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Scientists Surprised to Find Earth's Biosphere Booming
radioweather writes "An article from the Financial Post
says that recent studies of
biosphere imaging from the NASA SEAWIFS satellite indicate that the
Earth's
biomass is booming: 'The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and
Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA satellite
data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole
became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated
landmass — almost 110 million square kilometers — enjoyed significant
increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms
in, it finds that each square meter of land, on average, now produces almost 500
grams of greenery per year.' Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the
planet and the presence of CO2, fertilizing the biota and resulting in the
increased green side effect."
Green Side Effect as a result of the greenhouse effect. So are we all gonna die or not already?
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
More CO2 => increased temperatures => more greenery => more CO2 absorption => decreased temperatures?
another excuse for Bush and Co. to use
"Look were making the planet greener by fertilizing it with CO2!"
Biodiversity is declining and that's a bad thing even if more weeds are growing in Oshkosh.
The arctic ice pack is melting and that will ultimately change the earth's albedo in a bad way. I don't see much optimism in that, even if some plants in some places grow better due to changing climate conditions.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
Moderator: How are we going to turn this into something that will scare the masses - we have a few more anti-privacy bills to pass..
Jeff: We'll be attacked any minute by a muslim man-eating creeper and..
Jill: What about we are all going to starve because.. uhh..
Tony: We're gonna be taken over by weeds..
Jill: Weed!
Jeff: Man eating weed..
All together: Muslim-man-eating-weed!
Moderator: Great, let's write that one down.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Quote from article "massive programs in an effort to remove as much as 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.
If these governments are right, they will have done us all a service. If they are wrong, the service could be all ill, with food production dropping world wide, and the countless ecological niches on which living creatures depend stressed."
Bollocks, governments are not removing emissions, they are reducing emissions. Thus we will still keep all the CO2 in the atmosphere, we will just pump less new CO2 into the atmosphere.
Thus the plants can keep growing all they like, we won't be removing their food anytime soon. All we are doing is slowing down the pace at which we are overfeeding them.
So how much of this increased biomass is due to higher yielding farming techniques over the past 20 years? And how much of the higher farm yield is due to fertilizers from crude oil? (hint, in 1st world countries, you cannot profitably farm bulk crops without oil originated fertilzer)
Remain calm! All is well!
... is whether this outweighs the negative aspects of global warming or not.
I'd say it's too early to say for sure, but it would definitely be interesting to find out.
I've seen many references to "the cause" of oceanic "dead zones" being nutrients (mainly agricultural run-off of chemically active nitrogen) but this seems paradoxical:
Yes I know the story: nutrients create algae blooms which then die and decay thereby robbing the ocean of oxygen.
What I'm referring to as a seeming "paradox" is not only the fact that the base of the food chain is dramatically expanded by nutrients --
but that the organisms making up this foundation produce _oxygen_ from photosynthesis supporting algae grazers with both food _and_ oxygen.
Why don't the smaller, rapidly-reproducing zooplankton take up the gauntlet?
Virtually all of the articles I've read on hypoxic waters and dead zones fail to address this paradox. I've only read one paper that
mentioned even an _hypothesis_ of how algae grazers fail to flourish -- referring to algae species that protect themselves with toxins.
But this doesn't ring true: Why would the most pioneering of algae species be the most protective of themselves when there is so much
opportunity to evolve optimizations for growth rather than defense against grazers?
Seastead this.
That's a good point. I read an article a while ago stating that some parts of the oceans are experiencing a "return of the slime" - the higher life forms are disappearing, while simpler life forms are booming.
Probably not something we want to have. I'd rather have fish and seafood than algae slime, thank you very much.
Consider the source. The summary links to two rather untrustworthy sources of global warming information. Why are there no links to the actual study? Maybe the lack of appropriate links is, in it's own way, part of the story. Colour me sceptical.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
like the US government, nature seems to have a neat system of checks and balances in place to prevent someone from coming in and ruining everything.
Antarctica is currently so cold, it cannot snow. But it is currently melting. Along with this melting, Antarctica is heating up, and soon, it WILL be able to snow, and this snow will cause the glaciers to grow. Balance.
More CO2 in the air means plants will grow bigger and faster, and begin pumping O2 into the air. Balance.
Unfortunately, humans seem to be a lot like the Bush administration. we barge in and start screwing around with things so much, these checks and balances disappear. this is what we call a tipping point, and I believe we are nearing the point where it will be socially acceptable to crack each other's heads open and feast on the delicious goo inside.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Everyone is too focused on political scaremongering, everyone else is too afraid to come out with anything unpopular in case they're called an "oil company sell out" by the idiot global warming mob and lose their jobs.
its from a blog... where's the link to the article or research paper?
An excellent example of taking raw data and jumping to a conclusion. Certainly, if the numbers show that plant biomass is up, then biomass could very well be up, but is that a good thing?
This does not take in to account bioDIVERSITY. While we may be increasing crop density, causing giant algol blooms, is monoculture something that we really want?
You can introduce an exotic species of grass to populations in the Moaje desert which are extremely prone to burning, but will grow back from the ground. All of the native plants, which are not accustomed to fires die off. What you're left with is an exotic grass that any number of animal species may need be able to utilize. Destroy biodiversity at the bottom and everything above it falls apart.
Same goes for giant algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico due to high nitrogen runoff from agriculture. Sure there's a metric fuck-ton of algae growing there, but at what cost? If the death of every other living thing (or nigh on) in the surrounding area is good, then... great!
Furthurmore, last time I checked, Carbon was not exactly a limiting factor in plant growth. I've seen plants die from pH, salt poisoning, incorrect water levels, heat, cold, you name it. However, I don't think I've ever seen a plant suffer from lack of CO2.
In short: To say that plant biomass alone accounts for a healthy ecosystem and that increased carbon levels confers from magical "nutrients" to plants is far-fetched at best.
There is one constant and one constant alone about the history of our planet: its changing... thats what it does.
I'll all for conservation, but ppl need to decide if CO2 is helping or hurting (not that we put out enough for it to matter, anyhow) before telling the world it needs to spend $40+ trillion on *fixing* things.
Yeah, I'm bitter.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
Depends on what you do with the plants, if you let them rot deep under ground yes. If you burn them (for heat, etanol, diese or whatever.) no.
