Why is global warming a bad thing?
 

First, I respectfully request that those of you who see most threads as an opportunity to bash your least favorite political party or continue unwinnable disputes with adversaries from long ago threads, please give this one a pass.

In a discussion on another forum, a member from Canada mentioned that he was expecting temperatures in his town to reach minus 40C in a day or so. That got me thinking. There is pretty good evidence that the surface of the Earth is warmer today than it was during the last ice age about 20,000 years ago. So, in my opinion it's fair to say that we've been in a warming trend for some time. Without commenting on what caused the warming trend, I ask this question. Is global warming always a bad thing? For example, I can see where it would be bad for residents of a low lying island nation that is being threatened by rising oceans. But, if I lived where the winter temps routinely reached -40C, I might see global warming as a good thing. So my question boils down to this. Has anyone done an objective study of the negatives AND positives of global warming to determine who the losers and winners will be? Change is something we all have to face in our lives, and it seems reasonable to me that some will benefit from changing global temperatures.

We have actually been in a cooling trend for the past decade.

Well then, substitute cooling for warming and answer the same question. Is a change in temperature in either direction an inherently good or bad thing?

Climate Quiz: How Much Do You Know?

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/...uiz-questions/

By coincidence, I just heard on NPR a report on the expected effects of global warming on the State of Florida. Parts of it sounded reasonable at first blush. For example, if the oceans rise four feet, two nuclear power plants will be made unusable and billions of dollars of waterfront property will be lost. But, if it takes a hundred years for the water to rise that much, what is the likelihood that a contemporary nuclear power plant would still be there without undergoing the expense equivalent to building a new one somewhere else? And, for every ocean front property lost to rising water, a new waterfront property is created behind it. One land owner loses and one wins. So, will there be so many losers that all of us, including the winners, have to pay for them?

Look at answer 4. So the water levels have been changing for 200 years/ Hmmm....

4. Are sea levels rising?

Yes. Sea levels have been rising at a rate of about 3.3 mm a year since 1993, when satellite altimeters began tracking the data. Tidal gauging records, which vary from region to region, indicate a steady rise in sea levels of about 1.7 mm a year since 1870, which fits in with an overall trend stretching back over 200 years.

I saw a PBS show on why Lake Erie's level has been changing. The first blame went to humans. However they now scientifically speculate rebound. The Great Lakes were formed by glaciers and the massive weight compressed the Earth. The lake is naturally emptying itself. That is the modern thinking. Ten years from now they my change the ideas. This is why I see no need for rash decisions.

Ralphy

Considering the cold snap we are having here in Washington state, I'm all for Global Warming.:)

I hear Icleand is pretty happy with the receding ice bergs, or snow level, whatever... Anyway, it's opening land that is rich in ore deposits. They country expects to reap a MAJOR economic windfall that is ALL READY happening.

Then there are the poor pacific islanders about to loose what little land they have left. It's kind of like the current economic situation here, not everyone is being badly affected, some of us are actually making money (guilty as charged) during this time. My experience has been making money is one thing, HOLDING ONTO it is equally tough.

What we are seeing is a redistribution of the wealth, for various reasons. Climate change folks are filling their pockets with "research money" for instance.

I second that! I'm hoping my property values will increase 10-fold if Ohio becomes ocean front property in the next 50 years or so.

I'd love to drive my Cobra year around. Bring on the warming!!

When I lived in Ca., I also owned property in Nv. The Nevada property was to be oceanfront when the big Quake came and Ca. fell into the Pacific. Kept both properties for over 20 years, sold 'em both. Moved to Fl. where the ocean comes right into the living room!:3DSMILE:

Global warming doesn't mean every place on earth suddenly gets warmer. A global shift of only a few degrees net can (and, historically, has) caused shifts in weather patterns. Rising sea levels are only a side effect. Generally, the temperate regions will get dryer - this means the central US grain belt will get a lot closer to Dust Bowl conditions on a permanent basis, while the shorter growing season of the Dakotas and central Canada will get longer and warmer. (Ditto for Ukraine, which is central Asia's breadbasket; the growing zone will move north into what is now forested areas.)

It also creates shifts in weather patterns, so that areas used to 20 inches of rain a year might now get 10, or 50. It's not any one 2012-style disaster; it's a gentle shaking of the whole snowglobe that changes the weather and conditions in nearly every spot on the globe.

Think of it as every plat in a city being shifted ten feet in a random direction. No big deal, except that now your bedroom is on a neighbor's land and he has to cross your front yard to get to his garage. The disaster is cumulative and almost universal instead of being localized like an earthquake or even a hurricane.

Whether it's caused by human activity or is a natural change in conditions such as has happened on an almost continuous basis for eons, it's going to change the rules of food production, energy distribution, water resources and the balance of arable land in our lifetimes. It would be nice if we could get our sh!t together and deal with it instead of turning it into another politicized clusterfork.

BTW - They ditched the term "global warming" for "climate change." That better describes what's going in World anyway.

Another unfortunate effect will be extinction of some animal species.

