Climate Change Doubled the Size of Forest Fires In Western US, Says Study (time.com) 191
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TIME: Man-made climate change has doubled the total area burned by forest fires in the Western U.S. in the past three decades, according to new research. Damage from forest fires has risen dramatically in recent decades, with the total acres burned in the U.S. rising from 2.9 million in 1985 to 10.1 million in 2015, according to National Interagency Fire Center data. Suppression costs paid by the federal government now top $2 billion. Now a new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that a significant portion of the increase in land burned by forest fires can be attributed to man-made climate change. Other factors are also at play, including natural climate shifts and a change in how humans use land, but man-made climate change has had the biggest impact. That trend will likely continue as temperatures keep rising, researchers said. Climate change contributes to forest fires in a number of ways. Fires kill off trees and other plants that eventually dry and act as the fuel to feed massive wildfires. Global warming also increases the likelihood of the dry, warm weather in which wildfires can thrive. Average temperatures in the Western U.S. rose by 2.5 degree Fahrenheit since 1970, outpacing temperature rise elsewhere on the globe, according to the research.
Total BS (Score:4, Insightful)
The only man made problem here is the fact we've stopped forest fires in the first place. They are worse because of all the underbrush that didn't burn in the first place.
Climate change has nothing to do with it, except it got the author a new grant.
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What about the man made problem of climate hysteria?
Above average year of hurricanes? Climate change!
Below average year of hurricanes? Climate change!
8 year gap in major hurricanes hitting the US? We are just lucky.
Gap ends and Florida gets hit? Climate change!
Warm day? Climate change!
Cold day? Climate change!
I'm currently enjoying a beer while typing this, unfortunately it was the only one in the fridge... clearly the fault of climate change.
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I remember when climate change (back when it was called global warming) was responsible for lack of snow in winter.
Now that (in my area, and elsewhere) we are getting record snows, guess what causes that...
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When was global warming responsible for a lack of snow in winter, and who said that? Was it someone who might know what they're talking about, or was it just someone spouting off?
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Mostly someone spouting off. I think I was remembering an op-ed by Robert Kennedy Jr. (I looked it up, published in 2008 [robertfkennedyjr.com]):
In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today's anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don't own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.
(And you can read the rest of the text from the link, it's plainly in the context of climate change.)
But even scientists can pin the blame as they see fit [nytimes.com]:
''I bought a sled in '96 for my daughter,'' said Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. ''It's been sitting in the stairwell, and hasn't been used..."
...
And Dr. Oppenheimer, among other ecologists, points to global warming as perhaps the most significant long-term factor.
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The jetstream moving further south [blogspot.com.au] due to a decreasing temperature differential between a rapidly warming Arctic and the not-as-rapidly-warming lower latitudes, allowing cold air from the poles to move further south than previously.
Not a guess, as such, more like science.
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When I was a kid, 70 years ago, winter storms and cold arrived in the first week of November. We also had much more snow. Winter now arrives after Christmas.
70 years ago, by first week of April, we could say, winter has ended.
I see a one month shift and I also note mich less precipation. Want collaboration of my comment? Ask the ski hill operators.
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I would... only the indoctrination into this religion happens everywhere so it's rather hard to avoid.
Sorry, some of us have looked at the science and do not see it as strong or as dire as the alarmists.
Re: Total BS (Score:2)
The issue isn't the temperature, it's how fast it's changing.
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Abrupt climate changes have occurred before civilization.
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The most abrupt change of the past 65 million years (excluding the asteroid hit) was the PETM and it was at least 10 times slower than today.
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Really ? We've had repeated Extinction Events over the last million years ? Because we have had at LEAST 4 major abrupt climate changes in the last million years alone, associated with continental glaciation retreats. And speaking of continental glaciations ( because we're STILL in an Ice Age. . .), we're due for another Real Soon Now*, in geologic terms. . . .
(* Real Soon Now, meaning anytime in the next 10000 years or so. . .)
Re: What if? (Score:3)
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That was part of the back-plot of Niven, Pournelle and Barnes' "Fallen Angels [infogalactic.com]": As soon as we STOPPED putting out Greenhouse Gases, a Continental Glaciation began. . .
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The fact that the argument keeps changing should tell anyone everything they need to know.
Not to mention we're still in a cold period.
And the notion that there's some global temperature that climate is "supposed to be' is patently unscientific and ignorant of history.
