Winners And Losers Due To Global Warming: The Trees Are Winning

I cannot make this stuff up.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

Finally, some good news about the effects of climate change. It may have triggered a growth spurt in two of California's iconic tree species: coast redwoods and giant sequoias.

Since the 1970s, some coast redwoods have grown at the fastest rate ever, according to scientists who studied corings from trees more than 1,000 years old.

"That's a wonderful, happy surprise for us," said Emily Burns, science director at the Save the Redwoods League, which is collaborating on a long-term study with university researchers on the effect of climate change on redwoods, the world's tallest trees, and giant sequoias, the largest living things by total mass.

"The forests are not experiencing detrimental impacts of climate change," Burns said.
Researchers doing fieldwork for the study also made a bonus discovery. They came across an ancient, shaggy tree that corings revealed to be the oldest coast redwood on record. At 2,520 years of age, the ancient tree beats the previous record-holder by 300 years.

Actually, I'm not aware of any "truly" bad news associated with global warming. Remember: we're talking a degree or two over a century.

The best news is that the Arctic is melting, opening the way for cargo ships to take shorter routes between the Atlantic and Asia. But the Arctic melting pales in comparison to the growth of the Antarctic ice, and, get this: the polar bears are thriving. 

And now we hear the trees are winning. Sort of reminds me of the "forest scenes" in The Lord of The Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien would have been happy.

************************

Also from the LA Times:

Guantanamo has devastated our reputation as a champion of human rights, weakened our international partnerships and remains a powerful recruiting tool for terrorists.

Probably wrong on all three counts; certainly wrong on two. 

Except for an occasional Times (Los Angeles or New York) reporter,  I doubt any average American even gives Gitmo a thought any more. Considering the president ran on a platform to close Gitmo almost a decade ago and nothing has changed, has pretty much made this a dead issue. But I'm glad the Times has time to write about it; that tells me not much else is going on in the world to get me excited.