Global Warming Has Made the North Greener 398
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.'"
I've played this game! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've played Sim Earth. I know what happens with global warming... the equator becomes a giant desert, but the temperate regions all become tropical. If you ask me, now's the time to buy land farther north. It's only going to go up in value as natural resources like water become scarce in heavily populated areas. In the not too distant future, water pipelines will be more valued than oil.
Re:More green? (Score:5, Interesting)
>and tales of dairy farms and Viking settlements in Greenland have been dismissed as an anecdotal myth and stricken from Wikipedia
It wasn't myth, it was MARKETING. The claim that Greenland was green, indeed the very name, came from a Viking chief called Eric The Red - who was spreading a massive scam to lure Vikings to settle in the land he had taken over.
It was, basically, a good old fashioned property scam. Turns out the fixer-upper was a lot more fixer than upper, in fact thousands of Vikings died in the first few years - mostly from starvation and frostbite.
Re:My mother's garden has earthworms (Score:2, Interesting)
The Stuff You Should Know podcast episode from Dec 15th 2010 is entitled "How Earthworms Work". [howstuffworks.com] It actually had some fascinating things discussed, including the distance that they can move per year and how far they can migrate in a year.
Apparently all earthworms in North American were killed in the last Ice Age. All Earthworms we have now are immigrants from Asia and Europe that hitched a ride on plant roots brought over in very recent human migration.
Re:More green? (Score:4, Interesting)
There were viking settlements in Canada and the USA. as far south as Ohio.
Re:More green? (Score:2, Interesting)
Essentially.. "The medieval warm period was local to the north atlantic, except for all the other warm periods in the world that coincidentally were at the same time."
Certain climate researchers quietly campaigned to edit history itself, emailing colleagues (such as David Deming, University of Oklahoma) asking them to help get rid of the medieval warm period ("We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.") Deming even testified before congress about the effort.
Global warming may be a problem or it may not be. One problem is for certain, and that certain climate "researchers" are playing politics rather than science.
Re:Final nail? (Score:2, Interesting)
All data collection involves sources of uncertainty both known and unknown, therefore all interpretation of that data requires making estimations and assumptions that may be more or less acceptable to different people.
"CO2 doesn't care what I believe about it" is irrelevant, the subjectivity occurs at a level higher than the behavior of the actual thing being measured. This is one more strawman that just confuses the discussion and is not a contribution to the advancement of science.
Re:More green? (Score:1, Interesting)
I love how that wikipedia article begins...
Essentially.. "The medieval warm period was local to the north atlantic, except for all the other warm periods in the world that coincidentally were at the same time."
Certain climate researchers quietly campaigned to edit history itself, emailing colleagues (such as David Deming, University of Oklahoma) asking them to help get rid of the medieval warm period ("We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.") Deming even testified before congress about the effort.
Global warming may be a problem or it may not be. One problem is for certain, and that certain climate "researchers" are playing politics rather than science.
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.
Re:Final nail? (Score:2, Interesting)
Its not clear yet what exactly the effect of CO2 is. Compare the last 100 yrs of CO2 to the last 100 years of temperature. The curves are not the same shape. As I mentioned before temperature seems to be following a step-like pattern. This indicates that if CO2 is the main driver behind this, various negative feedbacks are getting triggered at certain levels of CO2 or temperature. The relationship between CO2 and temperature is pretty clearly nonlinear so it is a mistake to think that past relationships will accurately predict future results.
Re:Final nail? (Score:4, Interesting)
What I've heard is that the estimation is that locked up natural gasses released by melting permafrost will outpace the CO2 consumed by new plant-life for a couple centuries before equilibrium is restored.
But sadly, no alligators... (Score:4, Interesting)
... in Durham, in spite of the fact that alligator reproduction is an excellent bellwether and they are abundant a mere 150 miles away due East on the coast. 1 degree is 70 miles North, 4 to 6 is (say) 350, so by now there should be alligators in Virginia on the coast and central NC where I live FROM the coast. Alligators can only reproduce when a winter is frost free, as temperature determines the gender of the alligators in the egg. First and last frost in Durham haven't discernibly changed in the forty years I've lived here, starting back in the last "the Ice Age is starting" panic in the early 70s. There have been some bitterly cold winters and some remarkably warm ones -- much like the winters over all of the last century. We've set 100 year records for snowfall in the last 13 years, had a snow and ice storm on the Outer Banks (and inland) where it never seems to snow in mid-April, and had a killing frost in May, three full weeks after our supposed last-frost date. We've had winters where the Bradford Pears and Redbuds started to bloom in mid February (easily a month early), where it hasn't snowed at all, when you could sunbathe in mid-January, at least if you picked your days.
This winter was amazingly normal. A handful of small snowfalls, a few warm days, but mostly cold, often wet and cold, with lots of frost. The Bradford Pears and Redbuds still haven't bloomed, although we've had a few days of really nice spring-like weather (quite seasonal) and it didn't frost last night although it did the night before. The massive snows of winter all fell to the west or to the north, never quite reaching us here (except as cold nasty rain a few degrees above freezing -- got a lot of that).
There's plenty of scientific evidence of warming, as long as you pick your days, pick your events, pick your years, pick your starting points, and don't look at all the evidence that contradicts it. As everybody knows, scientific studies prove that green jelly beans cause Acne.
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