Re: GIMP 3.0.0-RC1

On 1/4/25 10:58 AM, TJ wrote:

...
I don't know much about sea level changes. I live about 250 miles from the sea, so I don't have to deal with it. But that doesn't mean I can deny the changes in the climate right here where I live.

I'm close enough to the US Eastern Seaboard that it affects our weather, and if winter precipitation is going be as snow, sleet or rain.

I'm a farmer, the third generation of my family to own and operate this small chunk of the world. Among other crops, we have raised vegetables and sold them on a roadside farm stand since 1962. We have records going back most of that time, with small notes about things like the weather.
 50 years ago, while there were exceptions (there are ALWAYS exceptions when taking about weather trends), we could pretty much count on the first killing frost happening between September 20 and the 25th.
 The last 10 years or so, that event has moved to October 5-10. And in 2024, the first killing frost was on October 25th.

I've casually noticed a similar trend; for our garden the first killing frost would nominally be in mid-September, but particularly the last few years has been later.  This year, it wasn't until November.  It was great to have two more harvests of lima beans, but it also sucks to be cleaning leaves out of gutters after Christmas instead of Thanksgiving.

So the climate IS changing. I've watched it do so. But is it natural, or man-made? In my layman's opinion, it's probably both. The basic mechanism is probably natural, augmented by Man's contribution.

Oh, its of course going to be a sum of multiple contributors; the question has invariably been not that, but of what relative magnitudes and rates relative to each other.

But what can we do about it? Little of any significance, unless we are willing to take drastic measures - kill off about half the human population, give up modern power-hungry technology, that sort of thing.

There's been some increasingly serious discussions on what the geoengineering options are.  Some are relatively affordable, such as stopping the use of cleaner bunker oil in shipping, so as to reintroduce SOx pollution.  Others are probably well-intentioned from an Engineering standpoint, but are viewed as being politically expedient to not change the current Status Quo - basically, its only practical if a third party subsidizes it, instead of the polluter source.

I'm not willing to do that, and I don't think anyone else is, either. So what I'll do is continue to take advantage of the changes that are happening, adapting as best I can.
 I can now grow fruits and vegetables that I couldn't dream of 50 years ago. Better, long-season varieties that I couldn't grow when I was a kid. For now, the climate is changing toward being better, here. That won't last, but it'll probably last longer than I do.

I've seen arguments made where it won't matter because CO2 is plant food, so we'll be able to grow triple-canopy jungle everywhere which will 'quickly' sequester the excess CO2 into wood .. but that misses that there's more than just CO2 needed to grow trees, such as nutrition+sun+rain, all in the correct proportions.
-hh