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.'"
Final nail? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is there any space left for more nails in this coffin? Pretty soon there'll be more nails than wood.
Re:Final nail? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm one of those that owns a lot of property in the north. That means in 100 years my grandkids will be sitting on a epic goldmine of realestate that all the people fleeing the new desert in the south will want to live. $1,000,000 an acre Bidding starts on the next heat wave.
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I hope you're also one of those that owns a lot of guns.
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Watch out for those termites and beetles though. Cold winters have been a barrier for pests in the forests of the North previously and those nice wooden mansions and ski cabins are at risk in the future, along with the rest of the forest.
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I have a small bit of property up north. A dozen acres of forest in central Alberta. My land hasn't had a forest fire in at least 85 years based on the age of some downed trees this winter. As I walk through my forest, I see a _lot_ of dry and rotting ladder fuel (dead trees leaning on living trees). My job for the summer is to wander around with a chain saw cutting and bucking all the ladder fuel and increase the rotting of the many logs laying down... The forest has been beaten back away from the h
Re:Final nail? (Score:4, Informative)
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This is one of the things which isn't mentioned when the topic of global warming comes up. GW is going to benefit some parts of the world. There will be some winners and some losers. Sure, it's going to suck in Florida and Arizona, but the northern states are going to start sucking less. Canadians, as well, will have much more fun with two, full weeks of Summer.
The trees in some parts of the world will have a good time, yes.
For humans, the global economy will have a bigger effect on their standard of living. Which way do you think the economy will go when the waves start lapping at the foot of the skyscrapers?
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What coffin?
There were powerful storms when the world was colder and their frequency hasn't increased with warming
Go look in Wikipedia. Northeast and Canada used to get hit with category 3 hurricanes on a regular basis
Sandy was barely a 1
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Hush now, you're going to upset the zealots. Please don't offer them any links to history's most deadly storms. Whatever you do, don't mention Galveston. And, absolutely, do NOT mention that Mexico has had even deadlier storms, long before the age of industrialization.
How 'bout that Spanish Armada?
Re:Final nail? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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This isn't about denial. This isn't about climate scientists. This is about alarmists.
Don't forget that like most alarmists, many of these alarmists likely have corporate-backed agendas. They hate the corporate-backed agendas of the oil industry, but deny that there are companies promoting clean cars and clean energy that stand to make billions of dollars of extra profit if they succeed in convincing governments and citizens.
Not everyone needs to spend thousands of dollars extra on a Prius instead of an
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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.
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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:Final nail? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 wil
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There's no need for various negative feedbacks as there are strong cooling mechanisms that are concomitant with burning fossil fuels, namely aerosols.
A secondary source of aerosols is vulcanism which has been shown to cause a dramatic worldwide drop in temperature shortly after large eruptions.
These tend not to last more than a few years unless other eruptions occur but the significant increase in Asian air pollution and global air traffic are other contributing factors to a reduction in the rate of warming
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The slight cooling of approx 0.1 C during that period was likely due to aerosols and air pollution. There wasn't much in the way of pollution controls and many people burned coal in their homes for heating. London, England was known for incredibly thick haze, the infamous yellowish "'pea-soup" fogs that were finally addressed in the mid-50s with laws forbidding residential use of coal in the city.
Also, that period was mostly dominated by La Nina events or ENSO-neutral conditions with only 3 or so El Ninos v
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I was referring to volcanic release of aerosols not CO2.
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Correlation is not by necessity causation, blah blah.
Medieval Warming Period, blah blah.
In the 11th century, Greenland was "Green", and collapsed as a colony after it wasn't, in the 14th., blah blah.
The muthafuckin' sky is falling! DO SOMETHING!
OK then here's something:
You know what? If you took 1/2 of the US navy out of commision, and grounded 1/2 of all US military aircraft? You'd eliminate more atmospheric CO2 in a decade than trying a century of taxing tailpipes and turnpikes.
But you see, everybody wi
Re:Final nail? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Nothing wrong with the chart but maybe there is with your interpretation of it. A 5 year running mean is not particularly significant climatologically. Climatologist usually work with 30 year running means.
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No, climatologists have always used 30 year running means since it was defined by the World Meteorological Organization as the standard for measuring climate which was before the IPCC was formed in 1988. Here's a FAQ from the WMO on climatology. [wmo.int]
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There is some information on this site [rankexploits.com] 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 stan
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Which is utter nonsense. I think every year now, the statistics show the last 9 of 10, 10 of 11, 11 of 12 and so on years were the warmest on record.
Point being, the last decade has been the warmest ever recorded since records were taken.
Re:Final nail? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Once again I find myself having to ask the a familiar question. Do you have any evidence at all that there us some massive conspiracy between scientists from many disciplines as well as politicians from all points on the political spectrum?
