Global Warning/Climate Change

[Robert]

Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and other books, dropped by Reason's studio in Los Angeles last month to talk about a curious global trend that is just starting to receive attention. Over the past three decades, our planet has gotten greener!

Even stranger, the greening of the planet in recent decades appears to be happening because of, not despite, our reliance on fossil fuels. While environmentalists often talk about how bad stuff like CO2 causes bad things to happen like global warming, it turns out that the plants aren't complaining.

[JimFoxvog]

I suspect that the warnings from the last 4 decades are correct and that it is already too late to prevent severe damage to many regions, peoples, and ecosystems. I think it still is right to attempt to mitigate the catastrophe.

Or maybe Jesus will return tomorrow, so why worry?

[Robert]

I suspect that the warnings from the last 4 decades are correct and that it is already too late to prevent severe damage to many regions, peoples, and ecosystems.

What severe damage are you talking about? If the info int he video is correct, things are greening and food is getting more plentiful. Sahara is getting smaller. Farmland is decreasing and forests are increasing. Poverty is decreasing.

What problems are these causing?

[Ken]

I suspect that the warnings from the last 4 decades are correct and that it is already too late to prevent severe damage to many regions, peoples, and ecosystems.

What severe damage are you talking about? If the info int he video is correct, things are greening and food is getting more plentiful. Sahara is getting smaller. Farmland is decreasing and forests are increasing. Poverty is decreasing.

What problems are these causing?

Sea level rise for one.

[Neto]

Some desert areas will shrink as vegetative growth invades and takes over. Other areas which were greener may become dryer. Here locally, there is (and has been for decades) an organized effort to "save the Killbuck Swamp". But they aren't interested in "restoring" that area to how it was when white settlers first made notes or records of what the area was like at that time. Swamps naturally fill up over time, and if it isn't actively dredged at some point, it will turn into grasslands, then forests. AND, other areas will flood more and more, because of the displacement of all of that run-off.

I grew up on the Great Plains (north East Oklahoma). Just in my lifetime the area where I grew up has become "forested", and the multiple housing areas that have sprouted up in that area is part of the cause. Trees were planted around houses, which at some stage reached a tipping point, and weather patterns changed, more birds came into the area, different types of birds, and these birds carried seeds from all sorts of "invasive species" all over the place. So what was under prairie grass when I was a child (what isn't now someone's yard) is now increasingly covered in stuff like briers and scrub cedar trees. I know, however, that the prairies were "managed" by the Plains Indians long before whites ever set foot there. (They periodically burned it, to stop tree growth, favoring the grasslands that provided the ideal environment for their favored game, the buffalo. There are now huge buffalo reserves in Oklahoma and Kansas where they follow that same strategy.) The forestry service in California and other western states seem to have run into the same dilemma - they have to do controlled burns, or the whole forest will burn, or the trees they are trying to save will be choked out by other trees of the same kind, and they all die. Some areas of the Amazon have been identified as former grasslands. People now do not want to adapt to the changing world - they want it to always stay the same as it is now, or how it was in their small window on time, their concept of "the good old days". So-called "primitive" tribes are way more "advanced" in their adaptability to their changing environments. (In my opinion and observation, anyway.)

[JimFoxvog]

I suspect that the warnings from the last 4 decades are correct and that it is already too late to prevent severe damage to many regions, peoples, and ecosystems.

What severe damage are you talking about? If the info int he video is correct, things are greening and food is getting more plentiful. Sahara is getting smaller. Farmland is decreasing and forests are increasing. Poverty is decreasing.

What problems are these causing?

I don't trust the coal baron, Matt Ridley, on the subject at all.

The damage expected will be from the rising sea, prolonged droughts, stronger storms, and killing heat waves.

[nett]

I suspect that the warnings from the last 4 decades are correct and that it is already too late to prevent severe damage to many regions, peoples, and ecosystems.

What severe damage are you talking about? If the info int he video is correct, things are greening and food is getting more plentiful. Sahara is getting smaller. Farmland is decreasing and forests are increasing. Poverty is decreasing.

What problems are these causing?

I don't trust the coal baron, Matt Ridley, on the subject at all.

The damage expected will be from the rising sea, prolonged droughts, stronger storms, and killing heat waves.

i would tend to agree, Matt Ridley is not a reliable source at all due to his connection to coal.

The declining insect and bird population is cause for great concern alone.

[Robert]

I don't trust the coal baron, Matt Ridley, on the subject at all.

The damage expected will be from the rising sea, prolonged droughts, stronger storms, and killing heat waves.

I am more interested in talking about the data then the messenger, but I can understand your struggle.

Share how raising sea levels are an issue now.

Where are some prolonged draughts?

There is not data showing storms are any stronger.

I am not familiar with any heat waves that are out of the bounds of the past 200 years of recorded history. The earth used to be much warmer than it is now.

[JimFoxvog]

I am not familiar with any heat waves that are out of the bounds of the past 200 years of recorded history. The earth used to be much warmer than it is now.

The Weather channel addresses heat waves at https://weather.com/safety/heat/news/20 ... ease-study

The change in seasonal heatwave days per decade 1950 to 2014.
(ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes/Nature Communications)

Heat waves have become longer and more frequent in much of the world since the 1950s because of human-caused climate change, according to a new study.

The study, published in Nature Communications, examined heat waves at a regional level from 1950 to 2017. It found that areas like the Mediterranean, the Amazon, northeast Brazil and western Asia have seen significant increases in the number of heat wave days per decade.

“Not only have we seen more and longer heatwaves worldwide over the past 70 years, but this trend has markedly accelerated,” said lead author Dr. Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick in a press release from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.

A majority of the world's regions saw at least one extra heatwave day per decade from 1950 to 2017. That number climbs to 3 to 5 more days per decade in some lower-latitude areas.
...

Here's the EPA data for the US:

Key Points

• Heat waves are occurring more often than they used to in major cities across the United States. Their frequency has increased steadily, from an average of two heat waves per year during the 1960s to six per year during the 2010s (see Figure 1).
• In recent years, the average heat wave in major U.S. urban areas has been about four days long. This is about a day longer than the average heat wave in the 1960s (see Figure 1).
• The average heat wave season across the 50 cities in this indicator is 47 days longer now than it was in the 1960s (see Figure 1). Heat waves that occur earlier in the spring or later in the fall can catch people off-guard and increase exposure to the health risks associated with heat waves.
• Heat waves have become more intense over time. During the 1960s, the average heat wave across the 50 cities in Figures 1 and 2 was 2.0°F above the local 85th percentile threshold. During the 2010s, the average heat wave has been 2.5°F above the local threshold (see Figure 1).
• Of the 50 metropolitan areas in this indicator, 46 experienced a statistically significant increase in heat wave frequency between the 1960s and 2010s. Heat wave duration has increased significantly in 26 of these locations, the length of the heat wave season in 44, and intensity in 16 (see Figure 2).
• Longer-term records show that heat waves in the 1930s remain the most severe in recorded U.S. history (see Figure 3). The spike in Figure 3 reflects extreme, persistent heat waves in the Great Plains region during a period known as the “Dust Bowl.” Poor land use practices and many years of intense drought contributed to these heat waves by depleting soil moisture and reducing the moderating effects of evaporation.6

...
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/ ... heat-waves

[JimFoxvog]

Share how raising sea levels are an issue now.

The 10-meter results seem out of place as there is no discussion when a sea-level rise of 10 meters is expected. Several more centuries, I expect, and still should be a concern, but doesn't fit with the rest of this infographic.