Posted on 07/06/2006 8:04:55 AM PDT by cogitator
Freely excerpting:
"The real truth is that we don't know enough to relieve global warming, and -- barring major technological breakthroughs -- we can't do much about it. This was obvious nine years ago; it's still obvious." ... "Having postulated a crash energy diet, the IEA [International Energy Agency] simulates five scenarios with differing rates of technological change. In each, greenhouse emissions in 2050 are higher than today. The increases vary from 6 percent to 27 percent." ... "No government will adopt the draconian restrictions on economic growth and personal freedom (limits on electricity usage, driving and travel) that might curb global warming. Still, politicians want to show they're "doing something." The result is grandstanding." ... "The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
In the US, there was massive deforestation in the 1800's, homesteaders were given tracts and were required to clear them of trees. For every 160 acres they agreed to clear, they were allowed to have another 30 acres to keep in timber. If you didn't clear the land in five years, you were not allowed any more homestead acreage.
It is well known that American deforestation caused the dust bowls, it is illegal in N Dakota to cut down the quarter section treelines.
The benefit of trees is well demonstrated.
The midwestern forests are not back, I grew up in Clayton County, Iowa and drive through the Midwest often. I have planted trees there in our family forest. Iowa has avery aggressive reforestation plan, free seedlings, minimal property taxes, and still people aren't planting many trees. Urbanization is still claiming more forests.
Good analogy
Look, it is very simple. If a glacier melts, plant trees in its place. Trees will suck up the CO2 and WHAM - back into the ice age we go.
Your attitude toward science is noted, since apparently what science has concluded doesn't agree with your preconceptions.
There are too many reasonable sources of global destruction to put your money on CO2.
Some things can be controlled (though it may take some effort), some things can't. Do you have or expect to have grandchildren?
Well, good luck with that.
I'm sure in the Eastern US and most defiantly in Europe, the percentages were far higher -- probably 60 - 80% respectively.
It is well known that American deforestation caused the dust bowls
This, I have to disagree with. The 1920s dust bowel was a result of farming on land that nature intended to be covered with thick layers of prairie grass sod, combined with a cyclical multi-year drought. Dry soil (little or no irrigation capability back then) that had no protective covering of sod mixed with typical prairie winds, makes a dust bowl.
A hundred years earlier (when there no farming on the plains, and no trees to speak of either) there would not have been a dust bowl, but raging prairie grass fires instead. But the sod would have kept the soil from blowing away. Deforestation had absolutely nothing to do with the dust bowl.
Why do you suppose that temperatures have stabilized since the mid 90s despite accelerated emissions and amplifying feedback mechanisms?
Could it possibly be related to the long increase in solar output which turned over in the mid 80s? And perhaps have something to do with the low-frequency ENSO peak which turned over in the late 80s, (which also tends to lead the global temperature curve by roughly a decade)?
It's not a "reforestation plan". It's a "forestation" plan. Trees make good wind breaks which is good for soil conversation.
Most of the Great Plains had very little in the way of tress 150 years ago --- (ergo Sod Houses instead of Log Cabins.) There was nothing there to "deforest".
"Oh yea, prove it!"
If we do something, every human will eventually die. This ominous prediction can be proven by elementary logic.
"Oh yea, prove it!"
If we do something, every human will eventually die. This ominous prediction can be proven by elementary logic.
One place already has. It's called North Korea, and not long ago, there was thread on FreeRepublic with links to pictures of what the place looks like today.
That's the way it would look for _us_, IF the greenies were able to get their way. Let's hope they never do.
- John
The homesteaders cut them down for firewood and buildings and fences. Those trees and treebreaks would have greatly dimished the dust bowls. Where treebreaks were enforced by law in Minnesota and Iowa from the 1860's on and later in N and S Dakota, the dustbowls ended.
Treebreaks would have minimized the dustbowls and protect the Midwest from them now.
Many of my relatives remember having to leave S Dakota once the trees were gone.
The laws on treebreaks are still enforced rigidly in the northern prairie.
Nothing holds soil and water better, slows down the wind, protects cities, roads and homesteads better than trees from the effects of dust storms, rain, wind, blizzards, etc.
That's my point, we need more trees, everywhere.
There certainly were many trees in all the coulees and valleys and in the open plains. There was very little of the classical hardwood forests of the eastern midwest. The sparse trees there were critical to the prairie ecosystem and their loss was the doom of those homesteaders. Drive through Sisseton, S Dakota to Williston, N Dakota as I have many times and see all the trees that have regrown, obviously they were not reseeded and none are over 50 years old. The prairie has largely healed itself after the starving homesteaders who cut down the few trees there, up and left.
Greatly? I doubt it. You know the northern prairie far better than I but the worst of the dust bowl was in the southern areas where the drought hit hardest, where there was no snow melt to soak the soil and where the sod was long gone. The distances between those natural tree breaks in the southern areas was too great to make a difference. Today, there is irrigation which keeps the soil from drying out.
But "deforestation" had no part in the great dust bowl years. It was the first time (after only 30-40 years years of intensive settlement in those areas) that prairie farmers hit a multi-season drought. They have had others since then that did not cause the damage of the 1920s and it wasn't trees that made the difference. It was electricity from coal-burning power plants that ran their pumps and irrigated their fields that kept the soil from blowing away.
If humans are going to live at anything above the "hunter-gather" lifestyle and a 30-year life expectancy, we need to alter nature. Every alternation to nature has consequences and every failure to alter nature has it's consequences as well. Its life.
You're absolute correct...I think. Look, the long-term mega-trend clearly shows that the Earth is cooling when compared to its beginnings some 4.5 billion years ago. Geologic time starts at the Hadean Period (or Eon) for God's sake. The name was given for a reason and I don't think it was because this was a really cool time in Earth's history.
There's another issue: radioactive decay from parent substances have been providing a whole bunch of heat to Earth since it has formed and been added to by meteoric strikes. As the parent isotopes turn into less radio active (and less heat producing) daughter isotopes, there will be less and less heat generated from these chemical processes the further we go into the future. The only thing that may save us from the cooling -- and perhaps part of God's plan? -- is that the Earth may be moving closer to the sun, countering the cooling effects. All of this is speculation though as to what God is doing...shoot for all I know, the opening pages in the Book of Genisis may all be literally true.
Given the general sense of your argument how do we account for the age of the moon?
NAPAP
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