What about global warming benefits?
1. Those shorter, milder winters will mean less demand for heating, which means lower heating bills, less fossil fuel burned, and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
2. Those longer summers will mean longer growing seasons, which mean higher crop yields.
3. If global warming persists long enough, our oak forests will expand northward and yield lots of high-quality lumber for centuries.
4. The expanded warm-weather habitat means bass fishermen, et al, will rejoice.
The above benefits are not trivial (well, maybe 4.). Worldwide, they mean trillions of dollars saved in energy costs which could be used to construct sea walls to protect coastal cities (see the Netherlands). The thawing tundra is exposing millions of acres of nutrient-rich soil, and, for example, Siberia could become the next breadbasket for the entire world, alleviating world hunger. Northern Canada and much of Russia will become hospitable for civilization, and new cities could emerge, alleviating population crowding elsewhere.
I have now lived long enough to see many examples of how the media catastrophize change. I remember that, in anticipation of Y2K, we were urged to stock up on bottled water and food, buy a gasoline generator, and hoard cash to protect ourselves from the coming calamity. I remember those African "killer bees" that were moving up from South America to Mexico and were going to kill the California honeybees that pollinate our crops, devastating our state's agricultural economy. And now that global warming is about to extinguish half the species on earth I'm reminded that some of those same climatologists were telling us in the mid-70s that the next ice age was imminent!
I'm all for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, but let's put global warming in perspective. The earth regularly goes through cycles of warming and cooling, and the geologic record clearly shows that life has been in its greatest abundance and diversity during the warm periods. Think how warm it must have been when dinosaurs existed. Those huge, cold-blooded creatures needed a lot more warmth than even the most pessimistic climatological models are predicting for the current warming period. And life flourished. The warm oceans teemed with life. Fern forests grew in Colorado.
It's global cooling that we must fear! Before this warming period started, the Laurentian Ice Sheet covered what became Manhattan Island to depths up to thirty feet! Life was not in abundance in that environment. Should the next ice age be similar to the previous ones, folks in the temperate zones will be in deep trouble. I have no idea how we would cope with the enormous demand for energy to keep warm. Maybe we'll have alternate sources of energy. Maybe we'll have to burn fossil fuels to generate greenhouse gasses. Or maybe there will be a tremendous migration to the equatorial zones which are little affected by global cooling and warming. Now that will be a population density to contend with!
I don't mean to alarm you, Rod, though we are about due for the next cooling period, geologically speaking.
I do suggest we start now to figure out how to take advantage of the benefits of global warming in addition to mitigating the disadvantages. That seems much more sensible than just hawking gloom and doom.
The sunny side of global warming
Wednesday February 28, 2007
Light blogging for the next few days; I'm off early in the ayem to Anchorage, Alaska, where I'll be giving a talk at the university's student union on Thursday night (see the Anchorage paper's feature here). I won't be wearing pants, so come out to jeer. You have been warned. In the meantime, here's a missive from a reader who believes global warming has a bad name. Discuss:
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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The cite you requested: Meterorological Office, International Symposium on the Stabilisation of Greenhouse Gases: Table of Impacts (Hadley Center, Exeter, 2005), Table 3 (Major Impacts of of Climate Change on the Earth System). You might also want to analyse the Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 30, which contains an article on carbon cycle feedbacks, aerosols, and CO2 levels. It suggests that we could reach problematic levels of carbon in the atmosphere (in terms of polar melt, etc) well before mid-century. Remember, CO2 is additive in the atmosphere, takes up to 100 years to dissipate, and takes up to 20 years to get to its destination (depending on the source), so all of the greenhouse gases from the last decade of US and global economic activity (we still produce 25% of the greenhouse gases for 5% of the world's population, as I am sure you know) are not even in play yet.
As to my feelings re: nuclear power, I have (reluctantly) had to admit that increasing its use will be necessary to avoid the worst outcomes from global warming , even though: 1) the issues of proliferation and waste disposal remain as serious problems, and 2) I have never seen an adequate life-cycle energy analysis of mining, processing and transporting uranium in terms of its carbon impact. Seems likely it is much less than some other forms of energy, but it would be nice to see an objective analysis, since each stage uses fossil fuels until processing, which in theory anyway could be located at a central plant powered by hydro (not Hanford again, please!) or other non-carbon sources. In addition, massive increases in nuclear power on the order of what you suggest would result in rapid depletion of known reserves.
