Land Gained and Lost: A Fermi Estimate | Hacker News Reader

Land Gained and Lost: A Fermi Estimate

daviddfriedman.blogspot.com

76 pointsmhb71 comments

Mostly nonsense masquerading under math/science and missing forest for the trees. Rising temperature does not in itself make land arable or suitable for habitation. In fact it would probably have the opposite effect in sub-arctic regions by causing extensive desertification, forest fires, flooding, erosion, etc.

I can't speak for land in Siberia, but I can speak about land in the north here in my own country, Canada.

The limiting factor for arability in the north here is not temperature, but soil (or, rather, the absence of it.)

Most of the north of Canada, especially the near-north which is now mostly boreal forest, is shallow soil overtop of an almost (or fully) exposed granite base we call the "Canadian shield". It covers a huge portion of the country. It doesn't matter how warm you make it, you won't be able to farm it.

Warming the north also means massive forest fires, which we are already seeing.

In areas where the soils are decent and that aren't on the shield there's already farming quite far north. E.g. take a look at the Peace River etc areas of Alberta. There's quite a few crops you can grow quite far north. (Also much of Canada isn't geographically that far north anyways, when compared to Eurasia.) But you have to have dirt to grow it in.

As for the tundra / taiga / permafrost even further north, I don't know much about the potential soil quality of that land (I doubt it's great though, it's quite arid), but its thawing is already leading to massive erosion problems and population decline for native species.

EDIT: Just for context: The Canadian Shield is 8 million km^2. The total land surface area of the earth is 148 million km^2, thus: The Canadian shield is 5% of the entire land surface of the EARTH, 8% of the northern hemisphere's land mass and 80% of Canada's landmass.

Agreed. There is more to soil than dirt, including microbes, fungi, and soil dwelling aerators like worms.

Soil is a miracle of which we are the beneficiaries. Increasing the amount of available land doesn't result in improved soil quality.

> Soil is a miracle of which we are the beneficiaries.

Soil is not a fixed quantity item though, we can make more of it. Part of the problem is the Cost of Living (and subsequently the cost of a marginal farm worker), and many of our ways of scaling farm productivity are tragedies of the commons (atmosphere, water & soil quality, fertilizer farming abroad)

a long while back I heard Joel Salatin speak about various systems for rebuilding dirt to soil . Really roughly it involved inedible biomass like hay, animal fecal material, churning/aeration to get bacteria more active, and then distribution across and through the land by animals (ploughing) .

Geoff Lawton talks about tools for permaculture and includes bird droppings -- for a small amount of food you can get bird droppings distributed into your environment to improve the soil quality.

In many ways big machinery is disadvantaged in this system because of things like their waste goes into the atmosphere rather than the soil.

There was a guy on youtube doing no till farming and he basically thought that commercial fertilizer and pesticide is a waste of money. Between growing seasons he is using a location specific mix of 18-20 cover crops to keep the soil covered. He didn't even clean up the residue from the previous crops, preferring to seed directly through a thickly covered bed. He barely had any problems with pests or diseases as he the predators of the pests survive and take care of the problem or he made sure there are enough mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria of the proper kind in the soil. The soil quality was getting better every single year.

There are some obvious downsides. First of all, over the short term you will see lower yields as you aren't strip mining the soil for a short term benefit. Second, you actually need a huge amount of knowledge to do this properly. Third, it takes decades to build up high quality soil and only a few years to ruin it, it's like forestry in that regard.

This is a very old, and very workable approach to soil health management. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system

You have to ensure that what's being taken out of the soil is at least replaced, if not replaced and added to - especially around organic material and nitrogen.

Humans have understood this for thousands of years, but the advent of artificial fertilisers allowed us to skip the "fallow" bit, thus increasing productivity in the short term.

Making more soil, that is, soil useful for human food, isn't as easy as you think. Or we would already have replaced a lot of low fertility soils with better soils.

