Tropical Rainforests Could Get Too Hot For Photosynthesis, Scientists Warn 249
Using data collected from the International Space Station (ISS), scientists found that a small yet growing percentage of tree leaves in tropical forests are approaching the maximum temperature threshold for leaves to photosynthesize," reports Live Science. If this trend continues, it could spell disaster for Earth's climate systems and biodiversity. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. From the report: The average critical temperature beyond which photosynthetic machinery in tropical trees begins to fail is 116 degrees Fahrenheit (46.7 degrees Celsius). Currently, only 0.01 % of all leaves surpass this critical temperature every year. But scientists warn that air temperature rises of 7.2 F (4 C) could push trees in tropical forests beyond a tipping point and into mass death. "It's concerning from our perspective that you see nonlinear trends. So you heat the air by, let's say, 2, 3 degrees Celsius [3.6 to 5.4 F], and the actual upper temperature of these leaves goes up by 8 degrees [Celsius; 14.4 F]," Christopher Doughty, an associate professor of ecoinformatics at Northern Arizona University, said during a press conference on Monday (Aug. 21). "Even though a small percentage of leaves are currently doing this, our best guess is that a 4 degrees Celsius increase in temperature could cause some serious issues for certain tropical forests." [...]
Plugging these peak temperatures into a mathematical model, the scientists found that an average 7 F (3.9 C) increase in the air temperature surrounding the leaves caused those most exposed to the heat to have their water-carrying stomata closed off by the tree, leading to their deaths. This triggered a cascade effect, increasing the temperature around the remaining leaves and potentially killing them, their branches and the trees in turn. "If you have 10% of the leaves dying, the whole branch is going to be warmer because a critical part of that branch can no longer cool the broader branch. Likewise you can make that assumption across the whole forest when a tree dies," Doughty said.
Plugging these peak temperatures into a mathematical model, the scientists found that an average 7 F (3.9 C) increase in the air temperature surrounding the leaves caused those most exposed to the heat to have their water-carrying stomata closed off by the tree, leading to their deaths. This triggered a cascade effect, increasing the temperature around the remaining leaves and potentially killing them, their branches and the trees in turn. "If you have 10% of the leaves dying, the whole branch is going to be warmer because a critical part of that branch can no longer cool the broader branch. Likewise you can make that assumption across the whole forest when a tree dies," Doughty said.
Geo engineering is inevitable (Score:2)
The problem is that such actions will inevitably be met with fierce opposition and accusations of incompetence, danger, global conspiracies, etc. They will be very likely to end political careers. On the other hand - not doing something can always be portrayed as "being careful" or "there is just not enough support" by the politicians, s
Re:Geo engineering is inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
Geo engineering is such a stupid plan that even Hollywood acknowledges it with several movies over the years. The idea that we can actively and consciously "set" the temperature of the planet and not fuck it up is the height of arrogance and true insanity. Humanity has an extremely long track record of fucking shit up and unintended consequences when we play God with Nature and a neatly non existent record of success. But oh it'll be different this time!
Re: Geo engineering is inevitable (Score:2)
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You base this gloom and doom on what?
There are 2 things to look at.
1) the daily weather
2) predictions of effects based on models
Daily weather, up to and including hurricanes, giant snow storms, fires, and so on are "shit happens". For example, the hurricane in California? There hasn't been one like that for ~90 years. And the one before that was about 90 years earlier. And.... so having a once a hundred year event happen once a hundred years is a sign of nothing. Shit happens.
Model predictions: there
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You totally missed what I said.
The predictions of numbers such as temperatures are irrelevant. They can be right, wrong, close, near, I don't care.
The problem is the predictions of what will actually happen when we get to these various tipping points. All predictions so far have been incorrect. So they finally moved the goal posts to so far out in the future we'll all likely be dead by the time those events occur or not.
This is very similar to how various religious doom cults have worked in the past goin
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Re:Geo engineering is inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, climate change shows that we *can* set the temperature. Oil extraction *is* an ongoing massive geoengineering project. Yes there are unintended consequences, but we know about them, right?
We do have success in some sense. We can feed billions of people where every other N2 molecule in our bodies is provided by the Haber-Bosch process for example.
