archichris: The column on the left should read:

Universities with billion dollar endowments, and governments who can lose a billion dollars in a couch just by sitting down fast.....

Are creating a political issue designed to channel public perception and money towards a portion of the political spectrum over which they have complete control....

because it will enable them to create a new form of taxation which will double their control over the largest economy in the world

Which yields the best pay off imaginable....money and power.

You honestly think universities have more power over government than oil companies? 9 of the top 15 companies by total revenue worldwide are oil companies.
You honestly think our government is trying to dictate the direction of the economy by taxing carbon, moving to renewables and away from fossil fuels? Then why are Republicans trying to dismantle the EPA? Why was the United States the only signatory to the Kyoto Protocol not to ratify it?

The companies lining the pockets of congressmen are coal, oil and auto companies, not universities and environmental groups.

I can't say I know why or what, but I know something is happening. In 30+ years of my life in this one place, winter has always been very much the picture of winter; always cold, a lot of snow, hibernating animals, months of gloom and darkness. This is normal. The last few years have been a worrisome change of barely any snow (and this year, none!), barely chill temperatures (as opposed to consistently below freezing!). This last year was so ridiculously mild I have spent most of my outdoor time in SHORTS.

On television I see things any idiot who's not been a self-absorbed moron their entire lives would realize are not normal in the least. Oceans rising. Polar caps receding. Forests depleting due to humanity's unchecked expansion.

It's basic science that if one species remains unchecked it throws things out of balance and unfortunately, humanity has absolutely no natural predator. It's only common sense that in an age where the natural life expectancy is continually rising and health advances mean more and more people live who nature says shouldn't, nothing good will come of it as you eventually reach the saturation point. Raise your hand if you think 7+ billion self-absorbed assholes and rising is a net change of 0 to the planet? Fox news, you're a dumbass.

When we start looking for human fat to 'cut' in the future as resources dwindle to dangerous levels, let's all agree people people with their fingers in their ears yelling 'I can't hear you, lalala!' right now sucking up everything get the axe first.

Aside from the fact that the author is wrong, and a complete moron...
I fail to see what is so catastrophically dangerous about pushing to develop technologies that are cleaner and more efficient, and trying to untether ourselves from fuels and energy sources that not only will run out, but have are already hitting the highest peak production rates that they will ever see. If we want to grow society, we can't do it on the back of resources that will only get increasingly more expensive from now until forever. GW is just a really good reason to try and do it quickly, and it isn't even the only one.

Terrible Old Man: I can't say I know why or what, but I know something is happening. In 30+ years of my life in this one place, winter has always been very much the picture of winter; always cold, a lot of snow, hibernating animals, months of gloom and darkness. This is normal. The last few years have been a worrisome change of barely any snow (and this year, none!), barely chill temperatures (as opposed to consistently below freezing!). This last year was so ridiculously mild I have spent most of my outdoor time in SHORTS.

On television I see things any idiot who's not been a self-absorbed moron their entire lives would realize are not normal in the least. Oceans rising. Polar caps receding. Forests depleting due to humanity's unchecked expansion.

It's basic science that if one species remains unchecked it throws things out of balance and unfortunately, humanity has absolutely no natural predator. It's only common sense that in an age where the natural life expectancy is continually rising and health advances mean more and more people live who nature says shouldn't, nothing good will come of it as you eventually reach the saturation point. Raise your hand if you think 7+ billion self-absorbed assholes and rising is a net change of 0 to the planet? Fox news, you're a dumbass.

When we start looking for human fat to 'cut' in the future as resources dwindle to dangerous levels, let's all agree people people with their fingers in their ears yelling 'I can't hear you, lalala!' right now sucking up everything get the axe first.

Using ice breaking ships to find polar bears. Someone's retarded uncle took the helm that day.

