# Am I Imagining Things (Climate Change And Personal Observations)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 28, 2021, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814 "2021-12-28T22:52:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/41 "2022-02-22T01:50:09Z")
That website again? Internet volunteers, some with no scientific background at all, who do their own “peer review”? But hey, at least the website was designed by the dude’s wife. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/42 "2022-02-22T02:36:56Z")
That mundane and pointless reply again? 🙂 As pointed before killing the messenger remains a fallacy, last time there was no explanation or demonstration from you that the examples they point at (and it is almost all published science what they point at) are wrong as in this case. Of course, just to show how mundane that reply was, it does not even counter what it was observed, that even experts already debunked what the other poster posted ages ago. That there is a website that records that what a contrarian posted was debunked years ago, is just inconvenient for the few contrarians that still think that the sources that they depend on are not garbage. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/43 "2022-02-22T02:59:56Z")
> [@billy-jack](#): > > I’m not denying climate change. I welcome it. > > What I deny is that the sky is fallilng. I think it will likely have considerably more benefits than drawbacks. Why? Because it makes you feel better to think that? I mean, everybody in the world would like anthropogenic climate change to be a beneficial phenomenon, if that were possible. The fossil-fuel companies and other entities that are doing the most to accelerate and perpetuate anthropogenic climate change have vast amounts of funding to encourage research into any beneficial aspects of climate change that anybody can scrounge up. Because they would much rather be hailed as benefactors of humankind than have to confront drastic profit-eating regulation on greenhouse-gas emissions at some point down the road. And yet, in spite of all these wonderful opportunities to rejoice in climate change for fun and profit, the overwhelming majority of actual climate scientists persist in telling us that the downsides of climate change, in terms of humans and other species adapting to it, will far outweigh the benefits. I mean, it’s nice that you’re trying to be resilient and maintain a positive outlook in the face of a damaging and discouraging severe drought. I’m not telling you that you need to be all hopeless and despairing and convinced that nothing will ever go right again. But I don’t think you’re really accomplishing anything by simply refusing to face facts. The facts, as far as the current state of climate science understands them, imply that optimistic expectations about absence of severe and prolonged downsides to anthropogenic climate change are unrealistic. ---
**Author:** ![billy-jack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@billy-jack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billy-jack)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/44 "2022-02-22T03:41:42Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > But I don’t think you’re really accomplishing anything by simply refusing to face facts. The facts, as far as the current state of climate science understands them, imply that optimistic expectations about absence of severe and prolonged downsides to anthropogenic climate change are unrealistic. I am facing the facts. The facts are that a warmer planet is a more productive planet. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/45 "2022-02-22T04:17:28Z")
> [@billy-jack](#): > > The facts are that a warmer planet is a more productive planet. Wrong. Just because the consequences of the anthropogenically modified atmosphere are called “the greenhouse effect” doesn’t mean that the earth will actually become like a greenhouse in the sense of fostering more beneficial growth and productivity overall. [Productivity will be lost due to labor losses from unsafe heat levels, for one thing.](https://phys.org/news/2021-12-earth-safe-outdoor.html) > [@](#): > > As heat and humidity levels rise throughout the day because of climate change, options for moving outdoor labor to cooler hours will dramatically shrink, leading to significant worldwide labor losses, a new study led by Duke University researchers finds. > > Economic losses associated with this lost productivity could reach up to $1.6 trillion annually if warming exceeds an additional 2 degrees Celsius relative to the present. [Droughts will continue getting worse overall.](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3117/drought-makes-its-home-on-the-range/) > [@](#): > > Drought—a year with a below-average water supply—is a natural part of the climate cycle, but as Earth’s atmosphere continues to warm due to climate change, droughts are becoming more frequent, severe, and pervasive. The past 20 years have been some of the driest conditions in the American west on record. [Even northern regions such as Canada and Russia that would see increases in agricultural yields due to warming would be worsening the global problems by additional emissions. ](https://news.trust.org/item/20200215072446-pl7ap/) > [@](#): > > Climate change could expand farmland globally by almost a third, [a study](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228305)by international researchers found this week. […] > > But, they warned, opening up new “agricultural frontiers” would also bring significant environmental threats, including a risk of increased planet-warming emissions from soils. [The consequences for insects and their contributions to agriculture will be negative overall.