TN Wildlife Agency - State Facing Loss Of Hemlocks, Beech, Trout W. 5F Increase By 2050,

[hatrack]

Brook trout, the state's only native trout, could disappear. Wood duck wouldn't be found as often raising their young along waterways and in wetlands. Drying of prairie potholes and marshes to the north could mean fewer mallard, northern pin-tail, blue-winged teal and other ducks migrating to Tennessee in winter, resulting in shorter hunting seasons.

These are among many possibilities that the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency lists in a new report showing that significant change would be in store for the state and its residents — the people, plants and wildlife — with global warming.

The report was issued last week as Congress debates climate change legislation that could provide funds for wildlife agencies to address potential impacts.

EDIT

"What we continually say is, 'It's about the habitat,' " said Mike Butler, executive director of the nonprofit Tennessee Wildlife Federation. "If it affects habitat, it affects wildlife and people, whether they're using a camera, a shotgun, a rifle or binoculars in their pursuit of wildlife. If you don't have the habitat piece, it doesn't matter if it's a bulldozer or global warming, the wildlife won't be there."

EDIT

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090624/NEWS01/906240389/1017/NEWS03/Agency%20says%20wildlife-rich%20Tennessee%20has%20lot%20to%20lose%20with%20global%20warming

[imdjh]

1. could, might, possibility, .... the only thing we really know is that some people want to .....

... drive the cost of energy through the roof with an energy tax.

[hatrack]

2. Toodles

nt

[imdjh]

3. I'm glad that you can afford for your energy costs to skyrocket. I can't. So thanks in advance. nt

[pscot]

4. The cost of doing nothing will be higher

than any of us can afford. If we don't pay now, our kids and grandkids will pay down the road, and they will curse our names for not acting while there was still time.

[vincna]

5. Sounds speculative to me - nt

[imdjh]

6. President Obama disagrees with you. He said that the costs "will skyrocket".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqg7ThZB04

Go to 00:30

I can't vouch for the video. It looks like him. Sounds like him, and I have watched it over and over to see if it has been edited and I can't detect such.

[pscot]

7. Whatever it costs

the cost of inaction will be higher. Do you really believe we can just keep on doing things the way we have been? The ground is shifting under our feet. The fact that you, or the President, think the price is too high to pay, doesn't matter. We're going to pay it, one way or another. Prevention is always cheaper than crisis intervention.

[imdjh]

8. That's elevating a lot of prediction to an unsupportable level of certainty.

You're assuming that not going Cap and Trade is the equivalent of doing nothing. It simply isn't.

[kristopher]

9. That's an intriguing statement.

would you care to elaborate? I agree that pricing carbon is only one strategy, but what other course, strategy or trend do you see that would be considered 'doing something'?

[kristopher]

12. By your silence I assume you concede that not taxing carbon is the same as doing nothing?

You wrote: "You're assuming that not going Cap and Trade is the equivalent of doing nothing. It simply isn't. "

[imdjh]

15. Would it matter?

[kristopher]

24. Would what matter?

[Nihil]

10. In that case you have a choice don't you?

> I'm glad that you can afford for your energy costs to skyrocket. I can't.

Cut your energy *usage* (and hence your energy costs).

OR

FOAD.

DU rules prevent me from suggesting which response would be more
appropriate in your case but I suspect that, from your past posts,
you are unlikely to be in the "let's reduce my waste" option and
far more likely to go for the "let's whine, obstruct and make
damn sure that we screw up the rest of the planet" one.

:hi:

[imdjh]

11. My AC is set at 81ºF. What's the temp in your place right now?

I am already at a minimal level of usage. When gas went to $2.50 the first time, I sacrificed my old WORK truck and bought a more fuel efficient WORK truck. I use less than 20 gallons of gasoline per month. I'm not sure, but that might put me below a bus rider around here. I have kept my electric bill down by conservation as well as equipment upgrades. I have nothing left except to stop using AC entirely. I realize that someone living in a rent controlled utilities paid apartment who rides the bus can be very superior in this sort of conversation, but that is not the real world that most of us live in.

Some people want to tax the hell out of ourselves, OURSELVES, not some imaginary fountain of plenty. Low to average people who are barely making it as it is, and you want to double their power bills and price them out of transportation entirely, for what? So you can feel good about the future? You're bordering on zealotry or fanaticism there.

We haven't even done the common sense things that should be done before anything drastic is considered- but you want to go straight for the drastic?

How many cities in the US have functioning public transportation systems? Ten? Maybe? I can think of three yesses and two maybes.

And if you are at the point of telling someone to FOAD for asking for calm, common sense, restraint, and compassion, then maybe you need to look at the real reasons you feel the way that you do.

[Nihil]

25. 81F (=27C) - I'm impressed!

> I have kept my electric bill down by conservation as well as equipment
> upgrades. I have nothing left except to stop using AC entirely.

In that case I sincerely apologise to you.

I am used to hearing complaints about "ridiculously high power bills"
and "taxes on driving" from climate change deniers who don't even take
the first steps to stop wasting energy (or fuel) and so I treated you
as the same. Mea culpa.


> ... for what? So you can feel good about the future?

So I can feel that the next generations can have a chance.
So I can feel that some species will survive our ravages.
So I can feel that if TSHTF, there will still be some natural resources
left for a future civilisation to rise.