I AM out drinking with friends, unlike so many pathetic, sad-sack Farkers engaging in heated debate on global warming! Please besmirch my character on Fark, as I'll GET OVER IT. Meanwhile, you can continue to disparage each other over your lack of insightful, credible, empirical evidence about how Mother Earth was always a peaceful, utopian playground up until the advent of mankind, and the exceptionally egregious "conservative" component to mankind. Blah freaking blah. Guess what...you are mortal no matter how much you eat tofu and hit the gym in 26 minutes. You are in the hand of God! You are dust in the wind. You are ONE drop of water that carved the Grand Canyon. You opinions mean nothing. Your actions mean nothing, UNLESS there is a higher power and you've treated your fellow man with respect. Don't pollute, be conscientious about energy, enjoy ur VERY limited time on this planet, and quit whining. If you have solutions, you'll make millions. If not, shut the hell up and quit biatching. E-cigarettes are now illegal in Beantown??? Screw you too!

Terrible Old Man: When we start looking for human fat to 'cut' in the future as resources dwindle to dangerous levels, let's all agree people people with their fingers in their ears yelling 'I can't hear you, lalala!' right now sucking up everything get the axe first.

And people call me crazy for expecting the environmentalists to start bending people over on blood-caked altars to sacrifice to the Earth Goddess. Look at you, champing at the bit to start sacrificing anyone who disagrees with your apocalyptic vision.

/yeah, I'm ready for that, bring it on any time
//as long as I take out more than one member of the vigilante mob before I get killed, I'll still consider it a win

GAT_00: Well, then, I'd like to present this: how exactly do you plan to live in a world at minimum 4C warmer than we are now? That's the best case 2100 scenario

At best dying my last in a hospital bed aged over 100

GAT_00: And it's such hysteria with no basis in fact, that plants are moving north all on their own:

just like `deniers` claimed was possible and `warmers` claimed was not.

vernonFL: Kome: You can't dump that much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through massive burning of fossil fuels and not have an effect.

Beijing

I will counter your Beijing with an image of the UK


Kazan: in the late seventies they ran and article that discussed both options (warming and cooling) for the future - i posted an image earlier in this thread.

and in the image you posted they mention a possible ice age at the bottom of the page written in black and white

heinekenftw: So instead of going out on a Friday night, you decided to stay online and troll a webforum?

Everyone look at this guy and point and laugh! What a loser!

Wait a minute . . . I'm posting here too . . .

I`m not, I`m trawling the thread in the morning with coffee after actually going out last night and being too busy with the real world to post on some webpage.

archichris: n a way its like being a not very devout christian.

You go to church, you listen to the words, the community is very cozy and friendly, you even benefit economically fro being a part of it. But you feel perfectly safe inside your head not believing in any of it because the potential reckoning is decades away at your death. You dont need to be right until the last minute, so why bother?

Very like the way some christians try to get you to believe in god by saying "What if you live a good life for nothing?" or "there are 4 possibilities on this little matrix here, either you pray and go to church or not, and whether god is real or not. If you pray it doesn`t matter whether god is real or not, you either go to heaven or nothing happens but if you don`t pray then either you go to hell or nothing happens so why take the risk?" meaning if you follow the logic some warmers advocate then everybody should also be christian who accepts ACC on that basis.

Friction8r: I AM out drinking with friends, unlike so many pathetic, sad-sack Farkers engaging in heated debate on global warming! Please besmirch my character on Fark, as I'll GET OVER IT. Meanwhile, you can continue to disparage each other over your lack of insightful, credible, empirical evidence about how Mother Earth was always a peaceful, utopian playground up until the advent of mankind, and the exceptionally egregious "conservative" component to mankind. Blah freaking blah. Guess what...you are mortal no matter how much you eat tofu and hit the gym in 26 minutes. You are in the hand of God! You are dust in the wind. You are ONE drop of water that carved the Grand Canyon. You opinions mean nothing. Your actions mean nothing, UNLESS there is a higher power and you've treated your fellow man with respect. Don't pollute, be conscientious about energy, enjoy ur VERY limited time on this planet, and quit whining. If you have solutions, you'll make millions. If not, shut the hell up and quit biatching. E-cigarettes are now illegal in Beantown??? Screw you too!

whatever

LaughingRadish: Alice: That thing over there is four feet away. I need a four foot long stick to get it.
Bob: No. We need a five foot long stick to make sure we can get at the thing and hold the stick securely.

alice: No, my arm is 2 feet long, I need a 4 foot stick, now stop being patronising and get the damn stick.

