Slashdot Mirror
Could Global Warming Make Life on Earth Better?
mikee805 writes "A lengthy article in Spiegel explores the possibility that global warming might make life on Earth better, not just for humans, but all species. The article argues that 'worst-case scenarios' are often the result of inaccurate simulations made in the 1980s. While climate change is a reality, as far as the article is concerned, some planning and forethought may mean that more benefits than drawbacks will result from higher temperatures. From the article:'The medical benefits of higher average temperatures have also been ignored. According to Richard Tol, an environmental economist, "warming temperatures will mean that in 2050 there will be about 40,000 fewer deaths in Germany attributable to cold-related illnesses like the flu." Another widespread fear about global warming -- that it will cause super-storms that could devastate towns and villages with unprecedented fury -- also appears to be unfounded. Current long-term simulations, at any rate, do not suggest that such a trend will in fact materialize.'"
Hate to tell you, but you can get the flu in summer. But all that aside, people die every year here in Texas because of the heat.
The documentary wasn't broadcast by the BBC. It was broadcast by Channel4 (known for more controversial and speculative content). Many of the scientists interviewed in that programme have since complained that they were grossly mis-represented in it.
It's still an interesting programme though.
The flagship publication of the reactionary publishing house Springer Presse puts forth an article in favor of heavy oil and coal consumption?
That's unpossible!
I love the way people are able to discard mountains of scientific evidence on the basis of a crappy documentary.
The documentary (which wasn't made by the BBC) has been strongly debunked, and it was seriously dishonest:
From Wikipedia:
Carl Wunsch, one of the scientists featured in the programme, has said that he was "completely misrepresented" in the film and had been "totally misled" when he agreed to be interviewed. He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two." Wunsch was reported to have threatened legal action and to have lodged a complaint with Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator.
People who deny the science on climate change are in the same boat as creationists and Flat-Earthers.
Yes, there's an entire industry behind it, worth about eight times what a science field with that count of people in it is typically worth. Academic funding goes to hot topics. Watch the video.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
It's not a hoax. It's gotten so bad that our blatant disregard for the environment is even heating up mars http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html It's obvioysly us that's doing it. Not that giant orb of fire we orbit.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Why is Michigan going to flood? Are great storms going to rain down upon us? Lake Erie(which the other four lakes that affect Michigan drain into) is 571 feet above sea level; pretty much all of Michigan is above that.
. shtmlt _lakes.htm7 0407/METRO/704070370
These guys think global warming will *drain* the lakes:
http://www.ecocenter.org/releases/20030414climate
http://www.greatlakesdirectory.org/oh/111803_grea
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200
So before you say 'shill' make sure you are dealing with actual facts.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Dude. Where to start?
Ok, historically CO2 has been part of the feedback to solar forcing of climate change. But the increased CO2 has been a positive feedback, sustaining the climate change well past the solar forcing. What's different this time is that due to human activity we are pushing CO2 directly, so if our understanding of physics is correct (as established by Arrhenius himself), the result is heating. This is basic theory and the temperature record, though noisy, hardly contradicts this over the 20th century. Now, there's uncertainty about feedbacks, clouds, etc., but the CO2 forcing is there.
Do you see the spike? My eyeballs tell me the slope is roughly 100ppm/century.
Natural gross CO2 fluxes are huge. Net fluxes are small (i.e. they largely cancel out, and that's not accidental). Human fluxes are large compared to the net flux. See above link.
If you really don't think that CO2 traps heat, you are wrong. Grab a physics textbook, or start here. It has pictures and everything.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Actually Michigan and the Great Lakes will see a large increase in waterfront property because global warming makes the Great Lakes water levels decrease. When the lakes don't freeze in the winter they lose water all winter to evaporation that was normally protected by ice. There are some people suggesting this is why New Jersey and New York have had flooding recently.
It's already caused some problems with shipping in my area and a lot of marinas are being dredged because they are getting too shallow for some of the larger boats. Warmer water also means less oxygen content so there is a good change the type of animals living in the great lakes will change and fisheries will become more important then ever.
Viruses survive more in warmer weather. Though we associate the common cold with colder temperatures, the cold actually inhibits them from growing. Viruses are more prevalent in the winter because humans are in closer proximity to each other due to the fact that they are inside more.
Vostok ice core data: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/ vostok/vostok.html
/ molspec/irspec1.htm
/ warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm
CO2 concentrations over the last 600000 years: http://www.realclimate.org/epica.jpg
Sadly, I can't find the graph that superposes the temperature record over the CO2 record. I'm sure another 30 minutes of googling for it will yield it.
The spike is over the last 150 years or so, and basic modeling techniques show you that it is abnormal. All your questions can be answered by looking through the two graphs I provided you.
