The Dendrochronolgists were interested in the tree-ring patterns. Trees grow fast or slow in response to many factors and these seasonal factors (light, water, nutrients) created ring signatures or patterns. Certain years might have been favorable for growth with plentiful water, light and nutrients (each favorable year would be marked [...]]]> I used to work on Mountain Home State Forest in the southern Sierra. MHSF has about 3000 specimen-sized sequoia within its boundaries. Dendrochronolgists often visited to see the stumps from logging in the mid to late 1800s. These were often over 2000 years old when they had been cut.

The Dendrochronolgists were interested in the tree-ring patterns. Trees grow fast or slow in response to many factors and these seasonal factors (light, water, nutrients) created ring signatures or patterns. Certain years might have been favorable for growth with plentiful water, light and nutrients (each favorable year would be marked a large, wide ring) and certain years might have had poor conditions for growth–drought, late spring conditions, early winter–marked by thin (in some cases–microscopic) rings. In general, the wider the ring the more favorable the growing season, the narrower the ring the poor the growing conditions. These ring patterns can be distinctive and can be used to date archeological sites (where wood is present).

Oxford’s Tree-ring Laboratory put it this way:

The way dendrochronology works is relatively simple. As a tree grows, it puts on a new growth or tree-ring every year, just under the bark. Trees grow, and put on tree-rings, at different rates according to the weather in any given year: a wider ring in a favourable year and a narrower ring in an unfavourable year. Thus, over a long period of time (say 60 years or more) there will be a corresponding sequence of tree-rings giving a pattern of wider and narrower rings which reflect droughts, cold summers, etc. In effect, the span of years during which a tree has lived will be represented by a unique fingerprint, which can be detected in other geographically-similar tree-ring chronologies.

Using tree rings as a proxy for temperature however is fraught with caveats and pitfalls.

Mike D.‘s of the Western Institute for Study of the Environment comment (on William M. Briggs’ blog) about using tree ring data as proxies for temperature is an excellent explanation of the problems of using tree ring growth for temperature. He starts with how tree rings are laid down:

Diameter growth on any tree is theoretically a sigmoid growth function. No tree puts on constant radial growth year after year. Trees grow by adding a layer of new wood at the cambium, under the bark. Each year a larger surface area is added. If growth is constant, the rings get narrower. But growth is never constant. There is significant deviation from ideal (model) sigmoid diameter growth in individual trees regardless of the weather. Even when sigmoid growth models are used, the natural variation adds statistical error.

Two sigmoid curves. The taller is the period annual increment for cubic feet; the lower smoother S curve is for mean annual increment of cubic feet.

So as the diameter expands, the amount of material put on would need to be more if the ring’s width was to stay the same as the previous season. Think of a clay disk that you add the same amount of clay to in successive rings. The volume of clay would be the same but the thickness of each new ring would decrease. The ring growth is S-shaped (sigmoid) because initially the tree has little foliage for photosynthesis and often puts its initial years into root development for survival. Then once roots are deep enough the tree puts its growth into height and width.

He then points out that tree-to-tree competition for light, water, and nutrients also affects the ring growth:

Dense stands exhibit narrow rings on individual trees, sparser stands may have wider ring growth, yet both stands may have equivalent gross growth. That’s why only open-grown trees are supposed to be selected for ring studies. But nobody knows what the tree density surrounding an individual tree was 100, 200, 500 years ago. Competitors could have arisen and died without leaving evidence of their presence so long ago. More error.

Besides competition, disease and injury can affect growth.

Trees can sustain injuries that affect growth, such as top and branch damage, that are difficult to detect 200 years later, especially a few feet off the ground where the rings are sampled. There are very few pristine, undamaged trees. I know, having searched for such across broad acreages. Open grown trees at high elevations are always damaged. A heavy winter snow can snap off branches and the tree will exhibit reduced diameter growth for a few years, even if growing season conditions are ideal.

This makes using tree ring data as stand-ins for temperature problematic.

