Slashdot Mirror

Planting forests is a 100-years plan.

No, it's not. Thirty years is enough to make significant changes. If one guy can do this all by himself, imagine what could happen if millions of people did the same all over the planet.

If enough people do this, or something similar, it won't even take that long.

When you turn on the faucet, who supplies the water?

A private company given a de-facto monopoly by the government. Which is why the water tends to suck and many places have to employ local filtering, softening, etc.

"... the light of the satellite is similar to a dusk-like glow, so it should not affect animals' routines..."

I'm pretty sure animals that wait for night don't start until AFTER dusk. If it's always dusk, then...?

Well, good news for crepuscular animals, then, though they may get tired from being active for 12 hours instead of 30 minutes...

An even more effective way to argue is to use a cooked up study like this, that is probably off by a factor of 10 to 100.

This page says there are more trees in America than there were 100 years ago.

People in cities use less energy per a capita than people in suburbs or rural areas https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/translating-uncle-sam/stories/urban-or-rural-which-is-more-energy-efficient and NYC is one of the most energy efficient of major cities by multiple metrics http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/12/31/eco.cities/.

Into that mix come early automobiles, little more than glorified carriages with primitive gas engines or electric motors. It’s not surprising that despite the manifold annoyances of dealing with horses, they were viewed with suspicion. And our faithful saddle pals had been good enough for thousands of years, right? Remember what they yelled at early motorists? “Get a horse!” (source)

The Evolution from Horse to Automobile: A Comparative International Study.

Overview: http://web.stanford.edu/dept/n...

The conclusion - men are pigs. From the article, the first and foremost reason : Overt sexism, unwanted attention and sexual harassment create hostile working conditions.

The biggest problem in our workplace between men and women was the men were concerned that by saying the wrong thing, they were going to be fired. So communications with women were very guarded. That certainly isn't a friendly situation, but completely understandable. If you don't have a reason to talk to someone who can have you fired, you probably won't.

A lack of role models for women in technical fields is discouraging. "When faculty members are looking for the next person to win a Turing Award, which is computer science's Nobel Prize, they tend to look for people like the last ones who won such awards. This usually involves looking in the mirror,” Roberts said.

Seriously? a lack of women in technical role models? Here's 90 of them http://womenshistory.about.com... Here's 90 of them http://discovermagazine.com/20...

http://www.mnn.com/leaderboard... Some random ted talks, all by female scientists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And if you want yound ladies to have especially physically attractive role models there's always : https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/p... a physicist/Astronomer who manages to not look like the stereotype egghead.

So all I have to say, if Herr Professor hasn't found female role models to present to his students, well - that is his fault not menarepigs

His study is the typical "women are weak" model, where any negativity causes tehm to seek other careers, which presumably have no sexism and all men are perfect gentlemen. He can rail on about his women's school model for a million years, but it won't cure the problem.

Study on one aspect: https://depts.washington.edu/s...

So the problem appears that if a female encounters any stereotype that she disagrees with, it completely destroys her interest.

Movie: http://www.bigdreammovement.co...

I should come up with a list of links to copy/paste, that lot was just a quick Google search.

So - does this mean that there was something wrong with any woman who did not allow herself to be intimidated out of a science career that she was passionate about, but the passion was killed by anyone that didn't give her positivity?

I don't know specifically

Only a complete moron would argue that if global warming isn't the cause of all islands disappearing, it can't possible be the cause of any. And if you actually looked at your second link:

The islands apparently were eroded away, a process accelerated by storms and sea level rise.

There's plenty of other examples.

- They kept colonies in other countries of the EU (Gibraltar) even though it's clearly illegal and have a specific article forbidding it.

Says someone from a county that does similar things. The Brits don't have clean hands either, nor do the Danes but at least the Danes just litter a little bit.

Way to miss the point. The point is that there is no need to do that. Programming is gender-agnostic, race-agnostic, age-agnostic. A movie that showed boys writing code and enjoying it can also demonstrate to BOTH boys and girls that coding can be enjoyable. Why are you suggesting that girls need to see other girls in order to understand that? That is very sexist and microaggresive behavior.