To give you a hint of why you might be oversimplifying - 2m of top soil on a layer of clay functions far differently to 2m of top soil on a layer of sand, because the fertility of the top soil is directly related to the properties of the underlying soil strata.

(Also, the mineral soil you're using to create your top soil from may have issues you need to address... [0])

[0]: https://teara.govt.nz/en/diseases-of-sheep-cattle-and-deer/p...

Yeah I completely agree it's harder than a short post by a software engineer on HN :grin: ...

But you're right that it's amazing how many variables add to the optimal solution.

I think part of what's hard is that it's a process that includes time as a variable. Who wants to hold onto land for 10 years while it prepares for productivity?

I think in time we'll see a combo of a need for industrial scale soilless vertical farming to feed a huge population, and a return to extremely sustainable solutions for the aristocrats that can afford the fanciest "farmers market" food.

Fully agree. Here's a soil map of my island[0]. And the key to each type of soil.[1]

I really don't see an increase in average temperatures changing our podzols into a better soil.

But yes, if the climate change predictions pan out, then we can grow more grapes further south on the east side without fear of frosts, yay!

However, the climate change predictions also state that the eastern side of the island will experience far less rainfall, and mean far more frequent hot and strong winds[2] that a) strip soil moisture and b) blow away topsoil, while the west side of the island, which is already very wet, will see its annual rainfall increase significantly, and also experience far more frequent extreme flooding events which tend to be very bad for crops and animals, never mind the increased erosion or spoiling (via flood deposits) of land under cultivation. All thanks to the magic of orographic lift.[3]

Climate change predictions I'm referring to are here. [4]

All this due to a predicted increase in air movement from the west.

[0]: https://teara.govt.nz/files/m-12777-enz.jpg

[1]: https://teara.govt.nz/en/table/12301/major-soils-and-their-f...

[2]: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-canterbury-norwester/

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orographic_lift

[4]: https://niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resou...

Why is the focus on arable land? Is it that important considering agriculture is ridiculously effective? Imo, any net gain would be offset by the massive energy use needed to offset climate change (in turn creating even more climate change), the destruction of natural habitats (animals won't just up and move to new land) and the unrest from mass human migration (humans won't want to settle that new land, either, instead opting for already developed parts).

I mean I wasn't just focusing on arable land. I mentioned erosion, desertification, and forest fires as well. People aren't going to want to pack up and move to a place surrounded by a) smoke all summer long <see also the pacific northwest last summer> and b) with no economic life near.

In any case in areas that aren't already settled industrial centres, agriculture is usually the first primary industry to develop. Though perhaps now it could be oil & gas and forestry as well.

> The limiting factor for arability in the north here is not temperature, but soil (or, rather, the absence of it.)

According to Wikipedia, "Approximately half of Canada is covered by forest."[1] If the soil is deep enough to grow trees, why can't it grow crops?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forests_of_Canada

I invite you to drive three or four hours north of Toronto and see for yourself. Or just Google image search "Canadian shield", I think it will become clear to you. It's beautiful country, BTW. But not farm country. (I personally would welcome the challenge, but my wife and kids would probably not appreciate it)

It's a thin layer of top soil overtop of granite, often exposed. a) it's variable terrain and mostly not level and full of exposed rocks, so not suitable for mechanized agri. Just getting a house built there with a well or basement often involves dynamite b) Trees roots can penetrate nooks and crannies most agri crops can't. c) the soil pH is wrong, it's quite acidic in spots.

It goes on like that for probably more than 1/2 of the Canadian land mass BTW.

As somebody who grew up 5 hours north of Toronto where the primary industry is agriculture, I find this incredibly insulting. Do you think a picture in a textbook exemplifies the entire region? Go look at satellite photos of the triangle Ville-Marie, Rouyn-Noranda, and Val-d'Or and tell me what you see? It will be nothing but farmland and this is in the dead center of the Canadian shield.

Whatever, I never said anything about it being 100% monolithically seas of exposed granite. I've been around Northern Ontario and seen plenty of farmland, but it's the exception to the rule and that can be clearly seen in satellite maps.

BTW that area looks neat. I'd like to visit. But it does look like the farmland there is a product of a low lying lake basin, maybe sedimentary deposits left over after glaciation? And sticks out like a sore thumb from the surrounding area. (EDIT: just read up on the "Timiskaming Graben"... cool!)

I do think, on the whole, northern Ontario stands to do better out of climate change than many other places in the world.

Ha, if that graben underlies the area under discussion, then I feel very vindicated about a comment I just posted.

I'm not surprised that there are areas in the Canadian Shield where soils are deeper - the Shield is very old, and erosion is a thing, and soils collect in lower lying areas.

I'm guessing that the area you're describing has a lot of lakes, or swamps, or both. Might be a bunch of drainage schemes put in place to make waterlogged soils useful for agriculture?

One swallow doth not a summer make. And one hollow doth not a viable agricultural soil over an entire geological structure make.

(Obviously there's more than one place in the Shield where deeper soils are present).

Because trees and human crops use the soil very differently. (And trees just doing their own thing use soils far differently to trees being grown for a silvicultural enterprise, for obvious reasons, we want more timber faster)

Here's a very obvious example, the Amazon, there's reasons that slash and burn farmers there have to keep cutting down more forest, it's called "soil exhaustion". [0]

Another example from an areas I can speak more soundly on, look at the forest in this photo[1], lots of trees, right? Some of them are 100m high. But they're growing on a podzol[2]. Good luck growing crops in that without massive amounts of uneconomic inputs. You'd need huge amounts of lime to reduce the acidity, huge amounts of organic material to increase fertility, never mind the question of managing water retention - too much is bad, too little is bad. Oh, and of course you might need to add additional minerals like selenium or cobalt. [3]

Soil science is a separate discipline for a reason. It's complicated as hell.

[0]: https://www.dw.com/en/the-amazon-nutrient-rich-rainforests-o...

[1]: https://hikingscenery.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/P105070...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podzol#Characteristics

[3]: https://teara.govt.nz/en/document/14187/bush-sickness

So sure, once you've cut down all the trees, and then spent millions remedying water retention/drainage issues of soil structure, millions adding organic material, millions changing pH, and millions remedying any mineral deficiencies, sure, you can grow food there.

Although, have you thought about erosion? And why removing trees can render soils far more prone to erosion?

Many reasons including PH, Soil retention under weathering (tree roots hold soil, and reduce wind erosion from leaves too), preferred fertilizer mix (nitrogen for example).

This all said, there are plenty of farming techniques that can make the land productive, it's just not as simple as clear cut + plant.

This is an interesting, coarse grained analysis. If you were looking for a false sense of security, or evidence to use in a melodramatic argument, this would fit.

The fundamental problem with climate change is the amount of uncertainty it brings. All of civilizations infrastructure has been built assuming a constant climate system. With 1-6 ft of sea level rise possible, and 1.5 - 6 degrees of warming possible, and completely uncertain impacts to local climates, I can’t tell you where to build the next sea port, farm, and city.

Exactly. Also there is no mention of how temperatures are distributed and how extremes occur. A +3°C increase does not merely mean a linear shift of the temperature records but also an increase in the spread of the values, often meaning making tails fat, i.e. increasing the likelihood of high temperature extremes.

And on the high end, those extremes coupled with humidity can kill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-bulb_...

Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Termination Shock, starts with an Indian city hitting this point and having the power grid fail due to demand for air conditioning, resulting in millions dead. It's fairly plausible.

You were referring to Kim Stanley Robinson's latest book, The Ministry for the Future. I have read both and recommend both highly.

Ack, you're right! Thanks! Mixing up my recent readings, whoops.

Thanks for the recommendations!

Focusing on economic gains?

