Warming: Where Is The Harm?

[tabibito]

Was the 1936 North American cold wave cause by global warming?

Probably. Climate conditions over millenia show gradual average warming. No-one has been able to walk across the Thames River in mid winter since some time in the 1700s, for example, though it was a regular activity prior to that. well - except for only an extreme few exceptional winters.

And wouldn't a warmer planet eventually produce more growing areas and longer growing seasons?

No. Warmer planet means loss of low lying plains, increased erosion and, because the increased temperatures result in an increased capacity for air to retain moisture, decreased rainfall.

After all the earth was once much warmer than today and animals and plants thrived.

Increased expanses of desert in once fertile lands show that this is not so. Egypt and Ethiopia both had very good agricultural capacity 2000 - 3000 years ago.

As to man made global warming - that has ACCELERATED the pace without doubt, and that rate of acceleration is probably itself accelerating. The current hiatus in rising temperatures was predicted early in the piece (1960s - 1970s?).
Basic scenario goes that Polar ice melts - dumps inordinate quantities of very cold water into the oceans, that very cold water is carried to equatorial regions by currents. Temporary cooling of the deeper ocean results in a stay in increased temperatures. Cooling effects result in a partial recovery of ice caps. The cold water eventually gets warmer, increases the melt of the polar caps (which never recovered fully from the prior melt) and continue the cycle.
To give a thoroughly over-simplified example: Temperatures increase, melt 100 tons of polar ice. ice water creates hiatus, polar ice increases by 50 tons. ice water warms up - melting of ice caps resumes, melts 100 tons of ice. after a few repetitions, no ice is left.

[HMS_Beagle]

Really Beagle?

Yes seer, really. Reality doesn't go away just because you don't particularly care for it.

And wouldn't a warmer planet eventually produce more growing areas and longer growing seasons?

Productive growing areas may move northward into Nebraska / Montana / Canada but this will be offset by crop losses in the traditional breadbasket states. There's also the problem of moving billions of dollars' worth of food growing / food processing / transportation infrastructure from the drought areas to the new growing areas. Little details like that you probably never consider.

After all the earth was once much warmer than today and animals and plants thrived.

Animal and plant life will survive. However the Earth never had 7+ billion people on it to support before so that population will likely fall drastically. You'll be gone by that time so why should you care if a few billion people starve to death, right?

[seer]

Seriously?

In the US alone changing wind patterns produced the Polar Vortex that did damage by dumping extra cold arctic air over the east coast and Midwest and cost the US economy an estimated $5 billion. Meanwhile the western states are still suffering through their worst drought in a century, causing significant damage to crops and an increase in food prices. In Alaska the melting permafrost has caused hundreds of millions of dollars' damage to infrastructure - roads, bridges, water and electricity distribution. Coastal sea trade cities on both coasts are having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up their port infrastructure too against rising sea level effects. That doesn't even include the severe cost of the loss of biodiversity through loss of animal and plant habitats.

That's just in the US. The same effects over the whole globe are estimated to cost approx. $1.2 trillion dollars a year in damages.

Climate change is already damaging global economy, report finds

Really Beagle? So this drought is worse than the 1930's dust bowl? Some of the coldest US winters were in the 60 and 80s. Was the 1936 North American cold wave cause by global warming? And wouldn't a warmer planet eventually produce more growing areas and longer growing seasons? After all the earth was once much warmer than today and animals and plants thrived. As far as coastal areas, that is mostly our fault for building to close to the shore in the first place - I knew that when I was a kid in the 60s and saw what hurricanes did to our coastal towns. And since those days we have only built up those areas more.

[HMS_Beagle]

Ok, from what I can understand from the grafts linked, from the late 1880s to present the earth's average temperature has increased about one degree f. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

This has seemed to have topped off in the late 90s. And we remain fairly stable, but we are stable at a much warmer temperature. So has that warmer temperature really cause any empirical harm? From what I have read we just went through three years of the mildest hurricane seasons in recent memory. I mean what weather events can we point to that are worse now in either duration, frequency or intensity because of this warming?

Seriously?

In the US alone changing wind patterns produced the Polar Vortex that did damage by dumping extra cold arctic air over the east coast and Midwest and cost the US economy an estimated $5 billion. Meanwhile the western states are still suffering through their worst drought in a century, causing significant damage to crops and an increase in food prices. In Alaska the melting permafrost has caused hundreds of millions of dollars' damage to infrastructure - roads, bridges, water and electricity distribution. Coastal sea trade cities on both coasts are having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up their port infrastructure too against rising sea level effects. That doesn't even include the severe cost of the loss of biodiversity through loss of animal and plant habitats.

That's just in the US. The same effects over the whole globe are estimated to cost approx. $1.2 trillion dollars a year in damages.

Climate change is already damaging global economy, report finds

[seer]

Tell that to the Eskimos, whose pies keep melting!!!

Like those polar bears that keep melting!

[Sparko]

Tell that to the Eskimos, whose pies keep melting!!!

[seer]

Ok, from what I can understand from the grafts linked, from the late 1880s to present the earth's average temperature has increased about one degree f. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

This has seemed to have topped off in the late 90s. And we remain fairly stable, but we are stable at a much warmer temperature. So has that warmer temperature really cause any empirical harm? From what I have read we just went through three years of the mildest hurricane seasons in recent memory. I mean what weather events can we point to that are worse now in either duration, frequency or intensity because of this warming?