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Rise In CO2 Has 'Greened Planet Earth' (bbc.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from BBC: Carbon dioxide emissions from industrial society have driven a huge growth in trees and other plants. A new study says that if the extra green leaves prompted by rising CO2 levels were laid in a carpet, it would cover twice the continental USA. Climate skeptics argue the findings show that the extra CO2 is actually benefiting the planet. But the researchers say the fertilization effect diminishes over time. They warn the positives of CO2 are likely to be outweighed by the negatives. The lead author, Professor Ranga Myneni from Boston University, told BBC News the extra tree growth would not compensate for global warming, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, ocean acidification, the loss of Arctic sea ice, and the prediction of more severe tropical storms. The new study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change by a team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries. A new study has also shown that ever since Americans first heard the term global warming in the 1970's, the weather has actually improved for most people living in the U.S. The study published in the journal Nature found that 80% of the U.S. population lives in counties experiencing more pleasant weather than they did four decades ago.
In the Netherlands it's the other way around, 30-40 years ago, we used to have long summers, with warm weather. These days if we have a few days warm weather before it starts to rain and storm again, we are happy....
Yeah, if prefer mud and slush to nice powdery snow
Same. California used to be nice and warm, but some parts have become unbearably hot during the summer, and the drought devestated the area I lived in after I moved away. Furthermore, many of us quite like the rain and snow - you'd be suprised how many people leave Hawaii or Arizona after the weather gets old.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Methane is causing much less warming than carbon dioxide. It is a big worry for the future, though, and much attentions is being paid to it.
Water vapor falls back to land very quickly. It can only cause local warming.
Clouds cause cooling by day but warming by night. The net effect varies by type of cloud. Too many clouds can interfere with growing crops.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
But scientists say that in the more ancient past, California and the Southwest occasionally had even worse droughts — so-called megadroughts — that lasted decades. At least in parts of California, in two cases in the last 1,200 years, these dry spells lingered for up to two centuries.
The new normal, scientists say, may in fact be an old one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...
it's in my head
Try a month of 40c+ like we had a few years back in west australia. That was hellish.
And the fun part is some of the areas in the north of australia had regular 50c days. Thats the point where people start dying without some sort of cooling.
I should note the article states "Since we started talking about global warning in the 1970s" or something to that effect. No, we've been talking about it since the late 1800s when the greenhouse effect was first discovered and worried scientist started wondering if all the coal being sooted into the air from the industrial revolution might have unintended consequences. The science was always fairly solid. CO2 (and other gases like methane) absorb gases at various spectra, which then becomes either heat (warming) or disipates into kinetic energy (storms and general chaos). There has never really been any proposed new physics that would prevent this happening, nor reliable observations that it isn't, yet unfortunately a large population still thinks its this whacky idea invented by environmentalists in the 70s and then adopted by some spooky lizard people cartel looking to lie about physics for some reason nobody seems to be able to explain.So I still call it the greenhouse effect, because thats what it is.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
California suffers cyclical droughts roughly every 40 years. They tend to last about 5 years and to sustain the population, reserves of water must last through the drought.
There are two ways to make sure the reserves are enough.
1. Build reserves to match consumption for roughly 5 years.
2. Limit consumption to match 5 year reserve capacity.
If Cali does that, then its fine.
Our problem in the Golden State is that we didn't build reserves to keep pace with population growth... or we didn't limit development and zoning to what could be sustained through droughts.
To blame the whole thing on Global Warming when it was spelled out very clearly in the fucking 70s with blueprints, time tables, budget forecasts... Its fucking comical.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
When the elites start leading by example I'll get on board not before. Until then it reeks of "some animals are a little more equal." I am solidly convinced that reducing carbon emissions globally would be a good thing. You don't even need to buy into climate change to accept that, after all it can't be good manipulate the carbon cycle in closed system upon which we all depend that we barely understand.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Its a simple fact that flying first or business class has a terribly higher carbon foot print. If Obama cares so much about climate change he would set an example the new airforce one would have been a 737ER with all coach seats! Set up that way there would be plenty of room for his entourage and the press core, it would just be way less comfortable. Ah but you see sacrifices are for the rest of us to make.
The elites don't need to lead by example. They can simply pick up and move to wherever things are pleasant, while all the "little people" die off. What, you actually thought they give a damn about you? If billions of us "little people" died off, all they would do is move somewhere until the bodies were done decomposing, so they wouldn't have to deal with all that annoying stench.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
And it used to happen all the time. There are entire cities, that went under water long before the infamous "hockey stick". Tasmania and Kodiak Island used to be connected to mainland until very recently.
Did shamans of those days blame the sins of the humans — such as burning too many fires — for it? Probably...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
No. The amount of water in the atmosphere is mostly independent of what we put there. It goes away on its own in a few days.
The main reason for the increase in the water in the air is the warming of the Earth, which is mostly caused by carbon dioxide. If we want less moisture in the air we need to reduce long lived greenhouse gases.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)