Sorry subby, but the global warming fundies are never going to let facts interfere with their faith

Friction8r: I AM out drinking with friends, unlike so many pathetic, sad-sack Farkers engaging in heated debate on global warming! Please besmirch my character on Fark, as I'll GET OVER IT. Meanwhile, you can continue to disparage each other over your lack of insightful, credible, empirical evidence about how Mother Earth was always a peaceful, utopian playground up until the advent of mankind, and the exceptionally egregious "conservative" component to mankind. Blah freaking blah. Guess what...you are mortal no matter how much you eat tofu and hit the gym in 26 minutes. You are in the hand of God! You are dust in the wind. You are ONE drop of water that carved the Grand Canyon. You opinions mean nothing. Your actions mean nothing, UNLESS there is a higher power and you've treated your fellow man with respect. Don't pollute, be conscientious about energy, enjoy ur VERY limited time on this planet, and quit whining. If you have solutions, you'll make millions. If not, shut the hell up and quit biatching. E-cigarettes are now illegal in Beantown??? Screw you too!

Bow-tie Daddy, don't you blow tour top - everything's under control.
Bow-tie Daddy, don't you blow your top, 'cause you think you're getting too old.
Don't try to do no thinkin',
just go on with your drinkin',
just have your fun, you old son-of-a-gun,
then drive home in your Lincoln.

Gawdzila: Aside from the fact that the author is wrong, and a complete moron...
I fail to see what is so catastrophically dangerous about pushing to develop technologies that are cleaner and more efficient, and trying to untether ourselves from fuels and energy sources that not only will run out, but have are already hitting the highest peak production rates that they will ever see. If we want to grow society, we can't do it on the back of resources that will only get increasingly more expensive from now until forever. GW is just a really good reason to try and do it quickly, and it isn't even the only one.

You don't understand. If rational scientists discover a harmful "thing", conservatives rush to defend the thing. Because of ALGORE and LIBSLIBSLIBS. Now, understanding why the modern conservative movement has become the province of insistent willful stupidity is another issue, but for right now, we don't need to understand the WHY of that. Just understand that it's the truth.

elchip: What is it with conservatism that makes them reject all forms of science?

The majority of congress in general are high net worth individuals, and they have their friends and former colleagues pay for their election campaigns. The problem with global warming is that we have been outsourcing our pollution to China for over a decade now and they not only massively pollute to make the junk they sell to us, but the transportation of goods from there to here generates more pollution than all of the worlds cars put together, per year. So here we are, putting massive amounts of pollution in the air and oceans and it is accelerating, not decreasing. The signs of GW are all around if you care to look (like glacier national park here in the USA). The issue arrives when you realize that the solution is to bring those jobs back here to the USA and keep it clean, while having factories in China produce goods for China. But that is not our zeitgeist, is it? A handful of 0.1% of Chinese take virtually all of the GDP of China while the average person makes barely enough to get by. Very few workers at Foxconn have ever seen an iphone or ipad despite the fact that they have built millions of those things. So this means rising global wages and god forbid we work in a society where everyone can do well. What is worse is that the international public and private debt crisis will only make pollution much worse, since hungry people don't give a crap about the environment. So here we are. O'Reilly and his ilk will watch from their private jets while stuffing their faces, continuing to manipulate the game.

I thought that honor belonged to Fark™.

