The most concerning potential explanation, however, is that there may be a feedback relationship between rising temperatures and low-level clouds. Meaning that, as the Earth warms, the clouds become sparse, enhancing the warming further. That would be bad news for our future climate, because it suggests that the lower range of warming estimates would have to be adjusted upward to account for it.
The warmer it gets, the faster it gets warmer. Positive feedback loops suck, man. But probably need to get this research done and published quickly. It will be much harder to do in a couple months.
People have pointed out that the Eath’s temperature has changed before, and it has…from much colder in the ice age to much warmer in the Eocene. This should have told them that whatever mechanisms there are maintaining it where it is now must be extremely limited.
Transmission towers connecting thick high-voltage power lines will stand 180 feet tall, slicing through prime sage-grouse, elk, and mule deer habitat and Colorado’s largest concentration of low-elevation wildlands. The TransWest Express will pass over rivers and streams, chop through forests, stretch over hills, and bulldoze its way through scenic valleys. Many believe this is just the price that must be paid to combat our warming climate and that the impact of the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre projects, and the TransWest Express will be nothing compared to what unmitigated climate chaos will otherwise reap. Some disagree, however, and wonder if such expansive wind farms are really the best we can come up with in the face of climate change.
“This question puts a fine point on the twin looming disasters that humanity has brought upon the Earth: the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis,” argues Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist and executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, a Hailey, Idaho-based environmental group. “The climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are of equal importance to humans and every other species with which we share this globe, and it would be foolhardy to ignore either in pursuit of solutions for the other.”
Even though onshore wind farms kill birds and can disrupt habitats, most scientists believe that wind energy must play a role in the world’s much-needed energy transition. Mark Z. Jacobson, author of No Miracles Needed and director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, notes that the minimal carbon emissions in the life-cycle of onshore wind energy are only outmatched by the carbon footprint of rooftop solar. It would be extremely difficult, he points out, to curtail the world’s use of fossil fuels without embracing wind energy.
Scientists are, however, devising novel ways to reduce the collisions that cause such deaths. One method is to paint the blades of the wind turbines black to increase their visibility. A recent study showed that doing so instantly reduces bird fatalities by 70%.
I’ve seen a lot of wind turbines by now, but never with blades painted black.
Interesting. This has apparently been under investigation for a while; the study linked in footnote 9 of the MIT article (from Paint it black: Efficacy of increased wind turbine blade visibility in the Wiley Online Library publication Ecology and Evolution - may be paywalled) is from mid-2020. I also found this interview with one of the authors, Roel May:
According to Daskalova, when people left, a poorer version of nature took over. “The blackberries are suppressing the growth of anything else,” she says. Daskalova says the blackberries are suffocating the community of birds and plants that used to live here in gardens and orchards.
Interesting problem, but one that could be immensely improved by the introduction of large herbivores. I suspect that allowing time for normal succession would fix it as well.
There are a lot of abandoned farms in marginal areas of Ontario. In the Ottawa Valley for example, upstream of where the wafer-thin topsoil gives way to an ancient beach, then the granite of the Algonquin Highlands. The Petawawa military base is on that beach. The granite bedrock of the Algonquin Highlands makes the area so unproductive that they were only summer hunting areas for the First Nations, and the origin of the Wendigo myth.
A lot of people tried and failed in the 1920’s to make a go of it. As a kid, friends and I would disappear into the woods and find old farm cabins and crab apple orchards.
Nature seems to take over in around 50 years.
Old highways and Cold War runways seem to take longer.
