TV Coverage of Cycling Races Can Help Document the Effects of Climate Change (phys.org)

Researchers from Ghent University were able to detect climate change impacts on trees in Belgium by analyzing nearly four decades of archive footage from the Tour of Flanders. The findings were published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Phys.Org reports: Focusing on trees and shrubs growing around recognizable climbs and other 'landmarks' along the route of this major annual road cycling race in Belgium, the team looked at video footage from 1981 to 2016 obtained by Flemish broadcaster VRT. They visually estimated how many leaves and flowers were present on the day of the course (usually in early April) and linked their scores to climate data. The ecologists found that the trees had advanced the timing of leafing and flowering in response to recent temperature changes. Before 1990, almost no trees had grown leaves at the time of the spring race. After that year, more and more trees visible in the television footage -- in particular magnolia, hawthorn, hornbeam and birch trees -- were already in full leaf. These shifts were most strongly related to warmer average temperatures in the area, which have increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1980.

Comments

Possible solutions?

[Kernel Kurtz]

Maybe they could spray those trees with something to prevent this problem.

Re:Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

I noticed a lack of citations on your claims. Here's mine:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...

Nuclear power is in fact the safest source of energy we have today.

The claim on nuclear power being a prime target in war is cute. Have you seen a modern nuclear power plant? Did you notice something? A big concrete dome perhaps? I'm sure if someone dropped a big enough bomb on the dome it would break open but if that's your standard then consider this, how well protected are windmills from an attack in a time of war? What of solar panels? You want to put windmills off shore too? I wonder how well protected those would be from an attack, or a drunken container ship captain.

If you want to talk about making land unusable then consider how much land would have to be plastered over with solar collectors. We can't grow crops in the shade. Oh, we put the solar panels on the roof you say? That doubles or triples the cost. When prodded on price solar power advocates talk of the price on utility scale solar, which by some estimates is as cheap as coal. When prodded on the enormous amounts of land use it suddenly and magically becomes far more expensive rooftop solar. Well, make up your mind. Do we get cheap solar and make that land unavailable for crops or housing, or do we get expensive solar and put it on our rooftops? You get one or the other to make your case, you can't have both.

Oh, another argument I hear often is that solar will get cheaper in the future. Well, nuclear will get cheaper in the future. We've been subsidizing solar for decades now with the promise that someday, with enough research and development, it will be cheaper than coal. Well, why not subsidize nuclear too to make it cheaper than coal, safer than wind, and lower CO2 output than solar? Oh, wait, we don't have to do that because nuclear is already there. You think that's "bollox"? Show me your numbers.

Re:Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

Funny how all the governments in the world want the same thing, supported by all their scientists.

Here, let me fix that for you...

Funny how all the dictatorships in the world want to take America's wealth, supported by all their government employed scientists.

We have the UN IPCC issue reports periodically on how the world will be uninhabitable in 100 years unless the USA hands out money to all the poor nations of the world. They aren't demanding the USA stop burning oil, in fact if the USA stopped burning oil then many of these dictatorships would collapse as they have nothing else of value to offer in international trade. These nations couldn't bear the USA to stop burning coal either, because then coal mining in the USA could flood the market and make the coal from many of these shithole nations worthless.

What can these shithole nations make that the USA might actually buy? SOLAR PANELS!!! Because of some market manipulations and accidents of history much of the world's silicon production has landed in China. There's some others around the world but mostly if the USA is going to "go green" and still hand out dollars to foreign nations then it has to be through solar panels.

Using natural gas in cars would cut CO2 production per mile traveled in half compared to diesel fuel or gasoline, but the USA makes more than enough natural gas for itself. So, even though natural gas was "good" for the environment maybe a decade ago we see the UN declared it "bad" because exporting natural gas from shithole nations is expensive. Again because of market manipulations and accidents of history the USA imports all kinds of batteries instead of making them domestically. Oh, and same for the rare earth metals used in electric motors and windmill generators.

With the help of a UN funded adverts, compliant international media companies, and a whole lot of useful idiots in the USA, we can't have natural gas cars in the USA to cut down the CO2 we produce. Instead we get electric cars made from a whole lot of imported materials and components. Thankfully, for these shithole nations, electric vehicles are worthless for the big consumers of oil, like large trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft, so there's no real threat of the USA stopping the importation of gobs of oil.

It seems I just talked myself into another conspiracy theory.

The UN might not have created the global warming scare but they've twisted it into knots in a way that the USA is kept handing out dollars for things that it could produce equivalents on its own. If the USA started building nuclear power to replace much of the natural gas it now burns for electricity that leaves a lot of production for something else. That "something else" could be planes, trains, and automobiles. Well, maybe not planes. The USA still produces plenty of its own oil so there would be plenty for aircraft fuel without needing any imports. No need for importing solar panels either if we move to nuclear. No importing large car sized batteries. Yep, that's it. The UN worked up a scare over global warming and then crafted an excuse for the USA to not expand use of domestic nuclear and natural gas to address this scare.

If enough Americans figure this out then the whole global warming scare can't be used as a way to siphon wealth from the USA to the rest of the world. I don't know if I believe my own conspiracy theory but its been fun to think this out.