Ring width has all but been abandoned as a temperature proxy. Instead, the latest technique is sampling rings for O18 ratios, under the assumption that O18 varies with temperature. Regardless of the ring width, the O18 ratio is supposed to have recorded growing season temperature. But that theory is fuzzy and mushy, and O18 ratios in living trees correlate very poorly with known growing season temperatures. In other words, it calibrates with much error at best.

Trees are not thermometers, but even thermometers have some serious measurement error problems.

Tree ring studies are a fad akin to phrenology and other discredited pseudosciences that has not dissipated as it should have decades ago.

Anyway, I put the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and graphed the data and added a trendline. (If you would like a copy of the xls file, please ask for it in the comment section below.) As the world warms it is getting wetter. As Matt [...]]]> I found a link the other day to a government website with global mean precipitation data from 1900 to 2000. Of course, I can’t find the link now (please comment if you have the link, but first see the note at the end of the post).

Anyway, I put the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and graphed the data and added a trendline. (If you would like a copy of the xls file, please ask for it in the comment section below.) As the world warms it is getting wetter. As Matt Ridley writes in his book The Rational Optimist:

If you take the IPCC’s [International Panel on Climate Change] assumptions and count the people living in zones that will have more water versus zones that will have less water, it is clear that the net population at risk of water shortage falls by 2100 under all their scenarios. (emphasis added)

Global mean precipitation (1900-2000)

10 yr average-global mean precipitation (1900-2000)

Even the EPA cites the IPCC (2007) to say much the same thing:

As global mean temperatures have risen, global mean precipitation also has increased. This is expected because evaporation increases with increasing temperature, and there must be an increase in precipitation to balance the enhanced evaporation (IPCC, 2007). Globally, precipitation over land increased at a rate of 1.9 percent per century since 1901, but the trends vary spatially and temporally. Over the contiguous U.S., total annual precipitation increased at an average rate of 6.1 percent per century since 1901, although there was considerable regional variability. The greatest increases came in the South (10.5 percent per century), the Northeast (9.8 percent), and the East North Central climate region (9.6 percent). A few areas such as Hawaii and parts of the Southwest have seen a decrease.

Crops may flourish with warmer climes and more CO2. There is some indication that in California some trees are increasing their ranges in response to this change. While increasing temperatures do have their downside, they also have positive benefits as well.

Note: it’s not U.S. and Global Mean Temperature and Precipitation on the United States Environmental Protection Agency‘s site. Nor is it State of the Climate-Global Analysis by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Nearly half the world uses wood to cook and heat with, contributing to deforestation. (Image credit: Freefoto.com)

(Cancun, Mexico) Few things divide rich from poor like access to affordable energy.  Today, it’s estimated that 1 out of 5 people have never flicked a light switch while nearly half the world cooks with solid fuel, such as wood or dung.  On [...]]]>

Nearly half the world uses wood to cook and heat with, contributing to deforestation. (Image credit: Freefoto.com)

CFACT hosts tour of energy poor village of La Libertad at Cancun climate talks

(Cancun, Mexico) Few things divide rich from poor like access to affordable energy.  Today, it’s estimated that 1 out of 5 people have never flicked a light switch while nearly half the world cooks with solid fuel, such as wood or dung.  On Wednesday, December 8, CFACT transported COP16 delegates, press and observers to the Mexican village of La Libertad, where people cook, heat and live without electricity.  La Libertad presents a compelling picture of the plight of the energy poor.

“As COP16 considers the future of the world’s energy policy, it is vital that the voices of those suffering energy poverty are heard,” said CFACT President David Rothbard.

“Today’s visit was both sobering and inspiring,” Rothbard said.  “We and our guests saw the harsh realities of what life is like without basic necessities, such as electricity, which we take for granted.  Yet among the people of La Libertad we saw remarkable joyfulness and hope in the midst of poverty – especially among the many school children – this humbled us.  CFACT believes these children deserve every opportunity that our children enjoy, including affordable, abundant electricity and all the benefits that brings.  We must not set energy policy in a vacuum and create obstacles to the progress of countless communities like La Libertad.”