I wish I could find a reference but I remember finding out about this years ago. Scientists were studying levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and found it to be about half of what it "should" have been based on how much we were outputting (i.e. instead of 6 bazillion tons it was only 3 bazillion tons). They realised that it's because the added carbon was causing an increase in biomass.
But, considering that the amount of CO2 is still rising, as are temperatures, it is clear that this process is not fast enough and it will reach saturation very easily. Trees only use CO2 when they're growing - after that, if they are burnt in a fire, or if they die from some cause, they will release all that CO2 again back into the atmosphere. It's clear that new trees cannot keep growing forever.
Basically, in the short term this is a good thing, but in the long term, it's likely to make the shock bigger, when the process reaches saturation or when a massive fire happens(and it will, rising temperatures + more trees = more likelyhood of fire), and all that CO2 stops being absorbed or gets released back from the trees.
That's right, everything is bad. There can never be any good news. Slash slash, bleed bleed. Maybe you should be making music rather than posting on slashdot.
I don't understand what it is with the idea that increasing greenery due to increasing CO2 emissions must be counterbalancing exactly. The call can't be made just yet. If the increase took place over eons like all the other natural increases, that might be a good counterbalance mechanism. But the increases we're making are obscenely fast, and could trip other things like methane releases from the ocean and rapid melting of the ice caps before any of these counterbalances can... counterbalance.
Calculating from these numbers, we arrive at
2 * pi * 6.38e+6**2 * 20% * 0.5 kg * (1 - 1/1.062))
or 1.5e+12 kg as the increase in biomass over 20 years.
At the same time, the DOE reports that we emit 7e+12 kg of carbon every year. Even assuming the bulk of the biomass increase consists of carbon, we can see that Mother Nature has been capable of absorbing only 1% of our emissions in land vegetation and wildlife.
The posting headline is misleading: the article author has written a book attempting to debunk global warming. This is not a scientific consensus, but one man pushing a contrary position. Check it out, and make your own evaluation:
The Deniers
Lawrence Solomon is author of a new book from the new Richard Vigilante Books. The book is The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud *And those who are too fearful to do so. And that about tells you everything you need to know. In The Deniers, Solomon focuses on profiling the scientists Al Gore conveniently doesn't engage. In the run-up to the hottest holiday of the year, Earth Day, he took questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez.
Remain calm! All is well!
First of all, note that the auhtor here does have an agenda. From the end of the article:
"Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers"The book he wrote does make a clear statement about how he feels about the current debate.
In any event, none can say that this development is linear. Beyond a certain point, maybe the balance between heating caused by CO2 and the increased plant consumption looks very different, and turns around. The complexity of these systems are not to be underestimated, and reading this article as "Some more CO2 might be good for us!", or at least reading it as a excuse not to do anything (like all those SUV owner might), would be bad.
we were not pumping in lots more CO2.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That global warming will kill the planet. It might kill the current life forms, and new ones will emerge. The question is, can we survive that change?
Do you know how obvious it is that you're just stringing together buzzwords and out-of-context facts that you looked up on Wikipedia?
I'm convinced that humans can't ruin the world by using CO2 admitting sources of power (perhaps if we burned it all at once not for energy). My reasoning:
1) Humans are not very the best at surviving extremes in weather. Thus:
2) If CO2/other green house gases screw up the air humans will die off before most other life forms.
3) The ones that survive will tend to be CO2 digesting lifeforms which will bring things back to normal and in the meantime probably have a hayday with all the extra food.
Environmentalists bitch about the selfishness of man to burn plant harming fuels etc. But then most of their arguements revolve around how it affects people. Oh look at this poor tribe that had to move from the coast presumably because of the ocean level rising (it has in fact declined on average). Oh there is draughts in Africa (but they don't mention that it was a record crop year in the Americas when we had all that warming for the El Nino, also better fishing conditions etc).
It certainly means more CO2 is being taken up in the global biomass. Not enough CO2 is being taken up by the biomass to prevent global concentrations of CO2 increasing though. The other worry is that as global land temperatures increase the release of CO2 from soil increases as well (bacteria in the soil will rot vegetation down quicker). So, even though the mass of vegetation over land increases, the carbon in the soil decreases and the land becomes a net source of CO2 rather than a sink. For example Cox et al 2001 : Acceleration of global warming due to carbon cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model, Nature, 408, pp 184-187
Well, yes, but at the same time those plants absorb some CO2 out of the atmosphere to grow. And then you eat them, shit it, and it's not going back into the atmosphere. Or they get turned to clothes, paper (quick-growing trees are used as crops to produce paper), etc, which end up in a landfill and again it's not quite going back into the atmosphere.
So while some CO2 _is_ produced in raising those crops, yes, including in creating their fertilizer, they also remove some CO2 from the air. So the balance isn't as doom-and-gloom as you seem to assume.
Second, we're talking fertilizers, not plastics. Most of what those plants need is nitrogen, which actually comes from the air. (Fossil fuels don't contain much nitrogen.) E.g., ammonium nitrate is nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen. There is no carbon in it at all. (And even if there were, it would go into the plant, not back into the air.)
Technically, some carbon is used there, but at least for the Haber process that's methane gas from natural gas fields. There's buggerall need to start from oil to produce it. And it's recycled back into methane by the end of the process, so it's basically used more as a catalyst than "OMG, dumping CO2 into the atmosphere." The Odda Process is even more fun, in that at least one variant of it can actually use CO2 and fix it to CaCO3.
So all that remains as a source of pollution there is that, like any factory, it needs some energy. It doesn't necessarily mean oil, though. I'm sure you can use nuclear power instead, which, for whatever other sins it may have, has exactly zero CO2 emissions.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm reminded of something a hisotory professor mentioned to me a year or two back: Back in the days of the Roman Empire, Britain was renowned for the quality of grapes it produced, owing to the warm sunny weather typical of England. Basically, the Dark Ages coincided with widespread cooling of the climate in Europe, as well as the political and social breakdown we all know and love that time period for. The temperature drop meant fewer crops would grow, and thus less quality food to go around, which probably only made things worse at the time. Dunno if global warming would mean England is primed to be a move and shaker in the grapes and olives industry though.
--Rags
Life is like a burrito. Sometimes the beans go bad.