Friction8r: While you toiled away on a Friday night, casting aspersions and nonsensical chart this graph that pretentiously scientific gobblety gook, I took great pleasure in torquing you and watching your repeatedly pompous posts, while I merely drank beer with friends as they marvelled at my ability to stir your beehive! Thank you for taking the hook, line and sinker! Sorry you have no social life, and thank God for smartphones.

Both of you are posting on Fark on a Friday night. Clearly then, that proves that he has no social life but you're the life of the party.

"OH HEY, ROB BROUGHT A KEG!"

"YEAH BUT CHECK OUT THIS QUEER, HE BROUGHT A SMARTPHONE AND PEOPLE ARE LIKE BEES ON THE INTERNET BECAUSE OF HIM HE IS TRULY THE PUPPETMASTER AND HAS REALLY NICE TEETH AND I HEAR HIS PENIS IS LIKE FOURTEEN FEET LONG AND HE KEEPS A HAREM OF SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD GIRLS! LET'S ALL MARVEL AT HIM!"

"WELL F*CK ROB THEN!

What a farking loser.

Kazan: LaughingRadish: I seem to recall National Geographic running stories about global cooling in the 80s.

you recall wrong - in the late seventies they ran and article that discussed both options (warming and cooling) for the future - i posted an image earlier in this thread.

You're going to notice that a lot of global warming contrarians "recall" non-scientific periodicals offering a couple of blurbs about one scientist forty years ago asking "is the Earth warming or cooling?" as if that proves anything meaningful.

You can expect that they're not similarly "skeptical" of the modern medicine they'll eventually need because they also "recall" doctors decades ago thinking lobotomies were a great idea.

Odd, isn't it, how selective they are -- when actual medical articles are written on extremely bad techniques, trust your doctor today (as well you should)! But when non-scientific articles are (incorrectly) remembered decades later (they like to post the TIME magazine article on "The Cooling of America" -- an article about fuel costs, for example) based on nothing more than a single, context-free sentence or, in some cases, cover illustrations or outright photoshopped covers, well then, shouldn't we just ignore the modern scientific process completely, since the advancement of science involves a hypothesis (the temperature may be changing, which direction is it changing in?) before it involves a conclusion (it is, and it is warming).

I mean, that is a thing we should do, right?

Friction8r: unlike so many pathetic, sad-sack Farkers engaging in heated debate

you honestly came to a thread to post about people who post in a thread should not have their opinion valued ?

Charming

thenateman: Or, for the sake of argument, let's say anthropogenic global warming is utter truth.

Should we stop using cars, steel and plastic? Should we return to a hunter-gatherer society? I mean, is the entire notion of progress predicated on destroying the earth?

Poe's Law? Are you irrational enough to believe that our only choices are "do nothing" or "stop using cars, steel and plastic"? Or are you mocking climate change denial? It's so hard to tell.

Friction8r: I AM out drinking with friends, unlike so many pathetic, sad-sack Farkers engaging in heated debate on global warming!

Oh, you're that asshole who goes out with friends to sit and ignore them and instead use his cellphone to argue with people on the internet.

ciberido: thenateman: Or, for the sake of argument, let's say anthropogenic global warming is utter truth.

Should we stop using cars, steel and plastic? Should we return to a hunter-gatherer society? I mean, is the entire notion of progress predicated on destroying the earth?

Poe's Law? Are you irrational enough to believe that our only choices are "do nothing" or "stop using cars, steel and plastic"? Or are you mocking climate change denial? It's so hard to tell.

you get to stop using steel, go back to the horse and bugy

Al Goore gets to jet around telling you to stop

get it

winterwhile:
you get to stop using steel, go back to the horse and bugy
Al Goore gets to jet around telling you to stop
get it

Going back to the horse and buggy is a horrific idea. With our metropolitan populations, the streets would be littered with dead horse carcasses. Bicycles however are a sensible solution for most of our transportation needs.
/ Vice President Gore has done more good with that job title on his CV than anyone else I can think of offhand.

Felgraf: Why is "Hey, let's not shiat where we eat as much" controversial?

