2 years to areas of major N. American vegetation die-off & desertification

[Pooka Fey]

Global warming alarmists aren't upset enough

Richard Lasker
Lasker is the director of Brabant Research Inc. in Bent Mountain.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-79644
<snip>
What we are seeing in the global warming picture is record heat and less-than-average rains, especially across North America. But, at Brabant Research Inc., we do biological and botanical research, primary research, (that means we actually do all the analytical testing as well as the field and lab research work), and we've been looking at the global warming picture since 1995 from an analytical and plant physiology viewpoint. All that experience makes us wonder, where are the real alarmists? Let me explain:

An increase of 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit doesn't just mean it's warmer. It means that plants, especially temperate climate plants (not tropical plants), have to keep cool by increasing the rate of transrespiration, moving water throughout the plant. That's how plants "keep cool." But an increase in daytime temperatures of 10 degrees Fahrenheit equates to a 50 percent increase in transrespiration in most temperate climate plants, less in some, more in others. The water doesn't circulate in the plant, go up then down and all around, it comes out of the leaf stomas (openings) as water vapor. That's part of what humidity is, plant sweat.

Now, with 50 percent of the U.S. currently in one form or another of drought, and plants needing an increase of roughly 50 percent of water movement, doesn't this mean that the plants are using the ground water at half again the normal rate? And, we've established, the ground water (rain) replenishment rate is at drought levels, yes? That's my point here: Most plant physiologists, most botanists, most biologists know these simple plant facts. Where are they in this "debate" about global warming? Where are the real alarmists who should be shouting at the tops of their lungs that a major calamity is scheduled to befall the North American continent unless global warming is brought to a halt now. Not 10 years from now, not five years from now. Now!

Allow me to be the alarmist. At the current rate of rainfall, coupled with the current rate of transrespiration, North America will start losing major areas of vegetation in the next two years. Yes, two years. Anyone who knows the climatic history of the Sahara Desert or Spain or Italy can tell you that once you strip or lose the trees and grasses, you do not get the rainfall back.
...

Spanish people tell me that prior to the Spanish Armada deforestation, a monkey could cross Spain from tree to tree and never touch the ground. Rain fell in excess of 36 inches a year. Today? A few inches at best in the most of Spain, and in some places it hasn't rained in decades. You have to give water, (from the ground through the plants) to get water. Uprising hot ground water from plants "seeds" the passing fronts and makes rain. With no plant "sweat," with no ground moisture, the passing water-laden weather fronts just evaporate; no rain. Gee, sound familiar?
<snip>

[Teaser]

1. this is awesome news.

I kind of dig the whole "desert planet" thing. Dune...Tatooine...

kewl...

[mainegreen]

15. I personally welcome our new worm gods. nt

[Ezlivin]

2. Privatize all those lands and the problem will be completely solved

Our benevolent corporations will nurse the ravaged land back to health.

:sarcasm:

[jilln]

5. This is the Libertarian point of view, right?

I remember reading an article by Libertarians explaining that the only way to save elephants from extinction was to "privatize" them. Privatize wildlife!!! That's when I knew libertarianism was not for me.

[Ezlivin]

7. Exactly

Privatizing prisons can save taxpayers money, right?

Well, until you realize that each privately run prison now wants to keep running, to keep making profits. That means we ALWAYS have to increase the numbers of people we are imprisoning. We have to ALWAYS build more prisons because any successful "business" seeks to and needs to grow.

[NNadir]

9. And the problem with building more prisons is what exactly?

We are all prisoners. Some of us, granted, have more exercise time in the yard, but we are all prisoners.

[Ezlivin]

10. We have more people in prison than China!

"In 1995, the most recent year we can use for comparative purposes, the overall incarceration rate for the United States was 600 per 100,000 population, including local jails (but not juvenile institutions). Around the world, the only country with a higher rate was Russia, at 690 per 100,000. Several other countries of the former Soviet bloc also had high rates-270 per 100,000 in Estonia, for example, and 200 in Romania-as did, among others, Singapore (229) and South Africa (368). But most industrial democracies clustered far below us, at around 55 to 120 per 100,000, with a few-notably Japan, at 36-lower still. Spain and the United Kingdom, our closest "competitors among the major nations of western Europe, imprison their citizens at a rate roughly one-sixth of ours; Holland and Scandinavia, about one-tenth." (Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in America)

"The number of people in prison, in jail, on parole, and on probation in the U.S. increased threefold between 1980 and 2000, to more than 6 million, and the number of people in prison increased from 319,598 to almost 2 million in the same period. This buildup has targeted the poor, and especially Blacks. In 1999, though Blacks were only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they were half of all prison inmates. In 2000, one out of three young Black men was either locked up, on probation, or on parole. The military-industrial complex of the 1950s, with its Cold War communist bogeyman, has been replaced by a prison-industrial complex, with young Black "predators" serving as its justification."
(Dan Parkin, International Socialist Review, Jan-Feb 2002, p69)

For the first time in history the population of US federal, state and local prisons has surpassed two million people, consolidating the US lead over China, Russia and even Belarus in both absolute numbers of inmates and the rate of incarceration, according to new figures made public Sunday.

