Floyd, I'd always thought that a hurricane's strength came from its wind speed, but after experiencing the massive flooding from Floyd, I realized that water could be deadly too. This made me wonder: why aren't there hurricanes that have lots of rain and lots of wind? As I later found out and as the video mentions, the water creates friction with the air, thus slowing it down. So, fast moving storms with high wind speeds can't carry very much water. Now, the "research" I did to find that out as a kid was to ask my parents, who had gleaned the information through their experiences with hurricanes (they grew up in Florida). In today's video, the scientists use vastly different methods of research, such as what I would term surveys and case studies, to find out the answers to their research questions. To illustrate, Mr. Tans was researching the carbon cycle, specifically, how does human-emitted-carbon dioxide interact with the existing carbon cycle? This is an excellent question, since we began emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide relatively recently, and so we don't have much information on the subject. It is a broad, vague question, which lets Mr. Tans and his colleagues examine all sorts of possible variables, which gives them more chances to understand how exactly the carbon cycle has been affected by humans. For example, Mr. Tans' group discovered that one of the reasons that the carbon level hasn't risen as much as we expected is because the forests that the early European settlers cut down are growing back. This can provide a massive carbon sink, but their discovery was accompanied by the sobering fact that these forests have almost finished regrowing. Soon, that massive carbon sink will shrink down to that of an old-growth forest, and carbon levels will rise more swiftly. Despite the importance of Mr. Tans' research, Mr. Emmanuel came up with a different topic to research that may end up being just as important and useful. His research has to do with hurricanes: how do hurricanes interact with the climate? This is also a large question, but is limited in scope to the area around the tropics. This question is, however, notable in that it changes a basic assumption about hurricanes. Most people assume that hurricanes, like most weather, are merely symptoms of the current climate. Mr. Emmanuel asks whether or not these hurricanes aren't actually changing the climate in a feedback cycle. Mr. Emmanuel's question is narrower in scope than Mr. Tans', but is also more novel in its basic premise. Furthermore, they differ in their methods of answering their questions. Mr. Tans uses what I would term the "survey" method, which involves gathering lots of little snippets of data from many sources. Mr. Emmanuel uses what I would call the "case study" method, where you study one particular subject and attempt to model its behavior in order to predict future behavior. Mr. Tans' method is probably far more accurate, but is also far more time consuming. In order to get a good survey, you need to use many different sources at many different times over the course of years. This will build up a large base of data, from which you can tell which temperature fluctuations come from which levels of carbon dioxide. Then, you can run this through a model to find out what will happen with the current data, based off of the previous data. Speaking of Models, Mr. Emmanuel's case study method relied upon them heavily. He would use data from a few hurricanes and create a model based on the information he had of these hurricanes. Then, he would run the model to see how close it came to the original hurricane. Then, tweak the model, run, compare, repeat, etc. until the model matches the hurricane perfectly. Then, assuming you aren't missing any factors (which is a big assumption), you can accurately predict hurricanes using this model. These methods vary immensely in how they need to be done. One can be done by one man with one set of data, while the other requires many data collectors and many analyzers. I would assume that Mr. Tans' method is more accurate, albeit time consuming, because the odds of his data set being made up of anomalies are much lower. Of these methods, my parents' conjecture about rain slowing down the hurricane was proven more by the case study method. They'd only seen a few hurricanes, but they extrapolated lots and assumed that these hurricanes were good representatives of all hurricanes. This happened to lead to a correct answer, but could just as easily lead to a plausible but incorrect answer.

This journal entry was difficult to write...

Perhaps it was hard but you have made it look like a piece of cake! Very well done!

1)

Some researchers have been interested in how climate change will affect the wildlife in America. Some postulate that the native trees may be forced to migrate (over dozens of generations!) up to 200 miles north to end up in the same climate, though the soil composition will likely change tremendously. They've installed data collectors, probes inserted into the trees, into various areas. The Duke researchers have used local trees. Their current project is asking "how will the different environments in an urban area affect trees and their adaptations to climate change as opposed to trees in rural areas?" They intend to answer this using those probes that were stuck into trees, which measure temperature, humidity, sunlight, and more. Furthermore, NCSSM has installed similar probes on some trees in their campus. The data collected from these urban trees will be compared to the rural trees. The rural trees have had quite a lot of information collected on them as parts of previous projects. I do not know how much data has been collected on the NCSSM trees. If I want to participate in this project (which seems like the most interesting of the available projects), my next step would be to gain access to the data of both the NCSSM trees and the rural trees.

=Arguments for which site to use:= Park/Lake site ( 35.939207,-78.585346) : Pros: Already familiar with it, helpful park rangers can answer questions. Cons: 10 minute drive from Mom’s home, within 250m of the lake, includes a welcome center and a small parking lot. Dad’s backyard ( 36.003461,-78.467898): Pros: In my backyard, much larger potential forest. Cons: it would be a long walk to the center of the coordinates I gave (though I enjoy hikes)