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347934816_Climate_change_A_threat_for_beneficial_insects) > [@](#): > > The ill effects of global warming like change in climate, temperature, rainfall, humidity, level of carbon dioxide has been found to have both positive and negative effects on insects, which in turn reduces the effectiveness of crop protection measures. This creates the need for global warming to be taken as an important criterion in Entomology. Being poikilothermic in nature insects are greatly affected by changing temperature. Insect will experience additional life cycles with rapid growth rate. As a result of changes in the population dynamics including distribution and migration the reliability on current insect pest ETL will be reduced. Increased insect pests outbreak will affect agricultural production. [The impacts of climate change on flooding and precipitation will on average be more destructive than “productive”.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimfoerster/2021/07/14/climate-change-contributing-to-increased-number-of-flooding-events/?sh=1448151c3e39) > [@](#): > > It’s not just coastal areas that are struggling with this increased flooding, inland areas are also experiencing flooding because of extreme weather, sea level rise, and other climate change impacts. There are many factors connecting flooding to climate change and it is becoming a growing problem, as more and more of our large cities, such as [New York City](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/12/weather/flooding-new-york-boston-northeast/index.html) and Houston are experiencing flash-flooding events at levels never seen. > > A recent [study](https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2017524118) found that from 1988 through 2017, precipitation changes have contributed 36% ($73 billion) of the cumulative U.S. flood damages during that time. The study goes on to explain that models show how climate change increases the probability of extreme rain events contributing to most U.S. flood damage. It concludes that as climate change increases, so too will the intensifying of extreme precipitation events. I could go on for pages, but I’ll conclude with the most important aspect of all the aspects that you seem to be blithely ignoring: There is currently no end in sight for the continued increase of anthropogenic GHG concentrations in the atmosphere and the severely destabilizing climate changes that accompany it. If it were just a matter of temperatures going up by 1.5C or so over the next few decades and then magically stopping at that level for the foreseeable future, there might be at least a little justification for complacent indifference. We’d have a reliable “new normal” that we could focus on adjusting to. But there isn’t going to be a “new normal” or an adjustment period for it if we just go on obliviously pretending that climate change isn’t really a bad thing. There’s just going to be a continuous sequence of “new abnormals” hitting us with unprecedented problem after unprecedented problem. I mean, as I said, these are the findings of research scientists who specialize in these subjects. Why on earth should anybody think that your layperson’s emotional optimism is a more reliable predictor of future conditions than their scientific studies? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/46 "2022-02-22T04:34:48Z")
> [@billy-jack](#): > > I am facing the facts. > > The facts are that a warmer planet is a more productive planet. Not really. > **[The five corrupt pillars of climate change denial](https://theconversation.com/the-five-corrupt-pillars-of-climate-change-denial-122893)** > > How to identify and understand different types of denial: scientific, economic, humanitarian, political and crisis. > Climate change deniers also argue that climate change is good for us. They suggest longer, warmer summers in the temperate zone will make farming more productive. These gains, however, are often offset by the drier summers and increased frequency of heatwaves in those same areas. For example, the 2010 “Moscow” heatwave [killed 11,000 people](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3984022/), devastated the [Russian wheat harvest](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/332/6026/220) and increased global food prices. What we need to know is really who told you that it would be beneficial (it can for some, but most will not see it that way), it has been years already, and one should by now dump on the ones that mislead us, and not the ones that report what the proper experts are saying. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/47 "2022-02-22T04:41:17Z")