Did you personally check all of the hundreds of possible geoengineering idea and determined that they are 'insane'? If yes, please elaborate. If you only watched Hollywood movies, maybe better post your conclusions on a movie review site.
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Every single geo engineering idea is insane. Either they will have insufficient impact or we go back to the historic zero success rate of humans having a successful controlled geo engineering program. For example, go look at China and everywhere else they have tried huge rain seeding programs. They created vast dead unfarmable regions. Go look at every place we have introduced a new species to handle a native species we don't like. Not just animals, either. California has basically no native plant lif
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I'm absolutely for stopping to put shit in the air. This is very obviously the easiest and cheapest solution.
But what if it isn't enough or oil&gas manages to delay the stop even more?
Interesting comment about rain seeding in China. Could you post a link to relevant information?
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If we get to the point where human activity is clearly destroying the planet and we lack the will to do anything about it for the very short term benefit of petro corporations then nothing else we think of will help anyway. We would not be the first species wiped out for lack of survival fitness and won't be the last. We are not entitled to our survival as a species.
I typed "china seeding clouds" into Google and got a zillion articles going back at least ten years with no effort. Take your pick. The the
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Our track record of managing the ecosystem we rely on is abysmal. Our knowledge of it is pitifully poor.
What gives you the confidence that we will be able to *actively* adjust it without fucking it up even worse and even faster? Do consider that there is no second chance here. An error in this effort could very easily simply end the planet.
We still do not have the technology to make hair grow on your body at a location where it has stopped growing, something completely insignificant and comparatively trivia
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So is the idea of a successful global geo engineering program.
If you want to discuss further, uncheck the AC box. Otherwise you and I are done.
We are fucked, but stocks went up! (Score:2)
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Mod me into extinction (Score:2)
And I hope that you're reading this on your second or third monitor.
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some serious issues for certain tropical forests
fair title should be: "Some Tropical Rainforests Could Get Too Hot For Photosynthesis".
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Well, the summary didn't say for how much of each day it was too hot, so I *THINK* a lot of people are overreacting. But they could have adjusted for that to come up with their 0.01% figure, in which case it's worse than it appears. Or perhaps the shaded leaves are cooler, and yet still collect enough light to photosynthesize, in which case it's not THAT bad, but IS an evolutionary driver. (Make your outer leaves tough and sufficiently transparent, but use them to screen out infra-red.)
So it could mean a
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Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:4, Interesting)
This is also why there are ideas to seed the atmosphere with more clouds to reflect away more of the energy so that we can cut the positive feedback cycle for water vaporizing. If we combine basically eliminating the production of greenhouse gases and reflecting energy away we can probably fix things.
1) We won't actually fix anything
2) It would be VERY expensive
3) People would prefer to die than have to pay to fix the damage
4) Billionaires would have to go, things like private jets put out more pollution in a few days than you will in a year
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I never mentioned anything about a conspiracy theory at all. I know cloud seeding exists. Clouds reflect quite a lot of energy. If read a paper at one point that if we do cloud seeding on a larger scale we can reflect away more of the suns energy. However, without also basically eliminating greenhouse gases it won't do much.
I just don't think people actually care very much. They say they care but I don't believe they actually do. I don't think we will actually do what is necessary to fix the problem because
Re: Jurassic Leaves (Score:2)
They aren't saying we would be Venus, but note how back then, humans weren't alive. I'd rather not roll the dice on an ecosystem that we have never previously survived in. I don't care if some life will continue if that life doesn't include us. Also even if it does include us, it could be a rather crappy standard of living.
Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, CO2 levels on Earth used to be 5x what they are now, but somehow we are going to become Venus this time for some unspecified reason.
Well, the fact that the sun was about 30% dimmer at the time might have something to do with it. Not that we will become Venus, but the same level of CO2 today would make the Earth a lot hotter than it did during the Jurassic. All of these individual factors affecting climate do not exist in a vacuum. There are many factors and we have to consider them as they are today.
Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, maybe so, but back then we also didn't need a planet that permits human life.
But if that's no requirement...
Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. There was photosynthesis happening on this planet back then. Was it the same that we have today?
Considering that we currently have at least three different ways of carbon fixation and photosynthesis going on, with one of them [wikipedia.org] only being a few million years old and all of them varying wildly in efficiency (or ability to work in the first place) with temperature and CO2 concentration, the simply statement "plants in the past could live in higher temperatures and at higher CO2 concentrations" means jack shit.
And I'm not even going into the problem of the effects of a considerable change in environment and the impact on the survivability of a species of that environment. If you ever had a garden and tried to grow plants that don't grow in your climate there, you know exactly what I mean.
Re: Jurassic Leaves (Score:3)
Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:5, Informative)
If you're nitpicking the headline, it does have the potential to be misinterpreted. If you read the headline and nothing else you might think that the photosynthesis reaction doesn't work at the temperatures they're talking about. If you go past the headline and read the summary you can see that it's really about how the trees react to the heat, the 'photosynthetic machinery.'
Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the headline and nothing else you might think that the photosynthesis reaction doesn't work at the temperatures they're talking about. If you go past the headline and read the summary you can see that it's really about how the trees react to the heat, the 'photosynthetic machinery.'
In short, photosynthesis depends on respiration, else there's no CO2 to work with, and stomata close around 100 deg F. The exact number varies, but this doesn't detract from the point. Photosynthesis is generally greatest near but not over this limit, as it is limited both by CO2 content of the atmosphere and also insolation, but insolation also increases temperatures.
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FWIW, plant metabolism also produced CO2, just a LOT more slowly.
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Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:4, Informative)
It's not the chemical reaction which stops, it's the associated mechanisms in the tree. Really, calling it photosynthetic machinery, as the paper does, seems reasonable.
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The claim made is "Tropical Rainforests Could Get Too Hot For Photosynthesis". This is not true no matter how much you obfuscate or insult.
Why is it not true? Let's try a thought experiment here. Can photosynthesis occur at 4200 degrees Celcius? No, clearly not. Not in any form that currently exists in any known Earth life. Why? A whole lot of reasons, the most obvious being that the given temperature is above the melting point of any known chemical compound. What about lower temperatures though. 1000 degrees Celcius? Not with any known biological chemistry. 100 degrees Celcius? Not in any known plant or other organism. There are extremophiles
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Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:5, Informative)
Sooo, 350 years? Lets see:
Here is a place where the timeline is complete: https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
Nothing like your claim present.
Here is another long one: https://phys.org/news/2021-11-... [phys.org]
Again, nothing like your claim is visible.
And another long one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Again, nothing like your claim is visible.
The reason most graphs only portray the last 200 years is simply because everything earlier are _estimates_. Obviously your claim is a complete fabrication.
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That depends on the plant and the carbon fixation route the plant takes. While generally, photosynthesis and carbon fixation improves with increasing temperatures, at a certain point enzymes start to denature and photosynthesis ceases to work. What that point is depends, to put it very simple (and I hope no botanists read this, it's an oversimplification, I know, but I doubt anyone wants to read about the finer details here) on the plant species. What you're looking at is pretty much what a diagram depictin
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Ok. It's clearly not true, because some plants do well in death valley. Given a more reasonable interpretation, however, it's not exactly clear what the significance is. 0.01% of the leaves...for how many hours per day? Or is this some sort of time average? Etc. ... If it passes journal referees, is considered important enough, etc.
The summary doesn't clarify things. Perhaps if I read the original article I'd have a more nuanced opinion, but I'm going to wait until I see a report in print.
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So polar bears would not die of heat stroke in the desert because the fennec fox survives there...
Yes, some plants have adapted to extreme climates with various strategies. Plants that haven't will perish in such a climate, though. If you introduce a plant used to a moderate climate to arid conditions, it will perish.
The same happens when you leave the plant where it is and introduce arid conditions, though.
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Since humans work best in a 0.0% CO2 environment while plants don't, the optimized levels would be 0.0% on the planet and much more in the areas where we want to grow our crops.
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When you factor in cost and feasibility, then the answer is "whatever the current levels are". Anything else is getting prohibitively expensive. CO2 is an incredibly stable molecule.
