When temperatures pass a certain threshold, however, the beetles lose their ability to synchronize and begin emerging sporadically. Unable to coordinate mass attacks, they have greatly reduced chances of success.
These basic processes became the building blocks for Logan's climate models. Because the beetles developed at more or less constant rates relative to temperature, Logan was able to describe the relationship between reproductive success and temperature as a series of mathematical formulas.
Simplified, they might look something like this: At temperature X, an approximate number of beetles (Y) should emerge simultaneously, giving the insects a Z percent chance that a significant number will reproduce successfully.
Having established that equation, predicting the beetle's expansion into any particular region was just a matter of plugging in the IPCC's temperature projections and crunching the numbers.
After running his models, Logan arrived at a grim conclusion: The temperature thresholds for sites like Railroad Ridge, the greater Yellowstone region and much of the American West -- thresholds at which climatically impassable habitats would suddenly become benign -- were well within the short-term projections of the IPCC.
Forecasting a fast-moving plague
In 2001, Logan published his findings, along with co-author James Powell, in the journal American Entomologist. Already, the insect's reach had begun to spread, with the area of forest affected by beetle kill more than doubling between 1999 and 2001. However, few alarm bells had yet begun to sound.
Railroad Ridge remained Logan's most important litmus test. He had set up a number of weather stations on the ridge after his first visit in the 1990s, and these indicated that the area was steadily approaching the "tipping point" established by his models.
Then, on a visit in 2003, he found his predictions borne out. Here and there among the whitebark stands, patches of burnt orange, the color of rust, were appearing. The implications were obvious -- the beetles were back.
"It was the most magnificent whitebark ecosystem I'd seen," Logan would later recall in an interview with The New York Times. "It broke my heart."
It took less than four years for Railroad Ridge's ancient ecosystems to collapse. By 2007, virtually no living whitebarks remained.
Across the continent, the beetles were taking new ground. By 2008, much of the whitebark population of Yellowstone National Park would be similarly afflicted. And the beetles were spreading north, expanding into the boreal forests of Canada and exploding through central British Columbia. The maps and models Logan had created were suddenly being recreated -- this time, as the chronicle of a phenomenon well under way.
A story 'more bitter than sweet'
Logan retired from the Forest Service in 2006, although he has since collaborated on a number of articles with fellow scientists. His work, particularly the 2001 paper, is among the most widely cited in research explaining the momentous devastation wrought by the mountain pine beetle.
Yet the signature achievement of his career brings Logan little satisfaction. An avid skier and fly fisherman, he spends most of his time in the outdoors; during the coldest months of the year, he and his wife winter in a remote cabin in the Beartooth Mountains of southern Montana. Increasingly, the beetle's expansion has left dead and dying forests throughout the region.
"For me, this story is more bitter than sweet," he wrote in a recent exchange.
He is currently part of a group of scientists and citizens pushing the government to confer protected status on the whitebark pine.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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36 Comments
Add CommentDecades from now, this episode will be seen as one more link in the chain of destruction caused by climate change. We can [and deniers will] argue reasons, but the effects are undeniable - and in nearly all cases, unstoppable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDecades from now, some of the lower elevations where pine is now established will sprout hardwoods to replace pine and other softwoods. Flora has evolved over millennia, and will continue to do so. Simply because we are now witness to it does not necessarily make it undesirable. Our CO2 & other hothouse gas additions exacerbate the condition, and should be limited. But the condition itself is not the dire case that this writing seems to suggest.
So what conclusions do you draw from the earlier episodes?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis would be true if the changes weren't unprecedented in both scope and scale, but most importantly in RATE. The rate of ocean acidification for instance has been shown to be greater than anything which has taken place within the accessible geological record out to at least 300 million years. NO incidence of such rapid CO2 and temperature change are known anywhere in the geological record.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, things change, but for so many things to change so rapidly over the entire Earth is probably unprecedented. To pass it off as "just ordinary change" as many people are so eager to do is going to be a terrible mistake.
