Slashdot Mirror
Climate Change Doubles Drought Stricken Area
Cally writes "The National Atmospheric Research Center has published research showing that the percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, and attributing this to global climate change. Interestingly, the lead author comments that 'droughts and floods are extreme climate events that are likely to change more rapidly than the average climate'."
I used to think exactly that until I saw a show on the Discovery Channel about the deep sea current that flows from the North Atlantic to the SW Pacific.
Yes, my source is a TV show.
It clearly explained (in terms a CS guy could understand) how the threat of global warming is NOT rising temperatures and rising sea levels, but rather a decrease in the salinity of the North Atlantic which will disrupt the deep sea current. The result of this will be a dramatic and nearly immedate end to the moderation of climates enjoyed around the world - basically everywhere north of the Tropic of Cancer and south of the Tropic of Capricorn will experience an ice age while the equatorial region will become a desert that makes the Sahara look quaint.
I'm not prepared to argue the merits or weaknesses of such conjecture, but The Discovery channel sure as hell convinced me - to my (climatology amateur yet) analytical mind, the arguments all stacked up. The salinity situation is all but impossible to refute and the climate data culled from Antarctic glacier ice cores indicates that sudden radical shifts in Earth's climate into an ice age are nothing if not typical.
By the way - if somebody knows what I'm talking about and has a good link to the material, I'd love to see it. Telling people about the TV show I saw that one time gets old.
I was supprised that this article doesn't mention the effect of land use over climate change. One of the fastest ways the increase the local tempeture of an area is to cut down all the trees (raise by 2-3 degrees C). Remember over=grazing of the mid west led to the dust bowl during the great depression. Sadly a lot of developing nations use bad farming practaces, and that is why deserts are the only ecosystems still expanding today.
Ugh...global warming does not mean the earth temperature increases everywhere by the same amount. It changes weather patterns. Some places may get hotter, other colder. Some places may flood, others experience a drought.
I mean I know the phrase "global warming" sounds like the temperature everywhere will just increase by a degree or so, but jesus christ, why doesn't anyone ever take a few moments out to learn what it really does before forming an opinion on it.
Yes. For there is no physical fact known to absolute certainty. None. Not one. Absolute truths are limited to geometry, mathamatics and logic. Gravity, speed of light, any idea based on measurements, all such ideas are are all subject to doubt. But I would not suggest jumping of any tall buildings. The odds are very very high that such a jumper would become a messy spot on the ground in just seconds.
Climate is a complex subject. Understanding it would be very unlikely to help you get an audition on the "O'Reilly" factor. It would be more likely to keep you off such shows. But if you did want to understand, here is the best overview I know of:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm
About 100 years ago, the "liberals" would have been the ones arguing that all changes are gradual in response to conservative nut cases talking great floods and cataclysmic events. Today, the conservatives seem to shut their eyes to the possibility of catastrophic changes, and the liberals are more likely to be talking about catastrophic change.
The world is a lot stranger than "liberal" vs "conservative". While climate change will probably look sudden on a geological time scale, on a human scale it probably will not look catastrophic until it is catastrophic. Which is exactly too late. Isn't preventing change what "conservatives" try to do?