Biodiversity is the logical result of a lack of bio-adversity. Bio-adversity, or a period of stress as we are now seeing, will weed out the species less able to adapt. Darwin has never been disproven in this aspect of his observations and conclusions. The most disturbing aspect to most "extremists" is that the change is "man-made." Guess what? Man is part of the biosphere. I'm not advocating that we abandon restraint or forgo seeking knowledge about our planet, only that we realize that we are bound to impact our planet, so long as humans survive, innovate and flatulate.
Our climatological knowledge is so limited and fragile that jumping to conclusions requires huge leaps of faith that would put a fundamentalist to shame. Collect the data, draw tentative conclusions. One doesn't accurately map a complex surface with only one or two data points. Forgo the FUD.Invenio via vel creo
until the definition of an ice age will be when there's some ice at the poles, yes?
Fair enough, though I don't see how science will manage to get that right...
A warming earth encourages evolution.
Have fun with the ideological contradictions.
So is the blogosphere
...but I bet those fighting against extinction of tigers, orangutangs, for habitats of wild and on-the-verge species, are fighting not just for themselves.
But of course, when youÂre only thinking of yourself, you would naturally assume everyone else would too.
The dangerous temperatures of 34degrees will become deadly temperatures of 37 degrees. The arid areas will expand and the people who used to live there will move to where you live. Got any spare houses for the dispossessed? If you deny them entry because they're foreigners, well what do you think they'll do? Die of starvation or invade?
For many lowland areas, the summer melt of snow packed in the mountains (and replenished in winter with snow) is the only thing keeping the rivers flowing in summer. Snowfall that doesn't melt runs down a lot slower than rain on the mountain, so you'll have just as much water through your rivers but they'll appear in the early spring rather than spread out over the year. So you'll have more drought and yet more flooding. This is generally not considered a good thing.
Its a perfectly valid comment. Please mod parent up!!!! Its too obvious that the environmentalists have modded this down. More plants = more CO2 is used to produce oxygen!
Sir, you owe me a new keyboard :-)
As somewhat of a socialist (the Western European kind, not the Soviet kind), I sometimes find it funny how "left" or "liberal" (which in most of Europe actually means "right") has become a blanket insult in the USA for anyone and anything who's not for giving more money and unchecked power to the corporations and billionaires. Especially how it's supposed to be some kind of monster hell-bent on destroying the industry and humanity.
The "left" is mostly about how you divide the pie, so to speak, not about trying to destroy industry. We're all Keynesians, yes, both Europe and the USA, we all live in a massive overproduction potential, and we all have our governments spend some of that excess to keep it going. Essentially any first world country can produce orders of magnitude more than it needs, and has to find a way to (A) use that surplus for something useful, and/or (B) keep some people busy doing something that doesn't produce anything. Giving corporations more money just results in B. More and more people are hired to engage in nearly zero-sum games, like marketing past a point. Yes, it stimulates consumption a bit too too, but even that (1) only goes so far, and past a point the effects are infinitesimal, and (2) is ultimately a way to waste some production capacity instead of just dumping those resources off a hill.
There's something inherently heartless to argue that someone poor should be denied healthcare, so someone else who's already rich can buy a new barbecue grill. Or that you should dump that excess into having more lawyers and marketers, instead of having a few more doctors.
And no, it hasn't destroyed the industry so far. Germany for example was doing great with a socialist economy, until it had to absorb the obsolete industry of East Germany. Now it's recovering pretty nicely from that again. All the leftist stuff like good welfare, good medical care, unions being officially a part of the corporate management, etc, haven't really resulted in anything bad so far.
But anyway, I digress. That's really what the "left" is about: how you distribute the wealth. The GINI index. The idea that someone below poverty line can use an extra buck on his wage, more than the CEO needs another ten millions on an already ridiculously high wage.
The "Greens" are something else. It's something orthogonal to it all. Yes, they too want some taxes, but then they want to spend it on their own ideas, not on (immediately) improving the lot of the poor. I'm not necessarily saying that it's good or bad, just that it's something orthogonal.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that the political spectrum consists of a hell of a lot of variables, not just one axis between left and right. The ecological agenda is just another axis in that multidimensional space, rather than something inherently leftist.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
but life isn't going to go extinct anywhere soon.
This is just a sign that, whatever happens, nature will always find its way.
Everytime something fucks up in the environment (be it something as impressive as some comet falling from the sky, or as mundane as one species like us gettint a little bit over-populated thus exhausting some ressource quicker than it should be, releasing a tad more pollution and favouring monocultures slightly too much) first you see extinctions due to the changes of conditions (granted, big scale event like meteorite or massive volcanic activities are much more efficient than us at this) but you could never wipe out completely life from the planet (even in case of stellar gamma burst sterilizing the surface, you could still find some bacteria hidden in deep oceanic trench) then after these extinctions there are suddenly a lot of new free niches both because they were left free after their previous owner died and because the environment changed. And once you have free nichew, there's bound to be a boom in the biosphere with evolution rushing to fill the free niches.
Then you reach a plateau, the crazy expansion where evolution comes up with whatever weird animal it manages stops.
Species start to specialise, less fit are weeded out by the competition, and less efficient disappear. You have a little setback in the biosphere and then you reach a new dynamic equilibrium, that will stay similar with only minor optimizations here and there (the whole cheetah vs. antelope tuning).
Until the next ecological accident. Then the whole story repeats again.
This is something that has repeatedly happened in the past (specially, huge ecological catastrophes with mass extinction have left very strong traces of such stories - dinosaurs is a popular one. Comet comes, kills dinosaurs, mammals bloom and diversify much more than with dinosaurs, mammals saturate the ecology, some of the weirder species disappear and the rest reach the lasting equilibrium that we know today)
And this is bound to happen again. On bigger scale (in case of gamma burst) or on much smaller scale (we human fucking up the eco-system).
The question is not whether life will be wiped from the surface of the earth. This can't happen any time soon (not until our sun goes nova).
The question is will we find a way to survive through the next few small catastrophe that might happen and how to avoid making them worse.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
A report on scientific research from scientific organisation on anything that remotely involves polar bears = vitriolic series of postings .
... slightly more diplomatic language and a certain modicum of decorum.
So I hazard a guess that no new light will be shed on anything here.
Perhaps our slashdot illuminati Overlords could move these ad trawling sections to a healthy debate in a pub?
I could suggest one in Govan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Govan where we might possibly see the active use of
But bring your own RPG and don't wear a football top.
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rest of the world doesnt eat whales.
Read radical news here
I don't remember any massive die-off of plants in the recent past. If they did, where did all the herbivores go? Their teeth aren't right for eating meat.