> [@billy-jack](#): > > It might surprise you to learn that the Sahara Desert is reportedly greening. No, it’s not, except where geoengineering projects are deliberately greening it. There are certainly [some climate change scenarios that predict a wetter climate for the Sahara](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220301007), similar to what it’s experienced at some points in the past. But in those scenarios other regions, such as the Mediterranean basin, become drastically more arid at the same time, so the net impact is definitely not positive. > [@billy-jack](#): > > Sure, there are going to be winners and losers. As in a casino, the winners are going to be comparatively few and many of the losers are going to lose big. That’s not a net positive overall. The good thing about a climate system that is reasonably stable over centuries and millennia is that it allows the formation of stable societies in which most people can rely on being “winners” at some level of basic environmental security. They don’t have massive ongoing degradation of human habitat due to sea level rise swamping coasts and increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, or the consequent displacement of several percent of the entire human population within a few decades. You’re perceiving this as a comparatively trivial problem because you’re only looking at a few tiny pieces of it (and most of those through an unwarrantably optimistic distorting lens). The fact that your current drought is not going to last forever, and that you might see a net increase in average precipitation over the next decade or so, doesn’t mean that climate change as a whole is no big deal, or no bad thing. ---
**Author:** ![billy-jack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@billy-jack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billy-jack)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/48 "2022-02-22T05:00:30Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > What we need to know is really who told you that it would be beneficial (it can for some, but most will not see it that way), it has been years already, and one should by now dump on the ones that mislead us, and not the ones that report what the proper experts are saying. Look around. You don’t have to be spoon fed what to think. Learn to think for yourself. Look at history and ask yourself, “When has a warmer Earth not been more productive?” By the way, the one climate scientist I know thinks the alarmists are crazy. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/49 "2022-02-22T05:06:23Z")
> [@billy-jack](#): > > Look around. You don’t have to be spoon fed what to think. Learn to think for yourself. > > Look at history and ask yourself, “When has a warmer Earth not been more productive?” > > By the way, the one climate scientist I know thinks the alarmists are crazy. That is funny, I actually came to find a lot about how unreliable the contrarians are thanks to years of finding out what they avoid. You need to be aware that less experts agree nowadays with what you think is research, almost all the time contrarians grossly underestimate what is going on. So, out with your sources, we need to know who to dump as has been the case for decades now. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/50 "2022-02-22T05:15:48Z")
> [@billy-jack](#): > > Look at history and ask yourself, “When has a warmer Earth not been more productive?” We haven’t had an Earth this warm for at least the last hundreds of thousands, if not few million, years. And as I said, there is no end in sight for the GHG accumulations or the temperature rise. If you insist on trying to evaluate the consequences of climate change based only on a vague and fuzzy concept of “productivity” and the woolly notion that “well, wetter and warmer weather has to be more productive”, then of course you’re going to be oblivious to the more realistic assessments of serious negative consequences. But being oblivious doesn’t make you right. > [@billy-jack](#): > > By the way, the one climate scientist I know thinks the alarmists are crazy. Feel free to cite some of their own peer-reviewed research publications supporting their minority viewpoints with scientific evidence. Short of that, your self-reported support from “one climate scientist” means less than nothing, especially compared with the findings of actual climate scientists that have already been linked to here. (That’s not to say that there are absolutely no “crazy alarmists” on the non-climate-denial side of public opinion who exaggerate the likelihood of every worst-case scenario they come across. Every science-and-public-policy issue has some ill-informed crazy alarmists doomsquawking that all the most farfetched catastrophic hypotheses are guaranteed to happen. But the majority of mainstream climate scientists are not crazy alarmists, and if your alleged “one climate scientist” acquaintance claims they are, then they’re either lying or crazy themselves.) ---
**Author:** ![billy-jack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@billy-jack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billy-jack)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/51 "2022-02-22T05:29:18Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > No, it’s not, except where geoengineering projects are deliberately greening it. I first saw it reported by National Geographic about 10 or 15 years ago. Are you going to try telling us that National Geographic is a bastion of anti-climate change? From [The Greening of the Sahara: Past Changes and Future Implications](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220301007): > [@](#): > > Despite intense human land use, the Sahel has been re-greening in recent decades as precipitation has recovered from the dry period of the 1970s and 1980s. Whether vegetation expands further into the Sahel and Sahara depends in part on the