Ecology: Global change and terrestrial plant community dynamics_from the renowned PNAS, (US Academy of Science) Paper freely available.

Global change and terrestrial plant community dynamics

Is I believe, a most welcomed contribution to help adjust to climate change.

Read the full paper below (page foot)  

1. Janet Franklina,1, 
2. Josep M. Serra-Diaza,b, 
3. Alexandra D. Syphardc, and 
4. Helen M. Regand

Author Affiliations

1. Contributed by Janet Franklin, February 2, 2016 (sent for review October 8, 2015; reviewed by Gregory P. Asner, Monica G. Turner, and Peter M. Vitousek)

1. Abstract
2. Full Text
3. Authors & Info
4. Figures
5. SI
6. Metrics
7. PDF
8. PDF + SI

Significance

Global terrestrial vegetation plays a critical role in biogeochemical cycles and provides important ecosystem services. Vegetation has been altered by anthropogenic global change drivers including land-use change, altered disturbance regimes, invasive species, and climate change, for decades to centuries, or in some cases millennia. Vegetation responses to land use and disturbance can be more immediate than to climate change and can be long lasting. The effect of global warming on water balance may have a stronger influence than the direct effects of temperature on vegetation. Models deployed at multiple ecological scales, populations, communities, and landscapes will be required to forecast vegetation responses and feedbacks to accelerated global change.

Abstract

Anthropogenic drivers of global change include rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses and resulting changes in the climate, as well as nitrogen deposition, biotic invasions, altered disturbance regimes, and land-use change. Predicting the effects of global change on terrestrial plant communities is crucial because of the ecosystem services vegetation provides, from climate regulation to forest products. In this paper, we present a framework for detecting vegetation changes and attributing them to global change drivers that incorporates multiple lines of evidence from spatially extensive monitoring networks, distributed experiments, remotely sensed data, and historical records. Based on a literature review, we summarize observed changes and then describe modeling tools that can forecast the impacts of multiple drivers on plant communities in an era of rapid change. Observed responses to changes in temperature, water, nutrients, land use, and disturbance show strong sensitivity of ecosystem productivity and plant population dynamics to water balance and long-lasting effects of disturbance on plant community dynamics. Persistent effects of land-use change and human-altered fire regimes on vegetation can overshadow or interact with climate change impacts. Models forecasting plant community responses to global change incorporate shifting ecological niches, population dynamics, species interactions, spatially explicit disturbance, ecosystem processes, and plant functional responses. Monitoring, experiments, and models evaluating multiple change drivers are needed to detect and predict vegetation changes in response to 21st century global change.

Please do not hesitate to read the full paper via the link below:

Global change and terrestrial plant community dynamics:



And why not join the community of readers of highly credible peer reviewed journal PNAS.(Proceedings of the American Academy of Science)  Link to all subject matter.

'via Blog this'

A global temperature conundrum: Cooling or warming climate? _Does not, the authors emphasize, change the evidence of human impact on global climate beginning in the 20th century.

"The scientists call this problem the Holocene temperature conundrum. It has important implications for understanding climate change and evaluating climate models, as well as for the benchmarks used to create climate models for the future. It does not, the authors emphasize, change the evidence of human impact on global climate beginning in the 20th century."





Nor must this, I contend, diminish our resolve to take the necessary actions to manage Climate Change deleterious effects both for our sake,for our economies and for future generations (self-interest is a well known motivator & must not be forgotten or excluded by pious calls in abnegation in favour of future generations who naturally have no "voting" power. 


Read more at:

A global temperature conundrum: Cooling or warming climate?

A Security Council Issue_Climate science: Why the world won't listen - opinion - 26 September 2013 - New Scientist

"WHEN scholars of the future write the history of climate change, they may look to early 2008 as a pivotal moment. Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth was bringing the science to the masses. The economist Nicholas Stern had made the financial case for tackling the problem sooner rather than later. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had just issued its most unequivocal report yet on the link between human activity and climatic change.

The scientific and economic cases were made. Surely with all those facts on the table, soaring public interest and ambitious political action were inevitable?

The exact opposite happened. Fast-forward to today, the eve of the IPCC's latest report on the state of climate science, and it is clear that public concern and political enthusiasm have not kept up with the science. Apathy, lack of interest and even outright denial are more widespread than they were in 2008."

The text quote above gives an excellent summary of the difficulties encountered in tackling climate-change and the more & more hightly likely consequences.

I strongly advise readers to read the full article freely available  in the highly reputable "general public" magazine The New Scientist. (Link html below)

Climate science: Why the world won't listen - opinion - 26 September 2013 - New Scientist

ROI-Return-On-Investment:
I would add one further reason for communication not leading to action. It is not sufficient to simply mention that the Financial & Economic case hase been made. It too must be communicated. It is of no use making appeals to those with the lease influence- for bottom-up action aimed at an ever empoverised population spending to live, and buy, if possible a cheap polluting car if they are fortuneate.  Against this the number of the very very wealthy increases. Do these people care about CC-climate change? Are they still making "dirty money" from their polluting businesses. Having made "dirty money " what action are they taking to correct the current situation & their dire projected consequences -consequences obviouly hitting the most vulnerable!

A Top down appeal for a "Marshal Plan for European Re-construction" following  International Collabortative Action get to the top of the Agenda. The recent European Elections did nothing in this respect, Poorly communicated if communicated at all. There was one list which suggested (promised) to fight to put the equivalent of what was paid to put the Banks afloat. I voted for that list for the EU elections. Not to be too harsh with the banking profession the may need to stat afloat as the sea level are projected to rise. (And what of the insurance Co's...Natural hasard vs IPCC best prevision and physically unacted upon by the Financial Players?)

Will there is still time - on my previous posts -

Why Global Warming Will Cross a Dangerous Threshold in 2036 M.E.Mann in Scientific American_Truely Serious Stuff!

If proper work is done the the crossing of the predicted threshold in 2036 will be avoided and the improvements enacted fully tested. So now is the time for  top politicians (eg G8) and business men (eg Davos) to get their act together. This is truely Security Council issue - we are not talking about Millenium Issues.We are talking about what is to be done now and over the next 10 years, one little decade, a we decade lads & lassies.

Dam-it "Wedge-a-War"  We have just assisted at the the almost unbareable photos take on D-Day.

Millions of deaths, Thousands on the beaches, inaccurate bombing at at that time. Well 70 years on we are again faced with inacurate "bombing" so to speak.

He lies my case gentlemen. "Wedge-a-War"

Why a watermelon tells you what's wrong with the climate debate - Zunia.org

Here is a rpiece I like written by the Guardian, UK science and environment editor  James Randerson of The Guardian,UK  The Guardian.com, Wednesday 11 September 2013.

Watermelon is a word that tells you what is wrong with the climate change debate. 

The right believes the agenda is green on the outside but red on the inside – we must take the political poison out of the debate

"For some libertarians, it is the insult that expresses what greenies and climate scientists are really up to. Behind all the acronyms and the jargon, they say, is a conspiracy to promote a nakedly political aim – anti-big business; anti-free market; pro-tax increases. In short, green on the outside but red on the inside.

The full conspiracy theory requires an impressive degree of paranoia, but one of the reasons the jibe is so persistent is that, if we're honest, there is a grain of truth to it – at least among some in the green movement and on the left.

Many of the policy responses to the climate change problem – consume less, regulate businesses, curb big oil and coal, restrict car use – feel more comfortable to those on the left than the right of the political spectrum. And as a result, right-leaning politicians and thinkers are in danger of losing grip on the most important issue of our age. That has already happened in large measure in America. It would be disastrous if it happened in the UK too. 

This is the backdrop to the parliamentary science and technology select committee's inquiry into the communication of climate science, to which I (J.Randerson) gave evidence on Monday. The Met Office is being questioned on Wednesday. The MPs on the committee are trying to get to the bottom of why the public is still confused about climate science when the core science has been pretty clear for years. The thrust of many of their questions was "what could the media be doing better to communicate the science?"

While the precise impacts and timescale of climate change may be uncertain, the basic tenets are well-established science. The projections from climate scientists indicate that there is a significant risk of profound changes to climate if we continue to release greenhouse gases at the current rate.
 
The elephant in the room at the parliamentary inquiry though has been that, consciously or not, there are people on all sides of the climate debate who argue backwards from a cultural or political position. As a result, arguments about the science of climate change become a proxy for what is really a political argument. If you like the prescription, then you embrace the diagnosis. If you don't, you undermine the diagnosis or attack the doctor.

But if it was just a question of putting across complex science to a lay readership whose attention must be grabbed from the numerous other shiny news stories on offer that would be, if not easy, at least no harder than your average science story. Science journalists' stock in trade is making unfamiliar ideas intelligible, compelling, relevant and entertaining. And let's face it, climate science may be complex, but the Higgs boson is harder to grasp than global warming.