The data shows we SHOULD be in a cold phase but the Earth has been warming rapidly compared to the last 10,000 years. The last time the average temperature rose 1c rapidly it took 900 years. Since the Industrial Revolution( roughly 1850s) the average temperature has risen a bit over 1C.
You can insist that given the great complexity of the Earth's ecosystem, scientists could not possibly know what will happen. They can theorize about weather change and some are right and some are wrong. But there is no
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But there is no doubt that the average temperature is rising and some areas close to the equator will start to be come uninhabitable in 20-30 years.
It's nonsense like that which makes people decide AGW is bullshit and everyone associated with it is either a useful idiot or has a secret agenda. No, areas close to the equator will not become uninhabitable, any more than they already are because most of the equator is covered by ocean. 78% in fact. The remaining 22% is across the narrow part of Africa, the northern edge of Brazil (which is Amazon jungle), and bits of Indonesia, which is also heavy jungle. By reasonable standards, most of the land cros
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You really have no idea just how big [thetruesize.com] Africa is, do you?
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You really have no idea just how big Africa is, do you?
I'm perfectly aware of how big Africa is. Which doesn't change the 78%.
AGW versus change in data sources (Score:3)
The fact that the argument keeps changing should tell anyone everything they need to know.
Not to mention we're still in a cold period.
And the notion that there's some global temperature that climate is "supposed to be' is patently unscientific and ignorant of history.
The data shows we SHOULD be in a cold phase but the Earth has been warming rapidly compared to the last 10,000 years. The last time the average temperature rose 1c rapidly it took 900 years. Since the Industrial Revolution( roughly 1850s) the average temperature has risen a bit over 1C.
You can insist that given the great complexity of the Earth's ecosystem, scientists could not possibly know what will happen. They can theorize about weather change and some are right and some are wrong. But there is no doubt that the average temperature is rising and some areas close to the equator will start to be come uninhabitable in 20-30 years.
http://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
Here's the main journal article [sciencemag.org] xkcd referenced for that comic.
You've noted, in different words, that the trend since around 1900 is unprecedented in the entire time frame of the temperature reconstruction, last 20k years or more. You are absolutely correct, the journal article re-confirms that the graph trend from 1900 onward is unlike anything in the 20,000 years prior in the entire dataset.
If you read closer though, there is another potential explanation beyond human CO2 emissions that must also be accou
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i see my mod stalker went on a downvoting binge.
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Exactly.
Forests burn.
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Choices (Score:3, Interesting)
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Hey! We're not even sure whether it's man made as long as it's climate related, now you come with an argument that is certainly man made but not climate related. Stop introducing new variables, we're trying to have a sensible bickering here!
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you may not be sure.
but the scientists are.
and its their opinion that counts.
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WHICH scientists, is the question.
The ones with any authority would be geophysicists with specialization in atmospheric physics, and meteorologists. . .
The opinions of, for example, biologists or metallurgists would not be relevant. . .
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the answer is both, unless you lack the capacity for rational thought.
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Some people just want to see the world burn...
Dollar denomination BS, too. (Score:2)
Another trick to make disasters look bigger is to denominate them in dollars of damage. This boosts them in two ways:
- It multiplies them by inflation. (They're talking "decades". Damage costs of $100 in four decades ago dollars, in current dollars come to $219.46.)
- It ignores increases in target size: How many more, and more expensive, houses, vacation/retirement homes, suburbs, and other pricey buildings and infrastructure have been built out into formerly "wild" areas - still subject
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Damn right, everyone's talking about our forests dying, but if I veer off the road just once, rest assured there's some damn suicidal tree hopping in front of me!
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Probably the main cause of the increase in forest-fire acres burned has been the change in policy to let the fires burn until and unless they endanger human habitat(s). Which is much healthier overall for forests than the old policy, but which will more or less
Re:Total BS (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know whats worse: the fact you think that's in any sense a logical argument, or that someone modded you up.
what kind of idiot would make a logical link to building codes and building fires ?
Hint: higher temperatures can impact water retention of the foliage and soil. it can also shift rain patterns, amplifying the effect. and drier bio matter burns easier.
the intelligent answer is that is both climate and management related.
This one's on the environmentalists. (Score:3)
Sure. A higher temperature has nothing to do with the chance on wildfires. Everyone knows that!
Oh, yes. I forgot. You don't 'believe' that average temperature has risen by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit...