Because somewhere along the lines of "growing up", girls somehow get discouraged from doing these things. And not discouraged as in "this is hard stuff", but discouraged along the lines of "boys do this. girls don't". You know, like how boys are blue, girls are pink. Or boys play with action figures of soldiers and astronauts and whatnot, while girls play with barbies and miniature houses. (And how girls who want to play with action figures and all that get discouraged by calling them "tomboys").

That's the real reason. Girls ARE actively discouraged from pursuing careers in science and technology as they're more "masculine" occupations and steered towards more "feminine" occupations like teacher and nurse.

End result is the few people who cross the line only really do it because of dogged determination and rebellion against society and more importantly, their parents. (This applies to both men and women who decide to break the traditional gender roles - male teachers, male nurses apply as well).

And I don't think there's any culture that's not guilty of this in some way - China's one-child policy caused a huge imbalance of males to females - families preferred males because they are perceived to be the breadwinners and to "carry one's honor" and all that, while women worked at home and were "basically worthless" (which also led to a lot of selective sex abortions and disownership). Even now some cultures find it deeply offensive if a woman talks back or is superior to men or commands men.

It's not ability, it's society.

Here's a letter from an enlightened (male) engineering student who sums it up nicely - http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/a...

Equal in ability, yes. But opportunity? Nope.

Custer surely would have never ever gotten that far. It takes a telescope to rile them up. Blankets? Do they need blankets?

Depends upon how far back you wish to go.

Hawaii was found by Polynesians who's DNA has proven them the discovers of America, I figure Columbus was the last person to of set foot on it's shore, yet gets all the credit.
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matte...

From South America they migrated along it's coast, to Central America, and spread out into North America, becoming the Indians we know today.

This still agrees with the land bridge theory, yet A Clovis point was found to be allegedly older than possible by a land bridge crossing.
http://america.aljazeera.com/a...

The Kennewick Man was found so far out of place (and not and Indian), that made him so special. No reason there wasn't a spread of information by just that sort of person. History refuses to acknowledge the transfer of knowledge rather than inventing themselves.

While mayhaps a bit off your topic, an interest of mine that I couldn't help but reply to.

The trials that were conducted were a treatment, not a cure. A cure insinuates the organism is no longer susceptible to the disease, which is not the case with these treatments. A better article, that represents our research and treatments, and quotes us better, is the MNN article below.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matte...

I expect their cure to be temporary.

Fungus, if it's stopped by bacteria is due to living space and biological niche being filled.

Just like someone on lots of antibiotics is at higher risk of thrush infections (fungus) and can be helped by consuming "probiotic" foods, the inoculation will depend on the bacteria PERSISTING on the bat and staying there.

For whatever reason, bacteria that used to fulfill the role for bats is gone and the niche was exploited by the fungus.

Finding something more effective than the usual anti-fungal drugs is a breakthrough, but they might still have to make this bacteria persistent or re-spray bat housing to keep the bats healthy.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matte...

Yet these alternatives produce much more CO2 to get from certain point A to B ... Imagine 200 cars driving from Finland to Sweden

Flying is, for most common routes, VERY efficient after you also consider how much cargo the planes carry..

He mentioned "train car bus". You picked cars, which are the worst for efficiency, but only slightly worse than aircraft. Trains and buses are far better.

As for aircraft carrying freight, that is so inefficient that it is only used for premium freight, such as mail and high value stuff.

It would mean learning to manage the world as a forest. We can probably do that. Yeah, I think we could figure that out. Maybe.

In the United States, which contains 8 percent of the world's forests, there are more trees than there were 100 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), "Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s. By 1997, forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920." The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their arrival. More trees than there were 100 years ago? It's true!

Seems we're doing pretty good at it.

Lets all plant 1360 acre forests. http://www.mnn.com/earth-matte...

story

I'm sure you are just repeating what you were told in school. Here is a tip, a lot of what you were told in school is outright wrong, especially public school in the US. I actually believe every history class I took was a propaganda program with very little of it actually being accurate.

