Author Archives: RobinLeflore

Update: What Do Critics Mean Who Say Obamacare "Isn’t Liberal Enough"?

by RobinLeflore Posted on April 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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I periodically drone on about the laziness of polls that ask a simple approve/disapprove question about Obamacare. The problem is that a lot of people say they disapprove because Obamacare isn’t liberal enough. These are folks don’t necessarily disapprove of the concept of national healthcare in general or Obamacare in particular, and shouldn’t really be counted among right-wing opponents of the law.

A couple of weeks ago, a Kaiser poll gave us a slightly deeper glimpse into all this. They asked the disapprovers why they disapproved, and it was clear that some of them had lefty criticisms of the law, not conservative criticisms. But the evidence was still a bit fuzzy.

Today, Mark Blumenthal goes further. In a recent HuffPo poll, about 9 percent of the respondents said they opposed Obamacare because it wasn’t liberal enough. Then, in a follow-up question, they were asked, “In your own words, what do you mean when you say the health care law is not liberal enough?”

The results are on the right. There’s still some ambiguity here, but I’d classify several of the responses as likely left-wing criticisms. Adding up the percentages, I get 6 + 4 + 15 + 4 + 4 + 3 = 36 percent. That’s a little less than half of those who had a response.

So, very roughly speaking, in future polls I’d guess that about half of the “not liberal enough” folks are basically supporters of Obamacare but want the law to go further. It might even be more than that, but it remains hard to parse the motivations behind all of these responses with precision. Is “too complex” a liberal or conservative criticism? How about “lack of choice”? Hard to say.

In any case, this adds some context to the whole debate about Obamacare critics who say it’s “not liberal enough.” It’s also an object lesson against assuming too much ideological coherence from survey respondents. A larger survey with a bigger sample size and a little more structure to the questions would be welcome.

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Update: What Do Critics Mean Who Say Obamacare "Isn’t Liberal Enough"?

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Climate change could bring ancient moss back to life

by RobinLeflore Posted on March 18, 2014

Climate change could bring ancient moss back to life

By

Peter BoelenSampling frozen moss in Antarctica.

The germs of microscopic jungles lay frozen at the poles, ready to burst into life as the ice and snow melt around them.

Deep moss banks growing on rocks and at the bottoms of lakes are defining botanical features in many cold and frigid environments. And as the poles melt, moss populations are quickly greening newly exposed earth.

But how could moss reach these remote locations? A new discovery highlights the fact that it doesn’t need to. It’s already there, frozen after previous warm spells and ready to resume the humble act of living.

Scientists bored a little more than a yard into ice beneath a moss bank on Antarctica’s Signy Island. They unearthed moss shoots that had been frozen in permafrost during the past 1,500 years. Despite their centuries of dormancy, the Chorisodontium aciphyllum samples were coaxed back to life in a British laboratory in a matter of weeks.

Moss is famously hardy, capable of withstanding frost and drought. But scientists had never revived frozen moss after more than 20 years of dormancy. The new research shows that the “potential clearly exists for much longer survival” than 1,500 years, the scientists wrote in a paper published Monday in Current Biology. That potential doesn’t just exist at the poles — it could also affect mountain landscapes.

“There is a potential influence here on what you see after deglaciation,” British Antarctic Survey professor Peter Convey, one of the authors of the study, told Grist.

“There are organisms already there that could trigger and contribute to the immediate development of communities, or biodiversity, in the deglaciated area — rather than having to wait for the more stochastic arrival from a distance of colonizing spores. This is particularly relevant to the Antarctic, which is isolated by many thousands of kilometers of sea,” Convey said.


Source
Millennial timescale regeneration in a moss from Antarctica, Current Biology

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Climate change could bring ancient moss back to life

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Older trees best at fighting climate change

by RobinLeflore Posted on January 16, 2014

Older trees best at fighting climate change

By

mindgrow

As humans age, we tend to pass more gas. As trees age, they tend to suck more of it up.

A new paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature has blown away old misconceptions about the roles that the most mature trees in forests play in combating climate change.

It has long been believed that younger trees are better than their older neighbors at absorbing carbon dioxide. But the new research suggests that the opposite is true. It turns out that big trees just keep on growing, at fast rates, and the growth depends on carbon that the trees draw from the air around them.

“In whatever forest you look at, be it old or new growth, it is the largest trees that are the greater carbon sinks,” William Morris, a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, told Grist. “Not the smaller, younger trees, as was previously thought.”

Morris and dozens of other scientists studied data related to 673,046 trees belonging to 403 tree species in managed and wild forests across the world. For 96.8 percent of species studied, they found that each tree drew more carbon dioxide out the air each year than it did the year before. The carbon is used to produce leaves, roots, and wood. From the paper:

In absolute terms, trees 100 cm in trunk diameter typically add from 10 kg to 200 kg of aboveground dry mass each year (depending on species), averaging 103 kg per year. This is nearly three times the rate for trees of the same species at 50 cm in diameter, and is the mass equivalent to adding an entirely new tree of 10–20 cm in diameter to the forest each year.

The findings don’t contradict the prevailing notion that young forests are better overall at sucking up CO2 than are old-growth forests. That’s because younger forests contain so many more trees.

That said, it’s still best for the climate that we leave those aging stands in place because cutting them down would unleash the carbon they spent their lifetimes absorbing. “One must take into account the amount of carbon the forests are storing as well as how much they are fixing,” Morris said.


Source
Rate of tree carbon accumulation increases continuously with tree size, Nature

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Older trees best at fighting climate change

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