If you're a jackass with an abnormally large fartbasket filled with dump, it's controversial.

boobsrgood: By committing to this lie, the GOP Democratic party is about to become history's joke. It's not a matter of IF they'll implode, but just a question of how much damage they plan to do on the way out. If Bush Obama is any indication, whatever they are planning will cost the nation trillions before it's over.

GAT_00: cameroncrazy1984: GAT_00: Does this even deserve a modicum of rational commentary? Might as just farking collectively moon Fox News. It's the same level of discourse.

That's pretty much what we're doing.

I don't see no ass.



Not going to win any Oscars for that one.

Teufelaffe: SquiggelyGrounders: Yeah except that the global temperatures have stagnated over the last decade.

That's not only bullshiat, it's not even convincing bullshiat.

9 of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000. (new window)



I'm sure every climatologist in the world will be relieved to know that most often-cited temperature set in the world is bullshiat.

Mass delusions:
Global warming
Species extinctions
Poisons in water, air and food
Obesity epidemic
Risks of oil pipelines
Risks of oil tankers
Risks of nuclear energy

Real threats:
Teh gay
Birth control
Any rich guy anywhere paying $0.01 in taxes

SevenizGud: Teufelaffe: SquiggelyGrounders: Yeah except that the global temperatures have stagnated over the last decade.

That's not only bullshiat, it's not even convincing bullshiat.

9 of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000. (new window)

[www.woodfortrees.org image 640x480]

I'm sure every climatologist in the world will be relieved to know that most often-cited temperature set in the world is bullshiat.

Remember the last time you were caught using this exact same cherry-picked data from this exact same site that deliberately uses cherry-picked data to illustrate the stupidity of cherry-picking data and using truncated timelines to exaggerate random noise?



You should, it was literally only a week ago.

Ladies and gentlemen, the great AGW debate -- knowingly repeating lies, GREEN TEXT ATTENTION WHORING, and vaguely remembered stories about fuel prices from TIME magazine that had the word "cooling" in the title vs. scientists doing science.

Clearly, it's the scientists we shouldn't trust.

I know I'm coming in late to this argument, and I haven't been able to read all 500 posts in this thread so this might be a repeat. I'm a research scientist that works with what are the indirect effects of global warming, namely landscape ecological metrics. In other words, for a living, I look at large swaths of area such as the entire Mississippi Watershed, or river basins in southern Arizona, and characterize their current ecological conditions such as vegetation and wildlife distribution. To be clear, I am not funded by 'climate change,' none of my grants are focused on answering any questions about climate change. However, the conclusions that there have been massive changes over the last century due to altering land use as well as climate change are incontrovertible. Just a handful of the indirect evidence gathered by myself and other scientist:

*Perennial rivers that ran 50 years ago now are dry riverbeds for most of the year.
*Rapid range expansion of wildlife north by species that were restricted by cold temperatures, allowing for interspecific competition we've never seen before.
*Earlier snowmelts flushing cold waters in rivers far too soon for cold water fish (trout), who depend on this flush to happen at a specific time for spawning.
*Higher prevalence of natural occurring insects like pine bark beetles decimating forests (read: lumber) with increasing winter temperatures allowing for more of the insects to survive and have more opportunities for breeding cycles.

I could search the literature and continue listing off these individual findings, likely in the 100's in the past five years alone.

As with all things, there will be winners and losers. Climate models agree that the areas like the American Southwest are going to get warmer, as they have been. The precipitation models are a little less certain, but most of them indicate that not only a.) it will become dryer, but also b.) when the rains happen will change. Both are serious problems, as one indicates less water, and the other indicates less water during the critical growing season. Already areas around the Rio Grande are in water crisis, where farmers are switching to less water intensive (and not edible) crops like cotton. Life in those areas is not going to be sustainable, but imagining people are just going to be able to pick up and move elsewhere is being considerably obtuse.

