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Trees' Leaves Grow At a Cool 70° All Over the World
biogeochick writes "Ever turn on the air conditioner on a hot day? How about a heater when it gets cold? OK, so we all know that humans act to keep themselves cool, but what about trees? A recent article on tree core isotopic evidence has shown that trees from tropical to boreal forests all grow at 70 degrees. The study, published in Nature by some fantastic researchers (so one of them is my adviser, so sue me) and covered by NPR on All Things Considered, has shed some light on the convergent temperature at which trees perform photosynthesis." Update: 06/19 21:31 GMT by T : I give, I give -- that's 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
I'm sure a war or two has been fought over whether toilet paper should be hung in the proper overhand fashion or the grotesque underhand abomination.
More Twoson than Cupertino
It's got nothing to do with getting upset. It's about sheer convenience. In large swathes of the World the metric system has been the only system taught for decades and this is an internationally read website which has (I suspect) a demographic bias towards younger people. Providing temperatures in a system that large portions of its readers may not know off the top of their head seems silly and unncessary when all that was needed was a "70F (21C)" to save potentially some x thousand readers have to go Google it or, God forbid, read the article.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Yes, clearly everything runs smoothly when people work in different units. Nothing could ever go wrong. Nobody could spend millions on a probe only to smash it into a planet instead, right?
Sometimes it's worth an inconvenience...
what's that now?
But seriously, when did Fahrenheit stop working?
About the same time that furlongs per fortnight ceased to be a useful measure of speed.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
YYYY-MM-DD(ISO 8601) is the only correct format. When you specify dates in that format, you can sort things chronologically simply by sorting them alphanumerically.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Latest System? Are you daft? Celsius has been the standard for science and, well, everywhere except the US, for a long time. Just because the US has been staunchly ignoring the rest of the world's units and measures doesn't mean that it's this newfangled temperature scale only commies and Jews use.
The worst part is the article says "21 C" - meaning the guy who submitted this had to do extra work to make it that way.
=Smidge=
The rest of the world really needs to start using only English. Honestly, it really is worth the effort to switch.
I'm generally in favor of metrication and the use of metric units, but the issue of temperature is a key exception. The Fahrenheit scale is more precise, and its zero-to-100 degree range more realistically covers the spectrum of what one would typically see on a weather report.
I sometimes wonder why Celsius is considered a metric measure to begin with: It predates the advent of the modern metric system itself. Its zero-degree reference point is just as arbitrary as Fahrenheit's in the big scheme of things. And, the measure doesn't employ metric prefixes (although I suppose they could conceivably be appropriated for the purpose).