Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] Climate skeptic convinced by data. Was: Re: Mike Mann _The hockey stick and the climate wars_



At 4:04 PM +0000 2/18/12, fred bucheit wrote:

Isn't the more important question here, what is the cause of this warming? Is it possible to find the correct solution if we don't know the cause? And, we can not deny that there are some advantages to a warming world, advantages that might ultimately outweigh the disadvantages.

What is the cause of the warming is an important question, although not necessarily more important than the warming itself. What is causing the warming will have an effect on what, if anything, we can do to mitigate the warming or adapt to it. But, except for some scientifically illiterate critics, that, too, appears to be a settled issue. Causes other than human activity have been pretty conclusively shown to be too small to have caused the changes we observe in the time frame during which they have occurred. Even if the causes turn out to be not man-made, it is probable that at least much of the change can be mitigated by increasing the earth's albedo, which is a bit of geoengineering that we can do and probably can control.

As to the changes possibly being beneficial, There may be some that are beneficial to some humans, since we occupy all areas of the earth. Living in a more moderate climate might be nice for some who now live in the polar regions, but that is about the only one I can think of. Even then, the advantages are few. Melting of the permafrost will make Northern Siberia and Norther Alaska and Canada uninhabitable quagmires, not to mention the effects of releasing the billions of tons of trapped methane in the frozen peat that makes up much of the tundra, which will clearly make the warming worse.

We have already seen that warming is giving rise to more extreme weather events--floods, droughts, stronger hurricanes and tornados, severe winter storms and summer heat waves. Warming could upset the North Atlantic circulator, which drives the relatively mild weather of Western Europe, making its winters more like Siberia. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas can threaten the entire civilization of south Asia, turning those areas into deserts, and the resulting sea level rise creating massive waves of climate refugees. As the tropics warm still further, tropical plant and animal species will move toward the poles, creating problems with the local species they will come in conflict with, and bringing their tropical diseases northward (and southward) with them.

For other species, who have adapted to the climate in which they found themselves, significant warming can be disastrous. Species that live in polar regions will not do well in the absence of ice (remember that we house polar species that are in our zoos in refrigerated buildings to insure their survival). Polar bears and several species of polar seals are already threatened. Most marine animals and fish are capable of surviving only within a fairly narrow range of temperatures. Most fish don't do well in water that is only slightly warmer than their natural habitat. Many species that live on high ground will find themselves isolated in their efforts to migrate away from increasing temperatures--they cannot go higher than the top of their mountains and they cannot go down because it is too hot.

Opening up the Arctic (and possibly the Antarctic) to exploitation of the regions' natural resources could further exacerbate the problems, and could lead to conflicts over control of the regions that could turn deadly.

So, no, I seriously doubt that the net effects of global warming will be to anybody's advantage. Less land to live on, less suitably arable land on which to grow food, more extreme weather and increased incidence of tropical diseases which we have not well-developed resistance to, among others, will clearly make the Earth a less life-friendly place than it has been.

The likelihood of any of the possible advantages outweighing the clear disadvantages of global warming is, IMHO, very small. I have long been saying that if we don't reduce our world population in a safe and orderly manner, that nature will do it for us, and we won't like the way she does it. I think we are seeing now a glimpse of how she will manage the reduction. I, for one, don't like it.

Hugh
--
Hugh Haskell
mailto:hugh@ieer.org
mailto:haskellh@verizon.net

I have been wondering for a long time why some of our own defense officials do not
put more emphasis on finding a good substitute for oil and worry less about where
more oil is to come from. Our people are ingenious. New discoveries are all around
us, and when we have to make them, we nearly always do.

Eleanor Roosevelt
February 13, 1948