Most Orangutans spend their time attempting and often succeeding at escape, often in ingenious ways. eg Fu Manchu, http://www.mnn.com/earth-matte... or Ken Allen, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K.... Google has many more examples.
Seems that anyone who doesn't like being locked up will attempt to escape and if as smart as an Orangutan, succeed.

story

Other than being completely factually wrong 100%, you make a good point.
Tip: When a leftist gives you a "fact" that can be looked up, please look it up. Its amazing what you can learn, such as there are significanly more trees in the US today than 100 years ago, despite what wjcofkc claims. There are also more polar bears today then a few decades ago, and they can actually swim!

That's scorpions, not spiders. But my point is still valid.

It was a 7 degree rise for ages:

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matte...

Now that's the high end of the "prediction".

In 2010 NASA said this:

"8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise."

And "New NASA model: Doubled CO2 means just 1.64C warming
'Important to get these things right', says scientist"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

In 2011 it was "Discovered" trees eat CO2:

Originally found at: http://www.google.com/hostedne...

Forests soak up third of fossil fuel emissions: study
By Marlowe Hood (AFP) – 5 days ago

PARIS — Forests play a larger role in Earth's climate system than previously suspected for both the risks from deforestation and the potential gains from regrowth, a benchmark study released Thursday has shown.

The study, published in Science, provides the most accurate measure so far of the amount of greenhouse gases absorbed from the atmosphere by tropical, temperate and boreal forests, researchers said.

"This is the first complete and global evidence of the overwhelming role of forests in removing anthropogenic carbon dioxide," said co-author Josep Canadell, a scientist at CSIRO, Australia's national climate research centre in Canberra.

"If you were to stop deforestation tomorrow, the world's established and regrowing forests would remove half of fossil fuel emissions," he told AFP, describing the findings as both "incredible" and "unexpected".

Also odd how this guy in 2007 was able to predict this winter's 100-year record breaking cold from things the IPCC have nothing to do with climate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Do the alarmists have an explanation for these?

Indeed. US-Americans are however famous for their combination of ignorance and stupidity. I recently upgraded all my CFLs to LED bulbs and are very happy with them. And no, LED bulbs are not more expensive, but you need to be able to do basic math to see that.

Yeah, it's only in America you find people who'll purchase "heat balls" because they refuse to switch to more efficient lights.

I bet non-Americans never make sophomoric sweeping generalizations either.

Spending more money on the problem won't solve the problem, as long as those in charge don't want to solve it.

It would be fucking easy to fix basically anywhere. All you have to do is enable this: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/indian-man-single-handedly-plants-a-1360-acre-forest

Instead of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_India#Pollution

But look around you at the country of your choice. Here in the USA we have people actively preventing people growing vegetables in their own yards. We have a huge percentage of the nation owned directly by the federal government, and exploited for its mineral rights; meanwhile, during the federal shutdown, they were actually preventing people from entering it. This land is our land?

The problem is greed. And it's particularly pathetic because the rich aren't happy, either. So they're depriving others in order to make some big numbers bigger in a way that won't even fucking make them happy. No matter how you slice it, that's a tragedy.

http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/questions/animal-or-vegetable-the-truth-about-protein and the one downside they note about meat, cholesterol and saturated fats, there was just recently an article where some leading figures in medicine debunked the whole thing. Or it was part of the controversy about the change in the recommendation for statins in the US, one of them. and by the way, quoting any individual study on pubmed is a sign that either you don't know what you are talking about, or you are deliberately misleading. and also, nobody doubts that (as an adult! children excepted) you can eat a healthy vegan (even!) diet. But you have to do a lot of research that when eating meat too you don't have to do to have all the nutrients.

it appears that taxi drivers learning a city experience increases in size of certain brain structures implicated in memory:

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/stories/brains-of-taxi-drivers-work-differently-than-average-people (couldn't find the journal article sorry)

but that old chestnut keeps coming up:

"What is not clear is whether those trainees who became fully-fledged taxi drivers had some biological advantage over those who failed. Could it be, for example, that they have a genetic predisposition towards having a more adaptable, 'plastic' brain?" Maguire said. "In other words, the perennial question of 'nature versus nurture' is still open."

there are evidences of plants under WIFI frequency bombardments having retarded growth

Links or it didn't happen

Links, with pictures

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/05/can-wifi-signals-stunt-plant-growth/

http://www.mnn.com/health/healthy-spaces/blogs/student-science-experiment-finds-plants-wont-grow-near-wi-fi-router

Now, satisfied ?

Read about it here on /. back in 2009. Newsworthy because a 16-year-old found it.

Here is the article.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/13-animals-hunted-to-extinction/hunted-to-death
http://www.huntercourse.com/blog/2011/08/10-animals-hunted-or-nearly-hunted-to-extinction/
Not to mention Bison, Bald Eagle, Salmon (destroyed habitat), many whale species.
Not all, there were some mass extinction events due to climate changes (ice age cycling etc), but we're the only species that can claim such a wide variety of eradicated other species. Don't forget all the deer and geese predators that have been hunted into ineffectiveness.
We are certainly responsible for many of the problems that afflict us and other species: ocean pollution, waterway pollution, marshland destruction, etc. I am honored that you would even consider me her most noble guardian, truly I am, I must protest that I am but a humble observer not worthy of being considered her guardian. To you though I offer the honor of living with the animals which in truth we are, show us our animal nature by living among them with tools, clothing, and shelter only of your own manufacture. I promise to soon and follow in your footsteps.

20,000 years ago was when the climate began to warm in Antarctica. It took quite a while for the ice to melt, the atmospheric temperatures to exceed today's. Several thousand years after that the seas began to rise. Whether it was 13,000, 17,000, 11,000 years ago is irrelevant. It happened. It was long ago before the age of modern history, before the age of carbon fuels, and the Earth was warmer, wetter, the glaciers smaller, the seas higher than now. And it was "natural". That's the science and it's not debatable.

The natural course is to return to glaciation as the Earth's orbit moves away from this climactic optimum for Men. That's the science and not debatable either. The Warmists would have you believe that this is a desirable end. Maybe it is - certainly it would be "natural" for mile-high glaciers to sweep all of the US Eastern Seaboard into the sea again leaving no record of Man's presence there. I wouldn't miss New York.

I live too far North to welcome it though. The glaciers would come for me too, and scrape my house into the sea. I would quite prefer that Man altered his environment in such a way as to prevent a recurrence of this dire fate. Luckily for me, that seems to be the plan.

Casual users more likely to replace their PCs with tablets

Most users are casual users.

Not a lot of 200 ton bees out there...

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/photos/7-amazing-examples-of-biomimicry/sharkskin-swimsuit

http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/artist-creates-beautiful-indoor-clouds

Like every energy breakthrough in the past, someone decided the Big Oil companies would know how to handle and distribute it. Somehow, all those promising alternative energy sources never seemed to work out. BP axes solar power business, Transition from oil to renewable energy 100 years away, says Exxon Mobil and dozens more.

The basic gist is that any dinosaur DNA would be completely degraded. DNA has a half-life of 521 years with variations based on environmental conditions. A 2012 study showed that DNA would degrade past the point that we could read anything useful out of it after 1.5 million years, and would degrade completely after 6.8 million, and those are under optimal conditions. The Jurassic period ended 145 million years ago.

Source: http://m.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/scientists-dash-hopes-for-dinosaur-cloning

I love it when the greenies insist on Sea Salt because it's more 'organic' than the other stuff

Really? Because the first hit on "green sea salt better" is a Snopes-like article on something called "Mother Nature Network":

http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/is-sea-salt-better-for-you-than-table-salt

Looks like those "greenies" are better at calling out bullshit than you are.

Uh, no, read the comments:

Do your own test, the next time you are in the supermarket, pick a natural sea salt, a kosher salt and one name brand. You will be shocked to see the variance in the amount of sodium.

""Table salt" while processed is highly heated. This creates a non-breakable bond between the sodium and chloride. The body needs the bond broken to use it in digestion....the sodium is used to buffer the acidity of food from the stomach, the chloride used to create HCL (or hydrochloric acid) which is vital to us....

I love it when the greenies insist on Sea Salt because it's more 'organic' than the other stuff

Really? Because the first hit on "green sea salt better" is a Snopes-like article on something called "Mother Nature Network":

http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/is-sea-salt-better-for-you-than-table-salt

Looks like those "greenies" are better at calling out bullshit than you are.

Your link suggested heating & cooling accounted for 43% of residential and 24% of commercial energy use; I wouldn't call that a "very small fraction".

I was specifically commenting on Namarrgon's post: "What new technologies are needed? Thermal insulation has proved highly effective, and many people report up to 90% reductions in energy use & emissions."

The article was talking about getting rid of 90% of total emissions, so they obviously can't be talking about doing it through insulation alone, since insulation obviously doesn't affect things like transportation and lighting. With more investment in nuclear power tech, many of those categories would have been carbon-neutral by now (with cars being the most difficult to convert, because on-board battery energy density needs to catch up as well), but the government listened to the anti-nuclear-power hippies and screwed that up. And then of course there are sources of pollution not directly related to energy use: garbage, cow farts, etc.

Each of those problems has a very simple capitalist solution: make people pay full cost, which includes paying for pollution liabilities (and in some cases risk insurance). The government currently does the very opposite: subsidizing trash pickup, subsidizing meat production and meat-related pollution liabilities, subsidizing overseas security for oil companies, etc, etc, etc. I'm all for overthrowing socialist governments that steal ("nationalize") private property, but, when Uncle Sam does it at taxpayer expense, it becomes just another subsidy that makes oil more affordable, thereby stifling the competitiveness of all alternative sources of energy.

But I agree, there's no hope of getting energy consumption down by anything close to 90%.

It's laughable to think that energy consumption will go anywhere but up, up, up...

But then I stop laughing, remembering that, with enough government tyranny, all things may be possible...

Insulation certainly helps, but not nearly that much. Demand will increase for a long time yet, I expect. However, emissions depend on generation methods, as well as consumption. Carbon-neutral generation is a separate question, but can potentially reduce emissions to virtually zero (if we got off fossil fuels altogether).

Agreed, but we need to get there first, and fossil fuels are a temporary but crucial stepping stone.

And we wouldn't want carbon emissions to be "virtually zero" - filtered CO2 is a valuable commodity for greenhouse farming.

Oh, and then there's the about 96% of this planet's CO2 emissions that have nothing to do with human activity... (Don't tell Al Gore.) Irrigate some deserts and plant some trees, and we're in balance.

--libman

There's still plenty we don't know, but so much of it is highly specialized that many breakthroughs are understood by only a handful.

Spare a thought for poor Charles Darwin. He published Origin Of The Species in 1859 and, over a century and a half later, only 39% of Americans fully believe it.

At least Samuel Pierpoint Langley, Svante Arrhenius and Arvid Högbom have managed to convince 63% that global climate change is real and they've only been going since the 1890s.

Still, could be worse: Galileo was imprisoned for the remainder of his life and his writing banned in 1618. The establishment (Catholic Church) didn't lift that interdiction on heliocentrism until 1822. Darwin's got another half century before he reaches Galileo's 204 years.

There's natural gas generators which are extremely clean and efficient. Higher end generators are really quiet. I've never understood why every home isn't built with one these days (other than the power companies oppose them for profit reasons). Add in small windmills (there was link here on slashdot about a new design that is very small and very efficient), suit case size nuclear generators

seriously, what's so terrible about some common sense approaches energy management. Everyone has a "reason" why we can't do this. No one really wants to solve the problems I think.

The weight of NFL players has been increasing steadily.