Alright, I exaggerated when I said that our CO2 output dwarfs all natural emissions. You're right, that's probably wrong. However, our emissions are currently not being absorbed as fast as they are generated, and total concentrations are rising quite nicely. That's the key part - we are putting stuff into the regular cycle that doesn't get absorbed.
I know you don't think that it's affecting the earth. You still haven't given a reason why, despite the well known physics of infrared absorption, which are described quite nicely here: http://teaching.shu.ac.uk/hwb/chemistry/tutorials
The data about CO2 affecting infrared radiation from earth can be found here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142, and at the Wikipedia article about greenhouse gases. If you object to the sources, you can always check the referenced literature.
I've got plenty of data. I can pull data for days. Where's yours? Where's your peer reviewed article? All you have is a few people who had to get a BBC documentary made, because people kept laughing at their theories and wouldn't bother publishing their papers. BTW, I've seen the BBC documentary - the data referenced in there, as well as the analysis thereof, has been widely discredited. For something real, read the IPCC reports: start here (http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/pub.htm), and don't stop until the end. Then come back.
Oh, and just for the heck of it, because I like Woods Hole and a friend of mine worked there, here's a little summary they threw together about the CO2 data collected: http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications
Again - where's your data?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
But it quickly became apparent that the horrific tale of a melting South Pole was nothing but fiction. The average temperature in the Antarctic is -30 degrees Celsius. Humanity cannot possibly burn enough oil and coal to melt this giant block of ice.
Hello, Spiegel. Let me introduce my friend, the Larsen B ice shelf, along with Journalistic Integrity. No, you haven't met.
Last year's lack of major hurricanes was due to the well documented El Nino effect. It has been published several times, even the media outlets targetted at dullards reported it.
Not that mimimal damage from tropical storms has prevented insurance companies from hitting us in FL with 70+% rate increases again, and them decided not to even offer renewals for a large number of people.
Here in BC, Canada, we're having our forests killed off by the "mountain pine beetle." While this is a recurring pest, it seems that this time around it's a lot worse than previous. One of the main things that can kill the bugs in a big hurry is a sudden cold snap to about -40c for about 3-5 days. Winters have been milder and shorter lived these last few years though, so the beetle is continuing on. I've heard that Eastern Canada is starting to suffer from something similar with "Pine Wasp" (I'll take the beetles, thanks).
Add to that the issue of beehives being killed off by strange bacteria that seems to proliferate better in the warmer weather, the marked increase in allergy issues locally (according my doctor, and he indicated that it was partly due to the warm, dry weather here), and I'd agree that there are a lot of ways that global warming is not making life better in terms of disease, parasites, and pests...
So, while many of these problems will be bad, the mosquito vectored ones probably will not. Good news I'd say, because I think GW is happening, and that we won't be able to stop it!
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
Maybe "interesting" in how he's avoided all the information that's available on the subject that he dismisses as being not available.
t alk-to-global-warming-sceptic.html
For example: temperature data extracted from glacial samples date back 600,000 years. That's enough of a "lifetime" for me. We've exceeded all temperature spikes demonstrated by those samples, and drastically exceeded the average temperature that you're interested in.
I know it's asking a lot to have informed opinions in postings to Slashdot, but Global Climate Change is one of the more well documented issues around.
Please read up all the nice things this person has compiled here:
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-
...and Lake Michigan is 579 feet above sea level (this means that the majority of the state of Michigan is even higher in altitude). No predictions, regardless of how absurd, ever mentioned the oceans rising by that much.
And no, melting ice caps will not make the Great Lakes flood. If anything, global warming is more likely to make them continue shrinking in size.
Last year was only a "dead" hurricane season in the Atlantic. If you look at it globally, last year was above average for hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical cyclones.
Disclaimer: I have a PhD in meteorology. While paleoclimatology and climate change are not my research areas, I am fascinated by climate change and try to keep up on the research.
I naively thought once the IPCC report came out these types of "debates" about climate change would end. I was wrong. If anything, the naysayers are louder than ever.
I have read the Summary for Policymakers (and actually used it as a teaching tool in my numerical weather prediction undergraduate class). Have you? It's written at a relatively non-scientific level (hey, it's for politicians after all) but is very, very clear.
The results of this international (intergovernmental) exhaustive literature review? Humans are very likely (90%) responsible for the bulk of observed global warming.
That's it. Plain and simple.
Yet, no other topic in the world brings out the armchair scientists more than global warming. It's a frustrating phenomenon for me as a scientist. It's sort of like being an oncologist dealing with a chronic smoker who blames his lung cancer on some genetic anomaly, or living 50 miles away from a nuclear power plant, rather than the bloody obvious fact that smoking two packs of cigarettes for 40 years just might have something to do with the cancer.