You describe the phenomenon of global warming as a "disaster" rather than the kind of change in the world's environment that has been going on for the past 4 billion years. Why? I see the world's endlessly growing population as a greater challenge in the areas of food production, energy distribtution and water resources than global warming. And I still don't see why a changing world is necessarily bad news for everyone. Why is this everyone's problem instead of the problem of those people who will be hurt the most?

Dave,
I take it that preventing the extinction of some animal species is important to you. I personally would not pay an additional $50 per month on my power bill to prevent the extinction of the local snail darter (fish) species. So, why not let those who care about the snail darter pay the price for keeping the species alive? Why should this be looked at as everyone's problem?

The world economy - and I mean the general notion of global trade rather than the simple mechanics of money - is a delicately balanced thing. If all of a sudden (over the period of a decade or two) you suddenly change all the rules, the only two mechanisms of global coping are complete cooperation, or widespread war.

Why? Envision a world in which the US loses most of its arable land in the heartland and is dependent on Canada for grains. Think that will remain a stable situation? In that same world, Ukraine, which is the breadbasket of Asia, becomes however you say "dust bowl" in Slavic and the Russians begin leveling their forests to convert them to farming. The damage cascades out from there, and that's just one consequence.

Sea levels only have to rise a foot or two to begin making major cities all over the world partially or wholly uninhabitable. Florida's the extreme case: millions of people living just a few feet above current sea level. The loss of property values there alone will be a financial mega-disaster bigger than the current bank mess.

Globally, net, it's just a readjustment. The planet has seen millions of them. However, this is the first significant change in global weather patterns since at least the Little Ice Age... and that was with a world population somewhere below a billion and before global interdependence - before industrialization at all. A shift now topples or shakes every pillar of modern living for every person on the planet.

Both are looming crises; population is controllable, while global weather is not. There are also signs that population growth is flattening. There are other ways to cope with added population as well. How exactly will we cope with a Katrina or two every hurricane season, or an essentially permanent dust bowl in the central US?

I don't care to get into this part of the argument; if you truly believe that you're just fine if the tornado leaves your house standing while it flattens the rest of your town, you'll have to find your own way in the ethical thicket. In very short: it IS everyone's problem, not just that some poor slob whose farm will dry up and blow away in the next five years. That slob was feeding you at controlled prices. If you want to buy your food on a panicked global market, it might just affect your entire standard of living.

I won't make any argument that snail darters, Mission Blue butterflies or other micro-species make the world a better place, nor try to convince you they do.

Your entire attitude seems to be that if it isn't of direct concern/benefit to you, then it's not your problem. It's a very common mindset.

I'll simply leave you to look up the massive amounts of federal support that has poured into Alabama in the last 50 years or so (approximately your lifetime), and list - just for yourself, not asking for a public reply - how much of it directly benefited you even though it came from, among others, me... and why I should give a rat's patootie about you or any other person, place or thing in Alabama. (If I remember correctly, Alabama is near the top in federal dollar inflow relative to tax rates.)

Not trying to start a pointless argument - just pointing out that the way the world works, the way the world keeps working, is for those who have to help those who don't. As one of the beneficiaries of a net federal support system, I think it's important that you understand that, and that maybe the flow should go both ways when necessary.

Gunner,
I'm genuinely impressed by the way you present your arguments. But I'm not convinced there is objective analysis to support the contention that the impact of global warming on the typical American justifies any particular level of sacrifice. I present myself as a "what's in it for me" kind of guy because I think that is what motivates the vast majority of people. So, unless someone can make the case for why some store owner in Montgomery, AL ought to care that droughts in Sudan are becoming more severe, its unlkely that store owner will lend his support to the politicians who will be making the tough decisions.

No sooner did I post a compliment about your communications skills than you wrote something I can't follow. Could you repeat your point so I can understand it better?

It's an argument that really gets down to brass tacks about the place of the individual and the state in the modern world, and I'm too tired and too leery of following this down into the sort of usual politicized muck it ends up in. If I can keep it simple...

I just looked it up. Alabama receives $1.61 for every dollar in federal tax it pays. That's in the very top tier of federal support. California gets $0.81 back in federal support for every dollar it pays. So my taxes last year went, in some substantial part, to YOUR schools, roads, and other federally-supported programs. I'd bet you don't see it that way and the thought of living in a state that has been heavily on the federal dole since at least WWII is not comfortable. So, since several states a long ways from you have been supporting your state, city, community and life without getting a single benefit from it... on what basis can you claim no responsibility for anyone outside your town, or whatever?

You also are framing this as a problem only in the Sudan or wherever. That's the places the problem is first starting to show, because they're areas of high population in fringe-arable territory. The canaries of the world coal mine, as it were. They also have the least amount of adaptability - they can't just sigh and buy more water that year, or whatever.

But I assure you that the problem of global climate shift is coming and will roost right on your town... and mine, and all of ours. It's not someone else's problem. It's everyone's. And ignoring what needs to be done now to cope with the problem in the remaining decades of our lives, to say nothing of the lives of our children only puts potential solutions and adaptations that much further out of reach when the problem is right at your doorstep.

Effectively fighting forest fires lies more in spotting the smoke early than in having the biggest fire trucks. :)