Is Global Warming actually Good?

Great Debates
1

There is no question in my mind that the Earth is now experiencing an era of global warming. This is not based on any particular science but my own personal observations. Here in the midwest we just do have the terrible winters we used to.

And that brings up my point - maybe global warming is “good”.

My grandmother who lived in the Dakotas has seen it snow every month of the year except for August. Yes, they used to actually get 4th of July snows. And the winters were something fierce. Days of subzero temperatures that lead to snow piled up to the rooftops. In fact many of the older homes actually had a 2nd floor entrance. The newer homes dont have them anymore because they are not needed.

Thing is starting around the late 70’s winters became gradually milder. I dont think Kansas City has had a true “blizzard” in 20 years.

Now go further north up into Canada I have heard from people that their winters are becoming easier also. In fact some areas are becoming accessible to farming. Looking at North America on a map you will notice its kind of in a “V” shape with most of the land in the north which unfortunately is mostly frozen tundra. If by chance those areas warm up it opens up new lands for settlement and agriculture.

At the same time I cannot say the summers are any hotter or longer.

So I’d like to ask you all;

#1. In your area have winters become less cold?
#2. Have summers become hotter?
#3. Do you think in your area the changes have been positive or negative?

2

No.

3

It does show that it is possible for man to change the climate on a planet and that proves terraform is possible on a planet. Could this data someday be used to terrafrom other planets such as mars? IDK

4

The cost of Climate Change is going to be really high, far higher than making efforts to reduce our affect on the climate. The reality is humans have built most of their large cities near coasts and on tidal rivers. The rising waters are going to force engineering projects of vast expense world wide and for many poorer countries they will have massive flooding they cannot control.

That is only one problem though, the additional heat also is causing more droughts and more major destructive storms. This will cause food shortages and massive damage. Storms like Katrina and Sandy could and probably will become more common as the earth heats up. The increase in devastating tornadoes is also predicted and in the non-intuitive area more severe blizzards are also likely.

The earth has many climates, 1000s are effectively micro-climates where the home of many specific animals and plants is measures in only miles. The micro-climates will be strongly changes and at a speed where many if not most of these animals and plants will die off. So bio-diversity will be reduced.

So it is possible that “global warming” might make the climate of some areas nicer it will be far outweighed by the places where it will be a huge economic hit.

5

On average, yes (the most recent winter was more typical of what we had 30-40 years ago)

On average, yes.

Mixed at best.

We might getting warmer, but the storms are getting more extreme. We are having flooding problems year after year causing damage and even killing people. Changes in the growing season are making it more difficult for farmers to plan their crops, even if the growing season seems to be longer. We are getting news pests and invasive plants.

Even if we wind up “winners” in some sense in my area there will be damage and destruction while the change occurs and we get used to dealing with the new normal. Even if we wind up “winners” in some sense it does not compensate for what will happen to those who are “losers” as the climate changes.

6

One thing you really can’t dispute is that the world is getting warmer (and yet, some people do dispute it, but that’s another topic). However, the exact reasons for this warming are a bit more arguable.

If you graph the temperature over the past 100 years or so, no matter whose data you use it always ends up looking something like this:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/images/giss_temperature.png

That graph rather eerily corresponds to the amount of pollution that mankind has been throwing into the atmosphere, which makes it very clear that man is responsible.

Or does it?

If you look at the really long term trend (going back millions and millions of years) a completely different picture emerges. Again, data varies a bit depending on whose numbers you use, but it looks more like this:
http://www.naturalclimatechange.us/images/bernier-climateandco2overlast600mill-custom-size-600-600-1.gif.jpeg

This graph makes it look like the average temperature of the earth is usually somewhere around 21 or 22 deg C and the earth is now just coming up from an unnaturally cold spell. The implication here is that the world would be warming up anyway, with or without our help.

While exactly how much of the warming is natural and how much is caused by man may be a bit arguable, you are going to have a hard time finding scientists these days who don’t believe that man is at least helping push things along.

One very important thing to consider though is that when you look at these graphs, you are looking at trends that run over hundreds to millions of years.

The OP is making a very big mistake in thinking that any rise or fall over the past couple of decades is significant. That’s statistical noise. Temperatures have warmed up for hundreds of years and cooled for hundreds of years. A couple of decades here and there don’t mean much.

One thing to get very worried about though is the fact that we (as well as much modern life) evolved during that brief cold period that has lasted for the last 30 million years or so. We are built for average global temperatures somewhere around 14 or 15 deg C. Raising it up to “earth normal” of 21 deg C may very well spell doom for all of us.

One thing to notice on that second long-term temperature graph is that at the end of the Permian period the temperature rose up above the “average” for a bit before dropping back down. That’s basically the era of the Permian-Triassic extinction event, also known as the Great Dying. It’s the earth’s most severe known extinction event in all of history. And there’s a chance that much of it was caused by the earth just getting too hot to support life.