I feel fairly confident that I can answer for you, and say that you do not. Scientists have been talking about global warming for a very long time, it wasn't something that magically appeared in the 80s. A few politicians were also talking about it back in the 70s.
Finally
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#1 thing to do about it- stop living in cities.
#2 thing to do about it- those who are unable to do #1, should plant food.
#3 thing to do about it- buy local as the #1 use of greenhouse gas causing fuel is SHIPPING.
None of this is rocket science. If industrialization is the problem, we need to de-industrialize.
And yet, I find, those who complain the most about global warming, are not the rural populations, but the urban ones.
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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? (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.
More green? (Score:4, Funny)
So the world is becoming more green due to global warming?
I'm confused, is this good or bad?
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It's kind of a tricky one. Large swathes of coastal areas will be inundated. This is a problem because that's where most of the people live, and it will be hugely disruptive to move them elsewhere. Europe, northern India, most of the southern US, Brazil and large areas of South America would be swamped if the ice caps melted. Even in higher areas you can expect major trouble as dry hot areas spread and extreme weather becomes more common.
However a lot of Siberia and Canada would become very habitable, and t
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"However a lot of Siberia and Canada would become very habitable, "
You have never been in northern canada in the summer. The black flies alone will keep it from being habitable.
Re:More green? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Informative)
Only that the north, above the 45th parallel is. That's Canada, Northern Europe, Russia and up to the arctic.
When you say Northern Europe, you really mean nearly all of Europe except for parts of Spain, Italy and the Balkans.
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I realize you're joking, but it doesn't mean the world is becoming more green, it means the livable part is moving North.
Remember, there's less land near the top of a globe than at the middle.
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Well, bad if you live in the parts that are going to go more brown, I guess...
Re:More green? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd be curious to see where the green belt lay during the Medieval warming period. Of course its existence has been discredited now, and tales of dairy farms and Viking settlements in Greenland have been dismissed as an anecdotal myth and stricken from Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warming_Period [wikipedia.org]
8 mentions of Greenland, including a temperature chart, and a photo of a viking settlement. Conspiracy theorists operate entirely independently of the facts.
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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 effo
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One problem is for certain, and that certain climate "researchers" are playing politics rather than science.
Yep, Deming is known for making extraordinary claims with less than ordinary evidence, he's a "conservative think tank" scientist who abandoned peer-review years ago. Nobody has "edited history", science has self-corrected on the issue in the manner one would expect.. In other words, at first it was thought that the MWP was a global phenomena, further scrutiny by intellectually honest skeptics (ie: scientists) did not support the claims, so the claim has been refined. It's not a fucking conspiracy, it's ho [tufts.edu]
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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.
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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.
To argue for the GP: oil exploration money is not available to academic climatologists. He was saying, if you're in academia doing climatology, and if you want funding, be a global warming scientist.
It's a separate argument from the availability of money to political interest groups. Except in the case where the academics become the interest group (because they wan
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:More green? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:More green? (Score:4, Interesting)
There were viking settlements in Canada and the USA. as far south as Ohio.
Re:More green? (Score:4, Informative)
Canada? sure. but in the USA? in ohio? I don't think so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_the_Americas [wikipedia.org]
Re:More green? (Score:5, Informative)
90% of ocean rise will be thermal expansion, not melt, FWIW.
And it won't do anything like kill stuff -- it will increase plant cover as large land masses become better able to support plant life. The increased CO2 actually helps in this aspect. We know this from much warmer periods in the past.
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http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-thermal-properties-d_162.html [engineeringtoolbox.com] for a nice chart backing him up.
Expansion of salt water is less than fresh water.
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And it won't do anything like kill stuff -- it will increase plant cover as large land masses become better able to support plant life.
I'm inclined to agree with you. When coastal cities start flooding and crumbling, most of the killing won't be done by the ocean, but by humans. I'm sure storms will get a few but the majority will probably die in migrations of billions of people from the coasts to lands already claimed by billions of other people and maybe some wars over fresh water sources and general societal collapse.
Those "warmer periods in the past" can no doubt give us a preview of what we will end up with when the tundra thaws. But
Re: More green? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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The volume of water displaced by floating ice is exactly the volume of water the ice will fill when melted.
Yes, for fresh water ice in fresh water [smithplanet.com] and for salt water ice in salt water. If it's fresh water ice in salt water, the difference in density makes a tiny difference in displacement [global-gre...arming.com]. So, icebergs that calved from glaciers would be slightly different from sea ice.
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Sea ice is also fresh water (with brine trapped in the pockets admittedly, though that drains over a few years). That salt being forced out of the forming ice increases the density of the water below adding to the "down at the poles" part of global water circulation.
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Umm yeah, right up until 4c .. then it reverses the contracting and starts to expand. By 8c the density is the same as at 0c and continues to drop (read: expand) as temp further increase.