There are two countries that have everything to gain from this warming, Canada and Russia. For the most part, they will not suffer from desertification like the USA, but they will benefit greatly from the limits of agriculture moving steadily northward. And in both countries, the huge forests will produce 6% more wood than a few years ago. Of the two, Russia is in the better position with bigger oil reserves compared to Canada's tarsands, and with a larger educated population that can leverage the benefits of being resource rich. Also, China is a resource poor country when you factor in its population size, but this market is much easier for Russia to reach than for Canada.
Couple this with political factors such as former Soviet countries now full members of the EU, increasing cooperation between the EU and former Soviet countries in Asia, Russia applying the EU model in a building up a dozen treaty organizations throughout former Soviet countries and beyond, and you have the makings of a real superpower. The hawkish position of many American politicians is the fuel that spurs Russia to take this road.
It's hardly any wonder that this is happening - all of that carbon was present in the atmosphere and then fixed into biomass during the carboniferous era. Now we're taking it out of the ground and putting it back into the biosphere, essentially returning the planet to those days.
Personally, I am concerned about the survival of as many life forms as possible, all of whom are being affected by Homo sapiens stomping blindly, willy-nilly all over the place, many spouting selfish bullshit like yours, eating up the world and being smug and self-satisfied with their designer beer. Whatever "favors" we may be doing by releasing carbon into the atmosphere are more than mediated by the fact that we are as a collective quite an ugly phenomenon vis a vis the rest of the biosphere.
Think of everything that life has learned up to now. It's all in the DNA. The DNA is everything life has learned about surviving and prospering and experiencing itself and the universe around. Evolved over billions of years, invaluable, irreplaceable information that interacts to sustain life. We are erasing that information, burning it up. We're not making a backup, and it sounds like you're saying it doesn't matter, it'll all work out in the end so it doesn't matter what we do. That's utter crap, because it does matter. It matters because what we do defines us, and as I look around, it seems that what we humans consider valuable runs quite counter to that which upholds the biosphere that sustains all life.
To me it seems like nothing less than a deep imperative to be concerned about all life and to treat all species as our beloved friends. At any rate, we should not dismiss every other species with banal cartoon characterizations like "fuzzy animals." Sure, you'll find plenty of people who'll pat you on your clever head for that one, but the biosphere is giving you the finger, pal. Life happens to be full, profound, and challenging for all living beings, whether you consider them cute, fuzzy, and ridiculous or not. To dismiss the deep experience of every other species, while exalting our own relatively banal imitation of life is hilarious to behold.
You should endeavor to give the deepest possible respect to all living beings. It may lead you to a deeper appreciation of life, where your concerns aren't bound purely by stylistic considerations: how large, how many fingers and toes, whether the being is fuzzy or "cute" or ugly, whether it can do calculus or get voted off American Idol.
Until you as a person give up your thoughtless species-oriented prejudices, you limit your access to the living world, make everything about "us" and "them," focus on differences, make life a war and a struggle, and closed off in a homo-sapien bubble.
You don't have to make it such an adversarial thing between you and those like me who are trying to love more broadly, but I can understand that some people prefer it that way, because they feel reasonably comfortable that they have the upper hand.
Well, congratulations on your hard-won success!
It just sounds like all you care about is you and yours, and you've got a very limited idea of who fits in that little group. Why would you not try to be an advocate for as many beings as possible? Most higher animals are quite helpless and oblivious in the face of all our madness, and without the intervention of concerned humans, they have no hope. Aren't the helpless, the voiceless, and the downtrodden exactly those who need us to wake up and work harder for them?
I mean, if you feel contempt or indifference towards the helpless.... well it has a fascist kind of spirit, doesn't it?
-- thinkyhead software and media
"I don't know if doing this will kill the patient, but let's wait until we find out to think about not doing it".
when they figured out that it was the earth's blogosphere, not the biosphere, that was booming. In other news, they may have found the source of a lot of the hot air that has led to global warming.
Its a blog.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Wish I had some moderator points right now. MODERATORS: mod parent +1 Insightful
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
I thought when Gasoline hit $4 and oil up in the got up in the $130 people would stop calling the folks who say that 'oil is going to become expensive after the cheap oil is extracted'... loonies. Drat.
Also, as far as I recall the only peak oil claim about food is that it will cost more to transport when gas costs $3.50 a gallon or whatever ridiculously high yanked out of their ass number those loons tossed around (this claim was from like four years ago).
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
I for one welcome our new green, CO2 breathing overlords.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
Looks like global warming is doing something right. Now if only those plants could keep up and convert the co2 back to oxygen faster.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Evolution is not "good" or "bad", it just "is".
You might as well talk about skyscrapers encouraging gravity. Or pollution encouraging chemistry.
Anthropomorphizing the universe is an ideological problem, but it looks like you're the one with the problem.
Very interesting, if a little skewed... for example, saying governments want to REMOVE CO2 from the air... no, stop artificially inflating, yes... but you wouldn't know that from the article. I'm also a little concerned.. this contradicts known behavior of most species of plants who simply cut back on pore count when CO2 is higher than they need. And then... no offense, writer, but do we know what KIND of plants are contributing to the changing chroma of earth's albedo? I put forward that GRASS isn't a good substitute for trees... there are holes in this that MIGHT be easily explained by the author, but should not be ignored before conclusions are made.
But I have this to say... you're a blatant biased pig.
I mean, you're getting on the case of a sovereign nation Israel threatening military surgical strikes against a nuclear weapons program at a neighboring sovereign nation that keeps expressing the intent to destroy their neighbor Israel.
You are the same sort of idiot as some of my elementary school teachers were who believed that the kid being picked on by bullies was just as much to blame as the bully and therefore should be suspended.
No, you'll raise your voice to decry Israel for their statements, but sit back and blindly ignore Iran's statements.
Sorry, you're thinking is just great for college classrooms. But gets people killed in the real world. Why don't you go put a "Free Tibet" bumper sticker on your car. Cause we all know that's going to help free Tibet.
++
Insert text to make comment long enough for Slashdot to accept.
I had to do some research on the Little Ice Age a few years ago and every single source I found came back to the same thing, that we're still warming back up and that it's still significantly colder than it was 1,000 years ago.
