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Global warming will be beneficial to some agricultural peoples living at high altitudes. I was travelling in the Andes over xmas, where the highest cultivated areas currently go up to ca. 12-13,000'. Warmer temps are making it possible for farmers to cultivate new areas at higher elevations.

Seems like the southwest needs lots of arid nitrogen-fixers like mesquite to get the nitrogen BACK into the soil.

along with the elevated temperatures and levels of greenhouse gases

I think we need to take a closer look at what this means when it gets phrased into to every discussion about climate change.

The biggest greenhouse gas we know of is cloud cover, we have suspected this ever since we started sleeping under the stars. On a clear night you know it is going to get cold.

The Dr Spencer fella, a real live climatologist came up with a simple model that predicts more precipitation with increased warming and it is perhaps the negative feedback mechanism that would eventually kick in, this from what I remember in the article, I may be wrong.

There is just no case for a history of tipping points where life on earth gets wiped out, especially due to a harmless molecule known as CO2 which we know is in fact critical to plant life.

I think we have all the reason in the world to be happy about increased CO2 levels and in fact should utilize the coal burning CO2 we are going to be going through when the time comes. We already pump it into greenhouses but with all the histaria over it absurd ideas of controlling its emission at the cost of not controlling deadly poisonous emissions created every day is the height of ignorance IMO. I think we can be happy there IS another side to the debate surfacing irregardless of the causes of global warming. Or Cooling. It's one or the other after all.

Cid_Yama wrote:There is nothing positive about an Extinction Level Event.

Without them you wouldn't have been able to share your great wisdom with us, so yes, nothing positive from you is all for we each have our own perspective on reality.

Plantagenet wrote:Global warming will be beneficial to some agricultural peoples living at high altitudes. I was travelling in the Andes over xmas, where the highest cultivated areas currently go up to ca. 12-13,000'. Warmer temps are making it possible for farmers to cultivate new areas at higher elevations.

I have wondered from time to time just how much difference changes in sea level will have. After all if the sea level goes up a foot per decade then the tree line on any given mountain should do the same thing. Basically the tree line is altitude dependent by location, the cloud deck will intersect the mountainside differently based on latitude and altitude.

Cid_Yama wrote:There is nothing positive about an Extinction Level Event.

We aren't talking about an extinction level event...we're talking about positive side effects of a possible warming atmosphere.

For example, mankinds ability to store water through lean precipitation seasons is much better than, say, a beavers. Knowing that more water might be coming, just not at the right time, us clever monkeys can store that water for use later. Been doing it for centuries now. Somehow, I'm guessing that more moisture in the atmosphere, in combination with a POSSIBLE warming, isn't going to cause us humans to suddenly forget how to build lock and dam systems, even if they are needed in areas which didn't traditionally use them before.

Tanada wrote:

Plantagenet wrote:Global warming will be beneficial to some agricultural peoples living at high altitudes. I was travelling in the Andes over xmas, where the highest cultivated areas currently go up to ca. 12-13,000'. Warmer temps are making it possible for farmers to cultivate new areas at higher elevations.

I have wondered from time to time just how much difference changes in sea level will have. After all if the sea level goes up a foot per decade then the tree line on any given mountain should do the same thing. Basically the tree line is altitude dependent by location, the cloud deck will intersect the mountainside differently based on latitude and altitude.

The tree line is effected by cold temperatures, air pressure and moisture.

Lore wrote:

GoghGoner wrote:It should have a positive effect of reducing population and forcing evolutionary processes that have been halted to continue. I think I am and the rest of you are really stupid and it is my hope that a new species with 3x the intelligence is the future.

I’m not sure you can count on any further intelligent life coming along that would equal, let alone exceed ours, ever happening again on the planet earth, if and when we are gone. It took almost 3.8 billion years for a near mathematically impossible set of circumstances to come up with the genus Homo, which has only been around for the last 2.5 million years. There may simply not be enough time left on this planet with the right environment to come up with another species to rival our own.

Just to clarify, I am speculating that the future species will split from Homo sapiens just like our line split from the apes. Obviously, this is the positive effect I hope comes from the challenge of finite resources also. (I suppose my thoughts are somewhat off-topic but I was never exactly good at following the spirit of the instructions especially since I cannot figure out what the climate will be like in fifty years, if I do figure it out I'll be sure to come back truly on topic)

Molecular evidence suggests that between 8 and 4 million years ago, first the gorillas, and then the chimpanzees (genus Pan) split off from the line leading to the humans; human DNA is approximately 98.4% identical to that of chimpanzees when comparing single nucleotide polymorphisms

John Cook of Skeptical Science has given a pretty good list of the positives versus the negatives of climate change based on the research data. In which he states:

The negative impacts of global warming on agriculture, health, economy and environment far outweigh any positives
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global- ... atives.htm

Judge for yourself.

Lore wrote:John Cook of Skeptical Science has given a pretty good list of the positives versus the negatives of climate change based on the research data. In which he states:

The negative impacts of global warming on agriculture, health, economy and environment far outweigh any positives
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global- ... atives.htm

Judge for yourself.