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.
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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.
A civil society is not going to stay civil if food or water run out.
Re:I've played this game! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Why would anyone intentionally stay in a area where water is scarce and you cant grow anything? Other than a sick and twisted repressive government? A small dirt patch that has been in the family for generations is not a valid answer.
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I pay $2.5 per 5 gallon jug. That's only about $27.50 a barrel, nowhere near the price of oil, and I've been in places where water costs much less than that.
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No it's not.
I pay $0.06 a gallon for water, and they pipe it to my home.
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Actually, water is more expensive than oil, by the gallon
Only if you buy it in little plastic bottles.
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What are you smoking? Have you looked at the price of a gallon of drinking water lately? It is nowhere near the cost of oil, and that is for full retail bottled water. Tap water costs pennies per gallon. Meanwhile, a barrel of oil is 42 gallons. At $90/barrel you're talking about over $2 per gallon. Oil is an order of magnitude or two more expensive than water, at least in developed countries.
My mother's garden has earthworms (Score:5, Informative)
I have other relatives who live in Denali Park, Alaska, in the midst of the Alaska Range and near the tallest mountain in North America. Over the past 4 or 5 decades, they have been watching the treeline creep hundreds of feet up the sides of the mountains.
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Just a couple of questions: how did they get there? Have they been migrating north underground?
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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.
More greenery =/= food crops (Score:5, Informative)
I don't doubt that the far north is getting greener, but don't think for a moment that it'll lead to food crops way up north.
Food crops require copious light, not just absence of freezing / cold to produce crops. Oranges & bananas more so than lettuce, more so than moss.
When the sun is low on the horizon at noon, there just isn't enough sunlight to make the land productive for agriculture.
Not to mention the relative lack of rich organic material and somewhat acidic soil for the most part.
If this were not the case, then a simple greenhouse with a heater situated way up north would allow for hobbyists to grow all year round; this hasn't been the case and isn't likely to change.
The above is as I understand it as a gardener and a Canadian who laments the lousy winter (non-)growing season in the mildest part of the country and with good soil.
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Thankfully we always have the plankton from the oceans of the world to fall back on. That stuff is tasty.
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You do know they don't actually make Soylent Green from that stuff, right?
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Soylent Green ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green [wikipedia.org]
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"I don't doubt that the far north is getting greener, but don't think for a moment that it'll lead to food crops way up north."
The largest source for Cabbage and lettuce for the USA is from Alaska and Canada. there are a LOT of food crops "way up north"
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USDA plant hardiness zones have changed (Score:5, Informative)
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...has a liberal bias (Score:5, Insightful)
As the great Colbert said - Reality has a liberal bias!
Re:...has a liberal bias (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but mostly because conservatism has a stupidity bias.
Greenland (Score:2)
It shall finally be green.
Greenland. Now actually green.
Disruptions (Score:2, Funny)
In the north's Arctic and boreal areas, the characteristics of the seasons are changing, leading to great disruptions for plants and related ecosystems.
Define "disruptions."
Climate change is normal and continuous. Our ecosystem is robust to change. Some humans apparently are not.
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"Towards the northern hemisphere" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Towards the northern hemisphere" (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
It's the blind faith in speculation of things that may happen that just disturb me, and probably should disturb any logical thinking person.
Just like the guy above in Alaska citing anecdotal evidence that the presence of earthworms in mum's garden and the forest line increasing, no one can definitively prove that a localized warming cycle is part of a part of a multi-millennial trend. Since there have only been accurate thermometers measuring data for a couple hundred years, one could easily conclude th
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Sorry, but the unprovable mays that you present are equally as likely as donkeys flying out of my ass.
Well there is evidence of increasing desertification [columbia.edu]. Now do you have evidence that donkeys are likely to fly out of your arse or is that just uninformed speculation.
Hmph (Score:2)
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.
rgb
Re:excellent (Score:5, Funny)
what's not to like then?
America is truly God's chosen country :P
The trouble is, if 'north' moves any further north, we are going to have to go and liberate Snow Mexico...
It takes thousands of years to get soil. (Score:4, Informative)
So when you emigrate to Canada because your land is now a desert, make sure to drag along a few billion tons of topsoil with you.
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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:excellent (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Especially if you're in the bottom half.
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Indentured servants. Give them a space to live in exchange for them working your land (and their children,...)
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...most people are wussies and cant handle 18-22 feet of snow on the ground for the typical winter.
That's enough to bury a house. How would you get out the front door?
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You don't. It's why god invented booze.
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18-22' of snow? Good for you Paul, unfortunately the rest of us don't have giant blue oxen to help us dig out.
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That's absolutely true if you call "Antarctica" "The Arctic" and call "The Arctic" "Antarctica". Otherwise its exactly backwards.