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

 CO 2 is required for photosynthesis; it is essentially a plant fertilizer  CO 2 cycles are natural  Oceans absorb CO 2  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

AtmospherePlants Caribou People Wolves Decomposers Soil Flow of carbon in an arctic ecosystem

 Variety on many scales, such as:  Genetic variety within populations  Polymorphism within species  The number of different species  The variety of trophic levels