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That makes no sense, we still need the peasants to buy our goods and services. Remember that we produce more than back in the good old days, we need some dupes to sell those trinkets and beads to or else perpetual growth ceases to work, and we can't allow that!
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Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm really not sure what your point is, or even if you have one.
Your 6-mile asteroid is the definition of the problem of rate of change. If the energy of that asteroid had been released, say over 1,000,000 years then it would have been no big deal. You say life survived the asteroid, well yes, but not the previously dominant life.
>There is absolutely nothing humans could do that would even come close to the impact of that asteroid. Even if we detonated every nuclear device ever created and burned every ounce of fossil fuel in the Earth.
What's your point here, either? So what? Does that mean we can't cause our extinction via climate change? Is that where you're attempting to go with this?
You say life will survive. Yes, certainly. But humanity won't if we are in such a disaster. Why do you care if life survives but humans don't? Does it make you feel better? Why?
Re: Jurassic Leaves (Score:2)
Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:5, Informative)
During the time of the dinosaurs the CO2 level was up to 5x what it is now. Plants and life didn't die out.
Are you seriously trying to suggest that widespread ecosystem collapses would not matter? True, the ecosystem during the dinosaur age adapted, but it didn't do that according to a successful three month crisis plan from corporate management. The ecosystem of the planet adapted over geologic time scales (a.k.a tens, hundreds of thousands or millions of years) which tends to suck for humans since our lifespans aren't all that long. Furthermore, nature generally does not care if you and your country lose your ability to grow enough food to sustain yourselves and starve to death as a consequence. Nature does not care if some other group of people who've used up all their ground water and turned their current habitat into a 40k'esque forge world desert through idiotic resource management got a collective vision from their god to the effect that : ''all your neighbours' still habitable land are belong to you now" so they come over, kill the lot of you, throw your corpses into a gravel mine, move into your houses and take ownership of your stuff. Take any period of rapid climatic upheaval in human history, particularly after the rise of sedentary societies, and you will see the same thing. War, misery, suffering, war and more war over the remaining resources. If we are too lazy to make what are still relatively manageable adjustments to our lifestyle to prevent ecosystem collapses then perhaps we deserve the consequences because it seems to be the only way some humans are capable of learning.
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If we are too lazy to make what are still relatively manageable adjustments to our lifestyle to prevent ecosystem collapses then perhaps we deserve the consequences because it seems to be the only way some humans are capable of learning.
As a species, we do deserve it. No "learning" will take place though. What we see at the moment is aggressive denial and determinedly doing nothing or by far not enough. "Failure to adapt" is basically assured at this point (no, "geoengineering" will not work) and a species that does that typically dies out. There is no reason to assume the human race is different in that regard. Maybe a remnant will survive, but that is not assured at all.
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Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:5, Informative)
We don't actually know that "geoengineering will not work."
Those of us that understand what engineering can actually do and what not and what the actual scale of the thing is do know that. Completely infeasible for what would be needed. Geoengineering is a smoke-screen pushed by those that want to go on polluting for a while longer.
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That is not geoengineering. It is unintended consequences. Engineering requires a goal, a plan and then technological work to reach that goal. You know, "coordinated" and "planned". As in "intended consequences".
Also look at the effort putting all that CO2 into the atmosphere would have needed if the core aim was to pump out CO2 and there was not industry to do it yet and no reason besides that CO2 goal to create that industry. You know, the situation for geoengineering to slow down man-made climate change.
Re:Jurassic Leaves (Score:5, Insightful)
CO2 levels are not a ttheat to Life on Earth. CO2 levels are a threat to humans. We as a species are relying on a very limited number of plant species for survival, and only a few animal species. If they get unter ecological pressure because of changing climate, we easily run out of resources to feed eight billions of us. And we are confined to a very limited type of environment. Basically, we turn every place we settle into a steppe: mostly grassy plains with a few trees here and there, named crop fields, plantages and pastures. But grassy plains don't thrive in a hotter environment. There, you either have deserts, or you have large forests - enviroments, humans usually don't settle.
This will result in a big batte for resources, and that's a problem, as humans are very good at destroying each other when it comes to battles.