The winners will be, apparently, those areas who will appreciate a longer growing season further north. However, that also means a greater prevalence of pests. Does that mean, too, that there will be enough rain at the right time in those areas or will the water issues continue?

We also expect to see a drop in plant diversity in general which may have a trophic cascading effect. If it gets too hot for a species of plant, it's not like they can pick up their roots and walk North. Not to mention, the soils north may not be hospitable to their persistence either. Thus, we're seeing species in this 'squeeze' now between their current range, and the advancing border of the temperature range.

I am only one scientist and not a climate scientist. I know many though, and I attend the meetings and read the scientific literature on a daily basis to keep abreast of what's going on. The evidence, in my eyes is overwhelming, and to point to what is really a very tiny minority in the scientific community (and there will always be dissenters) as proof positive that it's a hoax is really myopic. The only motivation I could see someone willing to deny the very real expense that this is going to have is because they can see more immediate profits now in denying it. Not everyone is going to die, but imagine for a moment what life would be like if we started charging people for the real value of water. You pay pennies on the gallon that come out of your tap now. Imagine if it went up even by $1.

SevenizGud: Teufelaffe: SquiggelyGrounders: Yeah except that the global temperatures have stagnated over the last decade.

That's not only bullshiat, it's not even convincing bullshiat.

9 of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000. (new window)

[www.woodfortrees.org image 640x480]

I'm sure every climatologist in the world will be relieved to know that most often-cited temperature set in the world is bullshiat.

There are no labels on your graph. I can discern the X axis to be years, but what is the Y axis measuring? Do you have the text that backs this up and explains the calculations and measurements used to create this graph? Without these things, it's garbage.

I say we need more global warming to return to the climatic optimums of the past.

/Why do environmentalists hate life?

winterwhile: you get to stop using steel, go back to the horse and bugy

Yes, if it's one thing about environmentalists, it's telling people to go backward instead of finding new technologies..

best part...


FOREVEER?????????????????????????

cameroncrazy1984: winterwhile: you get to stop using steel, go back to the horse and bugy

Yes, if it's one thing about environmentalists, it's telling people to go backward instead of finding new technologies..

best part...


FOREVEER?????????????????????????

Spot on impression.

gulogulo:
*Higher prevalence of natural occurring insects like pine bark beetles decimating forests (read: lumber) with increasing winter temperatures allowing for more of the insects to survive and have more opportunities for breeding cycles.


We saw this ourselves in Colorado last year. There are large areas where most, or all, of the pine trees are dead or dying. It's expected that in the coming decades, virtually all of the pine trees will die. Because of the beetle. The consequences are hard to calculate. And nobody argues that the pine beetle can't survive colder winters. Nobody argues that the pine beetle has been thriving. The only conclusion you can draw is that the winters are getting warmer, more of the pine beetles survive, and so they destroy more trees.

I was woefully ignorant about the pine beetle until we went out there and learned about it on a tour on an old mountain railway.

But at least pine beetles don't push a radical activist agenda of gay marriage. At least the pine beetles recognize that we either nuke Iran now or else miss out on the rapture.

gulogulo: There are no labels on your graph.

Teufelaffe: Hey, look, I can post graphs with no key or context from a website too!

Don't bother. The context is that that graph is -- quite literally -- from a site that is using the very graphs he posted to illustrate that his point is a lie (ie: using extremely short time periods to heighten the random noise effect). It's from a site that -- again, literally -- proves the opposite of his claim. He knows this, because he was caught in that same lie just a week ago.

Kibbler: gulogulo:
*Higher prevalence of natural occurring insects like pine bark beetles decimating forests (read: lumber) with increasing winter temperatures allowing for more of the insects to survive and have more opportunities for breeding cycles.


We saw this ourselves in Colorado last year. There are large areas where most, or all, of the pine trees are dead or dying. It's expected that in the coming decades, virtually all of the pine trees will die. Because of the beetle. The consequences are hard to calculate. And nobody argues that the pine beetle can't survive colder winters. Nobody argues that the pine beetle has been thriving. The only conclusion you can draw is that the winters are getting warmer, more of the pine beetles survive, and so they destroy more trees.

