"The bend-don’t-break adaptability of trees extends to handling climate change..."

"... according to a new study that says forests may be able to deal with hotter temperatures and contribute less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than scientists previously thought."

In addition to taking in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, plants also release it through a process called respiration. Globally, plant respiration contributes six times as much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as fossil fuel emissions. Until now, most scientists have thought that a warming planet would cause plants to release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which in turn would cause more warming....

IN THE COMMENTS: Rick said:

I recall an alarmist once responding to the point that some warming doesn't seem like an existential crisis by asking if I'd "ever heard of a feedback loop." I found it revealing alarmists believe being able to think of a way warming might harm the planet is proof it will do so. Decades in and these so-called scientists are only now testing the theories they included in their models. So how could the science be settled?

People get tremendous emotional satisfaction from believing they are opposing evil, it makes them heroes. But we live in a time and place where there isn't much, and what does exist is hard to find. So people satisfy this need by overreacting to lesser issues, thus global warming goes from something to keep an eye on to something justifying a complete reordering of society. And Trump goes from a buffoon to Hitler.

Meade says:

"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do."

Reagan was wrong.
Then he was right.
Now he's wrong again, right?

Meade also notes the correction —  "An earlier version of this article misstated the temperature to which some trees were exposed to test their reaction to warming. The temperature was about 6 degrees warmer than ambient temperatures, not 38 degrees warmer." — and says:

"The old Professor-Peter-Peckinpah-all-purpose-anti-personnel-Peckinpah-pocket-pistol-under-the-toupee trick."

Do you remember all the old tricks?

I didn't ever remember that the "old [blank] trick" format as an old joke-making trick was an old "Get Smart" trick, but I got brought up to speed when I made an "old [blank] trick" joke just now. It had gone generic in my head, and I'm glad to drag it back to a proper know-your-meme level of consciousness.

What do men want?

I keep thinking about this fascinating comment, written by rhhardin in last Friday's post "Women are unhappier than ever":

[Women are unhappy] from doing stuff women are not interested in, encouraged by the idea that women ought obsess on the same stuff as men, as if what was satisfying ought to be the same across the sexes.

Unhappiness is aided by a tendency to find stuff for men to fix, whose survival value is testing of potential mates for reliability and fondness. Finding stuff for men to do requires finding something that's wrong.

In a perfect world, that's followed by showing the man who was out on the quest that you're satisfied with him, which makes him happy.

This story is told over and over in Get Smart, wildly popular with males in the 60s.

I think being in touch with feelings is really just looking for stuff that needs fixing, the initial move in the dialog.

To help you think about that: