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Are deserts expanding from global warming ?

In the link (2) cited below, the article mentions "the world is becoming warmer and drier, and this means there is less water to support plants and animals". This is not necessarily true. In fact, long range forecasting models predict that along with global warming comes a wetter world. Although the moisture may not be spread equally across the globe, while some deserts might expand, so too would some rain forests. Furthermore, according the US Environmental Protection Agency, little research has been done on how global warming might affect deserts. The EPA even points out that while one model shows an increase in deserts by 185%, another shows a decrease by 56% (4).With such uncertainty I believe it is too difficult to determine how much if any of desertification is due to global warming.

(1) http://www.ieca.org/Resources/Article/ArticleChinaAdvancingDeserts.asp

(2)http://www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet/ontheline/explore/nature/deserts/prtconserve_desertification.htm

(3) http://www.mrdowling.com/607-deserts.html

(4) http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/content/ImpactsDeserts.html

Oh, and by the way, London had the worst snow in 50 years at the start of February. Your point was ???

For every example you can Google, I can Google a counterexample !

China, whose consumption has grown some 400% in the past 10 years, America isn't the only country that is buying the oil anymore.

So let me tell you the difference between Christians and Muslems when it comes to sacrilege...Christians boycotted...urged others to boycott...wrote letters to the newspapers. Muslems(sic)...threatened us with bombings and death.

You're saying that because in your job selling books you dealt with some people who expressed anger and resentment in different ways, you can tell everyone that Islam is more violent and evil than Christianity. Yes, that was implied by your post.

I don't expect you to bother learning some history, but perhaps others who read this will pause for a second and realise that violence and rationality varies from one person to another, within the same person at different times and in different situations - and that's dangerous and foolish and ignorant to forget.

It's people with simplistic world-views like yours who thought it was a justifible idea to crash planes into buildings three years ago. Those who moderated you 'interesting' can perhaps be forgiven for pointing out an example of the sort of dogmatic thinking that causes so many global fisticuffs. Those who moderated you 'insightful' are clearly a bit feeble-minded. No dobut I'll be labelled a troll for this - but if you, Brandybuck, at least, consider how easily you jumped from subjective experience through to stereotyping and cultural generalisation and plain out-and-out insult, maybe you'll notice the next time you think to do the same.

• -- world's largest democracy. (no link required)
• -- world's largest standing or deployed land force.
• -- world's largest employer is in India.
• -- Kerala, the state with over 99% literacy (one down, 28 to go :) )
  
  oh and i saved the best for last -- India as a country has 52% literacy.

You lost to the friggen Haitians! Were saved twice from Germany by in no small part the US (btw the second time we saved France we were also fighting a war against Japan). Yes we lost Vietnam (formerly know as French indo-china (with Kampuchea and Laos) who also booted out the French. You lost Quebec to the English, you won the 100 years war but burned alive the woman who led you to victory. Hmm Napoleon won a few but he was Corsican.

The US defeated England in our revolution (I will grant the French were there but we did most of the fighting) and the war of 1812, we defeated Mexico (another nation that kicked the crap out of France), Beat Spain in the late 1800's, helped save you in WW1, then again in WW2 (while fighting at the same time two very powerful nations), we fought to a stalemate soviet plans and Chinese troops in Korea, lost Vietnam because we did not play to win, then won a few minor wars with Panama, and Iraq (again France cant beat Haiti so it relevant), and most recently helped the NA removed the Taliban from Afghanistan (umm Karzai is still president of that nation and the taliban is shrinking more and more every day).

Now on to what you are not trying to hide from is France Socially superior to the US??

Literacy: both France and the US have over 90% literacy
Here . The french are a whopping 2% higher than the us here . When you take into account that nearly 4% of the US population are illegal immigrants (people who want to come to this land of misery as you call it)
here and documented imigrants are around 10% of our population
here we have a much harder task in front of us than the French. There are schools in our cities with kids who speak more than 30 languages doubt France has to deal with that.

Now onto "misery, insecurity and unhappiness are more present in the USA than in France." I would like to see how you quantified that? As it's not something you can measure but Ill give it a try.

Lets start with lenght of life
People in France live one year longer than Americansas a % that is 1.3% longer (that can probably be written off to a large immigrant population who may come from a nation with a poor health care system, but even if not that's statistically insignificant as the US and Germany are tied so they must be miserable too.

Now lets look at standard of living the US GDP per capita is nearly 30% higher in the US, same source as above and also here

The US has a higher quality of life according to UN data here .

We are also a Cleaner Nation here

Now while none of this prooves the US is a more happy, and secure place than the zoo between Germany and Spain it goes allot further than your post. If you care to get into a war of wits (again be careful about being French and in a war) at least come armed next time.

