Posted on 11/15/2008 4:59:02 AM PST by Libloather
Scientists angry after feds ax forest study
The government wanted to see how forests responded to carbon dioxide.
By Jeff Barnard
The Associated Press
Published on Wednesday, November 12, 2008
DURHAM For more than a decade, the federal government has spent millions of dollars pumping elevated levels of carbon dioxide into small groups of trees to test how forests will respond to global warming in the next 50 years.
Some scientists believe they are on the cusp of receiving key results from the time-consuming experiments.
The U.S. Department of Energy, however, which is funding the project, has told the scientists to chop down the trees, collect the data and move on to new research. That plan has upset some researchers who have spent years trying to understand how forests may help stave off global warming, and who want to keep the project going for at least a couple more years.
**SNIP**
Some scientists, though, believe ending the long-term research may be a mistake.
If we stop these experiments now, it could cost many years to get back to this point, time we may not have, Kevin Lee Griffin, associate professor of environmental sciences at Columbia University, wrote in an e-mail.
The research program, Free Air CO2 Enrichment, or FACE, consists of rings of tall white plastic pipes with holes along their length that emit once-liquified carbon dioxide in carefully metered doses. The loblolly pines planted in 1983 at Duke are located behind gates several miles from campus. Carbon dioxide enrichment began in 1994.
There are also experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Harshaw Experimental Forest in Wisconsin. The carbon dioxide levels around the trees are about 50 percent higher than current levels the amount expected 40 to 50 years from now.
(Excerpt) Read more at fayobserver.com ...
Wouldn't that ADD to global warming?
They have the data already. It just does not support their theories. That means keep the experiment going to see if they can somehow get the results that the want to publish (that, coincidently, support global warming).
Also, they need the money to pay their mortgages and buy gas.
It may add to Global warming, and it will certainly destroy the evidence that the CO2 bogey man is a fraud.
Trees release water vapor into the air which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.
If their studies are warranted they can find a private funding source. Start with Hollywood.
Wouldn’t that ADD to global warming?
Not if it’s “for the children” or “Saves just one life”.
They have only been “enriching” the CO2 for 14 years, eternity if forever.
I could go on but will spare everyone the groans.
My favorite part of the story.
No panic there. Nope, not once, never.
Yea, can't be doing research that could actually give results that are relevant to the situation.
Someone might actually figure the scam out and spill the beans.
There has been “global warming” for the last several thousand years. Really cold water , AKA ice, covered much of north America in the last ice age and it has been warming pretty much ever since.
Of course, if sun spots don't start popping up on the sun soon we may just get a little taste of what global cooling is all about... With a shorter growing season and less farm-able land we'll see what all the “experts” think about that - and the consequences... And then compare that to all the horror stories about global warming... The truth is without global warming most of us wouldn't be here.
“Wouldn’t that ADD to global warming?”
Yes, these scientists are responsible for the deaths of thousands of polar bears - arrest them
Have scientists ever protested to end long term gravy trains, err experiments?
This has to be the sweetest deal ever. Getting paid to watch trees grow.
Tree rings are great indicators of growing conditions during any one particular year. Why would more than ten years of experimentation be required to determine the effect of elevated CO2. My guess is that it has more to do with car payments than science.
The marxist left and the rino right are so deceived, they actually believe that man created global warming and have been carefully indoctrinated with the false belief that we can create and turn back such things when they are all part of the planets normal funcioning.
Global warming fools make me laugh in their foolishness and have done much to destroy captalism and free enterprise in America.
They are as stupid and arrogant as the left wing marxist dems runnings around and screaming as chicken little saying “the sky is falling, the sky is falling”.
They did these studies before...Guess What The Roots Got Long to enhance their Scrubber system for the highre amounts! When will scientist start to following science..
As soon as science gets it right. "Vee shall sendt schience to zee re-education kamp."
Planet Murderers...
That Norweigian anti-Global warming scientist said almost the same about the Re education Camps.. Fascist!
Marijuana growers have been pumping increased amounts of CO2 into pot plants for years. Yeah, it increases the amount of plant material significantly.
Does that mean if we start scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere, I don’t have to mow the lawn as much?
I don't know anything about this study, but it would appear to me the only reason to test the response of trees to elevated levels of CO2 is too check the increase in growth rate (read: increased CO2 absorption rate).
Such a study is much more likely to oppose global warming than to support it. This is one study I would like to see continued.
An outcome supporting global warming would be a decrease or no increase in growth rate. If they are looking for support for global warming, why not publish now if they have the data? Now maybe the scientists are afraid they will have to end their study and get a real job. That is another story.
The U.S. Department of Energy, however, which is funding the project, has told the scientists to chop down the trees, collect the data and move on to new research. That plan has upset some researchers who now have to find a real job.Gentlemen, there go our phony baloney jobs!
'Global Warming' is the new Lysenkoism. That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.
In greenhouses, the rose growers (fresh market cut flowers) have CO2 generators to pump more gas into the confined environment. If it wasn’t having a positive impact, I really do doubt the rose growers would be using the system.
Applied Ag Science 101
I wrote Fox and Friends this morning to report on how much carbon tax Oprah would have to pay for the CO2 emissions from her burning house and yard.
Why “favorite part of the story”? This study has shown how CO2 in the atmosphere benefits plant growth and how younger forests benefit most, which leads to the conclusion that cutting mature trees is good forest management.
This may not be what all the researchers wanted to find but there it is.

Global warming on Free Republic
bttt
The U.S. Department of Energy - demanding trees be cut down?
I'm in pig heaven.
The Tree SolutionAs Greenpeace expanded to become the world's largest international environmental organization, Moore's star steadily rose and he eventually became vice president of research. Then he did something even more unexpected than joining the organization in the first place. He packed up and quit... In the months before his departure, Moore had begun talking heresy. "The environmental movement had gone astray and lost its perspective on forests," Moore says. "Rather than cutting fewer trees and using less wood, we should be growing more trees and using more wood." Greenpeace branded him an eco-Judas. Now comes the biggest surprise of all. Recently published research suggests that Moore is right. Cutting down old trees could be the best way to thwart global warming.
by Jim Wilson
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