Cities flooded by each time more frequent heavy rains or directly sea rise won't come cheap, and that is where most of human population lives (and most will lose everything they have). It is not that new land opens elsewhere while everything else keeps being in exactly the same way as today.

It could mean death by extreme weather, starving, more frequent wars for billions, but I suppose that if they aren't in the top 1% it doesn't matter nor have an economic value to be weighted by those equations.

And it is a process. Is not something that will slow down or stop till we get back to the amount of GHG and feedback loops of 100-200 years ago, and we don't have an advanced technology enough to be undistinguishable from magic regarding this. Things will keep getting worse, maybe not at the level of Venus by Tuesday, but bad enough to risk most of life on the planet (including ours).

Stable climate have never existed. 9000 years ago the average temperature was likely higher than presently by 1 - 1.5 degree. 1000 years ago Northern Atlantic and Pacific were warmer than today. Vikings called Newfoundland Wine Land due to grapes that where grown there. Then that rapidly shifted into much colder conditions.

And then the next ice age can start within the next 1000-2000 years which is much worse for the civilization than global warming to the point that perhaps pumping CO2 into atmosphere is not a bad idea if it allows to stop that.

Based on the the contrast of your text to the background this kind of factual comment is not popular here lol.

I think stop global warming at all costs segment here as well as society as a whole would be better served by getting behind initiatives that promote anti pollution ie getting rid of coal and burning oil to produce grid energy. Solar is good too. Put your energy into promoting that and other solutions such as planting more trees instead of planting yourselves in front of a badly needed oil pipeline. I and a large segment of the population might support those efforts more if they were more centrist and weren’t so hostile to society. Focus on the common sense stuff.

Short-term given the current political situation burning coal is better than burning oil or natural gas. Coal is distributed much more evenly among countries than oil and gas. Wars like in Ukraine or Yemen are only possible due to money Russian or Saudi Arabia earns from the energy export. And pollution from wars may offset any savings from supposedly cleaner energy sources. Plus coal transportation is much more distributed operation making it resilient in case of natural disasters or terrorism. Plus the latest coal plants approaching 50% efficiency with proper capture of bad things in coal are not that bad.

Longer term wind and especially solar are way better precisely because they allow very local production, but full switch to those is a far future especially with the current realization that cloudy sky with no wind can lasts for months even in supposedly sunny places.

Current climate change is happening at an incredibly fast rate compared to historical fluctuations. I don't think they are comparable. But the point is nobody knows for certain so when it comes to modifying our environment at a grand scale we should probably try to be conservative.

There were a lot of rather abrupt changes even during Holocene [1]. We do not understand what could have been triggers for those changes. Which really emphasizes that we do not know how the climate works and as a civilization should have being preparing for the worst.

[1] - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-16006-...

This is not true at all. During the recent period known as the Younger Dryas average global temps changed about 5°C over a few decades and then did it again in the opposite direction 1000 years later.

The post-industrial period is so short it wouldn't even register on most historical proxies.

In general it is true, that climate changes are normal.

But the drastic, artifical change we are about to wittness, is something new.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

I think this glosses over the issues of land becoming more arid. Most of the western United States is struggling to deal with this and it seems likely that agricultural output will decrease in these areas even if the land is not unusable by the standards of this article.

It also glosses over that arctic land isn’t usable for agriculture. There’s nowhere near enough fertile soil in former permafrost. The areas that did have fertile soil are now deserts or covered in salt water. It really comes off as disingenuous to me in that regard; it’s a quantitative analysis without any of the qualitative measures that are necessary.

> There’s nowhere near enough fertile soil in former permafrost.

Not only that, former permafrost is highly unstable almost by definition: as soon as it starts melting it starts shifting. This is already starting to be an infrastructure issue, as roads and bridges built on/in permafrost degrade at very high rate when it thaws.

And that's before considering the cool methane bombs. Nothing says stability like your field or house being replaced by a 40m deep crater.

