Global Warming Has Made the North Greener

New submitter ceview writes "NASA has released its latest green data showing a creeping of green towards the northern hemisphere. From the article: 'Results show temperature and vegetation growth at northern latitudes now resemble those found 4 degrees to 6 degrees of latitude farther south as recently as 1982.'"

Comments

Final nail?

[Joce640k]

Is there any space left for more nails in this coffin? Pretty soon there'll be more nails than wood.

Re:Final nail?

[KeensMustard]

Another thing is that people who believed the earth is warming based on previous weaker evidence are not in any way better or more scientific than those more skeptical who required further evidence.

Actually no, that's not a thing. "Who is better" was never a thing. CO2 doesn't care what you believe about it. You are never actually going to be able to negotiate with it.

Re:Final nail?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the Hell are you arguing, exactly? That maybe Global Warming isn't happening? I'd like to hear that argument, that the observations, namely warming global temperatures and increased global CO2, is not actually proof of Global Warming.

Re:Final nail?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm arguing that the evidence that warming was occurring was not that strong until the late 1990s. It has leveled off since then but looking back at the last 100 yrs of records it looks like we should expect a couple decades of warming followed by a few of stability.

The attitude I observe on slashdot is that it was wrong to ever be skeptical of this trend. This is unscientific.

Now it is commonly accepted that the earth has warmed but the argument has moved towards whether or not this trend will continue which involves many more assumptions than just whether or not the data on warming is reliable. This is the normal progression of science, it is not a problem.

Re:Final nail?

[killkillkill]

What the Hell are you arguing, exactly? That maybe Global Warming isn't happening? I'd like to hear that argument, that the observations, namely warming global temperatures and decreased population of pirates, is not actually proof of Global Warming.

Anyone who denies that the globe is warming is a fool. Anyone who claims the cause of global warming has been proven is also a fool.

Re:Final nail?

[LoverOfJoy]

Any chance this greening will significantly reduce CO2 levels? Or are we seeing an equal or more reduction in green somewhere else?

Re:Final nail?

[Gadget_Guy]

Seems funny how all the alarmists say that man is causing all this Global Warming and jumps on articles such as this, completely ignore that as the glaciers are receeding, they are finding remnents that show those areas were green at least once before in the past.

Can you link to any example of this alleged claim that your so-called "alarmists" have ever said that it has never been this warm before. You just made that claim up because it is easier to argue against stupid made up statements rather than what the scientific community has actually said. Yes, it has been hot before, but it is how quickly that it is changing that is raising concerns.

And where is your proof that this is all about fear mongering to put money in politicians pockets? If you claim to be skeptical then you must surely have some good proof of your claim... maybe. Scientists started studying this phenomenon around the start of the last century, and back then they thought that global warming would probably be a good thing. As they gather more data and studied it further they realised that it could become a problem. Until the 80s all sides of politics were on board with the need to do something to combat the issue.

Then business started to realise that it was going to cost them money, and surprise, surprise it suddenly became a political argument. But if any politician was going to be accused of being in it for the money, wouldn't it be the ones that aligned themselves with the interests of business and went against scientific advice?

Re:Final nail?

[Gadget_Guy]

Please don't offer them any links to history's most deadly storms.

Actually, please do provide those links. While you are at it, also provide the links where climate scientists said that there had never been big storms in the past.

What? You can't? Then what are you talking about now? It seems to be a common tactic on the denial side to make disparaging remarks about those dreaded "alarmists" that attribute false statements to them. What is the matter? Can't you actually argue against the real things that the scientists say?

Re:Final nail?

[Rei]

That changes in CO2 levels always happen after global temps change and never before.

You're talking about Milankovitch cycles. Nobody is arguing that Milankovitch cycles are *caused* by CO2; that's a total red herring. They're *amplified* by CO2. The math doesn't work out if they're not, the cycle simply don't produce enough temperature variation without some kind of atmospheric amplification. That is to say, the sun heats up the earth a bit, and this causes more CO2 emission, which amplifies the effect several times over. The solar heating pulse comes first, followed closely by the CO2 pulse; together they reach the maximum temperature during the warm phase.

Which is actually a very disturbing thing, because it suggests that if we do something to heat our planet, the planet will multiply the effect.

Anyway, Earth already did our current CO2-dumping experiment in the past. It was called the PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) - look it up. Its the last time Earth rapidly dumped large amounts of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere in a short period of time. It changed the world so much that we give the subsequent era a different name - the Eocene.

We're now creating the Anthropocene.

Re:Final nail?

[NeutronCowboy]

Careful there, you might break your back will all the patting you're doing to yourself there.

I'm arguing that the evidence that warming was occurring was not that strong until the late 1990s. It has leveled off since then but looking back at the last 100 yrs of records it looks like we should expect a couple decades of warming followed by a few of stability.

I smell a "it hasn't warmed since 1998" argument here. You're being oddly unspecific, but I suspect that's just your rather weak attempt at obfuscating the argument. I won't go into the details of why picking an outlier in any series as an anchor is retarded or an attempt to outright lie about trends, and I'll just point out that even your weakened and obfuscated argument is wrong:
* you're doing what you accuse climatologists of doing: fitting a curve to existing data and repeating it, without any relationship to underlying physics
* all physical indicators are pointing towards fewer plateaus, as all systems responsible for generating heat and trapping it on earth are increasing. There are a few buffers, but they're buffers, not negative feedbacks.

