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 e-mails 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 What is limiting productivity? Are materials damaging?

Terrestrial systems N, P, K fertilizer components

Freshwater systems – phosphorus Oceanic systems – fixed nitrogen

Terrestrial-to-aquatic links Watersheds and river systems: continent-

to-ocean 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

Caribou

People

Wolves

Decomposers

Soil

Variety on many scales, such as:

Genetic variety within populationsPolymorphism within speciesThe number of different speciesThe variety of trophic levels