And then, obviously, global warming / permafrost melting doesn't magick a more reasonable insolation. Even ignoring soil quality factors, agricultural yields start degrading as you go further towards the poles because the seasons and sheer amount of sun are crap.

Similarly. Where I live (Scandinavia) we have seen modest change in precipitation on a yearly basis, and if you look at our country as a singular unit. However, the when and where when looking more detailed into the numbers reveal that lowland/farmland gets drier while highlands get wetter. We now have yearly drought warnings due to this.

A significant concern the author is not considering is soil salinity. Most of the coastal land is not easily defendable cities, but productive agricultural land.

When sea level rise then the salty water infiltrates into the ground water and makes vast amounts of soil infertile, from what I understand a much larger area than the zone lost directly to flooding. This will destroy massive wealth and push rural farmers inland, in conflict with each other or the wild areas.

No mention of permafrost? Yes, the _air_ will be more habitable, but if the _ground_ is a boggy mess, you’re not going to be doing much with this newly habitable land.

There were also no occurrences of the words "sun", "light", or "insolation".

The further away from the equator you go, the more your sunlight becomes a fickle seasonal creature hitting you at odd angles in varying intensity. Temperature isn't the only variable affecting the growing season and agricultural productivity.

Is there a way to detect permafrost and remove it using available tech?

Detect it: poke a stick. It stops, at a pretty consistent depth, and not because of rock.

Remove it: overheat the planet. It will turn to mud. Anything built on it will subside or sink. Massive amounts of trapped organic matter will turn to methane.

Eventually, I presume the area would settle into a new climatic zone, with neither permafrost nor mud. Emphasis on "eventually".

Thank you for reminding me that I’m on Hacker News.

11% of the planet's surface has permafrost. Good luck.

Why does the author think that for the effects of high temperatures it's the annual average that matters, but for the effects of low temperatures it's the minimum? It seems intuitively obvious that the extremes matter way more for both cases. A place with a steady 30 degrees temperature across the year is just fundamentally more habitable than one with the same average coming from 60 degree peaks and 0 degree troughs.

(The obvious answer is that the inconsistency is in bad faith, to fudge the numbers into fitting the author's preferred narrative. Is there any legitimate explanation?)

I didn’t want to believe your parentheses text, but I found that the author also has an article criticizing climate projections as volatile and too far into the future [1].

This is straight up climate denial. It’s very pernicious. It admits that climate is changing, it references one of the more dire predictions (3 C), and it doesn’t deny that the change is human caused. It’s pernicious because it shifts attention from an important negative implication (uncertainty with climate) towards an positive but inconsequential impact (more land area). Instead of talking about mass migrations of billions of people and food availability, we’re talking about land.

These arguments are always all over the place, they vary from “it’s not happening” to “don’t worry about it if it is” Climate skepticism has never been about good faith scientific inquiry, it’s always been about insulating incumbent interests from change.

[1] http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-prediction-we-w...

Where are you getting that from the article? He seems to address that point:

> Both of these calculations are based on average temperature. Arguably what habitability depends on is be maximum temperature. If it gets unendurably hot during a summer day, the fact that winter nights are cold is little compensation.

I'm getting it from what the author does, rather than what they say. The calculation for high temperatures is based on annual averages. The calculation for low temperatures is based on the coldest time of the year.

I had missed that sentence, but fail to see how it makes things better. It just means that the author is aware of the problem and has no excuse for using a different methodology for the two cases.

“They also imply that nearly five hundred times as much land is gained through warming as is lost through sea level rise, which makes it odd that only the latter is commonly included in discussions of the effects of climate change.”

Not odd. Wars are fought over “border changes” and resources which this definitely constitutes. The changes would be global and so would the war. This is a very simplistic view to the point of neglect crossing into malice.

> "The changes would be global and so would the war."