Compared to:
- Something like an order-of-magnitude increase in fuel load, due primarily to environmentalist driven legal action.
- Injunctions against cutting fire lines or re-clearing existing ones.
- Substantial delays in reporting the start of wildfires, due to similar activity - closing r
What about forest management practices (Score:4, Insightful)
There's also been a big change in forest management practices during that time. How were those factored in?
Re:What about forest management practices (Score:5, Interesting)
A fair amount of this can probably be traced back to this. In the days of yore, the Forest Service had a policy of "Out by 11" (the next day). The reality is that just caused massive fuel buildup in the forests, and made them far more flammable than they were in the past. That said, climate change has magnified this problem and made the tinder box even more dangerous.
Reference: I spent two summers ago at the heart of the Wolverine Fire in Chelan County, WA. We watched over 1000 acres burn in 15 minutes (from 8 miles away) and it's what I imagine what a Nuclear weapon going off would look like.
Re:What about forest management practices (Score:5, Informative)
The reality is that just caused massive fuel buildup in the forests, and made them far more flammable than they were in the past. That said, climate change has magnified this problem and made the tinder box even more dangerous.
Considering that forests here in the west thrive on natural burn policies, and the current forestry management practice is to put them out ASAP, you're right on part of that. There are parts in the pine forests in Western Canada where the debris is more then 6' deep in places. Some places are even worse after the pine beetle infestations, there are places in the US the same way. Climate change hasn't magnified this problem, but humans sure have magnified it by not letting natural burn & regrowth cycles to occur.
Hell when I was in California(Southern) in the 1980's visiting with my dad's friends, the hills in the mountains usually burned every summer or every other summer. I was out there ~4 years ago, 3' of debris and the last fire had been in 1996. They put out even the smallest brush fire in minutes. These are man-made problems.
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Re:What about forest management practices (Score:5, Insightful)
and the current forestry management practice is to put them out ASAP, you're right on part of that.
Actually, modern policies are to let it burn as much as possible, and only fight it where required. In our situation, they protected our facility (we run a retreat center in a deep valley) by doing controlled burns throughout our valley. This greatly reduced the fuel load, while protecting the larger/more established trees, and saving our site. In the end, the forest will be far more healthy because of this fire.
There were some other fires, further into the back country that summer as well, and for the most part they just kept them under observation, and allowed them to follow their natural course.
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"Actually, modern policies are to let it burn as much as possible"
You forgot to add in "recently updated" between that comma and "modern". You also forgot to mention that a lot of this is regional (for state controlled land vs. federally controlled land -- rules aren't necessarily the same).
There's still a HUGE build up of old growth that needs to either be cleared manually (not going to happen) or burn off in a blaze of glory.
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Same as always. Team Hockey Stick passes around an internal survey asking if global warming caused all of the fires, or just some. Since The Team is, by definition, the only scientists qualified to give opinions on such questions, the fires are Presto! "attributed" to the funding stream that is putting their kids through college and fuelling their yachts.
Anyone, like you, raising an objection will be investigated, and shortly you will be discredited because the grocery store you use gives a 2 cents-off-pe
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There's also been a big change in forest management practices during that time. How were those factored in?
DENIER!!!
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yeah (Score:5, Informative)
There's a fairly strong correlation between temperature and wildfires, so, this finding seems reasonable.
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2016 was way down as well.
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In millions of acres: 3.1 (2014), 9.1 (2015), 4.8 (2016) [nifc.gov]. The summary appears to be off by a million acres for 2015.
Just based on what we saw in Washington state (a significant percentage of the 2015 fires were up here) - the differences between the past few years might have as much or more to do with weather patterns than with temperature. It's hard to explain 2014 having so much less fire than 2015 if you only look at temps.
Firefighting increases forest fire size (Score:5, Informative)
There is some debate about being less aggressive and to allow a process closer to natural, but development and the protection of structures complicates things.
So man made causes, those of a climate change variety and others are both at work. It would be interesting to see how they separate the two. Plus increased human activity in an area also increases fire risks, from unsupervised campfires to bad mufflers on dirt bikes and atvs. Its not as simple as saying there was an increase from 3M to 10M acres over the last 30 years. I've witness a lot of increased development and increased human activity in southern california hills that are prone to wild fires.