complex interplay among vegetation, climate, and environmental changes. Despite large modeling uncertainties, state-of-the-art climate-model projections provide some support for the notion of a strengthening of the WAM in the future21 given that enhanced warming of the Northern Hemisphere extratropics favors a stronger monsoon, thus allowing vegetation to expand.22 A crucial factor beyond precipitation changes is the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2): elevated CO2 concentrations from unabated anthropogenic emissions could, in water-limited situations, directly promote vegetation growth and contribute to greening of arid to semiarid landscapes. Under a “high-emission” scenario (i.e., business as usual), by the end of the century CO2 levels will reach values last seen 50 million years before present (BP; \>1,000 ppm), a period of climate warmth and a green northern tropical Africa. From [SAHARA DESERT GREENING, THANKS TO GLOBAL WARMING](https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/sahara-desert-greening-thanks-to-global-warming): > [@](#): > > Satellite images of the Sahel—the vast, belt-shaped region south of the Sahara stretching from the Atlantic coast to the horn of Africa—show a steady northward march of grasses, shrubs, and even trees since the early 1980s. > > While the coming and going of grasses in desert and semi-desert regions can be transient, the encroachment of sturdier vegetation, including majestic acacia trees, has caught scientists’ attention. And it’s not just the vegetation. > > Stefan Kropelin, a climate scientist at the University of Cologne’s Africa Research Unit, has studied the region for more than two decades. > > “Before there was not a single scorpion, not a single blade of grass,” he told the National Geographic News for a July 31 story. “Now you have people grazing their camels in areas which may not have been used for hundreds or even thousands of years. You see birds, ostriches, gazelles coming back, even sorts of amphibians coming back. The trend has continued for more than 20 years. It is indisputable.” > > … > > During an extended period known as the Climate Optimum, 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, when temperatures were significantly warmer than today, both the Saharan and the Arabian deserts were wetter, supporting hunting, herding, and even some agriculture. From [Greening the Sahara](https://www.independent.com/2019/01/10/greening-sahara/): > [@](#): > > But in the last three decades, a surprising transformation has been occurring: increased rainfall, more plant growth, and an overall greening of the desert. > > Eleven thousand years ago, the Sahara was green and alive, pocked with lakes, rivers, grasslands, and even forests. Scientists think that over time, humans and their goats tipped the balance, turning the area into an immense desert. With temperatures rising everywhere, how is it that the Sahara, unfriendly to plants, is re-vegetating? > > Warmer ocean temperatures are leading to increased evaporation off the Atlantic coast of Africa. This moisture is carried inland by high-altitude winds, causing increased precipitation. As more plants grow, evaporation from their leaves increases precipitation even more. Moreover, plants stabilize the sands, furthering an anti-wind-erosion tendency and reducing the number of sand-dust storms and their desiccating effect. > > Another counterintuitive effect is that rising carbon levels in the atmosphere provide a kind of aerial fertilization that increases plant growth while utilizing water more efficiently. The more carbon dioxide there is in the air, the more plants grow. The result is plant growth in areas that were recently inhospitable to their growth. I don’t know what is counterintuitive of the affect of rising carbon levels in the atmosphere. It isn’t that unusual for people with greenhouses to inject extra CO2 to help plants grow bigger and better. From [The Sahara was ‘green’ for over 6,000 years and had 10 times more rain than now](https://www.ancient-code.com/sahara-green-6000-years-10-times-rain-now/): > [@](#): > > Through an analysis of marine sediments, researchers at the University of Arizona have determined rainfall patterns in the Sahara over a period of 6,000 years obtaining fascinating results. The UA-led team has identified the climate pattern that generated a “Green Sahara” from 5,000 to 11,000 years ago. The region had 10 times the rainfall it does today. From [700,000 Square Kilometers Of Added Green Vegetation, Climate Change Shrinks Sahara Desert By Whopping 8%!](https://notrickszone.com/2019/01/16/700000-square-kilometers-of-added-green-vegetation-climate-change-shrinks-sahara-desert-by-whopping-8/): > [@](#): > > Using satellite images, Venter et al. 2018 found an eight percent increase in woody vegetation in sub-Saharan Africa over the last three decades, underscoring the global “greening trend”. ---
**Author:** ![billy-jack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@billy-jack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billy-jack)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/52 "2022-02-22T05:32:22Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > We haven’t had an Earth this warm for at least the last hundreds of thousands, if not few million, years. And as I said, there is no end in sight for the GHG accumulations or the temperature rise. Researchers seem to think that it was warmer during the Eemian, the previous interglacial period to this one. Also, it was warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/53 "2022-02-22T05:40:24Z")
Are you, by chance, one of the contributors to said website? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/54 "2022-02-22T05:46:10Z")
