Seeing the environmental forest

For anyone paying attention, the US election yesterday was a disaster for Democrats.  That party lost control of the US Senate (likely 53-47) and took a drubbing in US House races (242-174) and US governors' (24-8) races.  The end result as far as science, environmental policy, and climate change is that science deniers now control key oversight committees on science, as many news organizations have noted.  The likely result for at least the next two years is unending investigations, waste-of-time hearings, and other obstacles erected to make environmental regulators' working lives a living hell.  Forget about the US ratifying any environmental treaties, much less anything having to do with climate change.  On the state level, I expect rollbacks of renewable energy mandates at the least, along with attempts to repeal other environmental regulations and meaningless resolutions attempting to nullify various federal laws and/or appropriate federal lands for state a...

One of the main issues I encounter when I talk about global warming is people are confused about the distinction between climate and weather.  The two are related but fundamentally different phenomenon.

One of the basic tenants of ecology is that climate determines the type of vegetation present in any location and vegetation determines the type of insects, birds, mammals, etc.  Average rainfall and average temperature are particularly important.  One of the widely republished and modified diagrams on the effects of rainfall and temperature comes originally from R. H. Whittaker's book Communities and Ecosystems :