[extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine

[bradbury]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 9:55pm Spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

Boy, the amount of misinformation in this message... :-(
You folks need to watch PBS more!

> > > And walruses, well, I wouldn't want to be 
> > > them.  But plenty of other species will thrive, such as 
> > > humans.  We are *Africans* fer evolutions sake!

(a) Global warming would probably not impact the walruses.
We essentially wiped them out nearly a century ago and they
have only slowly been recovering.  Producing an interesting
consequence (boy do they love to feed on the salmon at the
fish ladder in Seattle at the locks leading to Lake Washington).

The problem with intelligent marine mammals are that they are
just that -- intelligent.

(b) Their breeding grounds include a group of islands off of
San Francisco that would probably not be significantly
impacted by global warming.  In fact G.W. might make the
seas significantly more productive (higher temps speed
up biochemical processes) therefore producing more
plankton, therefore increasing fish reproduction,
therefore increasing walrus reproduction, therefore
increasing the number of Great White sharks that can
feed upon the walrus.  (All of this is speculation
of course...).

> We really are all Africans, we can take the heat a
> lot better than we can take the cold.

Actually Spike, recent DNA evidence has shown that
most "westerners" are of central Asian descent.
The central Asian climate can be very cold in
the winter.  So your claim that we can take the
heat better than we can take the cold may be
on very swampy ground.  I suspect that some
individuals may retain an African heat tolerance
but that for many others the case is not true
because we became adapted to other environments.
You are dealing with a very complex question of
how much energy humans consume and waste (through
burning it) and it is *not* as simple as you suggest.

Robert

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