This isn’t a political thread or even a scientific one about whether Global Climate Change is occurring. Let’s just assume that it is, the cause doesn’t matter, and it cannot be avoided significantly by anything we can control now.
Very few things have all negatives listed in their cost/benefit analysis. What positive things can be expected from Global Climate Change? Imagine you are a PR agency responsible for selling the positives of it while remaining truthful. What great things can we expect from a generally warmer climate with greater variation?
You could start with the fact that many areas of the world that are now too cold to grow crops could become arable, providing food for millions of starving people around the world.
We could end up with a significantly larger area of arable land as northern Asia, Canada and the farthest northern islands and sub-continents become crop-capable (again).
Many areas will develop long stretches of new coastline, always valuable property both as real estate and in other economic ways.
Energy use for heating will drop across some large swaths of inhabited areas. (Countered by increased energy for cooling for populations that stay in desertified areas.)
TV weathermen become the new anchors, as bizarre weather becomes a major component of news.
Realistically, none, unless we study it in a lot more depth. Some lands might well become more fertile, but that won’t help unless we can figure out which lands, and what farming techniques will be most effective for that land. And until we do figure out those techniques, we could accidentally end up with dust bowls instead of breadbaskets.
But what about the vast areas of farmland that become unsuitable for growing crops, especially those areas where most people currently live (in fact, yields are already declining as a result of warming, this study says 10% per degree of warming for rice, a mainstay for a large part of the globe’s population)? Also, I doubt crops are going to grow well in the Arctic when you consider things like the seasons and length of day and solar insolation, which won’t change, and many soils in those regions are infertile.
Also, citing new shorelines as advantages ignores what happens to all of the existing infrastructure; look at New Orleans (long affected by subsidence, which just prompts ever-larger levees) for an example of how resistant people are to relocating, and for some low-lying islands, it is a matter of having any land at all.
As for heat vs cold deaths, more people already die from heat, so any cold deaths being prevented would be more than offset, plus increased weather extremes like in recent winters would increase deaths as well, even if it isn’t actually colder overall.
There would be some advantages, like increased navigation in the Arctic (and of course, easier access to any oil and gas - yet another feedback), but on the whole it isn’t worth it, especially in the more extreme scenarios.
Skeptical Science covers the impacts pretty well (check the intermediate and advanced as well, note that many now think that the 2°C limit mentioned is now too high given currently observed impacts, similar to how “safe” CO2 levels are now thought to be 350 ppm or less, down from 400-450).
A few dozen more superstorms over the next decade or so could cause enough catastrophic damage to the infrastructure of our industrial nations that the majority of the world falls into a post-apocalyptic desolation state; lower populations and less ready access to oil and other pollution-heavy energy sources could bring about the very changes that people who were fighting global warming were trying to make happen, so it’s all a cyclic change from “normal” to “violent” to “normal” again.
Of course, a lot of people would probably die and several governments fail in the process…
I’ve read speculations that global warming could give us access to arctic oil fields, which are supposedly substantial. So we could see a new spike in oil production as these new fields are brought into service.
I would consider this to more of a disadvantage however, since it would mean even more CO2 emissions, and further delay the transition to renewable energy sources; but of course, short-term benefits usually outweigh long-term risks to most people.
This really evokes a much larger issue. It isn’t worth it for whom? The earth’s climate has changed drastically over time, from hot to cold, and all things in between. Some organisms thrive in some circumstances while others perish. Change isn’t “good” or “bad,” it just is. Yes, from a purely human point of view, we might take an optimistic or a dim view of the results of these changes, but in the bigger sense, things will happen. If it’s good for our species in some ways, good. But either way, the earth doesn’t care.
Maybe that is true, but the most important impacts of climate change are those that affect humans. Plus, volcanoes, asteroids and bacteria aren’t comparable to humans in one respect - humans are intelligent and capable of discerning the difference between what is right and wrong; it is just wrong to populate the Earth at the expense of other species (which is the real crux of the problem, 1 million people living like Americans will have less impact than 1 billion Somalis), even if it has happened countless times in the past (e.g. we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for photosynthetic organisms poisoning the atmosphere with their waste, leading to a mass extinction and climate change so severe the entire Earth may have frozen over).
This is admittedly scraping the bottom of the barrel, but it might teach us as a species to become more adaptable to our environment. It seems that the period of earth history in which civilization has flourished has been an usually stable one, climate-wise. Even though the current bout of climate change is undoubtedly anthropogenic, there are always natural climate catastrophes looming in the indeterminate future. If, say, Yellowstone erupts in the year 2100, hopefully experience garnered dealing with this artificial climate crisis will help us better respond to that natural one.
Another thing is that I suspect climate change, not scarcity, will be the driving force that gets us off of fossil fuels and there’s all sorts of environmental side-benefits to that. No more big oil spills, for one.
As I pointed out in another thread, before we reach a new stable warmer environment we should expect a bottleneck of very unstable and surprising weather.
While the south west in the USA, the Amazon and many other regions in Asia will dry up, it will be lovely in Greenland!
This view is often repeated, but is largely false.
For one thing, sudden change is much more disruptive than gradual change. Google “mass extinctions” if the point isn’t clear. The polar bear won’t have time to evolve into an aquatic bear. I know almost nothing about ocean ecology but if you think oceanic life will thrive as well with increasing acidity, I think a Cite is in order.
If “either way, the earth doesn’t care” means “life will be as diverse and complex when the earth is several degrees warmer” then, again, a Cite is in order.
It will allow northerly lying countries to grow more food and become livable. Mainly Russia supposedly, and like Putin says: “Only a man who hasn’t experience the Russian Winter fears global warming.” The Greenlanders are positively giddy that they’ll be able to grow their own grain for the first time since the Middle Ages and have sheep grazing for a longer period, etc.
It’ll open up areas of Greenland to mining and oil exploration. This is already in progress; they’re about to sign a contract with China for an iron mine, they just discovered more gold, and oil test drillings have been going on for some time.
It’ll open up the northerly route for quicker access between Asia and Europe. No more sailing all the way south of India and through the Suez Canel, mucking around with pirates and stuff. There are already companies that are using this north passage; Nordic Bulk Carriers.