I agree with Robert Sokolow (Princeton) and his take on "wedges" of carbon reduction (no cite at this moment, unfortunately). He argues that all (or almost all, with the exception of carbon capture and storage on a wide scale) of the technologies needed to reduce carbon impacts substantially by mid-century exist right now, and that we must make the commitment to carbon reductions while the cost is low enough that it will not affect global living standards unduly (esp. for the developing world, which is the equity/justice issue to trump all others). He places nuclear squarely where it belongs, in my opinion, as one element of the mix. We can get a much bigger bang for the short term buck with a serious effort at conservation (i.e. negawatts, a la Amory Lovins, it works...) but ultimately we will need more non-carbon baseload. BTW, you make it seem as if I am one of the few to be concerned about climate change at this level of amplitude. Did you read Elizabeth Kohlbert's book? She interviewed dozens of key climatologists, and pointed out that although scientists are typically pretty calm about risk (i.e. they mostly agree that the risks of nuclear power are overblown), leading climate scientists (as well as marine researchers re: ocean acidification, but that is another story) are, to put it mildly, more than a little freaked out about where we are headed. Again, although your political perspective may make you less receptive to this line of thinking, I am not making this stuff up.
FYI, I am in the wine business on the West Coast, though my background is in environmental law. The National Academy of Sciences issued a study last summer that predicted a BAU scenario would mean the end of my line of work well before century's end, as temperatures get way too hot for winegrapes. As in, 60 days per season above 95 degrees. Ever been in New Delhi? Try it on steroids! While I don't expect you (or anyone) to be particularly concerned with the future of the US wine biz, the forecast did come from an authoritative source, and anyone who thinks that kind of temp increase (magnified at the poles) is "manageable" by our species is, in my opinion, somewhat delusional. Nuff energy (no pun intended) spent on this stuff. Time to get out with the boy.
RIch,
A parting bit, a news summary of an on-point study from the National Center from Atmospheric Research released late last year: Source: Copyright 2006, Reuters Date: December 12, 2006 Original URL
Global warming could leave the the Arctic without ice during the northern summer as early as 2040, a study by a team of scientists shows. The research, to be published by the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters tomorrow, found that the extent of sea ice each September could be reduced so abruptly that, within about 20 years, it may begin retreating four times faster than at any time in the observed record. "We have already witnessed major losses in sea ice, but our research suggests that the decrease over the next few decades could be far more dramatic than anything that has happened so far," said lead researcher Marika Holland from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. "These changes are surprisingly rapid," Holland said in a statement today. The study indicated that if greenhouse gases continued to build up at the current rate, the Arctic's future ice cover would go through periods of relative stability, followed by abrupt retreat as the Arctic Ocean warms. In one model simulation, the September ice shrinks from about 6 million square kilometres to two million square kilometres in a 10-year period. By 2040, only a small amount of perennial sea ice would remain along the north coasts of Greenland and Canada, while most of the Arctic basin would be ice-free in September. The winter ice also thins from about 3.7 metres thick to less than one metre. "As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice," Holland said. The study was jointly conducted by NCAR, the University of Washington and Montreal's McGill University. I'm sure that you (or others) will criticize this study b/c it was a simulation (i.e. the usual criticisms of computer modeling), but it fits the field observations pretty closely, and how the heck else are we supposed to study complex systems like this? And note that the study assumes GFGs continue to build at their current rate, while all forecasts I have seen show BAU emissions rising sharply. That, to me, is reason enough for action.
ewoc Thanks for the references. I'll study those and I will read Kohlbert's book as well. Incidentally, I have been in New Delhi a few times, including once in May when it was 110F. Even for a native Texan like me it was a bit much. My 9-month old is trying to bite my foot, so it looks like my boy is drawing me away too.
As a scientist who works in this area, I actually think there are a couple of good points in the original post. 1. Global warming will produce winners and losers. The issue the post doesn't address is one of equity- how should the winners compensate the losers? This is a non-trivial problem. 2. Adaptation, mitigation, sequestration and emissions reduction are all morally justifiable ways of dealing with increasing greenhouse gasses.
A couple of things I disagree with. 1. Global cooling is the problem we should worry about. There is increasing evidence that we're actually in a fairly long interglacial period, as has happened once before in the past 500,000 years. In the long term I agree with the poster, but actually the problem with global warming is that we're blowing off one of our main ways of dealing with future global cooling. 2.Warming leads to less energy use. Given that much of the global population is in the tropics- and would love to have the use of air-conditioning, this isn't necessarily true.
i'm confused, rod. who wrote the original post and what DO you think of global warming?
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