Access to affordable energy has led to a cleaner, greener environment and a rebound of natural habitats and wildlife throughout the developed world.  Efficient agriculture and distribution, both of which require abundant energy, permit developed nations to devote less land to food production, while minimizing the need to forage for wood for cooking and heating.

Billions know a different reality.  Energy poverty means a life without the nutrition, health care, refrigeration, jobs, information and education the rest of us take for granted.  Without electricity, foraging for food and fuel leads to deforestation and pressures wildlife, while an estimated 1-2 million people die every year from respiratory diseases linked to the burning of wood, charcoal, dung and other solid fuels.

CFACT has worked for years with impoverished people around the world including Valle Verde and other villages in the Yucatan peninsula and witnessed the consequences of energy poverty first hand.

“Global warming campaigners are here in Cancun proposing treaty provisions that would frustrate recovery for developed economies while doing nothing to alter the climate,” said Craig Rucker, CFACT’s Executive Director.  “It is vital we also turn our attention to those in the developing world whom too many are callously willing to trap in energy poverty permanently.  Wealthy activists advocating policies that hold the poor down makes for a sorry spectacle indeed.  Payoffs to developing countries to do without efficient energy will benefit elites in those countries while leaving the needy behind.  This is a disaster for both the energy poor and the working people who pay the bills.”

International aid should focus on helping developing nations construct an efficient energy infrastructure including electricity generation and transmission.  Rucker said, “For villages like La Libertad if there is energy, there is hope.”

I’ve written before about wood use in Sounding the alarmed, are the world’s forests 80% fragmented? Electricity will help break the cycle of denuding vegetation from hillsides followed by mudslides, it will even lower deaths from lung disease by removing indoor smoke. In the interim as infrastructure gets installed, more efficient wood stoves could make great improvement.

More efficient stoves will lessen the amount of wood needed for those necessities by 70 percent while lowering the CO2 put into the atmosphere. As an example, the average Mexican Ejido family requires 40 trees annually; an efficient stove reduces this to 12 trees. (For more on the effect of efficient wood stoves click here)

encompasses the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA. To discuss future commitments for [...]]]> As we know equivocally from the website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the cabaret in Cancún, Mexico (29 November to 10 December 2010),

encompasses the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA. To discuss future commitments for industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) established a working group in December 2005 called the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). In Copenhagen, at its fifth session, the CMP requested the AWG-KP to deliver the results of its work for adoption by CMP 6 in Cancun.

Christopher Monckton writes this about the work occurring at the “sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA. To discuss future commitments for industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) established a working group in December 2005 called the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP).”:

A multitude of long, inspissate, obfuscatory, obnubilating, obscurantist draft agreements are circulated, always a day or two late for delegates to find out what they have actually agreed to. The daily timetables for the various “working” sessions of the conference are never available until breakfast-time on the day, allowing no scope for planning the day. By these means, most delegates are kept permanently and completely in the dark.Here is a typical paragraph from one of these leaden documents:

“The SBSTA welcomed the report (FCCC/SBSTA/2010/INF.10) on the second workshop of the work programme on revising the “Guidelines for the preparation of national communications by Parties included in Annex I to the Convention Part I: UNFCCC reporting guidelines on annual inventories” (hereinafter referred to as the UNFCCC Annex I reporting guidelines), held in Bonn, Germany, from 3 to 4 November 2010, which was organized by the secretariat as requested by the SBSTA at its thirtieth session.”

Try to read several hundred pages of this stuff. It simply isn’t possible. And that, of course, is the idea. This is the Mushroom-Growers’ Management Method writ large: keep them in the dark and feed them plenty of sh*t.

He concludes that the purpose of such sessions is  job creation–for bureaucrats, “No one has yet managed to discover just how much these hundreds of new supranational climate-change bureaucracies are costing us. That is an international state secret – until Wikileaks gets hold of the figures, of course.”

In the video below, delegates unwind after day of  “long, inspissate, obfuscatory, obnubilating, obscurantist draft agreements”: