Transcript Do environmentalists overstate their case?

Inhofe, who held an impromptu press conference
in the Bella Center, said the chances of passage
of pending climate and energy legislation were
"zero" and would remain so if such a bill was
financially harmful to Americans in any way. He
said the recent hacking, and publishing, of emails from a prominent climate change research
group at East Anglia University in England
showed that "the science has been debunked.“
Boston Globe, 12/17/2009




CO2 is required for photosynthesis; it is
essentially a plant fertilizer
CO2 cycles are natural
Oceans absorb CO2
Without a greenhouse effect, the earth would
be uninhabitable



Must understand “dynamic balance”
Contributors include physical, biological and
cultural factors – “Ecosystems”
How can we characterize “ecosystems”?




Describe: Where does one start and stop?
Internal components, flows, dynamics?
Compare: How do different ecosystems interact to
contribute to global patterns?
How does balance depend on scale?


Do we look very close or from a distance?
Are we concerned about changes over hours,
days, years or longer?



Primary Productivity from plants & bacteria
Secondary Productivity from consumers
More primary production supports more
diverse types of producers & consumers

It depends



Terrestrial systems



What is limiting productivity?
Are materials damaging?
N, P, K fertilizer components
Freshwater systems – phosphorus
Oceanic systems – fixed nitrogen




Terrestrial-to-aquatic links
Watersheds and river systems: continent-toocean links
Oceanic currents: ocean-to-ocean links (and
effects on global climate)
Ocean-to-continent winds

Establish limits of major concern: Where does one
start and stop?

Identify internal components, flows, dynamics

Identify the relevant “compartments”



Where is carbon found and in what form?
Indicate a hypothesis about how these
materials move among compartments
Indicate possible important influences on those
exchanges
Atmosphere
Plants
People
Decomposers
Caribou
Wolves
Soil

Variety on many scales, such as:
Genetic variety within populations
 Polymorphism within species
 The number of different species
 The variety of trophic levels