The projections are for up to 80% of BC's pine to be affected. The estimated impact over the last decade is estimated to be in excess of $1billion in economic value. It's more damage than all the logging could do in half a century (or more).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWelcome to Warmworld.
The long term records that are relied upon for your argument are incapable of registering minor decade long blips. The record of oceanic acidity levels even more so. There is wide variation in the oceans today. Simple things like a rain storm markedly change levels from one day to the next let alone over centuries. If a particular site now has salinity influenced by a modern fresh water spring or river system that was not present previously, acid levels will be higher for instance. The propensity of climate scientists, as revealed in the email scandal, to reject data that does not conform to their preconceptions is also a worry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's funny how people still cling to the old lies about the hacked emails of two scientists. Not only did the two scientists involved not reject data that didn't conform, even if they had it wouldn't make their behavior typical of climate scientists. Their work stands on it's own merits, just as all the other work that is in concordance with it including that of previously affirmed "skeptics".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's going on now can hardly be considered a "decade long blip", and once again you miss the point. We do see variation in the record, and we're reaching it's extremes at a RATE that is unprecedented. Even if it were a blip, it would be all the more troubling. The kind of changes that previously took timescales longer than human lives are happening within the timescale of a few generations of human lives, that's a problem.
You missed the point. There is no way of measuring what happened over one or two decades historically. Only if the recent warming continued for a prolonged period would it be significant. There is abundant evidence that this is not & will not be the case. I suggest you spend a little time looking for contra evidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo those trying to make their point, claiming the other(s) are missing the point... we are dealing with many many points, and they are all moving, and as has been pointed out so often, at unprecedented rates. Yes, evolution will ALWAYS fill in the gaps, recover entire ecosystems, or evolve new ones, given time. We aren't GOING to witness irrevocable changes (on human scale timelines), we ARE witnessing them, and this article serves not only as "just" another example, but one that was predicted. The Whitebark Pine ecosystem will recover, "eventually". None of us, nor our children or their children will be witness to anything that could be called the ecosystem restored. Just as we witness the recreation of the Mt. Saint Helens ecosytems in all their beautiful and diverse stages, so we will see Nature adapt to the changes we are making in our global climate. Does being a climate change denier make viewing the destruction any easier? Volcanic eruptions, even asteroid impacts are "natural", but can anyone call burning the planet's fossil fuels in a matter of a few hundred years, and all the consequences, good, bad, and ugly, ever be called "natural", or acceptable?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarley Says: There is wide variation in the oceans today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: On a global scale? Show it. Show the body of peer reviewed work that says the pH fluctuates widely. Remember I want a global scale and I want peer review. What that does not mean is some newspaper editorial or some fossil fuel funded website.
Anyone want to be that Carlyle and friends will not meet the challenge?
No one from either side has ever done global scale studies for either the modern or historic levels of acidity. This has been argued a few weeks ago on a thread about coral reefs. That discussion showed that coral reefs were thriving in much higher acidic levels than those presently claimed to be historically high.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo you admit to just pulling the assertion that modern pH levels have globally varied widely out of your posterior. Have you no shame?
Your claim that their are no modern measurement of global pH are not in accord with reality.
Ocean acidification Due to Increasing
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide:
The Royal Society
http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2005/9634.pdf
From the Summary:
"The oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the
atmosphere and this is causing chemical changes by
making them more acidic (that is, decreasing the pH of
the oceans). In the past 200 years the oceans have
absorbed approximately half of the CO2 produced by
fossil fuel burning and cement production. Calculations
based on measurements of the surface oceans and our
knowledge of ocean chemistry indicate that this uptake
of CO2 has led to a reduction of the pH of surface
seawater of 0.1 units, equivalent to a 30% increase in the
concentration of hydrogen ions."
Ocean Acidification and Its Potential Effects
on Marine Ecosystems
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
http://www.gg.mq.edu.au/rep/websites/docs/paper.pdf
From the abstract:
"Ocean acidification is rapidly changing the carbonate system of the world oceans. Past mass extinction events have been linked to ocean acidification, and the current
rate of change in seawater chemistry is unprecedented."