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Well, at least we will be back in our comfort zone, doing what we know best.
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What about sharks?
Sharks still exist and they have existed since early jurassic, yes?
Maybe there are details, but if a single species from back then still exists today, it doesn't really change anything. I am only curious.
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Funny that you mention angiosperms, they're exactly the plants that developed a new (ok, ok, back then it was new) way of carbon fixation [wikipedia.org] (i.e. photosynthesis).
C4 fixation is actually better at it in hotter and dryer climates than the predecessor... wonder if the plants already knew that we'd fuck up everything.
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Rather few plant species are actually C4, from an evolutionary point of view that's still a pretty new invention from the end of the Eocene. Funny enough, also a time when a fairly considerable change in the global climate, albeit in the other direction, caused a minor extinction event [wikipedia.org].
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During the time of the dinosaurs the CO2 level was up to 5x what it is now. Plants and life didn't die out.
I'd imagine an actual Green planet was capable of cleaning CO2 like a Dyson vacuum back then too. No concrete jungles and asphalt runways paving over all that capability.
Not saying I'm full-on convinced man is to blame 100% for any warming of the planet, but destroying CO2 cleansing plant life and not replacing it will have an obvious net-effect on an environment enclosed within an atmosphere, regardless of pollution by volcano or rednecks.
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During the time of the dinosaurs the CO2 level was up to 5x what it is now. Plants and life didn't die out.
You are exactly right; however, I forgot to save the seeds of those trees. Would you happen to have any so we can get a head start on making forests that will survive? We probably also need some of the insects and animals from that period too. Please tell me you stored that DNA because the DNA in the plants and animals that are alive today are not built to survive that kind of heat.
So... did you save that DNA?
Re: has anything dumber than this been said? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nature can absolutely recover.
It could take thousands to millions of years though.
Just an interesting example, grass is about 55 million years old, so dinosaurs didnâ(TM)t even have grass.
Nature changes, and we are a part of it.
Will we survive?
Probably.
Can we sustain a large population?
Possibly, but we might not, and the road to a sustainable level can be quite horrible.
This issue is not about all trees dying, itâ(TM)s about the current generation in the hot regions needing to adapt over a short period of time, which always means loads of trees dying.
But yeah, assuming the temperature stabilises they would probably adapt in a few hundred or thousand years.
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Ugh this absurd notion that we're going to go extinct from a few degrees warming.
Yet, if your body temperature goes up "just a few degrees", you end up dead.
And don't make me say what I didn't: the planet warming up is not going to impact your body temperature directly. This is just to illustrate that there are some physical interactions where "a few degrees" difference can actually make all the difference. Climate change is one of those, if you cared to research it.
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>Ever notice that EVERY climate change prediction uses the words "can, could, might, may" instead of "will" beause even the authors know weather & climate predictions are bullshit.
No, it's because scientists are very careful with their words most of the time.
Their models are MODELS, not facts. Therefore, they SHOULDN'T be saying "will".
>Like I said, I have done research
Obviously, none of that has been on the science, or Science, or you wouldn't have written your first statement.
>You never hear
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They ain't worse than the daily bitcoin scam post or the "news" about the latest brainfart of the Muskman.
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If we did not have a lot of cretins like the one above, we probably could still assure civilization survives. But their aggressive "there is no problem" stance delays decisive action further and further and we are out of time and have been for a while now. So taking the denier-population into account, yes, we are pretty much fucked.
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You've said several times water vapor is the main driver of gw and also said we can't do anything about water vapor.
What do you expect from people?
Re: has anything dumber than this been said? (Score:3)
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Whoa, wait, what?
Without any CO2 or without the additional human added CO2?
Because if you mean the latter, that is simply untrue. There was water vapor galore in the atmosphere before the first creatures stepped out of the oceans onto the land. Humans did not create the extra CO2 necessary to have water vapor in the atmosphere.
And if you mean with no CO2 at all then uh, so? Without us there was CO2 already. So, sure, science and all but it's a pure theoretical, the fact is we have CO2 with or without peo
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Whoa, wait, what?
Without any CO2 or without the additional human added CO2?
