The best solution is at least 6 billion dead humans asap.

Lame.

It may be lame but ultimately that the choice. Many of our social problems today come from high densities of people living in the same place. There are studies from the 1940's and 1950's that show the problems created when you increase the population densities.

Environmentally the heat engines created by our large cities are changing the weather in their down wind weather shadows. Just the fact that you have paved over or built over large expanses of ground has changed the heat absorption properties which is changing the environment even in the rural areas.

While people jump in and say the large farms are also changing the environment, their effects are not as great as the cities, as they are replacing one type of vegetation with another, not with solar cells, concrete, and asphalt.

I am NOT advocating mass removal of humans, but not to acknowledge that their physical structures are having an effect on the planet will prevent solutions from ever being found.

The next post will be about how the CO2 content is causing global warming. When considering the total CO2 output from all organism on earth, and the absorption properties of the water surfaces on earth, the small percent of CO2 that man controls makes little difference. A change of 0.2 degrees is NOT statistically significant when the spread of temperature measurements from all over the globe is about 120degrees at any one time.

The effect of vegetation on heat islands is evidenced by Central Park in NYC. That small bit of greenery cools the city by about 3 degrees.

@ krnuttle: But the study is about number of trees. It is beyond obvious-to me anyway-that man's development of agriculture depends on the removal of pre-existing vegetation. That's trees! Not at all sure how our agriculture is not a huge part of the cause of this deforestation. Heck, it's ongoing as we write.

+oM

I will debate fornthe sake of debating.

There is a big grassland push going on locally. Native wildflowers and all. I read an article about a large animal reserve in the low countries. It had a goal of allowing lage herbivores to survive and roam controlling the vegitation. Their theory was the humans hunted large game to near extinction INCREASING the amount of forest land in Eurooe. The animals supposedly browsed grasses and saplings well enough to create prairies of wildflowers and what not.

Humans are terrible for the environment. We are big and have a huge footprint for our size. What are you going to do though?

My new theory is control rezoning. Driving through StLouis city there are huge half empty areas of obsolete houses and fallen or partially cleared lots. The weeds ARE taking many over thank goodness but it there is no cohesion to it and larger animals do not live there. If the suburbs could not of rezoned from farm land or nothing to suburbs these lots would have retained value and been rebuilt leaving the farmland farmland or forests forests. In America our population maybe grows by 3% a year. Our rezoning should be tied to that to maintain environmental standards and property values.

people who live in cities are so egocentric to think the world revolves around them ..

ken

The paper is discussed below:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/03/trillions-and-trillions-of-trees-make-that-giant-sucking-sound-of-co2-from-the-atmosphere/

In reality, cities are not especially the problem. A denser arrangement of our population leaves more land for other uses, plain and simple. It's all the "pleasantvilles" going up everywhere that are the real abominations: Huge, never-used lawns, tons of roof and paved areas for water to run off, and this all for no reason other than stroking the ego. Give me ten closely-packed cities any day to one of your suburban dreams. I like cities and I like the countryside. It's all this ex-urban sprawl that's most reprehensible in modern land "development".

+oM

if houses and other structures were built underground that would allow more growing space for trees...............trees could be planted directly over a house and there would be no worry about it falling on something of value. Also an underground home would allow for a more stable year round temperature saving on energy bills to heat/cool. Plus they require little maintenance (no roof tiles/siding to be replaced) and hold up in the strongest of storms.

Viper, I agree with some of your points, but I am still mopping up mud from working on the underground portion of my home.

MAYBE out west. MAYBE in new construction, maybe. I gotta go now. Time to replace some drywall with stuff growing on it that just doesn't belong in the underground portion of my home.

The next post will be about how the CO2 content is causing global
warming. When considering the total CO2 output from all organism on
earth, and the absorption properties of the water surfaces on earth, the
small percent of CO2 that man controls makes little difference.

Well it appears that some basic facts are in order.

CO2 was first proven to be a greenhouse gas that absorbs infrared radiation by physicist John Tyndall in 1881.

There are many natural sources of CO2 but those generally are balanced
by natural carbon sinks. For 400,000 years levels of CO2 in the
atmosphere remained relatively stable in the 180-280 ppm range. In a
short 135 years, human activity has pushed this level to 400 ppm, a 40% increase.

Burning of fossil fuels is the #1 reason for this increase, deforestation is #2.

Also the average global temperature rise is .8 C since 1880, not .2 C. Warming is relatively higher at the poles, than the middle latitudes.

Viper, do you think people who live in high radon areas are going to take your suggestion of underground homes seriously?

One tiny problem: lighting.

"CO2 was first proven to be a greenhouse gas that absorbs infrared radiation by physicist John Tyndall in 1881."

John Tyndall did not prove that CO2 is a "greenhouse" gas. There are many gasses and other compounds that absorb in the same IR region of the Spectrum. Water also absorbs heavily in the lower area of the IR regions.

What Tyndall showed was that Molecules absorb IR Radiation in various parts of the IR spectrum depending on the various bonds in the molecule. A derivative of what Tyndall demonstrated is that you can identify a molecule by its IR spectrum.

