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Old 02-20-2012, 12:18 AM   #133 (permalink)
jamesqf
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ladogaboy View Post
Please define "present" and "natural range." Present and natural range meaning what we have experienced in the last 50 years? 100 years? 200 years?
How about the last 5000 years, give or take a few: the period in which essentially all our civilization developed, and to which our agriculture (and much else) is adapted.

[QUOTE[Are we talking about about the natural range that includes winters so bitter that the Delaware River froze over and soldiers literally froze to death while marching.[/QUOTE]

Bitter? Grew up in that country, on a tributary of the Susquehanna. It froze over every year, solidly enough to skate on. Likewise, anyone outdoors for prolonged periods without proper cold-weather gear risked freezing to death. But did the Indians freeze to death in the same climate?

[QUOTE[A range that includes the Sahara Desert's expansion over the last 10,000 + years? (predating modern fossil fuel use)[/QUOTE]

But not predating goats or intensive grazing :-)

Quote:
How are those people who are (supposedly) in awe of nature and the environment so afraid of change?
It's the rate of change, and the extent, which matters. Yes, barring a complete runaway Venus-effect warming, some species will survive, and it'll all be the same in a hundred million years or so. While I admit to a certain intellectualy curiousity about what a world inhabited by the descendants of extremophile bacteria would be like, I really prefer a world in which I can reasonably expect to go on living comfortably for the immediate future.

It's illuminating to consider that the closest natural analog to the current warming is probably the Permian-Triassic extinction event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian...tinction_event
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