Global warming might save us from the next ice age (which is a bit overdue, based on historical cycles). Or it might kill us all. I wouldn’t get all excited just because you’ve had a few decades of mild weather. Even if we aren’t heading towards another Great Dying, relatively moderate amounts of global warming could turn a lot of fertile farmland into overheated desert, causing massive global food shortages.

ETA: To specifically answer your questions:

#1. In your area have winters become less cold?

Yes.

#2. Have summers become hotter?

Yes. They are downright miserable these days.

**#3. Do you think in your area the changes have been positive or negative? **

The weather has been getting more erratic around here, which I don’t think is good.

7

Where in the Midwest do you live?

8

No. Global Warming will increase the risk of asteroids impacting Earth.

9

And still that does not mean that Urbanredneck was wrong.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/01/25/no-global-warming-isnt-suddenly-a-myth-because-its-really-cold-out

10

As even the article pointed out, that CNN interviewer was a dummy, Bill Nye was polite on not pointing that to that CNN interviewer and talked about the science and not that dumb question.

11

This comes up a lot, it’s pretty established that rapid global warming at the rate predicted by the IPCC would be bad for humans.

It’s possible it’d be good for some species though, I would imagine some insect populations would be able to expand into the northern hemisphere…and everyone likes giant mosquitoes in Canada, right?

12

As sea levels rise displaced populations will need to go somewhere. If you like political strife and human suffering, global warming is your guy.

13

I really shouldn’t have to say this by now, but you really shouldn’t be using that graph. The paper that the CO2 records comes from actually concluded that there was a *good *correlation between CO2 and temperature. It’s right there in the conclusions of the paper. So… why is the graph so misleading? Because it ignores literally every other confounding factor. Things like solar output, aerosols, solar output, oceanic current changes, solar output, the orientation of the continents and whether this allowed for ice caps, solar output, solar output, solar output…

Yes. And of course, this conclusion is reached after a massive amount of analysis of the available evidence and data. Oh wait, no it isn’t, you just look at the graph, think “cycles” and assume that the temperature goes up and down based on… I dunno, fairy dust? Global temperature is controlled by various phenomena. We can isolate and examine those phenomena to see what various changes to the system would do. This is how we’ve learned things like what the cause of the medieval warm period was, or why we had the little ice age.

To assert that it would be “warming up anyways, with or without our help” is something that absolutely needs to be qualified. Why would it be warming up anyways? “Because it moves in cycles” isn’t good enough. But even assuming that that’s true, here’s another important question: what effect does doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere have if we’re already warming? After all, we already know that CO2 is a significant greenhouse gas from lab experiments dating back over 150 years. If we’re already warming, then the necessity of cutting back CO2 emissions should be even greater, no?

Actually, when a trend takes a sudden, bizarre spike, it’s an outlier. It’s not necessarily noise. It’s especially not simply noise when we can tell why the outlier is there. What we’re dealing with here is a jump in temperature which is pretty much unprecedented. You’ve all seen the graph, so I’ll spare you linking to it again, and yeah, we’ve had major increases in the past as well. It’s just that most of the time, that’s been over millenia. Not decades. We are warming orders of magnitude faster than at any time previously recorded in history. And here’s the kicker: we know why. That’s not noise. That’s a very important part of the signal. It’s like… Imagine you have an oak growing in your backyard. In 25 years, it grows about 20 feet. Then, one day, you’re watching it for 15 seconds, and it starts really going - getting another 5 feet. And it doesn’t seem to be stopping. Even if the growth stopped almost immediately, you’d still want to know what the heck happened for it to do something so unusual and bizarre. That’s not noise in the signal.

14

As already said, the answer to the OP question is “no”. I prefer this reference.

The idea that good things can happen in a warmer planet – even if such a hypothesis were true – is entirely overshadowed by the profoundly far-reaching consequences of getting there.

The problem is the unprecedentedly rapid rate of change at which the planet is warming and its atmospheric constituents are changing, dramatically illustrated by charts like this CO2 graph. In a nutshell, the problematic consequences can be summed up as ecological disruption, climate destabilization, and the synergy of the two factors together.

Ecological disruption means that all life on earth is adapted to this climate, not some theoretically “better” but radically different one, and species cannot adapt to the changing environment anywhere near as fast as it’s changing around them, nor to the consequences of competing species, pests, and disease migrating poleward. Climate destabilization means potentially radical changes in global atmosphere and ocean circulation systems, drastic localized changes in regional climates, and a marked increase in severe weather. The synergy of the two factors means things like additional stresses on the ecosystem from persistent extreme weather like droughts, floods, and heat waves. And these effects will be long-lived, because changes in the carbon cycle and in polar ice sheet loss and many other feedbacks will continue to drive climate change long after CO2 is stabilized.

