The sunny side of global warming

THANK YOU! But now you are going to get it: the neo-Stalinist environmental thought police are going to be rather upset.

Sure longer growing season, but significantly drier. Sure shorter winters, but more intense rains, which will do little to help irrigation and wash a lot of good soil away.

Yep, if the worst happens, my kids will inherit seaside property in St. Francisville. Which is over 100 miles inland, but still.

But 1. means that bugs (and to a lesser extent weed seeds) are not killed off over the winter, leading to a bumper crop of pests during 2. the extended growing season. This is not trivial either.

But we will find out. Now this is something that must be taken on faith. GW science is not exactly Newtonian mechanics.

Rod -- I'm a regular reader and fan but only a two time contributor to the blog. I lived in Anchorage for 7 1/2 years and elsewhere in Alaska for 5. Two unsolicited restaurant recommendations in Los Anchorage (as non-ANC Alaskans sometimes refer to it). For breakfast, Snow City Cafe downtown. For lunch or dinner, if circumstances permit, Jens' at Arctic and 36th. You don't know me, but trust me on these recommendations.
I'll offer a prayer that you get to see Denali from Anchorage, but even if you don't, the surrounding mountains are awesome enough, and only hint at the grandeur of the state. As a friend from an Alaska home group once said (having heard it from another fellow Christian): "If Genesis turns out to be literally true, and God created the world in six days, then on the seventh, when it says he rested, he went back into his shop, and made Alaska for himself." Safe travels, and blessings.

Loved this post, Rod!

dovid It might be nice if you could actually make an argument instead of squealing about Republicans and lies. How about some proof pal? Or is catastrophic problems from warming just an article of religious faith for you?

Alaskan don't fear global warming! :) But we do wear pant and even SNOW pants in early March. See you tonight, Mr. Dreher!

(Readers, just to clarify, don't assume that because I post something someone else has written, that I agree with it.)

That doesn't even count such issues as.. Warm areas expanding means the greater chance of disease, as disease vectors like certain insects get a much broader range. Just because a new area becomes more arable doesn't mean we can take advantage of it. We tended to arrange ourselves based on the current arrangement. We left arable land alone, and built on and congregated in places that were not. And just because a place is warm doesn't make it good farm land. Rain forest is VERY warm, and very bad farm land. (Very little top soil, etc.)
Animal and plant cycles are based on the current seasons. We're already experiencing disruptions there, as plants that usually feed new young are now growing fruit too early, and the food isn't available when needed, for example.
All in all, alot of our prosperity is based on taking advantage of, and utilizing the current climate. Now, I'd say that 'ok, big deal, so we take a prosperity hit'. Except that people who don't want to change do so FOR reasons related to economics.
Well, if nothing is done, you ain't seen nothing yet when it comes to economic disruption. But, that requires actual forethought and the concept of delayed gratification. Paying little now to avoid paying big later. More than I'd expect from our current 'speculator/day trader' mindset in our economy.

educated men all who believed in reason and science, would be ashamed of us They would indeed, ewoc, with posts yours:
For the rest of us, who understand that 150,000,000 of the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh will find their nation largely underwater later this century.
Wow. Such scientific knowledge! It's amazing because no trustworthy scientist would never claim this as a known fact. At best, it's a rough theory. How do you know so much about global warming that you can talk about it so confidently? I assume you have already debunked the findings of Robert Ehrlich (George Mason physics prof) who claims sun fluctuations may explain many temperature cycles of the last 5 million years? And of course, the thousands of other scientists with competing theories. Remember, the entire scientifc community (I used to work at a national lab) would sell their own mother for more research money. Global warming is the gift to scientists that keeps on giving. Serious bias here, like so much scientific research over the last 100 years that involves government money. You'll have to look at the data yourself to get a neutral view. This is not a simple science; the temperature data itself, not just theory, is in dispute. A non-scientific tidbit: about 50 miles from where I live, there is a glacier that is shrinking. They have wooden signs out that show what position it was at at any given time. Some of those signs go well into pre-industrial era, before humans were producing greenhouse gas. We have been warming for a long, long time - since the last ice age. This makes it difficult to pinpoint man's effect. PS - please note I have no opinion on man-induced global warming as IMO the data is inconclusive as of yet. I have no dog in this fight. But it kills me to see the scientific method slimed by ideological global warming Goremania. Soon nobody will trust real science, and I wouldn't blame them.