But the numbers released by the justice department's bureau of justice statistics may not reflect the full picture.

"If you include INS, the territories, military jails, the Indian country and juvenile facilities, we did surpass the two-million mark back in 1999," Paige Harrison, one of the authors of the report, said.

If all the inmates held in these jails were included in the overall tally, it would grow by approximately another 130 000 people, according to Harrison.

The US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), which was folded into the newly-created department of homeland security earlier this year, operates its own system of detention facilities where it processes alleged illegal aliens.

According to the report, the 50 US states along with the District of Columbia and the federal government held behind bars as many as 1 355 748 people as of June 30, 2002, while 665 475 individuals were under lock and key in municipal and local jails.

The rate of incarceration was 702 inmates per each 100 000 US residents, up from 690 at midyear 2001. This means that one in every 142 people living in the United States was in jail in the middle of last year.

The figures show the United States remains the absolute world leader in both the overall number of inmates and their ratio to the population at large.

The world's most populous country, China, whose human rights record is being constantly assailed in part for throwing people in jail for political reasons, has over 1.4 million inmates, according to the British Home Office, which monitors these statistics.

The prison population of Russia is about 920 000, these figures indicate.

As for the incarceration rate, the United States is being followed by the Cayman Islands (664), Russia (638), Belarus (554) and Kazakhstan (522). - Sapa-AFP

(this source is from 2003: http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,6119,2-10-1462_1344062,00.html)

[NNadir]

12. Uh. Oh.

I need the sarcasm emoticon.

In prisoner-years, nobody beats the Romans for prisons. The people at Pompei were imprisoned in volcanic ash for almost 2000 years.

I'm guessing we are imprisoned by our atmosphere, we and the Chinese alike.

[Dead_Parrot]

18. Get 'em planting trees, then.... nt

[acmejack]

3. Yes we know they're concerned for the future.

Their ads advise us of that fact continually. BP is green! GP is good for forests! The only green anyone gives a flip about is the filthy lucre. It does so little good to scream, I've been told I'm delusional. What do we do, now they are on the look out for eco terrorists, which you damn well know is any environmental activists. Your post undoubtedly has been cross correlated in a gigantic relational database and flagged appropriately.

[skids]

4. This thread proves two things.

First that the effects of global warming are here now, not 20 or 50 years off.

Secondly, that people that read E/E are sarcasm-tag deficient. :-)

[NNadir]

6. Sarcasm and irony predate the invention of the smiley.

I'm old enough to know that. I hate to sound like an old fart, but I am an old fart. The time was that readers didn't need to be lead around by the graphic.

[skids]

8. Sarcasm is usually intonated...

...lack of intonation in text-based discourse is the principle reason for the invention of emoticons.

And you're also old enough to know that pining for days past doesn't bring them back :-)

[NNadir]

11. Sarcasm in the written word is very old.

Why it at least dates to the middle of the 20th century, just as I do!

As far as I know, George Orwell never read "Animal Farm," aloud, for instance.

Again, I am indeed an old fart - and a crochety old fart at that - but I think the emoticon was invented for reasons other than those which are advertised.

[skids]

13. Most Internet posters are no George Orwell.

Prior to the Internet, most written word was much less conversational in nature. Even in private correspondence, sarcasm was set up and framed with great care. This days we want to just sit back and chat, and as such we need emoticons.

[NNadir]

14. When you say, "most written word was much less conversational in nature,"

are you speaking from memory or from something you read somewhere? If you read it, did the work come with emoticons? If it didn't, how do you know if the writer was being sarcastic or not?

I give up. Here you go: ;-)

I think I'm distracting from an important topic about desertification.

[hughee99]

17. This thread proves

that the effects of global warming are here now? Not to say I personally disagree with that, but how is this proof? It's an editorial that makes a prediction, and even seems to admit that others studying the problem don't seem to have the same level of concern.

I think you're right about the sarcasm-tag deficiency, though.

[Gregorian]

16. I met an old lady once.

She was about 85 years old. She had lived in Hydesville since the thirties. I was a bit distraught about things, plus I always look for those people who have been a part of the community the longest. I spend much of my time riding my bike through forests. It's something I've always loved. But in the last few years I have become alarmed. Since Bush, I have seen major escallation of deforestation. And I do not see fish in the streams.

I got a conversation started with the woman, because she nearly lost her old house in a fire. And we walked along talking. I mentioned the lack of fish, and she looked up and got quite animated. Now Hydesville is in the coastal northern California area where the huge redwoods once were. As we walked she mentioned how sunny it was. But not because it was nice out. She said that Hydesville was always foggy. That is up until the redwoods were cut. She said it was as clear as can be, that when those big trees went, so did the fog. Which makes sense. But she also said that up until about 1968, one could almost walk across the river on the backs of the salmon, there were so many.

That's all. Just my story.

[Pooka Fey]

19. Thanks for commenting

on the OP. I liked your story.