I also worked a wild fire once
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Firefighting also increases forest fire size. Attacking nearly every fire allows flammable materials to collect, we end up trading a series of small fires for a very large conflagration when an area eventually burns.
Part of firefighting where I live involves back-burning (ie deliberately lighting small fires to burn all the combustible material) to prevent a large uncontrolled fire.
The biggest issue here is human proliferation. Back in the day a fire could burn for a week and not threaten anyone. Now that there's so many humans everywhere, even small fire is a disaster.
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Doesn't make sense from an energy standpoint eithe (Score:3)
Alas, they got it backwards. (Score:4, Funny)
Uhm, I think it's the fires that cause the warming, not vice versa.
[No whooshies, please!]
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If it was at least a viscous cycle we could pour it down on the fires.
Shoddy science (Score:5, Insightful)
Average temperatures in the Western U.S. rose by 2.5 degree Fahrenheit since 1970, outpacing temperature rise elsewhere on the globe, according to the research.
Western North America was cooler than normal for the period running from about 1949 to 1972, IIRC (I used to work in a lab that studied past climates using 13C from trees and 18O from ice cores). You could just as easily flip it and say 1970 was 2 or 3 degrees cooler than 1940.
I'll put this one on the article writer rather than the scientists, but - sloppy work like this just give the denialists more ammunition to keep ignoring actual valid data. Cooking the books in an attempt to provoke a stronger reaction ends up back-firing, more often than not.
Also doubling the size of forests... (Score:2)
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Plants also need freshwater and fertile soil to grow. Otherwise deserts would be forests.
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Plants also need freshwater and fertile soil to grow. Otherwise deserts would be forests.
Global warming is making more rain. Some parts will become dryer, but others will become more wetter and more green. Global warming may be catastrophic for humans, but should be a net gain for trees. (ie exactly like a greenhouse, which is where it got its name)
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Problem is, I'm not a plant.
bull (Score:2)
Why is this horseshit even posted? The tiniest glance at actual temperature change data show this is complete BS.
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Relly? Which source did you use?
I quick search in google on 'Temperature west USA 1970 till now' gave the following 2 links:
EPA [epa.gov] and NOAA [epa.gov]
Both are for the US as a whole, and both show a temperature increase of approx 2.5 F.
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Ah, but if you look closely you'll notice that the heat only starts when we start measuring it with satellites. Conclusion: Satellites cause global warming, we have to stop funding NASA. If we can't measure it, it doesn't happen.
Semantic games grab headlines (Score:2)
As far as I can tell, the paper shows that temperature increases are correlated with more wildfires. Up to this point it's solid science. Then they then define "Anthropogenic climate change" to mean "temperature increases since 1901" and "climate variability" to mean "fluctuations about the trend since 1901" and conclude that the anthropogenic climate change has been the cause of wildfire. Here I call shenanigans.
When most people say "climate variability" (especially in contrast to "anthopogenic climate
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The temperature has gone up, so there's more wildfires. You seem on board with that.
Then we need to ask about why the temperature has gone up. We find that man-made CO2 emissions are large enough to matter considerably, that the amount of CO2 has indeed gone up considerably because of human activity, and the temperature has gone up. Scientists have been saying since the late Nineteenth Century that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere would probably warm things up. Currently, a theory to account for
You need to be a little more serious (Score:2)
There is no doubt that man-made CO2 emissions contribute significantly to the warming seen since the 19th Century, so that most of the warming since 1901 may be due to man-made emissions. Please clarify where in my post I asserted otherwise.
In other words, we both agree that "man-made CO2 emissions would warm things up". But the authors of the paper are relying on the assertion "all warming up is due to man-made CO2 emissions" and that is something else entirely.
The authors of the study claim they can sepa
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I haven't been following the literature, so I can't really comment on this. It looks to me like AGW is sufficient to explain temperature increases, and I don't know of other explanations that actually turned out to work, so it may well be that human activity has caused all the temperature change. I really don't know. I do know that human activity is responsible for big changes.
Oh my yes. (Score:2)
In the Valley Fire (on Cobb, CA) the firefighters were literally seeing behavior they have not seen previously. In particular, the fire produced its own massive updraft and inversion layer, the combination of which was lofting burning coals into the sky and throwing them great distances -- which spread the blaze. We literally had little bits of charcoal land in OUR yard, and we live miles away. Of course, exploding propane tanks don't help...
fucked headline (Score:2)
1985 (Score:2)
How strange, I wonder why they chose 1985 as the starting point for their analysis. It couldn't possibly be cherry-picking for a local minimum, could it?
