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by flavius29663 682 days ago
> The world was wrong to expect that climate change would trigger rapid and widespread desertification in the world’s arid lands

The science never said that. It was popsci, magazines and attention brokers that pushed that narrative. A warming world looks like Jurassic park, not Mad Max, but that doesn't sell, so they had to make it scary to sell it, hence the desertification narrative.
2 comments
NathanKP 682 days ago
In this case the "greening" is not mutually exclusive with "Mad Max". One of the major points of the article is that the greening arid areas are also highly vulnerable to brush fires. CO2 is captured temporarily but then released back into the atmosphere again every time it burns.
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enthulhusiastic 682 days ago
Yes, but imagine all the free fire we’ll have.
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jandrese 682 days ago
Exactly, if you look at it from a thermodynamic standpoint a warming world means increased evaporation which leads to increased rainfall. There's simply more water in the air. So the threat isn't so much expanding deserts as it is more severe flooding events.

These effects can already be seen with many insurance companies abandoning low lying states like Florida and Louisiana. There are few instances of people more willing to put their money where their mouth is than insurance company actuaries.

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flavius29663 681 days ago
The even more annoying fact is that the whole global warming crisis is BECAUSE of that thermodynamic effect. With increased CO2 alone, if we emit as much as we could, would only warm the Earth 1C at the most. CO2 has a narrow band of light that is obstructs, and once that is filled, there no more heat it can trap. The scientists believe that global warming will be as high as it will because of the positive feedback loop a little warming from CO2 causes with water vapor(which is a more potent greenhouse gas): you heat up 1C, which means more water evaporates, which means more heat trapped, which means more water evaporates etc.

If it wasn't for more water in the atmosphere, just CO2 warming, there would be no Global Warming crisis, it would be just a blip. And still, somehow people widely believe we'll overall be in desert-like conditions?

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