Number of players over 300 lbs:
In 1970 - 1
In 1980 - 3
In 1990 - 94
In 2000 - 301
In 2009 - 394

See a trend here? It's also creating health issues for active players and retired players, and is causing a shorter lifespan. This isn't your grandfather's game of fast players with leather helmets and no padding. This is a game of fat men in hard plastic armor doing a lot of blocking.

It's simple physics. F = m * a. It's a lot easier for a players to increase their weight by 50%, than it is for them to increase their speed by 50%.

Regardless of a high brain injury risk, such sports will still be attractive because:
It's a chance for poorer students to get to college.
It's a highly publicized sport, with a large fan base.
Every player you see on the NFL field is a millionaire, and is semi-famous.

IIt is a regular occurrence for containers to be washed overboard or to simply be "lost" (before or after customs).

Yes. 10000 containers per year lost at sea. Probably not yours, but it could be.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/blogs/study-links-flammable-tap-water-to-fracking to start.

Use any search engine; decide for yourself.

Man eating crickets

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/what-can-28000-rubber-duckies-lost-at-sea-teach-us-about-

Its now a race to see who can get the first turbine up and spinning before anyone can claim to be first.

After years of opposition by Ted Kennedy, the Cape Cod wind farm was granted approval and all the law suits have pretty much played out.
The Cape Wind Farm gained final construction approval about this time last year (April 2011). Held up by yet another appeal due VFR (small plane) flights flying below regulation minimum altitude, it is expected to pass this hurdle as well, just like every other wind farm has. The opposition group has recently been fined for election violations.

But Approval does not mean construction has started, and both of these projects seem to be at the same point in their development.

I'm sure that as soon as selective breeding took place the result, it is no longer a natural process, but one that was influenced by humans.

Well, there's there's 'natural', 'normal', and 'un-natural' (and I don't mean the latter in the sense of some abomination).

Natural would be breeding in the wild -- whatever makes them do well and pass on their genes. This is what they do without us.

Normal would be breeding two horses in the hopes of trying to get one where you get a desirable trait for that breed. This is selective breeding. It's influenced by people, but it's not like it's ceased to be a natural process -- horses do occasionally get to mate and mares still give birth.

Un-natural is where you take things to an entirely new level. Goats which produce spider silk proteins, glow in the dark cats, venomous cabbage. No matter how hard you try to cross breed goats, or cats, or cabbages ... you can't really express any of those traits. It's just not there to be expressed, because it doesn't occur naturally in those kinds of things.

Still even if they did find a species, they could patent the proper way to cultivate it.

How? By describing what kind of plant species it is, what temperature and soil conditions it thrives in, what kind of acidity?

That's called gardening and botany -- I don't think you can patent those.

I'm sure that as soon as selective breeding took place the result, it is no longer a natural process, but one that was influenced by humans.

Well, there's there's 'natural', 'normal', and 'un-natural' (and I don't mean the latter in the sense of some abomination).

Natural would be breeding in the wild -- whatever makes them do well and pass on their genes. This is what they do without us.

Normal would be breeding two horses in the hopes of trying to get one where you get a desirable trait for that breed. This is selective breeding. It's influenced by people, but it's not like it's ceased to be a natural process -- horses do occasionally get to mate and mares still give birth.

Un-natural is where you take things to an entirely new level. Goats which produce spider silk proteins, glow in the dark cats, venomous cabbage. No matter how hard you try to cross breed goats, or cats, or cabbages ... you can't really express any of those traits. It's just not there to be expressed, because it doesn't occur naturally in those kinds of things.

Still even if they did find a species, they could patent the proper way to cultivate it.

How? By describing what kind of plant species it is, what temperature and soil conditions it thrives in, what kind of acidity?

That's called gardening and botany -- I don't think you can patent those.

Humans already caused climate change once. Specifically the huns with Genghis Khan burning down forests all over Asia and Europe. He not only left a trace in our DNA by having many "wifes" making a fair share of Eurasians descendents of him, he also had a measurable impact on the climate on that time.

Wicked! Some src for claims.

LMGTFY: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/stories/what-are-carbon-credits

the same people that need 18" saddles for their guided hunting trips