Are You a Climate Change Denier? Talk to the Trees
I'm reading a book The Treeline; The Last Forrest and the Future of Life on Earth by Ben Rawlence. The author traveled to countries that encircle the North Pole to look at the northern most tree line. While in these countries he visited with scientists who were studying how the climate was affecting where trees "are walking" today as opposed to their historical locations and species. There is no room for climate change deniers or for those who claim what we are seeing is the same thing that has occurred and is part of natural patterns.
It certainly is true there have been cycles of vast climate change in the millions of years of the earth's history. Here in the upper middle west a giant glacier flowed from the North, the Red River Valley, to the Southeast, falling apart in central Iowa. This was only 10,000 years ago. Humans were here already having started between 200,000 to 300,000 years before. There are native groups in Eastern Canada who claim their ancestors lived in the Red River Valley prior to the glacier. Plants, animals and apparently humans had time to move slowly following their food sources. Their rate of movement was left behind in archeological evidence.
The Northern Treeline is moving north. Evidence tells us it has done this more than once in the earth's history. However, before is moved a few inches every hundred years. Now it is moving several feet every year. Before it moved very slowly. Plants and animals had time to adjust. Now it is galloping. As trees move north it is thought they will unlock carbon from the permafrost which will accelerate to the process already underway.
The warming moving to the north is, of course, the same as the warming moving from the south. Climate has moved many miles south to north. The Middlewest of the past is on its way to becoming Arizona. Arizona of the future is being predicted as summer temps higher than humans can tolerate and stay alive.
I was in Bangladesh some years ago. It was packed with people. The population had doubled since it split with India. Now, many thousands of people are moving to the few large cities every day from low lying rural areas. People all over the world are going to be on the move. Many will be headed here.
How do we know all this? The trees are telling us.
some questions for you. what evidence can you cite to support your claim that global warming is "galloping". we all know, of course, that global warming is happening (I have looked at all sorts of numbers that clearly establish that trend as a fact of life). but at an unprecedented rate??? as to the trees, that makes sense. but two feet.? a real micro measure, that. is it, then, an average based on data from several northern countries? as usual, I think, that, as usual, your extravant claims require a little explanation.
ReplyDeletetsm "--"what evidence can you cite to support your claim that global warming is "galloping."
DeleteIt is really difficult to carry on a conversation with someone who will not look stuff up or ignores information readily available. In today's news is a story about how Greenland's glacier is melting at a rate no scientist believes has happened in past cycles. Same with the book I am reading. There is geological evidence about the rate of warming in past cycles. People who study this in the geological evidence all agree (I don't know of disagreement, maybe there is one somewhere) what the rate was in the past.
Are you asking ME to study the geographical record? I'm not a geologist, but I read them. Unless you can site several (not just one or two) that claim there is evidence the current rate has happened before I'll give that consideration.
https://news.yahoo.com/greenlands-ice-sheet-melting-thats-183524515.html
there you go again, casting aspersions that have no basis in fact. but let that pass. I have read articles about the Greenland ice. the one that you note, as far as I can tell, cites highly credible authorities, academics with both integrity and knowledge. but, if you read carefully, their conclusions are notably tentative, speculative. looking at what is happening in Greenland now, they go on to warn us of what might happen (or will happen) if warming continues, it is then, more predictive than actual. that distinction is, of course, important, introducing as it does a cautionary flavor. no uniformed alarmist like some shallow media blabber mouth or some silly soapbox chicken little. in fine, you seem to miss my central point, specifically I am not opposed to the science involved, I am, rather, opposed to the hype that has given the climate change debate a bad reputation.
ReplyDeletetsm -- "I, am, rather, opposed to the hype that has given the climate change debate a bad reputation."
DeleteI agree scientists need to be careful, and we all need to be skeptical, of over hyped alarm buttons. We also need to be equally skeptical of under estimations of potential harms to the world society. You seem to have locked onto Ehrlich and the timetable he used for the effects of over population. In doing this, you and perhaps millions of others, are making an incorrect calculation of costs and benefits. That is, the cost of underestimating the problem of climate change is far higher than the cost of overestimating the problem. Speaking very hypothetically, let's say the cost of doing nothing about global warming is one billion lives of men, women and children. To save these lives the cost is (again this is hypothetical) a worldwide decrease in the standard of living of between 10% and 20%. It seems to me the price of a lower standard of living is a bargain. Of course, its always possible the world decreased the standard of living and it turned out to be wrong and the problem was something different.
In all of this, there is one thing that is certain. From archology, we know that for most of the earth's history huge expanses have been uninhabitable. The period since we humans have been here has been an aberration, a brief and unusual period when the weather allowed food production for 8 billion people. Historically, the earth has been a place of uncertainty and precariousness. Religion persuades people they are so important the earth's history and physics has stopped forever. People are taught prayers and their gods have taken over all this history. Climate change is teaching us the earth have never heard of our gods and doesn't care a twit about humans. Human behavior might improve chances of longer human survival, but we can't be certain of that either. What we can do is make calculations of costs and benefits that might, and we can only say might, give the largest number of humans the best chance we can of surviving the big changes that have already started.
your first paragraph makes a good point: how to react to a credible threat ,whether in haste or whether with caution, with caution. of course climate change does pose something of a threat to the status quo, evironmentally, politically, economically, socially and otherwise. but how much of a threat? you seem to think that the threat is great, imminent. I am more cautious, too much hype, too many scientifically ignorant, ideologically motivated politicians who are urging radical and immediate changes that could be harmful, unduly disruptive, irrelevant, even disastrous. given all those considerations, I say, go slow. don't follow the lemmings over the cliff.
ReplyDeleteas to your second paragraph. that's what a good atheist must say, at lease if he/she wants to be intellecually consistant. does it then follow that all the talk about human rights, human dignity and all that is just so much twaddle?
in haste.