All CO2 whether from a rat, cow or human's gaseous expulsions; or from a decomposing rock will have the same spectrum. The natural carbon sinks do not discriminate as to where the CO2 comes from. The equilibrium is with the total of all CO2 in the air, farm animals, the deer and rodents, micro sources, and man.

Those pushing that man changing the atmosphere have blown man's influence on the atmosphere way out of proportion to the minor effect he actually has.

CO2 levels have been going up and down, far longer than man has been on this earth, and will continue to fluctuate long after he is gone. He is not as important as he thinks he is.

The earth has always been in a state of change. Was not there an "ice age"? Yup.

Did man have anything to do with it? Nope.

What about dinasuars? Yup, there bones are everywhere.

Did man kill off the dinausars? Nope.

If you look at the past, the future becomes more clear. Climate change happened in the past & climate change will happen in the future. Humans are mere ants in the grand scheme of things. It is not worth worrying about. Best advice I can give you, is just get ready to meet you maker & live every day like it may be your last.

A good portion in the Amazon - I'm not a "warmer" I really don't believe in climate change caused by man, it's a scam However I do believe in conservation, that means trees, animals and even insects that are beneficial like bees.

we cannot just cut trees endlessly down and expect to have a healthy lifestyle.

we have to be smart with our resources, we cannot wipe whole species by eliminating their habitat and food sources aka the Monarch for example.

its all about smart use of land and resources - we need to do much much better

Of course, humans had nothing to do with the changes on planet Earth over the vast majority of its billion+ years of history. And the Earth's atmosphere has varied widely over that history, and it will continue to go through variations
long after humans are extinct.

However, whilst we had nothing to do with the previous 5 mass extinctions (that geologists have identified), we are causing the current 6th mass extinction, and human industrial activity most certainly is the cause of the rapid atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial changes over the past 150 years.

No humans are not as important as we think we are (duh we're idiots), but how can deforesting 1/2 the trees, putting gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, millions of pounds of plastics in the oceans, etcetera, NOT have an effect on the planet??

the forests will return.....If we have learned anything from history its that human civilizations rise and fall all the time. Some last a few hundred years some a few thousand but in time they all fall. In that process populations crash and information is lost. People live very much like animals until that information is relearned and a new civilization is born.

This thread is more evidence that most people can't even identify our problems, let alone contribute to solving them.

That CO2 is a greenhouse gas and man has increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 40% is irrefutable in the scientific literature. The environmental effects of this increase are described in thousands of papers across a score of disciplines. To deny this is inane.

There is a growing movement to call the current period on earth the Anthropocene, the age of man, and papers to describe exactly when the Anthropocene began. Our current rate of population increase and concomitant deforestation will likely ensure our age will come to an end if we don't stop what we are doing. The easiest thing ever to grasp, today, is that deforestation must end. Nothing is easier to understand than that.

I totally agree, Dan.

We can't keep putting greenhouse gases and heat in an atmosphere for all practical purposes only five miles thick and cutting down everything that can absorb it. That's pretty thin with a diameter of 25,000 miles. Proportionally, thinner than an onion skin.

Mike

Ma nature will soon get tired of us and create a really nasty pandemic that will kill most of the human population. And then the trees will come back.

Probably..if we didn't smarten up. Population encrease ultimatley is to blame when you see farm land being concumed by new housing and paving over.

Overpopulatin Bomb...

http://ca.figu.org/Overpopulation_Bomb.html

I think if plants have enough time to respond to our constant attacks they will evolve to counter them. I often think of tree of heaven in this instance. You cut one tree down and 100 sprouts come up. You cut those sprouts and 500 more shoot up. They are extremely hard to kill even if you use herbicide. Plus they grow in poorest soil and can tolerate high levels of pollution. In time plants could become almost indestructible.

I have two contributions to this on the global warming front:

Watching the weather last night I noticed temps were a couple degrees warmer in the city than outside the city. Seems like 100% proof of man made global warming. Also seems like if you want stats on CO2's part in that you'll need to isolate your weather station data to unpopulated areas or at least areas pretty darned remote.

About CO2. I know what it does in a closed environmentm I have seen boy scouts run the fish tank test. I am not liberal enough to hope it works different on a planetwide basis. Yes it does go up and down. So did the Colorado River before man came along. Lets not take a 1% chance of pushing it too far up. I have a kid and maybe someday grand kids.

In the last 100 years most of Europe, and the U.S., has doubled the number of trees. There's a lot of reasons for this, I'd encourage people to do some research outside of blog posts, there's good data on it.

The problem today is in third world country rainforests/jungle. South America has improved a lot, not sure if that's leveled out yet. Hopefully this continues to improve, brought about by global awareness.

NASA scientists are studying the relationship between tree removal and urban heat islands in Atlanta, Georgia. Scientists estimate that Atlanta's vegetation and tree cover have declined by 65 percent between 1973 and 1993. The area of tree loss equals 153,781 hectares. The trees were removed to make way for new urban growth.

http://www.ei.lehigh.edu/eli/luc/sprawl.html

Good post, personally I see trees getting cut down everyday for urban growth.

there was a short period of time last 70 years when tree numbers increased due to managed logging, but that's no longer the case.