These two peer reviewed works are just summaries of the science and cite many, many other peer reviewed works. How is it that you have conflated your personal ignorance with the state of the science?
Have it your way. I see no point in arguing with ideologues. My link is better & more athorative than yours arguments are circulatory & prove nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou do not like the reference to climategate so you will not like this:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOmitted variable fraud: vast evidence for solar climate driver rates one oblique sentence in AR5 http://tinyurl.com/88y6she
Or this: The truth about sea levels? They’re always fluctuating
http://tinyurl.com/77g4mj5
Two link rule but you can digest those two for starters.
http://oceanacidification.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/ocean-acidification-9/#more-8787
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee post No.1
Recent research showed that cold water corals, given six months to adapt to lower pH, with aragonite saturation below 1.0 (0.8) still managed to have slightly enhanced rates of calcification at these low pH, low aragonite saturation conditions (Form and Riebesell, “Acclimation to ocean acidification during long-term CO2 exposure in the cold-water coral Lophelia pertusa,” 2011, Global Change Biology, in press). Also, no “appreciable” increase in metabilic rates occurred.
The post continues & the questions it poses are legitimate. Perhaps with all your wisdom you could go to that site & clear those little matters up.
On the earlier string, I repeatedly asked, where is the data from the past century, let alone past millennia. No response from Trent or my other critics. Perhaps not so knowledgeable after all. There are only a handful of actual readings that go back beyond the 1980s as a matter of fact. The previous string: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=oceans-acidic-shift-may-be-fastest
What you say may all be true. Supposing it is. What action do you propose? If you have been following these posts for any amount of time you will know that I oppose the waste of fossil fuels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not think that I am the only one here noticing a pattern. You can not provide peer reviewed scientific evidence for your assertions. That is why you always link to blogs and editorials. What is the matter Carlyle, facts got your tongue?
Now I noticed that you have once again changed the subject from ocean acidification on a thread about the successful modeling prediction of future pine beetle infestations, to ocean acidification and now onto sea levels. Why is it you can stand still? You are not providing rational discourse on any of these subjects. You are simply engaged in a gish gallop. That is not how matters about reality are explored.,
So let us try this again. Please provide peer reviewed articles that substantiate your assertion that modern global pH levels fluctuate widely.
Why is this so hard for you? I provided evidence from the top tiers of science The Royal Society and the New York Academy of Sciences. Each of those articles is just stuffed with citations and explanations of how they know what they know, and all you can provide is a blog and a sorry attempt at distraction by introducing yet another subject.
Pathetic
You do have a tendency to jump to conclusions dont you. As per your post on the earlier string. I suggest you have a look at 3. tharter. Get back to me on your learned analysis as to who introduced the subject of acidification will you? Now theres a good boy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarlyle Says: On the earlier string, I repeatedly asked, where is the data from the past century, let alone past millennia. No response from Trent or my other critics. Perhaps not so knowledgeable after all. There are only a handful of actual readings that go back beyond the 1980s as a matter of fact. The previous string: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=oceans-acidic-shift-may-be-fastest
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Carlye, I am beginning to think that you are denser the typical anti-science ideologue. On the very thread you linked to Chris G provided exactly that information post #3. Anyone can go there and see that is the case. I just provided similar information in this very thread. Why do you pretend other wise?
Trent Says:
Carlyle Says: I suggest you have a look at 3. tharter. Get back to me on your learned analysis as to who introduced the subject of acidification will you?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: That was Deborah Zabarenko the reporter who wrote the article titled, "Oceans' Acidic Shift May Be Fastest in 300 Million Years". So yes, the whole thread should have been about...wait for it. Wait. Ocean acidification.
Are you drunk? Sloshed? This is dumber than usual.