Disclaimer: No, referencing research by various groups that contradict "the sky is falling" mentality of global warming is NOT flaimbait. Yes, temperatures most likely will go up. No, we will most likely not have a huge catastrophe that destroys mankind.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
too lazy to even check out TFA...
You missed the several thousand articles about Iran declaring their intent to wipe Israel and every Jew off the face of the planet.
And the fact that they are actively engaged in weapons development programs toward the accomplishment of that fact.
Or the fact that this will be one of a number of times the world has silently thanked Israel. You see, the chicken powers (U.S., U.K., Russia, France, etc) sit back going "We REALLY do not want this nutcase to have nukes. But we'll cause an international incident if we act. Let's just wait and see - knowing Israel will have to act since they're the target."
And then Israel does a surgical strike. The world condemns them publicly and thanks them behind closed doors for doing what none of us western nations have the balls to do.
Since the biological things in the biosphere are made of mostly of Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Nitrogen (the old COHN thing) in that order... Why should anyone be suprised that massive pumping of hydrocarbons out of the ground and conversion (burning) to CO2 - which plants like - is increasing biomass? Let me rephrase that - we're adding mass to the biosphere, why shouldn't we expect an increase in biomass? It's so like "Duh"... If a "scientist" didn't see this comming, they're not much of a scientist.
...were just "waiting for science to get all the facts right and remove political/personal agendas" about whether cigarettes cause cancer?
For decade after decade?
the hockey stick graph was disproved so take that and smoke it you global warming bandwagoneers
they intentionally left out the medieval warm period to make it look like the modern age was to blame - typical UN stuff. why let the truth get in the way of an agenda?
the forests are more plentiful now, and if you can get the President of Brazil to stop plowing his rain forest to plant ethanol sugar crop, then maybe the biodiversity drop would stop. That isn't gonna happen since you dolts forbid drilling for oil or using coal, even with carbon sequestering - or perhaps nuclear for elctric generation? Get Yucca Mtn going now. Moron greenie commies.....
the records show that they are on the increase and recently putting them ion the endangered species list was a wrong headed politically driven move.
the polar bears are FINE. They keep records on these animal, their numbers, their family units. There are more now than there were 35-40 years ago.
pollution is not defined as killing life, it is defined as wacking the natural balance out of balance
eutrophication for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication
eutrophication is when the soil is fertilized for agriculture, and the run off causes a massive boom in algae in rivers and streams and bays, which suck out all of the oxygen, reducing a previously complex ecosystem into a slime pit
so what we have here is eutrophication of our entire planet, its atmosphere
the idea of being good stewards of our planet is not a monopolar concept. it is about keeping things in balance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I live in an area that has benefited from recent changes in microclimate. At 850 foot altitude, we are getting lots better annual precipitation than before, and the season formerly known as "winter" is so mild that I can get plenty of great bike rides all through the season.
So yes, by all means, keep it coming.
On the other hand, there's the nearly billion people who live at less than 80 feet altitude who will be looking for new homes.
Are you offering your land to the displaced people? That would be a nice sentiment, assuming that you have the resources to offer it! If you don't have the resources for those teeming masses, be prepared for some "adjustments" in your lifestyle.
No "alarmist" has ever claimed that CO2 will kill the planet. They claim that if we don't watch out, there will be resource wars that make WWI and WWII look like playground fistfights.
Hey you greenies. Plant more trees. Go plant some apple or other fruit trees, since most of you are fruity vegetarians anyway. New tree growth sequesters more carbon than old growth, which is why the modern lumber industry is a very green thing. They grow trees as a crop, the trees are used for building - not destroyed but sit there holding their carbon as houses and such. Also, you should all be proponents of green gasoline. You grow fast growing poplar trees, convert them to the gasoline compatible (runs in unmodified gasoline engines) biofuel green gasoline, burn it in vehicles, and the new crops resequester the carbon.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111392&org=NSF&from=news
From what I've read, current CO2 levels are at the low end of what plant life can tolerate.
Past CO2 levels have been documented in peer-reviewed journals:
This discussion may prove enlightening:
Honestly, "at worst we are a bad case of Eczema to the Earth" (Jon Stewart I believe) and the Earth will be just fine with out us. When we "fight" Global Warming/Climate Change we are fighting for our way of life and lives. We might change the biosphere enough that we can't live in it anymore in the numbers and the quality of life that we have enjoyed.
I'm honestly not worried about the grander scheme of life. Life will find a way. Even if we make the planet Venus-like... life will find a way. But, maybe without us.
[signature]
Ummmmmm .... yeah. Hint its called "Greenhouse" effect for a reason. A greenhouse (or hothouse) traps heat/engergy and makes nice warm places that PLANTS thrive in (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse). Now here's the trick, how do we open the windows to vent it so we can live here too?
As an atheist, religious people annoy me, but even more annoying are people who dabble in naturalistic mysticism. It's like you're almost there...almost rational...but no, in the end, you still need your mystical spiritual comfort teat. You should realize that the crap you are saying--Gaia, 'wonderful self-regulating system evolution has produced'--is a bunch of crap. Evolution is not perfect, and it's not imperfect...it doesn't really self-regulate...it just is what it is. You act as though it has intention. There is no intention. It is just a complex system full of opportunistic, adaptive agents. Yes, there are carbon and oxygen cycles...plants make our air, we make theirs. But that is opportunism on both ours and the plants' part. But there's no overall organization worthy of your mystical fantasies. Your analogies of 'Gaia's immune system' don't add anything to the understanding of how nature works. you have an inadequate, simple-minded, WRONG understanding of what evolution is, and what scientists have to say about it.
You mean the planet is getting colder not warmer? You mean it turns out that increased levels of CO2 are actually good for the planet and global warming is an international communist conspiracy carried out by the U.N. and designed to reduce the population of the world to abject misery and slavery?
Wait you mean to tell me that increased CO2 levels will lead to world prosperity the likes of which has never been seen? You mean we can actually start farming areas that were previously considered desert? You mean contrary to popular opinion we should not only not be trying to reduce carbon dioxide creation, but INCREASE it as much as is possible? Who could have predicted that? Only someone who took biology in fifth grade and actually paid attention:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freerepublic.com%2Ffocus%2Ff-news%2F2007402%2Fposts&ei=YDhNSKf7FKT2gQLcy_mnDA&usg=AFQjCNE-9gxV6myERRvOyldNNNP1CxjuUA&sig2=fWJgH4DKm7wd0E2mwyr0rw
We've gone quite off topic, haven't we? The very first post in this thread was asking, rather flippantly, about whether climate change now is good or bad news (I don't really think he was trolling, BTW). And now we are into trolling about how Israel is the innocent victim of the insane hatred of those crazy Muslims - which, strangely has been modded "insightful". That is something of a quantum leap, even for /.