Stable Climate = Stable Civilization? (Score:2)
One of the huge concerns especially if you look at xkcd's representation of the development of modern man and civilization vs Temperature is that the arrival of modern man and the development of civilizations occurred at a relatively flat plateau in temperature. It's uncertain if we'll be able to thrive as well if the temperature shoots up beyond this plateau which we seem to be rapidly accomplishing. I'm not saying we'll completely die out or anything but if you look at that graph a few degrees below ave
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Could have had a discussion without trump or hillary but you've already ruined it.
Anyways, if I wasn't so busy out dicking bimbos...... I'd just grab climate change by the pussy.
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Trump 2016.
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And yet you'll vote for someone who's demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that you cannot safely leave him alone with your wife or teenage daughter, *ever*.
Maybe you don't have a wife or a teenage daughter. I have both. So do numerous Republican Senators, Representatives, and Governors, apparently [bbc.com].
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It just struck me how absofuckinglutely hilarious it is that we see all the Trumpers going round wearing "You're a cuck if you're not for Trump" T-shirts when it's *Trump* who's aiming to make *them* cuckolds. The ones who actually have wives or girlfriends, that is, assuming that any of them do.
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Yeah, pretty much. I'll be glad when the election's over, and I can resume worrying about lighter matters, such as the Russian submarines that keep getting sighted within 20 km of my home.
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I don't have a daughter and my wife is perfectly capable of defending herself. The idea that Trump is bad because we have wives and daughters is insulting to women who aren't related to you. Sexual assault is wrong whether it's against a wife, a daughter, a teacher, a UPS driver, a homeless women, or even an illegal prostitute.
Before anyone brings up Hillary (also a known defender of sexual assault), I'm a freaking Libertarian. Good luck finding something Gary Johnson has said that degrades women.
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Nice attempt to detract from my point.
I'm a Southern boy, and I was raised up old-school: I was taught to regard and to treat ALL women as if they were my own wife, sister, daughter, mother, or grandmother. Because every woman is one or more of those things to someone.
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No, your point is still bad. Southern and old school is a nice euphemism for benevolent sexism. Every woman is one or more of those things, but that's not what gives them human value. The fact that women are related to a man somehow is not why they shouldn't be abused, it's because they are people.
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I admit, Gary isn't the best at live interviews, but his policy on Aleppo is solid even if his immediate response was facepalm worthy. No one is actually arguing about his foreign policy, just his ability to deal with pop quizzes. For those concerned about Gary Johnson because of an Aleppo question, I would encourage you to consider that the POTUS never has to answer questions without a cabinet of experts to advise them.
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rapid increase in global population=more co2=climate change kill 1/2 the population=fighting climate change
am i doing it right?
No. People's biological processes are part of a short-term closed loop. The CO2 they exhale has been recently extracted from the atmosphere by plants (and maybe went through an animal or a few). If you don't understand that, your opinion is entirely spurious. See carbon cycle [wikipedia.org] and Dunning-Kruger effect [wikipedia.org].
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Well, he's not entirely wrong. More people use more fossil fuels, so fewer people would mean less introduction of CO2 to the atmosphere.
We should start with the biggest polluters, though. Nuke the US.
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Well, he's not entirely wrong. More people use more fossil fuels, so fewer people would mean less introduction of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Agreed, but the problem is not the CO2 they exhale, it's the CO2 they make by digging up fossil reserves of C and adding atmospheric O to.
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Are we talking about the same CO2 that we use in fire extinguishers?
To quote Babbage: "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question". But yes, the CO2 we exhale and the CO2 we produce by burning hydrocarbons and many other carbon-based materials is chemically the same substance that is used in some kinds of fire extinguishers, that is used to carbonate soda pops, and that is released by baking powder to raise a cake.
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It's a hoax from China.
I mean, "Gyna".
Re:Is this in the US only?? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.climateinstitute.or... [climateinstitute.org.au]
I can't speak for other countries.
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Global warming stole my brother's pickup! True story.
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True, but that's only part of the story. Every time the climate shifts big time, the top dogs of the food chains got fucked big time.
Guess who this is this time around.
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No, but people who have some semblance of a clue will continue to mock you regardless of who wins the election.
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