Finally about most of our genius coming from abroad if you speaking to our roots as a nation (being we are 70% of European decent) than I would put it to you that you have no point as they are educated and nurtured in America. If you are referring to the # of foreign students in our universities I would ask you why are they coming here rather than going to France? I would also put it to you that your culture was started when you lost a War to the Romans and had their culture put on you, Western Culture owes more to the Italians and Greeks than the French, English, and Americans put together. There is nothing to argue we are not perfect but we are better in most ways than the French.

Note: I consider an Immigrant who comes to this nation and becomes a citizen to be the most loyal and important kind of American one who made the choice

Actually you know that the US is the only nation in 'the West' that doesn't have a 'socialised' health system, & guess what? The US just so happens to have arguably the worst health system in the West too - its the most expensive health system in the world, both per capita, & as a percentage of GDP, plus in total too, even though 40 million Americans have no coverage what-so-ever.

That's the trouble with basing policy on ideaology, one loses flexibility.

Hence on balance, the most successful economies are the mixed economies, where they don't let themselves be restricted by ideaology & take policies from both the left & the right, depending on which is right for the job.

BTW, in other ways the US is a mixed economy - for example the US has a socialised highway system.

You see, compared with other sectors, demand for healthcare services are relative static in reaction to price - people do not get less sick just because prices go up. Consequently in a market based healthcare system like the US, relative speaking healthcare providers can charge what they want & mostly get away with it.

However in the rest of the OECD its different. Take the example of Canada. A couple of Years ago some doctors decided to opt out of the system & charge what they want, well the govt just said we won't pay them, & if patients wanted to see them they'd have to pay them themselves. Well what do you know, those doctors lost most of their business overnight & eventually they all gave in.

Here in Oz its similar, if doctors charge more than the schedule 'bulk billing' fee, its up to patients themselves to cover the balance. One can take out 'gap insurance', but insurers know if they covered the whole potential 'gap' doctors would be free to charge what they want, so even the insurers will only cover a proportion of the gap (a percentage of it, up to a certain maximum threshold). But because its much easier for doctors just to bulk bill the govt, rather than mail bills out & chase them up - where in the end they get a cheque from medicare (the govt agency that covers payements to healthcare providers) for the schedule fee bit & another cheque from an insurer that covers the insured part of the gap & then the balance in cash from the patient. Which means months of waiting because the patient has to 1st mail the bill to the govt healthcare agency to get the schedule fee cheque, then when they get it back they then mail it off to the insurer to get the 'part of the gap' cheque from them. So basically the govt makes it so inconvenient for either doctors or patients to go private, that the vast majority of both chose to go public, ie the doctor just bulk bills the govt & patients ddon't have to worry about bills at all.

Consequently in the rest of 'the West' healthcare costs are only about 8% of GDP, or something, while in the US its nearly about 15% & rising. As a percentage of GDP the discrepancy is even higher. Plus in the rest of 'the West' there's 100% coverage, while in the US, 40 million Americans have no coverage.

One standard for comparing health systems is life expectancies. M'nn "it appears all those countries with 'socialist health systems' have better life expectancy rates than the US". Ecen Cuba's almost matches the US's.

BTW, how often do you lobby the US govt to privatise its socialist highway system? Afterall the fall of the Soviet Union shows that socialism doesn't work, which means US highways are bound to be more efficient if they were all privacised & there were tollbooths on every entry ramp.

& imagine the efficencies that could come with increased competition, you could have a dozen different companies all operating different tollways between San Diego & LA. That would be real efficient. Afterall increasing choice always makes things better - look at the 60 TV channels, that's much better than just having BBC 1, 2 & 3 & a couple of token private channels like they have in the UK. Mind you how does that Pink Floyd song go? '40 channels of shit on the TV' or something?

Hahahahaha. Richest how?

By GDP, duh.

Idoit.

-Bill

Yes, you're quite right, I should have said would have instead of did, respectively, however this is a mistake I made because I was irritated with the original comment I was replying to and didn't proofread closely enough. You have my apologies. Any literature about Marx, however, very plainly demonstrates that what occurred in China and the USSR were not what he intended nor what his writings put forward. Here's a nice short one that simply states the difference, but there is a large amount of his shorter letters and articles on the 'net that can be found with a simple search. I'd also like to point out that he was alive during the events going on in Poland and eastern Europe, as well as political unrest Russia, and commented on revolutions and many of the smaller events that did influence the later Russian Revolution or its participants. It's not as if it's something that just happened in one weekend. It had many factors involved, and while Karl Marx's writings were one of them, they were interpreted in ways I'm sure he did not intend or would have approved of.

(Whoever modded my comment:) Just because I make a mistake does not mean I am a troll. Why don't you just reply with a note that you don't like what I have to say, or send me some hate mail? I don't care if you disagree, but I'm getting rather sick of being called something I'm not. Not everyone who expresses an opinion other than your own does it out of spite.