But since it has now been brought up - what does anybody really think they will achieve with this hysterical posturing? World peace? That Israelis and Palistinians will be brothers forever? No conflict can be resolved unless all parties want peace enough to put aside their grievances and reach a compromise. This is true whether we are talking about toddlers throwing toys at each other and bawlling their heads off, or whether we talk about superpowers on the brink of war. Compromise is the only way - and as with all compromise, it will cost both sides more than they like.
I would have thought that Israel has the stronger reason for wanting to make peace with their neighbors. They can only maintain their present position because the US supports them, and that may eventually come to and end; it depends on America being the strongest superpower in the world, with huge resources at their command - resources that are running out. If the crisis really bites, and it comes to a choice between taking care of American citizens and upholding Israel, will the US still support them so unflinchingly? And if the US falters, as well they could, Israel will find itself in a precarious situation. If I had been in their shoes, I would have made an effort to make frineds with my neighbors.
"Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, fertilizing the biota and resulting in the increased green side effect."
So if we get more plant growth, that's global warming. And if we get higher temperatures, that's global warming. And if we get more hurricanes, that's global warming. More tornadoes? Global warming. And if it hails in Tokyo? Global warming. Less vegitation? Global warming.
Higher temps, lower temps, more storms, less storms, higher humidity, lower humidity, floods and droughts, and everything else - no matter what's going on around you, it's all due to global warming.
Sounds a lot like the stuff of internal memos at a pharmaceutical company to me. "Whatever's going on with you, our new miracle drug Xylamiaciliacin will make it all better"
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Yes, nitrogen does come from the air. But the really high-yield crops (like corn) require *fixed* nitrogen fertilizer (something like ammonium nitrate).
How do we fix that nitrogen? In an industrial processing plant that uses lots of oil and natural gas, of course.
Couldn't the premise of the story be reworded to "Plantlife thrives in greenhouse conditions"?
What's got the scientists so surprised?
This is NOT good news folks. What it shows is the whole planet acting like a pond filling up with algae. Sure, the "algae" are doing well. For now. But our position in all this is like the trout who can't deal with it.
This is yet one more solid piece of evidence that the weather patterns our crops depend on are heading into territory that may have no place for our technological civilization.
News at 11: Turns out that the fundamental nature of reality isn't a monotonic function.
Worth noting: yours is a good argument *against* ID: why was the supreme designer asleep at the switch here? Surely he could have made a better food chain: the phyto flourish without starving the oxygen levels utterly or spewing so many poisonous byproducts, then toughed-up zoop's swoop in to eat 'em, then fish eat them, etc...
And while we're at it, couldn't (S)[Hh]e have done something about the stank? Fetid water could smell like daisies, or a steak dinner with cheddar fries on the side.
Instead, everything dies and the whole area smells like someone barfed into my nephew's sweatsocks. Bravo, chief! (golf clap).
The article gives a false impression of climate security based on the premise that higher concentrations of CO2 are leading to increased plant growth. While everything else in the article is wrong and/or misleading, it is true that increased CO2 increases plant growth, up to a certain point. The problem is, this is low-quality plant growth.
This Nature Journal article (2 Aug 2007, subs. required) describes research confirming increased CO2 concentration increases the mass of crop output. However, the nutritional content of the crops dropped and the growth of crop-destroying pests doubled.
This article in New Scientist reports research showing increased CO2 levels increase pollen production in ragweed. The researchers report a strong correlation between increasing CO2 concentration and increasing rates of asthma.
Similar findings, along with additional information, are described in this blog post.
"I'll go with waiting for science to get all the facts right and remove political/personal agendas."
Assuming you are serious, what is your definition for "facts" and how will you know when you have ALL of them?
I mean there are 11,000+ google scholar hits for papers using or citing the SEAWIFS data set. I don't even see the paper referenced in either link let alone a credible understanding of the biosphere. This is not to say the paper is wrong, it's just that the spin in the article is making me dizzy and I want to vomit.
As you can see from all the amount of research using the SEAWIFS data set there is no need for you to wait. And that's just one data set, our collective knowledge of climate (and the biosphere in general) has exploded since the 80's and the only political/personal agendas you need remove are the ones that are stopping you from being a true skeptic and practicing the scientific method.
Unfortunately this means getting a basic grasp of the existing body of knowledge and evidence, if that's too much then you may find reputable blogs worth a try, especially for mythbusting.
BTW: Whoever modded you insightfull also does not understand the scientific method. Science will never "get all the facts", waiting for that oxymoronic event to occur implies either ignorance or some sort of political/personal agenda.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There were geologic ages where either the oxygen, carbon dioxide, or both were higher than they are now. And the whole planet was literally a jungle full of lush life.
Its not whether life life can survive in such conditions, but what happens when this changes occur in a century or two instead of hundreds of thousands of years. Some species may have a lot of trouble adapting to quick change, including coastal-dwelling humans.
You've fallen for the trap of equating Zionism as a political movement, with Semitism as a religious movement. The distinction is significant because few, if any individuals here who oppose Israel's actions also oppose Judaism.
It is possible and reasonable to oppose any system of government that selectively grants political and human rights based largely on religious affiliation, without opposing whichever religion that may be. In that regard, state sanctioned repression of religion is also wrong in Canada (provinces that fund a parallel Catholic school system but no other religious school systems; historic "residential school" system that systematically eradicated First Nations religion and culture), Iraq (anyone who shared Saddam Hussein's branch of Islam is now systematically disadvantaged), Tibet (citizens share work, lifestyle and customary gods with the rest of China, except for formal religious practices), and formerly in Northern Ireland where a historic religion-based map making exercise on Britain's part also disenfranchised a great number of people and resulted in decades of sectarian violence and terrorism.
Even though it's tempting to turn a blind eye to the religious-based violence in Israel due to the unfortunate Nazi experience, it is because of such travesties that we must not allow any state to selectively disadvantage portions of its own people based on religion or ethnicity.
Let's hope that we do not follow an analogous path of technological or economic map making and exclusion based on well-meaning dogma.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Satellites see dominant species, not diversity. So where does the diversity point come from? A "report" attached to a petition!