REFERENCES:

Why a watermelon tells you what's wrong with the climate debate - Zunia.org

Full article by James Randerson of The Guardian, Environment, 2013/sep/11/Climate-Debate

GET MOTIVATED: HOW I FORMED, MOTIVATE and MAINTAIN MY INVOLVEMENT IN GW-CC ISSUES

HOW I FORMED, MOTIVATE & MAINTAIN MY INVOLVEMENT IN GW-CC ISSUES 


I must admit that as a non-expert in Climatology and much else, I have been an early convert to the mainstream view, impressed by the weight, competence of the professionals,not to mention the abundant peer reviewed publications and the International recognition of the importance of these issues (IPCC) , on par with the International Energy Agencies IEA-AEI(Fr)   IEA-GW-CC section, Let me add it appeared to me that:

1. On such a scale of possible consequences (mostly dire) that it would be better to play it safe and do something about it, preferably something sensible, rather than the "lets waitt and see" people.
(cf. RealClimate article below)
2. As a professional R and D scientist and engineer, experienced both in the Lab. and in industry (the latter a bit grimy), I know for a fact, that it is easier, but not necessarily better, to pollute than not pollute. (Scientists have an explanation for our collective incompetence it is called Entropy).
3. I feel that I would be better for me (and my colleagues retired or otherwise employed) to concentrate on what  as a professionals in metallurgy (great recyclers) materials science, labs or industrialists to put our expert knowledge to use in our discipline. To do so one must have a good grasp of  the GW-CC issues.
4. As Scientists, the scientific mind requires that we remain informed and inquisitive, if not skeptical, of inevitable evolution in this fairly new (at least to the general public) and highly complex field by its shear dimension, and possible consequences.
5. We have ample experience success in all sorts of pollution activity (natural and easy) but little of pollution avoidance and depollution (needs much energy, invention and innovation)

6. An early road map was drawn up by Socolow and Pacala  Wedge Approaches with lead to the creation of The Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton Uni.

RealClimate: The high cost of inaction

www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/.../the-cost-of-inaction...

Block all www.realclimate.org results

14 Oct 2011 – “Unfortunately, the original wedges approach greatly underestimates needed reductions. In part, that is because Pacala and Socolow built their ...

Hope you enjoy reading me,

Cheers.  

Global surface temperature rise interrupted between 1998 to 2008 cited by Skeptics confuses general public on Global Warming - Climate Change best previsions-senarios. My View and Commitment cf. next post

 My View and Commitment next post - read on below

Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008 by Robert K. Kaufmann a,1 , Heikki Kauppi b , Michael L. Mann a , and James H. Stock c

a Department of Geography and Environment, Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue (Room 457), Boston, MA 02215;  b Department of Economics, University of Turku, FI-20014, Turku, Finland; and c Department of Economics,Harvard University, 1805 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Edited by Robert E. Dickinson, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, and approved June 2, 2011 (received for review February 16, 2011) PNAS

Supplementary information [pdf]

As an informed member of the public I recommend the above referenced paper which I would hope responds to the still highly vocal sceptic specialists  often poor criticism or deliberate mention of facts out of context and biased (bribed?) media and leading to a misinformed sceptic public. cf previous post. 


"Famous last words" ? 


I shall return in following posts to argue my own view as a still convinced GW-CC non-specialist, non-expert educated senior member of the public.

Climate Change Convinced Experts vs Skeptics Part II_The Fight to discredit THE GROUP OF 98

Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide

Eos, Vol. 92, No. 24, 14 June 2011

When I discovered the paper Expert credibility in climate change [pdf] basis for my previous post, I though that the Global Warming-Climate Change (GW-CC) debate had taken an important step towards even stronger concerted action (much effort has been taken despite recognised uncertainties and the out-right Skeptics. We all know of the inertia to get human society into progressive motion let alone global action, but little did I realise just just how much intellectual, media manipulation, industrial and financial interest were not only dragging their heal but fighting viciously to discredit THE 98%  mainstream climatologists.  

My first reaction was that communication could be at fault. Therefore a strong tangible comparison to touch the public imagination could help. Such a case could be the comparison between volcano vs human generated CO2. Naturally the Climate Scientists, from the Group of 98 have done this work.

Ultrashort summary: In order to emit CO2 at the same rate as humans, we would need Mt. St Helens to erupt violently every 2.5 hrs. 

Thanks for the reminder from Fight Entropy blog together with comments and further peer reviewed references.

a) RealClimate  peer reviewed paper in EOS[pdf] C on RealClimate blog add further peer reviewed references.

Unfortunately there is still apparently unfair opposition to the Pro GW-CC and the action this calls for
and another blog post appears necessary. 

Expert credibility in climate change_Convinced-CE (98%) vs Skeptics UE (2%)_ Can THE 98% be mistaken or corrupt?