One thing that might lead different people to different perspectives is reflected in your choice of words. Climate change and sea level rise is not a future tense, but a present tense scenario. It's already happening. It's easy to view it as something that happens where you go from today's "normal" to the sea rise of the future and perceive the chaos that must entail. The NOAA, in their 2019 report, puts the worst case scenario at up to 5 meters by the year 2300. [1] So the tail end worst outcome results in an overall sea level rise of less than 2cm a year. There is of course an acceleration but it's relatively gradual. It never goes from zero to 'Let's go swimming on Main St.'

If you'd like to see what might happen in a hyper-accelerated case of sea level rise, you can follow the news about Bangkok. Bangkok is a city that was built on a marshy soft clay type terrain and so the literal weight of urbanization and development within the city is causing the city to sink by compressing the terrain under the city. This is further compounded by real sea level rise, local climate conditions (annual extreme typhoons), and relatively poor infrastructure. A bit of a perfect storm. Estimates vary but the city is sinking by around 2cm per year.

It's an issue and is affecting the city. But it's not really triggering a panic or causing any sort of chaos. The city is trying to resolve the issue using technological and developmental solutions, and life more or less goes on. Should the solutions prove untenable I expect the city will gradually start to decline in population with a proportional increase in population to outlying areas. And life continues.

[1] - https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148494/anticipating...

Drought and flood projections undermine the 'usable' claim:

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2881/earths-freshwater-future-...

Projected result on agricultural production? (IPCC 2020):

"World Bank (2009) projected that, without the carbon fertilisation effect, climate change will reduce the mean yields for 11 major global crops, such as millet, field pea, sugar beet, sweet potato, wheat, rice, maize, soybean, groundnut, sunflower, and rapeseed, by 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa, by 11% in Middle East and North Africa, by 18% in South Asia, and by 6% in Latin America and Caribbean by 2046–2055, compared with 1996–2005. A separate meta-analysis suggested a similar order of reduction in yields in Africa and South Asia due to climate change by 2050 (Knox et al., 2012). Schlenker and Lobell (2010) estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa, crop production may be reduced by 17–22% due to climate change by 2051. At the local level, climate change impacts on crop yields vary by location (Chapter 5). Negative impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity contribute to higher food prices. The imbalance between supply and demand for agricultural products is projected to increase agricultural prices in the range of 32% for rice to 100% for maize by 2050 (Nelson et al., 2010), and cereal prices in the range between a 32% increase and a 16% decrease by 2030 (Hertel et al., 2010)."

The most important part of the post:

> This is a draft of a chapter for a book I am working on... My conclusions are pretty dramatic and I want to know if they are, for some reason, wildly wrong.

I am familiar with the author; he's genuine about wanting feedback. Some of the comments here are likewise genuine, but I worry that other readers here are like this fellow:

> The obvious answer is that the inconsistency is in bad faith, to fudge the numbers into fitting the author's preferred narrative.

You want "bad faith," try assuming the author's plea for feedback is dishonest.

He also states this datum isn’t brought up in climate change discussions. It absolutely is brought up. Just listen to just about any interview with David Wallace-Wells and he’ll say it’s a mixed bag with some regions seeing benefits and others catastrophe. And that’s just one author. This overstatement suggests questionable motives.

This seems to naively suppose that the gain could offset the losses. Except for the problem that large populations, cities, ports, industries etc are located on the coasts, while the land gains in cold, remote regions will be probably mostly useless for centuries.

The sea level rise is slow enough that no actual populated areas will be "flooded" leaving people homeless. Rather, it will be a very predictable process, each year the sea will rise by a small steady amount.

The natural life of a city building is on the order of 100 years, on the same scale as the sea rise phenomenon. So cities and people will incorporate that into their planning and property valuation and urban areas will naturally shift towards higher altitudes as new buildings are constructed and old stock is abandoned.

For particularly valuable pieces of real estate, defenses will be built. If sea walls were viable 200 years ago for agricultural land in the Netherlands, it will surely make sense for Manhattan.