This is science, not faith. Just about every climate change doubter starts his sentence with "I don't believe humans cause global warming because..." or "I don't believe in global warming." This clearly demonstrates a huge misunderstanding of the scientific process. Belief has nothing to do with it. It's about physics, meteorology, climatology, astronomy, biology, oceanography, chemistry etc., all of which rely on the peer-reviewed scientific process to further our understanding of the physical world.
I challenge any of the naysayers to do a little research of their own, not simply rely on cherry picking viewpoints which align with their own. It's sort of like a game, holding up their "most credible scientist" as a shield, challenging me to do the same. Never mind the fact that my "army" of scientists is about three orders of magnitude greater than their own... but I digress...
The very least anyone should do before arguing against... or for... anthropogenic climate change is to pick up an undergraduate meteorology textbook and opening up to (usually) chapter 3, the chapter on heat transfer. The section on radiation is the most crucial one. Read about blackbody radiation. The solar spectrum and the terrestrial spectrum are a function of their temperatures. Because the Earth is much colder than than the sun, it emits in the infrared (longer wavelength than visible light etc. from the sun).
Then read about greenhouse gases, those by-and-large trace gases which exist in our atmosphere. Understand how they respond to longwave and shortwave radiation. A little light bulb should eventually go on over your head when you realize "oh, so *that's* why the Earth is habitable." You see, without these trace gases (CO2, H20, CH4) the earth would be in a deep freeze - estimated at about 50 degrees F colder global average temperature.
Once you make it that far, you're almost there. Realize that humans are responsible for increasing atmospheric CO2 levels from preindustrial levels of 280 ppm to a modern day value of 380 ppm, an increase of over 30%. It takes very little stretch to realize that this would lead to a shift in the radiative equilibrium temperature of the earth (related to the global average temperature).
You see, this is really easy science. There is NO REASON TO ASSUME that CO2 values increasing the way they have would NOT lead to an increase in global average temperature!! This is exactly what we'd expect! And this doesn't even involve the scary discussion of feedbacks (water vapor feedback, snow/ice albedo feedback) which may accelerate the warming.
And that's just the back of the envelope part. Yes, there are still unknowns. Not, it's not the sun (we've checked into that if you can believe it). No, it's n
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
I'm still highly amused that you have not provided a single graph, analysis or paper that supports your position or your claims. This, in spite of a lengthy post that must have taken a good chunk of time to write up. BTW, here's a quick link for you to peruse about volcanic emissions versus human emissions: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volg as.html
Oh how wrong you are about volcanoes. Sucks when you have no data to back you up, doesn't it? For someone who harps on data and models, you are amazingly bad at picking your supporting graphs, your supporting models and your supporting papers.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"I'd rather get the flu than dengue fever, yellow fever, viral encephalitis, malaria, and a whole host of other tropical diseases."
Smile when you say that. Most flus over the past few decades have been fairly mild. But there is always the possibility that a new flu (such as the much bruited avian influenza A (H5N1)) could create a new pandemic as deadly as the 1918 out-break, which killed more than 600,000 here in the US.
Of course, flus are not caused by cold weather, they are caused by viruses, many of which originate in south-east Asia which is tropical or semi-tropical. That in turn is not a result of climate, but of the poverty and which in turn leads to close contact between humans and farm animals that serve as the reservoirs of infectious viruses.
The reason that flus spread in the winter in the northern hemisphere is that winter leads to close human contact in schools, offices, and shopping malls that allow the viruses to be transmitted between infected and uninfected human hosts. Flu pandemics are not caused by weather.
Similarly, the tropical diseases you mention are not truly tropical. They are transmitted by insects (mostly mosquitoes) that thrive in water. The reason that they are largely found in the tropics now is that the tropics are largely poor and dominated by bad governments. In Europe and North America public works of sanitation, drainage and insect extermination have largely eliminated these diseases, and they could in the tropics, if they were used.
These are not really climate issues.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
It was a dead hurricane season in 2006? Typhoons in Asia
Sounds to me like you're forgetting the world is a big place, every year one part of the world has a worse season than another part. Weather is crazy, when Katrina hit during a bad year the rest of the world saw less storms. It's been happening for as long as we've been keeping records.
Despite what you seem to think the relationship between heat and the intensity of hurricanes is very well researched and documented. Just because its hot in one place one year doesn't mean that same place is going to be the hot spot the next year. Ocean currents and trade winds take quite a while to round trip the earth.