No matter how grim the storm is if you give in to despair you are much less likely to weather the troubled times it brings than you are if you keep hope alive.

I am no starry eyed idealist who believes everything will be milk and honey, neither am I such a doomer that I believe there are no benefits whatsoever. This thread is dedicated to figuring out what those benefits are and possibly determining where those benefits will be manifested.

mos6507 wrote:Seems like the southwest needs lots of arid nitrogen-fixers like mesquite to get the nitrogen BACK into the soil.

Yes, they will help, but what the soil is mostly lacking is carbon (humus). Humus holds water. Much of the humus has been stripped out by overgrazing and cultivation. Restoring grasses and shrubs, also trees, will help. This work should be done while we still have powered machines. Though it can be done by hand also, with a great amount of labor.

Shar_Lamagne wrote:Guess this thread should be called the POLLYANNA side to Global Warming.

Pollyannaish: unreasonably or illogically optimistic

What an illogical statement. Lets illustrate the beauty and live giving sustenance of global warming.

Many many years ago New York was under a sheet of ice. Sterile, white, interesting in a monochromatic sort of way, but hardly a hotbed of biological activity. Then, as mother nature does, without a coal fired power plant or gigantic methane emission for help, the ice melted, to be replaced with lush forests, abundant undergrowth, and all the animals and worms and deer and soil which the woodland indians put to good use in their near utopian existence before modern civilization caught up with them.

There was no desert. There was only change, change in vast quantities, and undoubtedly the microbes which loved the frozen, icy wasteland of the glacial sheets were pretty irritated when they died, or moved along with the glaciers to their new location. But humans did what humans do best, and enjoyed the change, the new ecosystems which grew up after the glaciers retreated.

And if the naturally warming world now shifts from its current configuration to a wetter, more tropical configuration, what can I say? Louisiana isn't a bad place, if you remove the human political leadership and replaced them with better versions. Certainly desert dwellers like our old friend Monte won't be happy if the deserts of Arizona become wetter and suddenly more forests start growing, but it certainly isn't a bad thing in the least. More tree's and undergrowth around the Grand Canyon? I'm game! More snow for the Rockies, and by extension more water for the reservoirs of the SW? Why not? The Great Lakes getting bigger as they capture more of this runoff? Absolutely!

Lore wrote:John Cook of Skeptical Science has given a pretty good list of the positives versus the negatives of climate change based on the research data. In which he states:

The negative impacts of global warming on agriculture, health, economy and environment far outweigh any positives
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global- ... atives.htm

Judge for yourself.

Logical fallacy. I didn't see a single mention about how the LAST global warming has delivered to us a perfectly nice environment. Its like saying, "oh well sure, the LAST warming was fantastic, but the next one, well it will be different, and it will suck!"

shortonsense wrote:Logical fallacy. I didn't see a single mention about how the LAST global warming has delivered to us a perfectly nice environment. Its like saying, "oh well sure, the LAST warming was fantastic, but the next one, well it will be different, and it will suck!"

I’m not sure why it needed mentioning? The logical fallacy would be to equate the last warm period with the one we are placing ourselves into along with several billion humans dependent on a stable environment in which to thrive.

Lore wrote: The logical fallacy would be to equate the last warm period with the one we are placing ourselves into along with several billion humans dependent on a stable environment in which to thrive.

And an assumption that a naturally warming world isn't a place where we will continue to thrive....just like we have in the past. Certainly the ecosystem around, say, the Adirondacks, is a perfect example.

Positives.....?

The Sahara may get some rain and revert back to savannah as it was 6000 years ago.

Siberia, greenland and antarctica may eventually become habitable.

UK might turn into a tropical (albeit smaller) island.

I might be able to grow bananas in my back garden.

shortonsense wrote:

Lore wrote: The logical fallacy would be to equate the last warm period with the one we are placing ourselves into along with several billion humans dependent on a stable environment in which to thrive.

And an assumption that a naturally warming world isn't a place where we will continue to thrive....just like we have in the past. Certainly the ecosystem around, say, the Adirondacks, is a perfect example.

By "we" do you mean Homo sapiens? Or do you mean our society/culture (industrial agricultural civilization)?

Homo sapiens is quite adaptable, even to extreme climate change. There's evidence civilization may not be.

Ludi wrote:By "we" do you mean Homo sapiens? Or do you mean our society/culture (industrial agricultural civilization)?
Homo sapiens is quite adaptable, even to extreme climate change. There's evidence civilization may not be.

I have never tried to differentiate between humans and civilization. I can understand the distinction, I'm just not certain which way I feel about the relationship.

Civilization seems to be as much of a good thing as a bad thing, with the good/bad perspective depending on which point in history you choose for reference.

shortonsense wrote:I have never tried to differentiate between humans and civilization.

So you mean both? By "we" you mean civilized humans, or maybe our current industrial agricultural civilization?

Just trying to figure out what you're saying, if anything.

Ludi wrote:So you mean both? By "we" you mean civilized humans, or maybe our current industrial agricultural civilization? Just trying to figure out what you're saying, if anything.

Well, I can't say I have considered the difference ( in the way I think about it when I say "we" ) well enough to pontificate on the topic yet.