Sorry but global warming is real and induced by pollution. It use to be that the republican party took pride in environment protection. But has been high jacked by those who worship money. Even the Whitehouse has had to acknowledge the problem. There has been a serious chilling effect on scientist not to disclose the facts that they have found because it goes against Bush's agenda. Check out New Scientist magazine. And do some research on the Whitehouse's suppression of facts. Also some islands have already been covered over by water. The mark of a republican is they only cares about themself and how much can they get. Christians need to examine and see if that follows Jesus' teachings.

No one responded to my question about the last warm period, 800 to 1200 A.D. Do we know what happened then to polar bears, to the tundra, to the amount of land available for farming, etc. If we have been in such a warm time before, shouldn't that teach us something about what to expect?

Of course with any change, climate or otherwise, there will be winners and losers. And I think it's generally accepted that the biggest losers in global warming are those in the Third World near the line, be it water or poverty. Here's a story about Bangladesh, which is already seeing big changes: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fg-warming21feb21,1,7326230.story When the head of climate analysis at NCAR, Kevin Trenberth, was asked in testimony before Congress two weeks ago to talk about global warming damages we're seeing already on the planet, he mentioned the subtropics in general, and Africa in particular: "Drought has become widespread in the subtropics. Parts of Africa have suffered greatly. Our understanding is building that part of this is associated with global warming. From the standpoint of Africa, maybe it's already too late."
The "subtropics" include Texas. As Rod mentioned in his column of a week or two ago, chances are good that the Southwest (including North Texas) will suffer substantially higher temps and 10-30% less rain. We are entering, according to Martin Hoerling of NOAA, a "new era of drought" because of global warming.
So yes, there are good things about global warming, but I doubt the wonderfulness of drought, in Texas and where I live in California. If you want to see more, take a look at this NOAA presentation from last winter, which shows that observed temps in the U.S. are already higher than the climate models predicted, esp in the Southwest: http://www.resourcesaver.com/ewebeditpro/items/O14F10014.pdf I could list a lot of other damaging effects: earlier snowmelt in the West, the devastating spread of the Mountain Pine Beetle, pathogens in Alaskan waters not seen before, bigger snowstorms in the East, and so on. But it's true that with global warming changes will come some good effects. Wine-making will be possible further north, for example, and to date has been good for the Napa Valley, although that is expected to change.
But what I rarely if ever see discussed on the right regarding global warming is the amount of harm to our land and our people we could avoid by reducing our emissions. An exciting example of this is in play in Texas, where the huge utility TXU has entered buy-out negotiations with Goldman, Sachs and other investment banks (who have on their own funded major anti-emissions programs costing millions) and enviro groups (eager to avoid the construction of enormous coal plants sure to pump vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere).
This is great news, and a great example of the adaptability of American business. Why aren't these innovators admired more? I don't know. I fear that many on the right so want to bash enviros and Al Gore that they won't act to preserve their climate, a strange and excessive version of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Here's the simple truth of the matter, as expressed before Congress by another prominent researcher, Gerald Meehl: "What we do makes a difference. If we go on a low emissions track, we get less warming. If we go on a high emissions track, we get more warming, and the longer we wait to do something, the worse the problem gets." Why not act now?

