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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.
Yeah, if prefer mud and slush to nice powdery snow
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
.... who cares if some island nations are wiped off the map or a few thousand people drown in Bangladesh?
I get that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it seems like nearly all of the "society ought to do X" suggestions for combating climate change equate to "reduce CO2 emissions." However, CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas; methane is barely mentioned except in reference to livestock emissions, particularly from ruminants; and water vapor is practically ignored. Why isn't anyone suggesting interfering with the water cycle? Water vapor is a major greenhouse gas. Alternatively, since clouds cause global cooling, why not a plan to increase cloud formation? It's known that decreased albedo in the poles will lead to them getting warmer, why not a plan to artificially increase albedo? White paint or whatever. When it comes to "plans that require decades, cooperation between most of the world, and trillions of dollars", why are we so laser-focused on this one plan to decrease CO2 emissions?* It seems to me that big problems tend to be solved with dozens of smaller solutions, rather than one big "hurray, it worked!" solution; true, there are many ways of producing energy aside from burning carbonaceous materials, but as I've mentioned above that's just attacking the issue from one angle.
*I imagine a big part of the reason is "don't spend $billions on that, spend $billions on this (which I have a stake in) instead." But that doesn't fully explain the issue either, I think the 'call to arms' to rally scientists to consensus has caused a little too much groupthink, and bluesky ideas which should be seriously considered are being dismissed out of hand.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The reason is that there are really two issues rolled into the climate change debate. The first is man-made warming itself. The second is environmental conservatism in general. What many climate campaigners would like is for humans to stop destroying our natural environment - cutting down forests, polluting rivers and lakes, that sort of thing. Many of the same people/organisations who were drumming on about environmental conservatism since before the climate change debate, simply used climate change as their latest vehicle to get their message out. Nothing wrong with that.
However, the reason they don't want to talk about geo-engineering, is that if this is seen as a viable option, then the two issues separate again. In other words many people will see a much simpler third way which involves technology preventing global warming, while they continue burning oil and buying endless junk they don't really need.
Sadly, humans being humans, it is likely that this third way will be the one we take. However, the biggest risk I see is that while us rich westerners just buy a few more air conditioners and argue about whether climate change is a thing or not, some country that is bearing the brunt of the problem decides to setup an aerosol plant and begin feeding something into the atmosphere that they think might fix the problem for them. I mean, if your country is starving due to drought, or sea level rise threatens to wipe you out, and the rich western countries are busy arguing about whether they should be able to have enormous cars or giant cars, you might just get desperate and do something risky for the planet.
Once you're finished terraforming Earth, it will become habitable for intelligent life.
Sincerely, Your Neptunian Overlords
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Since when was the sea level predicted to rise so fast people would drown from it?
Sea levels rise, storm floods now start flooding areas that were previously farther from the coast and relatively safe, people cannot afford to just abandon their property and buy new land and build a new hose/farm in a safer place elsewhere because they are so poor they can hardly afford food, the government is to corrupt/apathetic/incompetent or just plain too poor to build flood defences which in many cases may even be a futile effort... result? Lots of people drown in storm floods in places like Bangladesh.
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.
Rise In CO2 Has 'Greened Planet Earth'
Gah. Stop verbing adjectives. It really infuriationates me.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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