Since I did not use them in my last reply, that is once again a very mundane and pointless remark. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/55 "2022-02-22T05:53:06Z")
It’s just that you seem to be particularly interested in that one, rather unscientific, website as your go to source. 🤷‍♂️ ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/56 "2022-02-22T05:55:05Z")
Not the only source I use, wrong and pointless shrug there too. Calling them unscientific is just once again going for the fallacy of shooting the messenger, it is also like calling a popular science program uncientific, just because the editors are not scientists, very silly indeed. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/57 "2022-02-22T05:57:00Z")
> [@billy-jack](#): > > Researchers seem to think that it was warmer during the Eemian, the previous interglacial period to this one. > > Also, it was warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. Wrong again, particularly about the Holocene. > **[RealClimate: Paleoclimate: The End of the Holocene](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/paleoclimate-the-end-of-the-holocene/)** > > RealClimate: Recently a group of researchers from Harvard and Oregon State University has published the first global temperature reconstruction for the last 11,000 years – that’s the whole Holocene (Marcott et al. 2013). The results are striking and... No, really, the research you are looking at is the pits. Do us a favor and tell us what are your sources. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/58 "2022-02-22T06:08:33Z")
> [@billy-jack](#): > > From [The Greening of the Sahara: Past Changes and Future Implications](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220301007): My previously linked article that you quote here says that the Sahara could become much less arid in future due to climate change, as I already noted. And your “Greening the Sahara” link is mostly talking about an eco-restoration project, which as I already noted has significant potential for modifying the local climate. Your other links with their exaggeratedly optimistic views are from propaganda sites like the fossil-fuel-industry-fronting Heartland Institute and something called “Ancient Code” (?). You are not “looking around you” or “learning to think for yourself”: you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid of science-denial organizations that are deliberately feeding you misinformation and distortion and encouraging you to ignore actual scientific findings. > [@billy-jack](#): > > I don’t know what is counterintuitive of the affect of rising carbon levels in the atmosphere. It isn’t that unusual for people with greenhouses to inject extra CO2 to help plants grow bigger and better. Oh, for pity’s sake. Claiming that anthropogenic climate change has to be beneficial overall because farmers use added CO2 to help plants grow is like claiming that driving your car off a cliff has to be beneficial because everybody knows that going downhill uses less gas and is easier on the engine. The answer in both cases is “No, it doesn’t.” Take a look at a more nuanced scientific analysis of the issue like [this one](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-does-rising-co2-benefit-plants1/), instead of relying on the comforting propaganda from your fossil-fuel shill sites. > [@](#): > > So is it true rising atmospheric CO2 will help plants, including food crops? […] > > There is a kernel of truth in this argument, experts say, based on what scientists call the CO2 fertilization effect. “CO2 is essential for photosynthesis,” says [Richard Norby](https://www.ornl.gov/staff-profile/richard-j-norby), a corporate research fellow in the Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “If you isolate a leaf [in a laboratory] and you increase the level of CO2, photosynthesis will increase. That’s well established.” But Norby notes the results scientists produce in labs are generally not what happens in the vastly more complex world outside; many other factors are involved in plant growth in untended forests, fields and other ecosystems. For example, “nitrogen is often in short enough supply that it’s the primary controller of how much biomass is produced” in an ecosystem, he says. “If nitrogen is limited, the benefit of the CO2increase is limited…. You can’t just look at CO2, because the overall context really matters.” […] > > In addition to ignoring the long-term outlook, he says, many skeptics also fail to mention the potentially most harmful outcome of rising atmospheric CO2 on vegetation: climate change itself. Its negative consequences—such as drought and heat stress—would likely overwhelm any direct benefits that rising CO2 might offer plant life. “It’s not appropriate to look at the CO2 fertilization effect in isolation,” he says. “You can have positive and negative things going at once, and it’s the net balance that matters.” […] > > And while rising carbon dioxide might seem like a boon for agriculture, Moore also emphasizes any potential positive effects cannot be considered in isolation, and will likely be outweighed by many drawbacks. “Even with the benefit