Benefits from climate change, when temperture gets hotter?

Question

Benefits from climate change, when temperture gets hotter?

Answer 1

As other posters noted, warmer temps mean longer growing seasons, higher CO2 concentrations helps plants grow faster and consume less water. The last two times it happened, in the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, humanity flourished. Certainly there will be some disruptions, some droughts, but we have that today.

Frflyer, are you seriously claiming that the dinosaurs died out due to global warming? That's the funniest Gristmill fable I've ever read, so thank you. It's been much warmer than it is today without sudden climate shifts, but at least one ice age appears to have had a rapid onset so I won't say it's impossible. But dinosaurs died due to a mass extinction event almost certainly brought on by an impact from a comet or asteroid.

Answer 2

The benefits are tremendous and far outweigh the detriments.  More arable land and longer growing seasons render the planet more hospitable to life.  The little ice age, from which we are still emerging was a time of hardship and famine.  This is why life was so hard on the first settlers in America.  This is why Napoleon's army froze to death.  During the medieval warming period before that people were farming and grazing sheep in Greenland.  As the glaciers recede the old farmsteads are exposed.  Somehow the polar bears survived.  Imagine that.

Of course these facts kill the reason for changing policy in a futile atempt to shut down industry so these facts are distorted.

Answer 3

Very slim to none for the benefits side. Huge, dramatically effects for the negative.

Answer 4

Fat people start going outside and lose weight.

Answer 5

We will flourish like the Renaissance period in which warmer weather played an important role. The longer vegetation cycles will be a boon to our food supplies and shortages will become all most nonexistent. All types of plants will experience a longer growth cycle, which means that more oxygen will be generated by the process of photosynthesis that will in turn absorb more CO2.

A global cooling, however, will lead to hardships because of shorter growth periods, and quite possibly a greater concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere, because vegetation will be more scarce.

Answer 6

I could give a long dissertation on temperature change.....quick answer would be that Canada will have California type  weather..... i don't think it is bad as people make it out to be....

Answer 7

No Jazzman, I am not claiming the dinosaurs died from global warming and neither is anyone else.

The dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago, not 250 million.

Assuming that some of the predictions are correct for the effects of global warming, the effects will be disruptive.  

The  problem is not just with what temperature it will be in any location, but with the abruptness of the changes.  

Argument:

The earth has had much warmer climates in the past. What's so special about the current climate? Anyway, it seems like a generally warmer world will be better.

Answer:

"I don't know if there is a meaningful way to define an "optimum" average temperature for planet earth. Surely it is better now for all of us than it was 20,000 years ago when so much land was trapped beneath ice sheets. Perhaps any point between the recent climate and the extreme one we may be heading for, with tropical forests inside the arctic circle, is as good as any other. Maybe it's even better with no ice caps anywhere."

"It doesn't matter. The critical issue is not what the temperature is, or may be, or will be. The critical issue is how fast it is moving."

"Rapid change is the real danger. Human habits and infrastructure are suited to particular weather patterns and sea levels, as are ecosystems and animal behaviors. The rate at which global temperature is rising today is likely unique in the history of our species."

"This kind of sudden change is rare even in geological history, though perhaps not unprecedented. So the planet may have been through similar things before -- that sounds reassuring, right? "

"Not so much. Once you look at the impact similar changes had on biodiversity at the time, the existence of historical precedent becomes anything but reassuring. Rapid climate change is the prime suspect in most mass extinction events, including the Great Dying some 250 million years ago, in which 90% of all life went extinct."

Many animals can't migrate fast enough to change their habitat, and obviously plants can't migrate, and evolution doesn't ususally work fast enough for adaptation to such rapid changes.  Some species are already being pushed up against the limits of their habitats because of warming.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/1/...