Again. 1/ You accused me of introducing acidification into this debate. I pointed out that this was not so. Have another look.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. 3. tharter in reply to the Gaul 07:35 PM 3/14/12
This would be true if the changes weren't unprecedented in both scope and scale, but most importantly in RATE. The rate of ocean acidification for instance has been shown to be greater than anything which has taken place within the accessible geological record out to at least 300 million years. NO incidence of such rapid CO2 and temperature change are known anywhere in the geological record.
2/ On the earlier thread Chris G post #3. he. provided three links. None of them lead to evidence of readings taken over the previous century. When he repeated his claim, I asked for the specific links as an extensive search of the journals & reports he linked to failed to show any such evidence. Perhaps you can do better. Read the posts yourselves folk. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=oceans-acidic-shift-may-be-fastest
For the benefit of those who missed the report on accelerating ocean acidification; http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell I have just spent an hour going through the link you gave me re ocean acidification. I can not find any record of actual widespread testing. All there seems to be is theory relating to what the scientists expect to find. How many hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding have these people spent? Where are the actual readings? Give us the specific data links.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI swear you are the densest person on these threads bar none. In just a few minutes of perusing the links given you I found this:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOcean Acidification Observations and Data
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/OA+Observations+and+Data
Mission Statement:
"The PMEL carbon group primarily focuses on large scale observations of ocean interior carbon through hydrographic cruises and surface ocean carbon dynamics through measurements made on volunteer observing ships, buoys, and other autonomous systems. We work in both the open ocean and in coastal environments. We maintain long-term time series observations as well as conducting short term process studies or exploratory studies."
How can you miss this after a supposed hour of looking?
What I really think is stunning is that you think the world's oceanographers are involved in some sort of vast conspiracy.
You have now been presented with several summaries of the science by the world's leading experts in the matter and you think they are just making it up. Amazing
One thing other than lack of winter freezing that has assisted pine beetles in BC and I suspect south of the border as well is that the forests here are replanted with logepole pine for the forest industry so rather that the natural cycle of Pine/fires/conifers/age/pines we have eliminated the part of the cycle where the conifers take over untill they are replaced by pines again. This has provided an endless supply of food for the beetle and increased the population accordingly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHurrah for the beetle! Adapt or die as the saying goes. Sadly for us, nature prefers a shotgun approach to life and cares not at all how many die as long as some live.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo why did you not give this link in the first place? Could it be because I repeatedly asked for the data from the past century that the report claimed it was comparing the present readings to? Where is the data?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe oldest data in this link goes back only three decades.
See what I mean. One of the longest records? Five years old. Note also, data unconfirmed but more importantly, surface water only.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOcean Station Papa (145°W, 50°N) has one of the longest records of time-series measurements in the ocean. Through support from the US NSF and NOAA and in collaboration with the Canadian DFO Line P Program, a surface mooring was deployed in June 2007 at Ocean Station Papa to monitor ocean-atmosphere interactions, carbon uptake, and ocean acidification. It is an Ocean Climate Station (OCS) mooring that is part of the global network of OceanSITES time series reference sites. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Papa
The more I read the weaker the long term record becomes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor the last 2 decades, we have used underway sampling on research vessels and VOS to measure large-scale trends in ocean carbon chemistry. We are in the process of adding pH and additional parameters necessary to address ocean acidification using VOS.
You are correct. Not only that but the plantation pine is bred from a limited genetic base. Seedlings being manually fertilised to prevent unwanted strains being grown. Any uni culture is more venerable to disease or insect attack than a diverse population.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly one of the ten stations was established 32 years ago. The oldest after that is less than nine years old. Only ten fixed location stations to monitor the whole world. Even the sampling from ships is less than 10 years old for much of the data & not all the sites are set up to actually register pH levels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not think my concern that ocean acidity comparisons globally between the present & a century ago are unfounded. As I suspected, very flimsy data indeed.
Carlyle Says: So why did you not give this link in the first place?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Because, you see, I keep on making this mistake of thinking that you are not a Wearing-My-Underwear-On-The-Head-Insane. That is my mistake. I do not go around thinking that published scientist with degrees in geophysics and biochemistry are so stunningly incompetent that they can not have thought to measure the the oceans of the world pH level before publishing their findings on the same topic without references to those measurements.
