Interesting Links for 24-08-2023

[andrewducker]

1. When did galley slaves become common, and why?

(tags:history boats war sea europe slavery viaDanielDWilliam )

2. Would *you* like to know about the racist birth centrifuge?

(tags:childbirth gravity history patent viaPatrickHadfield )

3. LEGO officially offers Braille Bricks for sale for the first time

(tags:blindness lego )

4. It's Getting Too Hot for Tropical Trees to Photosynthesize

(tags:trees plants doom globalwarming )

Comments

[armiphlage]

4. With respect to survival (and thriving) at high temperatures, plants using C4 photosynthesis cope better than plants using C3 photosynthesis. Unfortunately, only a few trees (all from Hawaii) use the C4 pathway. Either we have to massively seed tropical rainforests with currently-endangered Hawaiian trees, or they will turn into grasslands.

https://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/TREES/Family/Euphorbiaceae/28967/Chamaesyce_olowaluana

[hairyears]

What's the upper limit for grassland?

You can see where I'm going with this: what's the upper limit for cereal crops?

This is a harder question to answer online, than I had thought: all the data I can find is about overall climate, and conflates high temperatures with low rainfall.

[armiphlage]

Unless we have robotic or air-conditioned tractors to harvest the cereal crops (or sugarcane! it's C4), it'd be a moot point; before it gets too hot for C4 grasses, there won't be any living mammals in the region. Many insects would be dead too (bees kill wasps by huddling around them and warming them to 45 C). Without insects for pollination, the variety of C4 crops that could propagate would be reduced. We might end up with just lichens before it got too hot to actually kill off the grasses.

My grandfather's tractor didn't have air conditioning, just fans; it was sometimes too hot to harvest even in relatively cool Nova Scotian summers.

[hairyears]

The good news is that honeybees aren't the only game in town - they're not eventhe dominant pollinator.

Mining bees can and do survive temperatures in the high forties; they don't forage during these conditions, but they'll breed successfully if flowering plants are photosynthesisising and producing nectar for part of the day.