Great.
Here's a good way to get a lot of people confused:
mt
To me it seems kind of pointless to try to halt CO2 production in the world. Yes, we need to cut down on the other nasty gases that directly affect our cities, but why such an emphasis on C02? Lets say we listen to the Envirotards and totally stop burning oil right now. It would cost the world trillions of dollars which represents a huge percentage of human effor on this planet. Now that we are in a C02 reduced paradise, a huge volcano erupts spitting millions of tons of the stuff into the atmospheare. What the hell did we accomplish? I say that we reduce pollution accross the board as it fits into economic constraints, and spend the money and research hours on Geoengineering and learning how to colonize other planets. A major climate change is but one of many human extinting events that we have to face if we want to continue to survie for another millenium.
You know, this is really discouraging. Why don't you people talk about what you care about, instead of what you hate about each other? Jesus, this is sickening.
Halfway around the planet real human beings just like you and me are being forced to return to the charnel ground where they used to live by a military junta, because that junta prefers them to be hopeless and cowed instead of hopeful and possibly trying for change. They get to smell their dead neighbors as they sit in their ruined houses.
And your life is so trivial that you worry about how much it costs to drive your 170 pound ass to work? Get some perspective, man. If the price of gas doubles, you're still one of the most fortunate people in the world. If the roof over your head gets repossessed, and you're forced to live in a cardboard box, you're still better off than those people.
I don't wish that fate on you; I'm just saying, count your blessings. Stop beating up on each other. Try to find some common ground.
BTW, pop quiz: do you know which military junta I'm talking about, and where they are?
The world has already started to solve this problem and if we really wanted to halt it, we could just dump iron scrap into the ocean.
The only question I want answered is 'Why should we even bother to fund climatoligists and their studies? It's settled, right?'. We should be funding engineers to solve this problem, and there are lots of solutions.
the world is going to become a swamp. Very nice for most forms of life. I expect giant mosquitoes, massive yellow jacket nests and killer ants like in that old movie where they had to hold them off with a ring of burning gas.
great for life and probably biodiversity in the long run, but maybe not as fun for me. I HATE yellow jackets.
This is an article in a financial rag. It is meant as a PR piece for the tactic of suggesting that since CO2 is required for the processes of life, then governments have no right to regulate its release into the atmosphere. I'm surprised by how much traction this specious argument gets from otherwise logical /.ers.
And while I haven't read the original paper, I suspect that the authors did not come to the conclusion that CO2 emissions must not be reduced, which is absurd on its face.
Can any of you really accept the premise that regulating technological release of CO2 (i.e., releases above and beyond what we exhale) would endanger life on earth? That we must not interfere with coal plants and suv's, lest we harm the planet?
Seriously?I love how so many people seem to be so sure of themselves about what we're doing to the planet. In my observation, people are lazy and don't like to change their lifestyles. So they latch on to whatever allows them to justify that lifestyle.
The problem with the scientific debate on climate change is that it is so politicized. Biased media organizations try to tell people what to think, and since people are too goddamned lazy to do any research they listen to whatever sounds best to them.
So who should we listen to? In my opinion, we should listen to the scientists that study the climate every day, because they are the only ones with the expertise to understand the implications of the direction the climate is heading. If people really think that every climate scientist is involved in some huge hoax, then they probably don't understand what science is, or have some insane mistrust of the scientific community.
This article discusses a study conducted to find out how much debate there is over the reality of anthropogenic (human induced) climate change. It also acknowledges that even though there is scientific consensus (despite what you may think from what the media/politicians say), it doesn't necessarily mean that they are correct. But science is the best thing we have to understand the world around us, and we need to stop letting non-scientists convince us that experts all disagree.
life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think
Point is that if there is a stable level of more greenery on earth that means more CO2 is absorbed.
Like Carlin says, we don't have to save the planet, it will be just fine. Human life, on the other hand, might have a bit of a problem.
Last time I checked, the planet is BLUE, not GREEN. This green business is absurd.
The mantra "save the planet" is hugely arrogant. The planet isn't going anywhere. This rock will be here far longer than us, possibly. Quit being intellectually dishonest. What you mean to say is "save the humans."
Any first year biology student can tell you that heterogeneity is key to the health of any biological system, and "over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%" does not mean jack if all of that "bounty" is tied to one organism ... say ... corn.
All it takes is a single blight in a monoculture to induce another An Gorta Mór or An Drochshaol and we're already looking straight into the headlights of something similar with bananas.
This strikes me as another piece of disinformation meant as a palliative to soothe the masses who've grown restive over the real degradation of the biosphere.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Some points to consider:
1. Plant growth is often not CO2 limited, but rather temperature limited, moisture limited, nutrient limited, etc. And not all plant species experience significant CO2 fertilization (). Increasing CO2 doesn't automatically increase plant growth, and increasing it to arbitrarily high levels does not produce arbitrarily large growth. The FACE CO2 manipulation experiments have shown interesting results in this area.
2. Increasing CO2 increases global temperature, on average, which has a number of negative effects on forests, fuzzy animals, and the biosphere.
3. There is more to environmental health than "increased terrestrial vegetative biomass". By and large, there's very few better things we could have done with our intelligence for the continuance of life on Earth than releasing all of the trapped CO2 back into the atmosphere so that it can be used again. That's pretty hilarious.
Plants grew really well in the Cretaceous. Doesn't mean we necessarily want to return to that climate, though. The only species that are going to really be adversely affected by this sort of change are those who have set up permanent settlements right next to the water and can't easily retreat further inland as the water rises. Or has critical infrastructure that can be easily destroyed by hurricanes and tornadoes as the weather becomes more chaotic. Or species which can't take climate extremes or climatic impacts on their food chain. Which can't migrate fast enough to keep up with shifting temperature zones and precipitation bands. Especially if we put up a lot of roads and buildings and disrupt migratory pathways and eliminate available habitats. Or the ocean species which can't take drops in pH from dissolved CO2. Or the ones which depend on sea ice. How fast do we expect them to adapt?
mrbluze great sig! Read democracynow.org + amconmag.com FTW! Sorry about the off topic mod me down if you must but I had to say that!
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Americans getting fatter, news at 11.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Only from the extra biomass it holds at the moment, so sure it lowers it, or well, it already has since there already are more plants, but it's not removing more the whole time if all of the carbon the plants holds are released into the atmosphere sooner or later. Some of it may remain on the ground thought, but I doubt all are even if the plant rot on the ground.