The attitude I observe on slashdot is that it was wrong to ever be skeptical of this trend. This is unscientific.

You need to learn the difference between being a skeptic (not believing what someone tells you without additional support), and cranking out arguments that have been disproven decades ago, and sometimes a century ago.

Now it is commonly accepted that the earth has warmed but the argument has moved towards whether or not this trend will continue which involves many more assumptions than just whether or not the data on warming is reliable. This is the normal progression of science, it is not a problem.

The normal progression of science involves, and actually requires, the use of scientific arguments. The deniers are resorting to arguments that are so blatantly wrong, and which have been repeatedly shown to be wrong, that it is ego driving the public discussion in the US, not science. See for example people still trotting out the volcano argument, or that 1998 was somehow a good anchor point to start trend lines.

Re:Final nail?

[spiralx]

It could easily mean that the mammals suffered less than other animals around that time. If 90% of non-mammals die out but only 70% of mammals die out then that will certainly lead to a massive expansion of mammals relative to other species; it's still the case that the vast majority of mammals died out though.

Re:Final nail?

[roky99]

There is some information on this site that gives an overview of the adjustments that have been made to the USHCN data and provides links to further detailed references. I am no expert but my impression is that the adjustments have been made for sound and fairly standard reasons such as time of observation. Furthermore, and the whole point of that page, a different method of adjustment has been applied that yields very similar results. This would tend to suggest that both methods are robust.

It is a standard 'skeptic' tactic to complain vaguely about 'adjustments' to data as if adjustments are intrinsically wrong or suspicious whereas in fact it is rare in science for raw data not to need some pre-processing before robust conclusions may be drawn from it. However I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Unlike me, you might very well be an expert on this topic, so I'd be interested if you could explain specifically what you think is wrong with the adjustments.

...has a liberal bias

[freedom_surfer]

As the great Colbert said - Reality has a liberal bias!

Re:...has a liberal bias

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but mostly because conservatism has a stupidity bias.

Re:excellent

[someone1234]

Are you aware, that most of the population of the USA lives on the shore?
Living in a half submerged skyscraper might be novel, but kinda unhealthy.

Re:More green?

[BasilBrush]

So the world is becoming more green due to global warming?

The article doesn't say anything about the world becoming more green. Only that the north, above the 45th parallel is. That's Canada, Northern Europe, Russia and up to the arctic. It doesn't say anything about the balance between that and desertification nearer the equator.

It does fit with other studies and models to help confirm the reality of global warming though.

Re:More green?

[Sique]

It's not the world, which becomes greener, it's the North. If at the same time the equator regions become aride, coastal areas sink under the sea and deserts are growing, then we get a huge migration from the equator to the northern regions. It's up to you to decide if that's good.

Re:I've played this game!

[girlintraining]

If water becomes scarce enough in heavily populated areas to justify transporting it continental distances, I very much doubt anyone is going to be interested in protecting your property rights. You'll be trampled by a flood of refugees fleeing the drought.

Fifty to one odds you're American. Anywhere else, and you'd know what's going on outside your borders. Let's look at a place where there's already large amounts of desert, limited water resources, and tons of refugees. There's an entire continent with these problems called Africa. And would you know what -- there's property rights there. If there's one thing you can learn from them, it's that bullets are cheap. You have nothing to worry about on that front.

The other thing is, you make it sound like tomorrow the equatorial region of the planet's going to suddenly go apocalyptic and everyone will be rushing out of there overnight. Dude, this isn't Hollywood. Even at the incredible speed at which global warming is occuring, we're still talking about something that's happening at a speed unlikely to significantly change the environment you're living in within your lifetime. When I say significant, I mean "I lived in a lush forest when I was born, and now it's an apocalyptic desert where no rain falls." It just isn't happening that quickly. It's devastating, and very bad for us as a species, but it's not happening quickly.

Which means such an exodus would happen in small enough numbers that it'd be less like Army of Darkness and more like 28 Days. Large tracts of nothingness, the occasional person... nothing you can't handle with a high power rifle and some explosives, dear.

Re: More green?

[Rockoon]

H2O shrinks when it goes from frozen to liquid. Thermal contraction.

Which has nothing to do with anything...

The volume of water displaced by floating ice is exactly the volume of water the ice will fill when melted.

The ice on land currently doesnt effect sea level, so here too the contraction when H2O goes from solid to liquid is meaningless.

The thermal expansion being discussed is that of liquid water as it warms.

You are proof that a little bit of knowledge is a terrible thing. You know that water contracts when it goes from solid to liquid, but you clearly have no idea what it means in practice.

"Towards the northern hemisphere"

[Toam]

It isn't heading towards the northern hemisphere, it's heading towards the north pole. There is plenty of "green" in the northern hemisphere already.

Re:"Towards the northern hemisphere"

[Chrisq]

It isn't heading towards the northern hemisphere, it's heading towards the north pole. There is plenty of "green" in the northern hemisphere already.

I think that is the key point. People should also realise that places that are currently green further south may well become desert - this doesn't mean more green it means green further North. It seems to confirm predictions that the "Wheat belt" may move North from the contiguous USA and central Europe to Siberia, Northern Europe, Canada, and eventually possibly Alaska.

Re:More green?

[Sique]

Look at how much grant money is given out these days to GW research. There's the reason why. As always, follow the money and it will usually lead you to the answer.

Not much at all, compared to the money that is given out for instance for oil exploration and new extraction technologies. So follow the money.