So yes, global warming contributed to the weather that we are currently enjoying, except for the fact that Florida is in drought and experiencing some mighty bad forest fires along with Georgia. Yep, no affect at all. Oh yeah, all those extremely powerful tornadoes, also not affected by increased temperatures. Climate change is violent, it always has been in the past, I have no idea why people seem to think it would be easy to deal with now.
Do we need to outlaw oil and stop all emissions? Of course not, but we need to do something about the problem at hand, the problem we can see now, projections of the future don't mean jack as we know now that the climate is changing and we're in a position to do something about it.
See, for instance, Figure SPM.7 of the Summary for Policymakers of the 2007 IPCC 4th Assessment Report.
That figure gives a >20% precipitation decrease for northern Africa in 2090-2099 (relative to 1980-1999 levels). It gives a similar decrease for southern Africa in the summers. For central-east Africa it gives a precipitation increase in the winters, and finds the predictions are unreliable for central Africa in the summers. Those precipitation decreases are larger than anywhere else in the world, except for the subtropical eastern Pacific ocean. This is for about 3 C of warming under the A1B SRES scenario.
In short, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes to a conclusion exactly the opposite of you for much of Africa: Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya might be better off, but most of the rest of Africa is predicted to be hit with substantial drought worse than anywhere else in the world. Humans don't have any fundamental data on the subject, so human nature takes over: we fear change. The whole global warming scare across the world smacks of a very human fear of change. Most people don't even realize that the temperature on Earth now is, as far as we can tell, below the lifetime average for Earth, and below the lifetime median as well. While there is much hysteria about global warming, there is good reason to be conservative: it's often better to stay where you are, in a regime that you know about, than gamble on making things better when there is a substantial risk of making them worse, unless you're very sure that "better" is much more likely than "worse". Humans are risk averse decision makers, and this is not irrational.
On top of that, our current civilization is adapted to a particular type of climate, and there will be at least short term costs which result from changes in any direction. Furthermore, the faster the change, the greater the damages, because adaptation takes time.
While the Earth's climate has been warmer in the past, our civilization and to a certain extent our species itself is evolved for temperatures closer to today or even cooler (we have spent much of the last few million years in ice ages). The mere fact that the climate has been different in the past says little about the benefits or costs of change, as viewed by the human species and their currently preferred ways of living.
"Further, global warming, whether true or not, could not signifigantly affect trade winds which are governed by the spin of the Earth, and it is they that drive the major weather in many tropical and subtropical regions."
The Earth's spin is responsible for the direction of the trade winds, not their existence or force. The winds are generated by the temperature (and hence pressure) difference between the equatorial zone and the temperate zones. If the Earth didn't spin, the winds would blow straight from the south (or north in the southern hemisphere) instead of from the northeast/southeast.
Get your numbers right (don't take them from obscure global warming sceptics' sites, for starters). You're confusing the oceans' (and land masses') total CO2 emissions (which are indeed much higher than ours) with the ocean's *net* CO2 emissions (which are *negative* -- the oceans currently absorb more than they emit, slowing the CO2 level increase in the atmosphere -- CO2 concentrations in the oceans are rising, all measurements show that). The CO2 concentration in the air is higher today than it was in the last 600,000 years or more, we also have direct evidence (carbon isotopes) that much of the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuel burning, and if you want, you can take the total amount of CO2 released into the air since 1800, divide it by the total number of molecules in the atmosphere and see for yourself that the current CO2 concentration is not a "thing much bigger than we are". About one in three CO2 molecules in the atmosphere originates from human activities, there is no scientific dispute about that.
There is a definite link between being cold and having a cold.
...A study at the Common Cold Centre in Cardiff UK in 2005 took 90 students and chilled their feet in cold water for 20 minutes and showed that the chilled group had twice as many colds over the next 5 days as a control group of 90 students whose feet were not chilled....
From the University of Cardiff's website:
Here's the media release.
Basically being cold allows any virus that you already have to take a stronger hold on your body and so symptoms that you wouldn't have had become expressed. You are close in thinking that the immune system is weakened but you certainly don't need to be hypothermic, you just have to have the virus present in your nose already.
See; your Mother was right!
I wonder what else she got right?...you do have clean underwear on don't you?
I am always amused by those who post URLs and say (paraphrased), "you must be a moron for not having read this: _________", as if anyone is going to actually read the link. In a "science" as vague and vast as monitoring earth's climate there are always going to be those that over exaggerate their own importance if it seems to lead to continued employment.
In my opinion, the doomers rely on the fact that most people have no sense of scale ("wow, a million of anything must be a lot") and manipulate popular attitudes by using emotional triggers. This is inherently dishonest as a tactic to gain more mindspace.
The End of Human Existence is what they predict, if you don't do what they say. Conveniently, the answer to all the problems is big government intervention.