And the oil we are burning are old plant material from quite large areas stored up over millions of years, isn't it? So I doubt a little more plants for a tens or 100 of years do much of a difference.
(And as I said much of that biomass are probably things we grow for food, auto fuel, heat and electricity, even more of it may be algea, some of it may be trees we don't use for anything.)
The Financial Post (Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers)*.
So some author has a "Growing number of scientists" (to whom do we owe the credits?) who thinks things are roses, huh? And this is on a financial website? Hell, I'm going to go by some Freon and use it to power my H2!
"According to a growing number of scientists", the period of global
warming that we have experienced over the past few centuries as Earth
climbed out of the Little Ice Age is about to end."
[*] The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming
Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so (Hardcover)
http://www.amazon.com/Deniers-Renowned-Scientists-Political-Persecution/dp/0980076315
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Regardless of the value of this article, I have a question maybe someone here can answer. Would a worldwide "grow some plants" campaign have any potential for positive effects on the CO2 level in the atmosphere? For instance, if everyone in the world planted trees and started weed gardens. Just curious to know if there are some glaring roadblocks with this sort of thing.
Can we make it even better? How about we kill off say 5 billion humans, anyone who doesn't have internet access for example (since they're not likely to read this and wouldn't know of the mass genocide being planned against them online). How would that effect the biosphere?
Will 5 billion cadavers make for good fertilizer?
This is incredibly insightful, but is always ignored by the global warming fatalists.
So a few coastal cities eventually MIGHT(MIGHT!) wind up underwater. Will it happen overnight? No. Plenty of time to pick a place away from the flooding and move out. Laguna Beach crowd swimming -- I could give a hoot. Some seriously poor people in Bangladesh swimming? The money given to CO2 remediation could move them all into luxury condos in almost any country.
It bothers me on a visceral level that anyone can take incredibly initial condition dependent non linear equations and crow about inevitable outcomes. It's all Al Gore's fault. He needs to find another cause to trumpet before he incites even more mass hysteria.
The species that is most likely to survive is not the strongest, but the one most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin - Paraphrased
Oh, and "duh". More heat = more available energy = more life (to a point). Fuzzy animals and plants are great. But I'm more worried about how G.W. will affect humans, seeing as I am one.
I Am Not A Dendrochronologists;
But, I do recall that the CO2 level is reportedly the highest PPM since about 600,000 years ago, when the ecology was a bit different.
"The current concentration, around 350 ppm, is actually at the lowest end for plant survival."
I wonder if you aren't just full of crap -- if your name actually is "Anonymous."
There are N4 and N3 plants also involved in the mix of plants NOT inside PolyTunnels. The N4 plants like warmer temperatures at night to convert energy to carbohydrate and release oxygen. The N3 plants, thrive when nights are cooler. Guess what? Other than soybeans, most of the food we eat is an N3 plant.
So, while algae, weeds and soybeans are going to thrive -- I think the rest is a big risk and we MORE quantity life isn't just better because there is more.
This also doesn't prevent people injecting more CO2 into their PolyTunnel Farm -- whatever the hell they are trying to grow in it.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Trees and weeds *grow themselves* if we simply don't destroy their habitat. I somehow doubt that a few small trees per household in pots on people decks, and small weed gardens are really going to offset the many thousands of Acres per day of wild spaces that are burned, bulldozed, and otherwise de-vegetaged. Sure, it might add up to a few hundred million additional trees, which sounds good, but I think in practice, everyone who *can* grow some trees and gardens (e.g. they have some land on which to grow plants) largely already does. Every house with land around it I've ever seen already has some landscaping. Even commercial and often times industrial property will have *some* plants on them.
The problem is, when humans occupy a space, it goes from hundreds of trees and thousands of smaller plant varieties (ok, I'm kind of making up numbers here, but the general gist of this is still true) packed into an acre, to a building, a drive way, sidewalks, some grass, maybe up to 10 trees, and a dozen or so shrubs.
Granted, we gotta live, and work, and go to school, and do commerce, *somewhere*, so it's a tough problem. The biggest problem, I think, is simply overpopulation of the planet. We're approaching 7 Billion people in the world, and that is really a spectacularly large number, especially since humans consume far more resources per-capita than most species (meaning we require a lot more land). 7 Billion ants, on the other hand are probably what you would find in a small rural town and outlying townships.
Population is a deliciously difficult problem to deal with because, as far as I can tell, people just won't voluntarily slow down reproduction, and non-voluntary population reduction measures, at least all that I've ever heard proposed, range from morally difficult, to downright evil.
I see no difference between religious fundies and burning globe fundies. Both want to control how I live without my having a recourse or say in the matter and they want the power to kill those who will not obey.
I don't give a rats ass about fundies, religion or science. Expecially science since it's been so perverted by the leftists fundies, the eco-fundies the fright wing fundies that there is no science.
I choose humanity and it's ability to solve problems over killing humanity either from being cleansed from for the sin of not believing in god or the sin not believing in the burning earth.
I'll vote from the rooftops eventually.
We hit 102 at my house. It must be global warming. But wait a minute, we had the coldest winter on record, so that must also be global warming. We've had a lot of rain this year, probably because of global warming, but wait a minute. We had less than average rain last year, and that was also global warming. The grubs are particularly fierce in my lawn this spring, must be global warming.
As far as I am concerned, the fire-breathing Global Warming fanatics (and that is exactly what they are) have lost all credibility because it has long been observed that, over the course of history, the more fanatical someone has been about their argument, the less credible that argument has ended up being at the end of the day.
I've had enough...
It would be nice to have a peer-reviewed paper cited, rather than a climate-change denialist (and another site, probably also denialist). So here's a link to Running's publication page. The relevant NASA presentations appear to be here. Have fun, folks.
Antarctica (having about 70% of the worlds ice) is actually growing in terms of volume and area of ice (Though very slowly, nearly steady state).
There is also arguments that a world without ice would have more useful land. For example Iceland and Greenland would have vastly more habitable land and Antartica would be livable too.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/waterworld.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
Average sea levels are raising but at a much much slower raise than several thousand years. The challenge is to prove that the rate of change is different than would be expected at this point in the freeze/thaw cycle and that it is caused by man and not just slight variations "this time around".