Maybe people should abandon these cities. It's sunk cost fallacy, I think? This land is valuable, therefore we'll invest enormous resources into keeping it livable, creating even more climate change, requiring even more investment...

Eventually they'll have to be abandoned anyway, that energy use would be way more efficient just a few miles inland. Which I just realized is in part what you said :D

What really happens is that areas flood more and more often due to "freak" storms. Eventually they're under water full time, but well before that, nobody can live there.

> The natural life of a city building is on the order of 100 years

That's great except sea level rise is going to be a lot faster than that.

Why would 0.6 m of water make a city unlivable? Will 0.6 m make a place where are no "freak" storms into a place "under water full time"?

That is an entirely savage fantasy. 0.6 m is nothing compared to the natural rate of change in a modern city. See for example the embanking of the Thames, or try to imagine how the beaches of New York looked 100 years ago. They were built, rebuilt and raised and redesigned many times over.

Never cross a river that is on average 4 feet deep. Storms, currents, each time more frequent extreme weather, disrupted climate features (like the polar vortex or AMOC). It won't be an orderly, even and without side consequences inch by inch sea rise. You will have pretty chaotic living conditions decades before that average sea rise, do you feel lucky? Can buy another house in another city if yours get flooded by a week long heavy rain next year? Can most people do that?

I had this idea 25 years ago. Move to a place where it's cold, and away from the sea (Montana), and over time it will get warmer. In some respects it worked out. It did get warmer. There are far fewer < 0F days here now. More people want to move here now which has increased property prices, increasing my net worth.

However, not all is positive. Warmer springs mean much more ice on roads, making driving more dangerous, more flooding, erosion. Less snowpack means more fires and larger fires. It's becoming more difficult to get insurance. Lack of extreme cold in winter allows invasive species to survive. Insects that would have been killed by the cold now devastate trees, killing them, making fire risk even worse. Severe hailstorms are now more common, increasing the risk of damage to vehicles and buildings.

Another beneficial consequence of climate change over the long term will be the return of megafauna. Apatosaurs, dunkleostei, sarcosuchus imperator, and others will make a comeback. I can't wait.

or, anything larger than a dog will fail (extinction) in the wild.. many pollinators, species with a large range, and species with specific habitat needs and long breeding cycles, will fail.

Dale Gribble: I say let the world warm up, see what Boutros Boutros-Ghali-Ghali thinks about that! We'll grow oranges in Alaska.

Hank Hill: Dale, you giblet-head, we live in Texas. It's already a hundred and ten in the summer, and if it gets one degree hotter, I'm gonna kick your ass!

Does anyone else find a man who makes a living selling propane and propane accessories criticizing others over global warming to be a bit rich?

This reminds me of Bjorn Lomborg going on the some interview show and saying that we should evaluate also the positive aspects of climate change, for example Denmark could use some warmer weather ha ha ha, charming reptillian smile.

Do you have a link? I’ve never known quite what to think of Lomborg.

No I don't offhand, my girlfriend at the time was doing a climate change project and that was one of the sources so theoretically I could find it. It was on Glen Beck, I found one but it wasn't the one I saw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquohKzR8QI , here Lomborg says good to be back so I guess that means he was on at least one time before.

I remember in the interview I saw they were in the same room, this one is over a video call.

well went through the emails we had around the time, and the various versions of the report, but couldn't find a transcript or link to the Glen Beck video.

> I want to know if they are, for some reason, wildly wrong.

Yes, they are. Agriculture transforms solar energy into food. Any analysis that ignores the solar input is wrong by principle.

Land area is an important secondary variable, you will need it too, but the main variable isn't even on the article.

I know at least one midwestern US farmer who quit and sold his land which had been in his family for generations because increasing frequency of large storms made his harvests unreliable.

"I wish most of Canada wasn't so cold"

And the monkey's paw curls.

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