I'm expecting flames here... but please give this question serious thought. What are the POSITIVES to GW?

Question

If global warming has been seriously evaluated by scientists, they must have considered the positives. After all, NOTHING is TOTALLY bad. So where are the positives?

For instance, doesn't it stand to reason that if some farmlands dry up, that others that were previously not usable become usable? How about Canada for instance? I found one study that said the Sahara was becoming wetter, which means it might be usable.

If you have found studies that discuss the POSITIVES of global warming, I'd greatly appreciate reading about it... Links would be wonderful.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Worst (best) - case scenario.  Global warming causes a polar shift.  Mankind as we know it cease to exist.  Man, hardy as he is, survives.  MANY MOONS PASS.  Mankind rekindles society.  Society thrives.  Many years pass with desired types of governments (good leaders, etc.)  Then greed resurfaces & it all happens again.

Answer 2

Sure, there are some positives.  Siberia and other high latitude regions will become more inhabitable, for example.  One that people like to point out frequently is that there will be fewer cold-related deaths.  Of course, there will also be more heat-related deaths, so overall it's hard to say if this is a positive or a negative.  And of course there will also be increased deaths in poor countries due to water and food shortages, for example.

Another positive is that we'll be able to drill for oil in the arctic, but that can also be perceived as a negative (more fossil fuels to burn and contribute to global warming).

If you evaluate all of the potential consequences in an unbiased manner, there are far more negative ones, but that doesn't mean there aren't any positives.  You just don't hear about them because the net consequences are overwhelmingly negative.

Answer 3

I got to laugh at Dana's positives.    The benefits will be numerous and obvious to all except those pushing an agenda.  The benefits include:

Longer growing season for crops;

Extending northward the arable land, land that is good for farming.  

Fewer cold related deaths. Many more deaths from cold occur now than from heat.  These deaths include those diseases that are prevelant in the winter months due to everyone being indoors.

Increased CO2 decreases a plants need for water.  This would reduce the amount of water need to irrigate crops.

Greenhouse gases actually moderate the temperature with the vast majority of the warming on the coldest nights and winter temperatures.  This is obviously good for many reasons.

Fewer baby animals dying of the cold

Fewer starving children

More plants and animals surviving longer.

The contention that more storms, more severe storms, more droughts, more hurricanes, isn't borne out by the evidence or history.  It is more gloom and doom

Gloom and doom is an attractive scenario to some but I can't understand the mentality.  Clearly there are always those that are attracted to it.

The reason many scientists don't provide the obvious benefits is because it doesn't fit their agenda.  Their purposeful ignoring of those benefits should disqualify them from proposing solutions.  It is a problem when people don't use their critical thinking and believe what people tell them just because it fits their agenda.

Answer 4

A fair question. If what is happening is that teh rainfall is much more concentrated over far less land, first it causes damaging flooding, second it largely runs off to the seas. The idea that a foot in boiling water and a foot in ice is on average comfortable does not always work.

The SAHARA... Now start by checking out the Darfur region of Sudan... formally a poorly watered area but there was a large lake and swampy area... the lake has shrunk to a small part of its size, swampy area all gone. It has changed from near desert to desert. But even with the land being devastated most of the time, it may get enormous floods some day. This may refill the lake and the swampy area. But once it fills up, it will run off. The sands of the desert may fill with water and provide a burst of growth before reverting to desert for a few years.

In Canada we have a large area on Northern Ontario that could support rice growing, provided it does not receive frequent frosts. This proviso does not appear to be likely in the near future, like the next 100 years. Our average temperature will rise, unquestionably, but large storms will pull down freezing temperatures. These storms will not lower our average temperature, but will drop our minimums to killing frost.

Even areas that could become well watered farmland will require a lot of work to change the cycle of flood and drought into a usable steady supply of irrigation water. It is not that there will be less total water. We expect more. But we expect it to be located in narrow bands where storms and groups of storms drop it.

We have to anticipate that this will require a lot of intelligence and work just to get back to a viable agricultural economy.

We should not assume that in our lifetime we will see longer growing seasons in the north. This may happen eventually, but we should expect deep incursions of killing frost most years for a century.

Cold related deaths are not from average temperatures, but extremes, same for heat related deaths. Storms that pulll down snow and cold weather from the arctic may catch far more people than a steady cold. Melting watercourses as will represent significant risks.

We are expecting release of large volumes of methane now locked in ice. Well, if we were able and ready could we not capture that and burn it in our cars? More luck catching farts for that purpose.

Answer 5

Some regions previously too cold for serious agriculture may see increased productivity with a slightly warmer and longer growing season.

Some regions previously too dry may see increased precipitation.

There will definitely be winners and loosers around the world as the climate changes.  The question is are people on the loosing end ready to adjust?