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Big Arctic Perils Seen in Warming
gollum123 wrote in with news of a new study of warming in the Arctic, showing that warming from greenhouse gases is causing vast changes in the region. If your lifestyle depends on cold and frozen rather than mild and damp, you're in deep trouble.
"I guess I'll be buying property in Antartica."
Hate to disappoint you, but Antarctica has been cooling for years: it's only the Arctic which has been warming (and much of that is because many parts of the Arctic were unusually cold a couple of decades ago and is returning to more normal temperatures).
I'll start with the last comment first:
Do you assume that global warming means that temperatures will rise uniformly across the globe?
Do you assume that global warming would cause no shift in weather patterns?
Do you assume that any shifts in weather patterns would not be disruptive to agriculture?
Do you assume that disruptions in agriculture can be easily accomodated, say by rapidly shifting agricultural production to different parts of the globe (assuming, of course, that there would be vast new tracks of arable farmland as a result of changed weather patterns)?
If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then global warming should make you nervous.
If your answer to any of these is "yes", then it's you, not the environmental scientists, who have some explaining to do. They seem like pretty shaky assumptions.