I was woefully ignorant about the pine beetle until we went out there and learned about it on a tour on an old mountain railway.

But at least pine beetles don't push a radical activist agenda of gay marriage. At least the pine beetles recognize that we either nuke Iran now or else miss out on the rapture.

There are dynamics beyond just losing the trees, too. First, there is a much larger fuel load to manage for, nearly guaranteeing more intense forest fires. Additionally,the trees provide two things beyond shade, habitat and lumber. They provide soil stability and water uptake. In other words, in heavy diluges they prevent the water from running off too quickly, essentially scouring the topsoil away. Thus, those areas can no longer support new growth. Not to mention, these scouring events tend to dump massive sediments and inundate rivers and scour those too. Fish habitat decreases, water quality declines, a cascading effect of events that eventually falls at our feet to deal with.

gulogulo: Kibbler: gulogulo:
*Higher prevalence of natural occurring insects like pine bark beetles decimating forests (read: lumber) with increasing winter temperatures allowing for more of the insects to survive and have more opportunities for breeding cycles.


We saw this ourselves in Colorado last year. There are large areas where most, or all, of the pine trees are dead or dying. It's expected that in the coming decades, virtually all of the pine trees will die. Because of the beetle. The consequences are hard to calculate. And nobody argues that the pine beetle can't survive colder winters. Nobody argues that the pine beetle has been thriving. The only conclusion you can draw is that the winters are getting warmer, more of the pine beetles survive, and so they destroy more trees.

I was woefully ignorant about the pine beetle until we went out there and learned about it on a tour on an old mountain railway.

But at least pine beetles don't push a radical activist agenda of gay marriage. At least the pine beetles recognize that we either nuke Iran now or else miss out on the rapture.

There are dynamics beyond just losing the trees, too. First, there is a much larger fuel load to manage for, nearly guaranteeing more intense forest fires. Additionally,the trees provide two things beyond shade, habitat and lumber. They provide soil stability and water uptake. In other words, in heavy diluges they prevent the water from running off too quickly, essentially scouring the topsoil away. Thus, those areas can no longer support new growth. Not to mention, these scouring events tend to dump massive sediments and inundate rivers and scour those too. Fish habitat decreases, water quality declines, a cascading effect of events that eventually falls at our feet to deal with.

You just articulated what I meant by "consequences are hard to calculate." There could be cascading effects that will be enormous. So if the right responds with "Aw let's have a pity party for the poor tree huggers," they really don't understand what they're talking about. It will be far worse than just dead trees.

Kibbler: So if the right responds with "Aw let's have a pity party for the poor tree huggers," they really don't understand what they're talking about. It will be far worse than just dead trees.

The crazy thing too is the fact that many of these 'hypotheticals' have now moved into the realm of being observable events. It's happening, and there is really no more debate in the scientific community about it. Yet the debate in the public arena rages on, and to a majority of scientists this quibbling is tantamount to arguing whether water is wet or fire is hot.

I blame my scientific peers for this. Like you said, you had no idea bout the pine beetle. Most people don't because other than a few magazines that offer distilled scientific results for public consumption (Science, National Geographic), I would guess over 90% of research and its findings stay within the scientific circle in very dry and expensive peer-reviewed journals. This needs to be fixed. There are movements now within the scientific community to offer free online peer-reviewed journals, and reduce the costs of others (Elsevier for one is being boycotted right now by something 2500 scientists for its price). That doesn't stop the fact that most articles are very dry and in the terms of telling an interesting narrative, badly written (past tense and passive verbs, repetitive sentences). It falls in our lap to make the information more digestible and distributable. I don't think it's been really figured out how, yet, without overstating or misinterpreting the results.

I rather suspect the Black Death caused more actual hysteria than all other hysteria-causers combined. Half the human population dead in a few years? They really believed the world was ending.