In other words, when I and other Non-Underwear-On-The-Head-Wearing people link to said scientist summaries of their fields of work we assume if you have further questions you look at the references. My bad. I will try not to overestimate you again.
Now if you had read any of the links given you would know that pH has been measured for decades and before that can be measured indirectly from the known CO2 levels in the atmosphere and ice cores. From the Royal Society link that was given to you we find in section 2.6 the following:
"Change in ocean chemistry due to increases
in atmospheric CO2 from human activities
Based upon current measurements of ocean pH, analysis of
CO2 concentration in ice cores, our understanding of the
rate of CO2 absorption and retention in the surface oceans,and knowledge of the CaCO3 buffer (Section 2.2.2), it is possible to calculate that the pH of the surface oceans was 0.1 units higher in pre-industrial times (Caldeira & Wickett 2003; Key et al 2004). This 0.1 pH change over about the past 200 years corresponds to about a 30% increase in the concentration of hydrogen ions."
See how that works? You can now go to those cites and if are "skeptical" of their findings then I look forward to your empirically based peer reviewed article that will come out as a result. You incredulity is not going to cut the cheese.
So if the pH levels can be derived from CO2 levels, why are they retro fitting these monitoring stations with pH measuring equipment? What is the justification of even having these stations if the information can be derived from atmospheric measurements. How was the historic data verified?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI applaud the gathering of scientific data. It is when skimpy data, mostly collected in the last decade & even then not by direct measurement, from only ten fixed data collection points, then to come to conclusions for the entire planet, is rediculous.
Another reinforcement of the view that even when climate researchers have real data they just can not resist fiddling with it. Always in ways that favour AGW. Another GISS miss: warming in the Arctic – the adjustments are key
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/11/another-giss-miss-warming-in-the-arctic-the-adjustments-are-key/#more-58888
You expect people to unquestioningly accept conclusions about ocean acidification mostly on the basis of derived rather than actual pH records when even when climate science has real temperature data they fiddle with it. The whole climate science field is corrupt & will remain so while ever they have legions of ideologically driven supporters who see nothing wrong with unethitical behaviour.
You repeatedly claimed there were global pH records that prove the claims about acidification. You give red herring links initially then an actual link that shows only ten fixed stations for the whole globe. One of them only two years old, seven less than nine years old & one thirty two years old. Not only that but only now are some of them being set up to take real pH measurements yet you accept that these scientists can accurately tell us what the global levels are now as compared to one hundred years ago. Do you also believe in the tooth fairy?
Somebody give me a ring when _any_ atmospheric change can be shown to have an effect on any average state over thirty feet below the surface of the ocean. Give me another ring when it reaches below a hundred feet. Oh wait. We will all be dead of old age long before either happens.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe somebody can explain why a tiny, tiny increase in the proportion of atmospheric CO2 can possibly impact something as large in volume as the ocean.
The other thing I wonder about the whole _the oceans are getting acidic and we are all going to die_ thing is how did life survive when the atmosphere had much more CO2 and was much warmer, sometimes both at the same time.
All I can say is wow...roll up your pants..The forests are also dying in Alaska, the water is warmer, there are more whales then ever before, which I suppose is good for whales, but not for us. The worst regime change will be the inability to farm at current levels in formerly temperate zones. I say lets use up all the fossil fuels as fast as we can and get over it, most of the damage has been started and cannot be undone. It is amazing how Carlyle seems to perceive any reported information as planned hysteria to change the world of facts in a direction that he will not or cannot accept. It probably has as much worth as arguing over the Koran, or the Bible.In fact I am willing to bet there is a Bible involved somewhere here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe tree line is moving north across North America so I don't know why the forests in Alaska would be dying.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not sure why it's bad for us that whales are moving into Alaskan waters in greater numbers than there has been for the last fifty years.