Like my young blog colleague, student at a leading Univ in Climate Change research, writing in his blog Fight Entropy, I came across this gem of a paper in the most read articles in PNAS

 To my mind, this is a paper which, for all intents and purposes, removes much of the uncertainty which has arisen in the interminable debates on the credibility of anthropogenic (human generated) origin of  climate change (ACC).   The paper is entitled "Expert credibility in climate change" by   William R. L. Anderegg,  James W. Prall,  Jacob Harold, and  Stephen H. Schneider, and is Freely available online through the PNAS open access option. [pdf] Contributed by Stephen H. Schneider, April 9, 2010 (sent for review December 22, 2009)

This date is important in the light of the Incident known to a wide public as Climate Gate which originated in November 2009 cf. TIME LINE in WIKIPEDIA 

Returning to the paper  "Expert credibility in climate change" 

The Discrepancy between the convinced experts (CE) [98%] and the rise in scepticism in the general public fired by the unconvinced experts (UE) [2%] led my young colleague climate scientist, at in his blog Fight Entropy to comment  "we are the 98% joke." 

 - Quick Summary of "Expert credibility in climate change" 

"Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC.

A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers (UE) relative to agreeing researchers (CE), and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive data set of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.


  - Research Ranking 



" The authors provide a broad assessment of the relative credibility of researchers convinced by the evidence (CE) of ACC and those unconvinced by the evidence (UE) of ACC." They claim that:

"consideration of UE researchers differs from previous work on climate change sceptics and contrarians in that the authors primarily focus on researchers that have published extensively in the climate field, although we consider all skeptics/contrarians that have signed prominent statements concerning ACC (6–8). Such expert analysis can illuminate public and policy discussions about ACC and the extent of consensus in the expert scientific community.


 - Results and Discussion Summarised (Numbers in brackets below refer to references in the full paper)



"We (the authors) provide a large-scale quantitative assessment of the relative level of agreement, expertise, and prominence in the climate researcher community. We show that the expertise and prominence,two integral components of overall expert credibility, of climate researchers convinced by the evidence of ACC vastly overshadows that of the climate change skeptics and contrarians. This divide is even starker when considering the top researchers in each group. Despite media tendencies to present both sides in ACC debates (9), which can contribute to continued public misunderstanding regarding ACC (7, 11, 12, 14), not all climate researchers are equal in scientific credibility and expertise in the climate system. This extensive analysis of the mainstream versus skeptical/contrarian researchers suggests a strong role for considering expert credibility in the relative weight of and attention to these groups of researchers in future discussions in media, policy, and public forums regarding anthropogenic climate change." 

Endogeneity

The Authors are of course well aware of the imperfections of  their research credibility indicators  from reviewing the literature (cf? their references 21 to 29) 


"Publication and citation analyses are not perfect indicators of researcher credibility, but they have been widely used in the natural sciences for comparing research productivity, quality, and prominence (21–24). Furthermore, these methods tend to correlate highly with other estimates of research quality, expertise, and  prominence  (21–26).  These  standard  publication  and  citation metrics are often used in many academic fields to inform decisions regarding hiring and tenure..."

and again

"Regarding the influence of citation patterns, we acknowledge that it is difficult to quantify potential biases of self-citation or clique citation in the analysis presented here. However, citation analysis research suggests that the potential of these patterns to in fluence results is likely to decline as sample size of researchers, possible cliques, and papers analysed for citations considered increases (22, 25–28)."

Largely absent from my blogs in 2011,(a hectic year of much change in our personal lives) I thought such a paper would bring some serenity to such a crucial issue and united effort to such a global Issue.  Reading the literature opened by studying the current paper "Expert credibility in climate change"_ I was surprised to see that resistance to the required freely consented united stance and accompanying measures to alleviate " best-worst scenario prevision - designed to alleviate unwanted greenhouse gas and global warming (GW).

The subject is still a downer in any conversation among friends ie. if you wish to keep them especially if they have readily available coal at hand. GW-CC appears to be the subject to be avoided in our Presidential candidates here in France. Like the situation of EU anthropogenic debt there is no magic wand at hand.


MORE...


Anderegg et al's reply to Aarstad: Risk management versus “truth”


Anderegg et al's reply to Bodenstein: Contextual data about the relative scale of opposing scientific communities. 


Anderegg et al's Reply to O’Neill and Boykoff: Objective classification of climate experts

Supporting Information Anderegg et al. 10.1073/pnas.1003187107 

I will return to the GW theme in the light of my rapid update in order to write this log. Many of these peer reviewed papers are well worth reading and deserve as strong an echo as possible.

CHEERS Anderegg et al

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