Locator: 48669GLOBALWARMING.
Updates
May 26, 2025: as long as they're still arguing about it, it tells me this is not an issue about which I have to be concerned.
Two links:
- Greenland -- surprising rebound in mass;
- ocean to rise 0.3 inches over ten years; 3 inches over 100 years; link here;
Original Post
Locator: 48467GOLF.
As I said yesterday:
The Masters: will be legendary! When golf is good, it's really good, clearly my favorite sport to watch when it's this good.
The Masters: by many (most?) metrics, Rory McIlroy is a better golfer / has more records than Tiger Woods. Tiger is not yet eligible for the “senior tour.” Rory is 13 years younger than Tiger Woods.
Rory: first in history to record six “three’s” in one round. The six “three’s”: two eagles
Bryson and Rory: final pairing. In final round tomorrow.
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Global Warming
Turkey. Link here.
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Honeybees
Nancy and Keith Budke, married 43 years, are migratory beekeepers. They produce honey with the taste of canola nectar, sweet clover and other flowers that their bees pollinate first in North Dakota, then in Texas, after being hauled there by truck, and eventually in California — if the bees make it that far and if nobody snatches them.
This season, the chances of the bees making it to California were much lower. Honeybee colonies are under siege across much of North America. And the Budkes, owners and operators of Budke Bees, a small commercial beekeeping business, know it all too well. Parasites, loss of habitat, climate change and pesticides threaten to wipe out as much as 70 percent or more of the nation’s honeybee colonies this year, potentially the most devastating loss that the nation has ever seen.
A ten-minute read.
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The Book Page
Frank Lloyd Wright. Link here.
Locator: 48562CO2.
Tag: methane.
From TheWashington Post, the story was posted November 4, 2024:
The amount of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled in the past 250 years. It has been responsible for about a fifth of global warming. But it has a confusing recent history. The steady rise of emissions stopped in the 1990s. Emissions were stable for almost a decade until 2007, but then abruptly resumed their rise.
[The Bakken boom in North Dakota began, coincidentally (?) in 2007; in Montana in 2000.]
What has been going on? Fracking of natural gas in the U.S. and elsewhere has frequently been blamed for the resumed rise in emissions. But new studies are raising serious questions about that.
Researchers are now saying say that, globally at least, the increase in recent years is due to the activities of microbes in wetlands, rice paddies, and the guts of ruminants.
“Despite the large increase in natural gas production, there has not been an upward trend in industrial emissions,” says Stefan Schwietzke, of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, who is the lead author of one of the new studies.
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Meanwhile: Jiu Jitsu
Over at Fox.
A tip of the hat to Geoff Simon for finding this one.
Corn, or maize, is foundational—along with rice, wheat, soyabean—to global food security, serving as a critical source of nourishment for both humans and livestock. Over the past few decades, increases in atmospheric CO2 from industrial emissions have tracked with notable boosts in corn yields.
Between 1900 and 2024, the national corn yield in the U.S. rose to 183 bushels per acre (bu/A) from just 28 bushels. During the same period, atmospheric CO2 increased from 295 parts per million (ppm) to 419 ppm. Worldwide, corn yield rose from a mere 29 bu/A in 1961 to 86 bu/A in 2021.
This phenomenon is not merely coincidental; it is deeply rooted in the physiological characteristics of corn as a C4 category plant. C4 plants like corn – so named for the number of carbon atoms in their photosynthetic product — possess unique biochemical pathways that make their photosynthesis particularly efficient under high concentrations of CO2 and elevated temperatures. Such plants employ a mechanism that concentrates CO2 in specialized structures called bundle sheath cells.
Higher CO2 levels also improve water-use efficiency in corn, which is particularly beneficial where water supplies are limited or during droughts. This efficiency translates into enhanced growth rates and potentially greater yields. In fact, researchers say that “less water will be required for corn under a high-CO2 environment in the future than at present.”
One wonders if corn might be grown above the Arctic Circle? Corn, from seed to maturation, 60 to 100 days based on variety. The "warm season" in Barrow, Alaska, lasts 3.3 months = 99 days. Wheat? Slightly longer.
Locator: 48412GLOBALWARMING.
New tag! GlobalWarming_2024_2025.
This confirms / corroborates earlier stories already posted.
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The Book Page
A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin, Susanna Ashton, c. 2024.
