Diary Of The Last Age

What I learned, and why you should drop your objections about global warming Since we are not climate scientists, I argued, we don’t have the expert knowledge necessary to evaluate which side of the debate is right. Therefore, we should defer to the majority for the purpose of choosing public policy.  This argument didn’t seem to change any minds. One man even argued it was completely irrelevant. “Science isn’t a democracy!” he said. Well, he’s right! It’s not a democracy at all ! That’s why your opinion on the cause of global warming doesn’t matter. I’m not saying that contrarian climatologists are wrong because they are in the minority — I’m saying you need staggering arrogance to insist that over 90% of climatologists are wrong when you aren’t even a scientist, let alone a climatologist. As I read more on the topic, I learned that the vast majority of climatologists agree: greenhouse gases are the main cause of global warming, not changes in the sun. It’s scary ...

Plants consume carbon dioxide and intuitively we feel that it's concentration in the atmosphere should have a positive effect on them.  However, research now shows that rice grown in higher levels of carbon dioxide has lower amounts of several important nutrients. Rice farmers in southeastern China. More than 2 billion people worldwide rely on rice as a primary food source. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times When scientists want to figure out how climate change might disrupt the world’s food supplies, they often explore how rising temperatures could shift growing seasons or how more frequent droughts could damage harvests . In recent years, though, researchers have begun to realize that the extra carbon dioxide that humanity is pumping into the atmosphere isn’t just warming the planet, it’s also making some of our most important crops less nritious by changing their chemical makeup and diluting vitamins and minerals.  Now, a new study has found that rice ...

I've posted many times about the dangers Florida, New Orleans , and Houston have to look forward to because of climate change.  Despite being in conservative states they have been forced to confront the issue, Florida especially as I've posted .  Another Republican State is being forced to confront climate change, Alaska .  They are between a rock and a hard place.  While the impact of climate change in Alaska is making itself felt, Alaska is already seeing the dramatic effects of global warming firsthand, making the issue difficult for local politicians to avoid. The solid permafrost that sits beneath many roads, buildings and pipelines is starting to thaw , destabilizing the infrastructure above. At least 31 coastal towns and cities may need to relocate , at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, as protective sea ice vanishes and fierce waves erode Alaska’s shores. “The change has been so real and so widespread that it’s become impossible to ignore,” B...

Three Things We Don’t Understand About Climate Change   by  Aarne Granlund I argue that most of us do not grasp how immediate this situation has become, how fast it is progressing and what the scale of change needed is to reach the stabilisation targets of the Paris Agreement. I also argue that after individuals, nations and corporations understand the urgency and the rate, they should be honest about the scale of action needed in order to avoid collapse of the biosphere and thus civilisation. Intense forest fires were raging in California in December 2017 (NASA WorldView Terra / MODIS) https://go.nasa.gov/2l1LVX4 1. Urgency  The first misunderstanding about climate change is related to how we perceive its impacts in time. It is not (only) a future issue, not a polar bear issue and certainly not an issue which only affects a few remote parts of the world. [....] 2. Rate and Scale of Change  The Arctic, area located on the top of the plan...