The littlest bit of global warming will wreck my local ski area. And, no local ski area, no skiing for me; I can't afford to travel to ski. It does seem that winters are warmer than I remember but I have no idea if there is global warming going on or not, or if it is part of a natural cycle or affected by us, or both. I have observed that certain people treat this issue as one requiring doctrinal adherence as a moral requirement, which is not a scientific attitude. Have you heard the phrase "global warming denial?"
I find myself confused by the conflicting voices on this subject. I am generally in favor of trying not to damage our natural environment, always remembering that the immediate needs of human beings also have some claim. I suspect businesses can find ways to be profitable under various forms of regulation, and that some governmental regulatory and tax manipulations could force them into finding ecofriendly ways to be profitable. However I don't think it is easy to know how to design these manipulations, and treating one scientific theory like a religious doctrine is not the way to do it. Susan F. Peterson

Looking at the snow outside my window, I want my global warming and I want it now and Texas can turn into a desert for all I care.

Again, I challenge any or all of those sceptics who are reading this to provide an explanation for what we are seeing in the Arctic and Greenland right now - the rapid melting of the permafrost (releasing methane); the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet (rate of melting more than doubling in a few years); the massive shrinkage of summer sea ice in the Arctic (this is observable from satellites - you can see the photos on the Web, and the evidence is undeniable, unless you subscribe to the theory that it is all a grand govt conspiracy, kinda like the folks who say we did not land men on the moon...); the observations of the Inuit, who have lived in the Arctic for thousands of years, etc. etc. Or are the Inuit on the Gore payroll too? The IPCC (several thousand scientists from around the world, who if you believe some of the posts are involved in an incredibly well-organized combination scam and conspiracy) considered the sunspot theory and rejected it. I will take their conclusions over Patrick Michael's at U of V any day of the week. If I am not mistaken, he quoted his wife as a scientific "source" in a paper without revealing they were married! He is one of the most frequently quoted sceptics. Now that's objectivity for you! I am frankly amazed at the lengths to which people will go to rationalize the overwhelming volume of evidence that is out there (ice core studies, global temperature monitoring stations, atmospheric CO2 readings, ad nauseum), esp when the noise from the sceptics represents an echo chamber of a handful of hacks with grants from Exxon for all to see. Talk about transparency!

Apologies, folks. The global warming sceptic who cited to his wife without mentioning that they were related was Dr. Fred Singer, not Patrick Michael. My memory was faulty.
Several years ago, Singer cited to a supposed article in Science magazine for the proposition that glaciers were advancing globally, rather than retreating (anyone who follows the literature knows the truth of this one). The assertion was picked up by a number of prominent sceptics, including the author Michael Crichton, and cited as authoritative. (BTW, it was also picked up by Lyndon Larouche's magazine. Remember him? He's out of jail now). When a European journalist attempted to follow up on the source material he found that there was no such article in the magazine. He contacted Singer, who blamed the mistake on a "former research associate," without mentioning that that person was in fact his wife. He then went on to say that the mistake had been corrected. Lo and behold! A year later, the same assertion was still on his website. No word on the state of his marriage........But this is the kind of "evidence" that the echo chamber relies on. "Nuff said. Happy to provide the cites for my statements if you wish.

ewoc The IPCC worst-case sea level rise from the new summary is 17 inches. Your argument is that current field studies suggest that Greenland-based melting is far worse than IPCC projections. Well, the new figures suggest Greenland is losing about 57 cubic miles of ice per year out of a total ice pack of 630,000 cubic miles. This would increase sea levels by about half a millimeter a year. Your "Bangladesh underwater" statements are grossly irresponsibile fear-mongering.