of CO2 fertilization, when you start getting up to 1 to 2 degrees of warming, you see negative effects,” she says. “There are a lot of different pathways by which temperature can negatively affect crop yield: soil moisture deficit [or] heat directly damaging the plants and interfering with their reproductive process.” On top of all that, Moore points out increased CO2 also benefits weeds that compete with farm plants. > Rising CO2’s effect on crops could also harm human health. “We know unequivocally that when you grow food at elevated CO2 levels in fields, it becomes less nutritious,” notes Samuel Myers, principal research scientist in environmental health at Harvard University. “[Food crops] lose significant amounts of iron and zinc—and grains [also] lose protein.” […] > > “The problem with [the skeptics’] argument is that it’s as if you can cherry-pick the CO2 fertilization effect from the overall effect of adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere,” Myers says. But that is not how the world—or its climate—works. (Emphasis added.) I mean, seriously, do you think that climate scientists as a group aren’t smart enough to know that in isolation, additional CO2 can have positive effects on plant growth? Do you think that all their warnings about negative consequences of global warming are because they’re just too dumb to have noticed this potentially hopeful feature, and they needed “skeptical” “common-sense” ordinary people like you to point it out to them? Newsflash: You are not smarter or better-informed about climate science than climate scientists in the aggregate. You aren’t blessed with special knowledge or intelligence or viewpoints that make you better able than they are to perceive the consequences of climate change in a realistic way. Focusing on one small piece of the climate-change phenomenon such as “but CO2 is good for plants!” does not mean that you understand the global consequences of the phenomenon better than climate scientists do. > [@billy-jack](#): > > Researchers seem to think that it was warmer during the Eemian, the previous interglacial period to this one. > > Also, it was warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. Not much, if at all. Even if you aren’t convinced by GIGO’s link that current temperatures have already surpassed the Holocene’s, the current climate is definitely [well on track to break all Holocene temperature records by 2100](https://www.scienceintheclassroom.org/research-papers/how-unique-are-todays-temperatures). (The Eemian occurred more than 100Kyears ago, of course.) And again, I repeat: The real climate-change problem is not so much the anthropogenic GHG concentrations that are already changing the climate, but the catastrophically unchecked continuation of the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and the impacts they’ll have in the future. Millennia of human civilization during a period of relatively stable global climate have brainwashed you into taking it for granted that climate-related shifts must be manageably gradual and non-extreme. That is not necessarily a justified assumption. ---
**Author:** ![billy-jack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@billy-jack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billy-jack)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/59 "2022-02-22T07:05:57Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > fossil-fuel-industry-fronting Heartland Institute and something called “Ancient Code” Since I don’t pay any attention to those, I don’t know what they are. I was just searching for information on the Sahara Desert becoming greener because of warming. Is the National Geographic Society a front for the fossil fuel industry, too? I’m not brainwashed, but you appear to be suffering from it. The climate is estimated by experts in the field to have been about 2 to 5 F higher during the Eemian than it is now. Also, that or more earlier in the Holocene. What I know is that it was anything but a disaster when climate was warmer in the past and that the real disaster is when it was cooler. Even in the relatively mild “Little Ice Age” the Earth was far less productive than it is now. Some people are reported to have had to turn to grinding tree bark into flour so that they had something to eat. Actually, I mentioned the higher CO2 helping plants because it is very true and the effect is not small. Warmer temperatures and more CO2 are good for plants, not bad for them. The civilization that we enjoy today was made possible by Global Warming. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2022, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814/60 "2022-02-22T07:22:05Z")
> [@billy-jack](#): > > The civilization that we enjoy today was made possible by Global Warming. Again, the temperature you are thinking about is being overshoot. And no, saying that you look at the National Geographic for support is grosly underwhelming unless you cite what you post about. Because, unless you cite, one can the just ignore the contrarian old chestnuts out there because almost all the time, contrarians that you follow also cherry picked or misunderstood what groups like National Geographic said about an issue. Repeating the misunderstanding, or the cherry pick, or denier deceptions from a few does not make them new or accurate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-imagining-things-climate-change-and-personal-observations/956814.md?page=4)