15

A valid point, but I was only using the graph to talk about the long term average temperature.

It’s not just fairy dust. I am definitely not an expert on climate change, but I’ve read quite a bit about it. But specific to that graph, I am also an engineer who understands feedback control systems, and what I see in that graph is very obviously a system with feedback control in it. Do I understand exactly what mechanisms are involved in this feedback (atmospheric gases, solar output, etc)? No. But it’s very obviously a slightly underdamped feedback system.

Slightly underdamped means that as the temperature adjust back to its natural stable point, it can easily overshoot a bit, as it did at the end of the Permian period. We could very easily be heading for another Great Dying in the next few tens of millions of years. And that’s without man’s intervention. If mankind is doing something to accelerate the warming, then the overshoot is going to be even worse.

Another implication of recognizing that this is a feedback system is the understanding that if man is pushing it along, when we stop pushing, there’s still an integrative effect in the system, which means that the rising trend won’t stop just because the force that is pushing it up has stopped. And since the system is somewhat underdamped, you’d expect the temperature to rise above its stability point then drop back down to it, and possibly drop below it before rising back up. I may not be an expert on climate change, but even an idiot like me can recognize that those kinds of wild swings in the long term average temperature could be devastating to life as we know it.

I’m not saying it moves in cycles. What I see is a feedback system that has been perturbed at times. What caused all of those perturbations? I have no idea. Massive volcanic eruptions? A big ice ball or a hunk of rock slammed into the earth? You tell me. The last perturbation seems likely to be that big rock that slammed into the earth about 65 million years ago.

A lot of those temperature perturbations occur around the same time as massive extinction events. I really doubt that they are unrelated to each other.

16

I’m not completely sure, but I think you didn’t type what you meant. Did you mean to type “Here in the midwest we just don’t have the terrible winters we used to.”? Because from the rest of your OP it seems that would be what you meant to say.

Of course the logical thing is to ask what you mean by “global warming.” If you mean “warmer is better than colder”, then yes, of course warmer is good. The brutal winters of the sixties and seventies were horrible. Much like the last winter (2013/14)

If you mean the worst case scenario of AGW, a runaway greenhouse effect, amplified by arctic warming, methane release, an assumed water vapor feedback loop, leading to the extinction of all mankind, and most every other living thing on the planet, not so much.

Kansas city had blizzards in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013.

Like the winter data, you can actually check almost any location in the USA, and see what thye official climate history actually is. This is called being scientific.

The problem is some of those questions aren’t actually meaningful. We speak of trends in temperatures because it’s the best we can do at answering what you really want to know. is it getting colder in winter? Warmer? No trend? Are summers actually getting hotter?

Number three is the real question. If the winters are warmer, and summers the same, is that a positive?

Or, if winters are getting much fucking colder, and summers are hotter than ever, then what the fuck?

17

FX,

Thanks for the well thought out reply.

You make some good points. I’m inclined to agree with you that overall global warming is bad.

I think one big problem is trying to convince people (even me) that global warming is bad is people just dont care for long cold winters with deep snows and raging blizzards. People retire to warm sunny areas like Florida. Even Obama plans to retire to Hawaii not Chicago. When people think of “good” areas to live they think sunny beaches and green year around. Nobody likes snow and freezing cold. Stubborn people like me would love to chuck our snow shovels and be able to grow orange trees. We dont see the big picture like you mention. So overall, thanks for the input.

Finally though, I will have to disagree on one point you made: "Kansas City had blizzards in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. "

I dont call those true blizzards. Yeah we had some snow this winter but often it would then warm up to the 50’s and be gone the next week. We barely dropped below the 0 degree mark.

18

Alaska, Minnesota, and other northern states already have some of the worse mosquitos as well as blackflies.

19

On flooding, is that caused by global warming related issues or the fact people are living in more flood plains, the fact that with more concrete it causes water to run off faster than when it used to get absorbed by open ground, or just poor planning and water management in general?.

About 3 years ago we had flooding here in the midwest but that was caused by them releasing too much water from the upper dams on the Missouri.

20

My wife and I don’t ski, and we still like it.

However, if climate change gets to be dramatic – and I don’t think it is yet – weather pattern shifting would probably make some areas colder while most become warmer. I find it hard to believe models are good enough to tell you in advance what local effects will be. And that’s bad. For example, the government might pay many billions to build seawalls for the wrong hazard.

As for there being some areas where warming would help, sure. But, let’s say a big area of Canada opens up to wheat farming. It will take a decade or more before people are convinced that the opening for crop growing is here to stay. And then it will take a decade or two for the infrastructure needed to open the area for farming, such as roads and rudimentary towns, to be put in place. By contrast, the bad effects on food growing, in other areas, would be almost immediate.

As I think has been said before, climate change is inevitable but needs to be very gradual.