OK Rich, I exxagerated - we're talking about 100 million Bangladeshis, not 150 million. That is very comforting, no doubt. My comments referred to "later this century." I was referring to the BAU (business as usual) scenario, which involves increasing reliance on dirty coal (w/out carbon capture and storage technology, which as of this moment has not been demonstrated on any significant scale, certainly not economically) as the primary (baseload) energy source for the major industrial powers, including the US, China, and India. My comments (and the forecast, which is shared by numerous US and foreign climatologists - see Jim Hansen's comments earlier this week) also assume continuing strong economic growth in the developing world. There is no sign yet that this outcome (rapidly increasing emissions) is not likely, but of course changes in policy could result in different outcomes. While the TXU deal the other day is good news, the news out of China is not so good (one new coal plant built every week), and numerous other US utilities are still planning many dirty coal plants. Our current Administration is doing less than nothing to avoid that outcome, as should be evident from their choice to lead the climate talks I already mentioned. As you appear not to know, current CO2 levels are 382 ppm (last year's readings), and the rate of increase has itself gone up sharply during the current decade over that of the 1990s. In the BAU (business as usual) scenario, we exceed what many scientists regard as a critical threshold of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is in the range of 450-500 ppm, before mid-century, perhaps even earlier depending on a number of factors. And these estimates do not incorporate the emissions contribution from feedback loops such as methane from melting/decaying permafrost, even thoug field observations suggest they are already happening. Nor do they consider the fact that carbon sinks, including soils and the oceans, become less and less effective until they either no longer function as sinks, or even become carbon sources (see, e.g. Geophysical Research Letters, publication in 2003, predicting that by 2040 soils will begin to emit, rather than absorb, carbon). The Met Office (Hadley Center) in the UK, not restricted by a consensus process like the IPCC, convened a conference of climate experts several years ago which warned that exceeding the threshold of a 2 degree C warming (with the current level of .6 degrees as a baseline), would lead to the "onset of complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet." If I sounded like I was predicting that Bangladesh will be underwater no matter what choices we make, I stand corrected - by my own hand. I believe that outcome is avoidable, if we make the smart (and in some cases tough) choices right now. But if we continue to argue about it for the next few decades, I believe we will all regret wasting our breath. Certainly painting this issue as Al Gore vs. the right wing misses the point entirely. Just today, the Tories in the UK bitterly criticized the Bush Administration for its intransigence on global warming. What does that tell us about the rest of the world's views?

ewoc Ahh, OK. Skeptical scientists who disagree with IPCC estimates are "hacks with grants from Exxon", but alarmist scientists who disagree with IPCC estimates are "not restricted by a consensus process". I just didn't understand the rules. Thanks for clearing that up.

Rod Dreher: The overwhelming majority of climate scientists have been "bought and paid for" and are "political hacks"? Mmm-hmm. First, the "overwhelming majority" did not make the 90% claim, which is who I'm talking about. You are pulling me out of context. If you were to get each individual climate scientist alone and make them bet their own money on this prediction, you would get a very small amount. Second, the vast majority of self-proclaimed "climate scientists" don't have all the tools necessary to give a 90% number. They lack the training in physics, statistics, astrophysics, and chemistry to make the claim. Third, all are indeed comprimised by funding desires. And yes, I would argue that scientists will indeed let things slide to get funding. It's their living. I've personally seen it; I've worked in that environment. And what in the world is a "climate scientist" anyway? Who makes the dividing cut? I think some 10,000 scientists have signed a petition against the man-made GW claim. This is a brand new science that exists pretty much to get funding for global warming research. Guess what the results will be. As a journalist, you must know how political these 90% pronouncents are. Go read about how this number came to be, and who was silenced and about all the internal fighting. This is politics, not science. Finally, what exactly does the 90% claim mean? That man has some warming effect? Sure, nobody doubts that, he also has some effect on gravity. The question is if he has a serious effect, and can one prove it. And anyone making a 90% claim to this effect is proof that they aren't good scientists - too coomplex, too much questionable data, too many other possiblilities, too young of a science. Make the 90% claim, and you are a hack. (BTW, I am not pro or con on man-made GW one way or the other based on the current data. You should be too until you study the data with a sceptical eye.)

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.

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.

i'm confused, rod. who wrote the original post and what DO you think of global warming?