And, to be honest, partly so I can see that the people who have been
benefiting from this last 20-30 years of "limitless" resource consumption,
hedonism & exploitation are brought to the bar to pay for some of their
own costs rather than to keep merrily piling on the debt (financial and
otherwise) before leaving it all to the children, grandchildren, et al.

> You're bordering on zealotry or fanaticism there.

Possibly. Possibly not. YMMV.

> And if you are at the point of telling someone to FOAD for asking for
> calm, common sense, restraint, and compassion, ...

I (thought I) was telling someone to *either* conserve *or* FOAD.
You have done the former and I apologised for guessing incorrectly.
On the other hand, I didn't see your post as "asking for calm,
common sense, restraint, and compassion" but more as a complaint
that "those damn environmentalists are wanting me to pay more".

FWIW, I don't have A/C (unless you count on the train commute to/from work)
but neither am I living in Florida. (I meant my title above: I am impressed
that someone with A/C has the discipline to keep it that high - a sharp
contrast with most of the American air-conditioned buildings I've been in.)


> We haven't even done the common sense things that should be done
> before anything drastic is considered- but you want to go straight
> for the drastic?

My perspective is that we have been asking people to do the common
sense things for decades with very little response. As a result, we
are now a few decades behind where we "should" be and so, as the
cliff approaches, we will need to brake more severely than would
have been the case earlier. And to continue the analogy, it is the
people who didn't bother to fasten their seat-belts that will suffer
the most from either the emergency stop or the impact.


> maybe you need to look at the real reasons you feel the way that you do.

Maybe ... but if I took the time to do that, I bet that "frustration
with the sheer stupidity of supposedly educated & civilised humans"
would be high on the list.

:shrug:

[NickB79]

13. And the impact that global warming will have on your food bill will be what again?

One example:

http://www.wthr.com/global/story.asp?s=10591639

"The group's Midwest office director, Ron Burke, says Indiana could face scorching summers with up to a month of 100-degree days each summer by the end of the century. He says that heat, along with spring flooding and summer droughts, would damage Indiana's crop production."

The cost of doing nothing at all appears to be higher than the cost of doing something now.

[imdjh]

16. Hypothetical as opposed to the certain cost of taxing energy.

Notice what your source does?

When you see an ad that says, "You could save UP TO, $1000." do you think, "Oh goody, I'm going to save $1000."? Of course not. If you are an experienced consumer, then you assume that either the path to saving $1000 is ridiculously hard, would require spending more money than you intend to spend, or that the product is simply outrageously overpriced to begin with.

So why would you buy into the same language is a pseudo-scientific context? IF Indiana faces scorching summers with UP TO a month of 100ºF days, by a due date (unverifiable impending event technique) which few if any of us will live to see, THEN along with flood and droughts..... Indiana doesn't have floods and droughts now? Hasn't it always?

BTW, the highest recorded temperature in Indiana was 110ºF in 1936.

[NickB79]

18. Huh. I didn't realize that the Union of Concerned Scientists was a pseudo-scientific organization

And I didn't realize that I don't have to consider what kind of world I will be leaving for my children and grandchildren, since I'll be dead by then.

Whew, that's a load off of my mind :sarcasm:

[NickB79]

20. Since the taxes haven't gone into effect yet, wouldn't that make those cost hikes hypothetical too?

It's all hypothetical until it actually happens. The hypothesis you provided will simply be proven or disproven sooner.

[NickB79]

14. Join the club. Our moose population is almost extinct

http://www.startribune.com/local/15895882.html

"Scientists say that the moose are dying from "tipover disease," less a diagnosis than a description of how moose simply weaken and crumple to the ground, often to be finished off by wolves or other predators. Minnesota moose seem to be dying when and where they shouldn't -- in the prime of life, or in the fall, when they should be fat, and amid plenty of food. The causes are still largely unknown.

It might be due to parasites they've picked up from an exploding deer population. It might be a complication of heat stress, induced by a climate that's gotten too warm too fast. It might be combination of those and other factors."

[imdjh]

17. Has Minnesota's climate gotten too warm too fast?

[NickB79]

19. Yes, actually. As an avid gardener, I can see the changes in my garden firsthand

And the look on my 80-yr old grandmother's face when I handed her a Minnesota-grown peach from my peach tree was priceless.

[imdjh]

21. Got hard numbers? How much warmed over what period of time?

Sorry, I am not trying to annoy you. I simply have read too many articles which can't back up their own claims. Example being the Maldives article. "Global warming threatens paradise." After a bit of study, I found out it's bullshit, pure unadulterated bullshit. The sea level has not risen significantly and isn't the threat to the Maldives. The threat to the Maldives is that they have built it up and grown beyond sustainability- they are out of fresh water. The desal plants they have were paid for by other countries, and they are going to the UN saying, "Give us money! Gloabal warming!" . It's a beggar nation trying to exploit global warming while over building a luxury tourist market beyond the islands' ability. The erosion has zip to do with global warming, it is due to artificial beaches, artificial harbors, and sea walls doing what those things do here in the US and everywhere else.

[NickB79]

23. See post #22. NT

[NickB79]

22. The Arbor Day Foundation has published an interesting update to it's zone maps

http://www.arborday.org/media/map_change.cfm

The changes in winter low temperatures are pretty impressive. As a gardener, I can't say I'm too upset with the warmer climate, but I also realize that this will have negative consequences on the ecosystems of my state.