Did I say that? (Here's a hint: I didn't)
the fact is we have CO2 with or without people.
Indeed, you are correct, although there have been points in Earth's long history when the concentration was essential zero, which would be a problem for human life as that was 'Snowball Earth'.
So, anyway, this guy I was replying to has posted all over the comments about how water vapor is the key to everything, that we can't stop water vapor,
You may have been misunderstanding the posts. Essentially, we can't stop water vapour as it's a feedback.
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No, but we know pretty much nothing about their metabolism.
It could be that their body temperature was around 41C. (concrete number picked because it is an estimate for the Apatosaurus). At that body temperature, a human is dead.
Some others could have been as low as 25C.
Now go away with your common sense-sounding idiotic questions comparing the incomparable.
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They taste like chicken. That was their downfall. Once Ugg the Caveman had his first Dino bite it was over. We still have Dino shaped chicken bites for kids today in genetic memory of those times.
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If gw is all about water and water can't be fixed then why are you calling people lazy for not trying to fix the unfixable?
Re: has anything dumber than this been said? (Score:2)
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You're not over the top dramatic. At all. Nope. My tea is ready, ttyl.
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This is just more FUD
You don't even know what FUD means, do you? It comes from words "fear", "uncertainty" and "doubt" and fear certainly is warranted. Uncertainty? Only in terms of when the leaves in will stop being able to photosynthesize and where. Doubt? None, really, since climate change is happening already.
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Good question.
Let's look at both.
No models say 7F global average will happen so I think we can agree to dismiss that case, yes?
If there is a local occurrence that turns an area into sand and rock, well... ok? So? That has been happening in both directions since the first plants and moss formed on the land. Forests become grassland, grassland becomes sand and rock, sand and rock becomes forests. And not just from climate change. Humans have made some dramatically regional changes throughout history long
Re:I believe climate change is real... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the media took hold of it and ran it through their spin cycle. And it needs to be sensationalist clickbait, so people watch and read it.
In other words, even if something is actually true, they make it sound like a drummed up story.
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They will keep posting this fear porn as long as it drives comments.
Don't dance like their monkey.
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And since sunspot activity is starting to wane according to the sun's own cycle, is there a reason to try?
Why do you idiots keep claiming this? The solar minimum was in late 2019. The solar maximum is coming up in mid-2025, it's not waning at all, it's still increasing. All eight years surrounding that solar minimum were the hottest years on record [nytimes.com], it did nothing to reduce heat (and if it did, oops, that would mean it was mitigating worse underlying problems). The solar cycle is roughly an 11 year cycle, and we've been consistently heating up for far longer than 11 years. Sunspot activity, or lack thereof, is
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Re: Climate alarmism articles on Slashdot (Score:2)
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All other forms of life are secondary to human life, so no, pre-industrial CO2 levels are irrelevant.
Are you saying that because you don't think humans existed prior to the industrial era? Because that would be the only condition under which that statement would make sense.
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Re: Climate alarmism articles on Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
" Furthermore, if in order to optimize the Earth's carrying capacity for humans necessitates higher CO2 levels (along with the irrigation of deserts), so that the Earth's temperature can rise, so that we have more precipitation, more arable land, longer growing seasons for crops, and ultimately greater food production for humans, then we should DO THAT"
That, sir, is the cry of the uneducated idiot acting above his pay grade.
In reality the climate that allowed humanity to thrive is the result of a fragile balance between ecosystems and natural geological processes, and the same imbalance threatening the polar bears threatens us. Making the globe warmer will destroy our food systems (yields are already falling worldwide) and in fact not benefit us even slightly.
Re: Climate alarmism articles on Slashdot (Score:3)
Reality is calling
https://theconversation.com/cl... [theconversation.com]
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Trees won't die in general, SPECIFIC trees will die. 56 million years ago, the poles had what we would consider tropical climates... but it wouldn't have been all that nice closer to the equator.
252 million years ago, the Siberian Traps erupted and temperatures went up 10c... and 95% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life went extinct.
We're expecting to have almost half that temperature rise by 2100. This is really, really bad. But there will still be trees, they'll just be distributed differently.