US Study Projects How 'Unequivocal Warming' Will Change Americans ...

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/06/17/17climatewire-us-study-projects-how-unequivocal-warming-wi-29186.html

by newacc • 17 years ago

13 36 17 years ago

On the other hand, a lot more people die from cold, so if you decrease that, it could be a net win...

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/global-warming-the-grea...

Let me be even more sarcastic and snide... maybe people who are afraid of global warming are close minded and afraid of change...

jshen6• 17 years ago

Wanting to avoid death, disease, and destruction is not the same as a general fear of change.

anon-e-moose2• 17 years ago

And you could make a similar point about almost any other time someone is said to be afraid of change... that's why I'm making fun of it.

pj3• 17 years ago

I read the post you are replying to as a jab at those who believe change leads to death and destruction. We could move the cities inland. We could optimize buildings to keep people cooler. We could find more efficient forms of energy to enable more indoor climate control.

The current stress right now is to stop climate control. We humans believe we can stop climate control, but what if we can't? What if it actually is due to sun spots and beyond our control? It seems like it would make sense to adapt to the change rather than try to stop the change.

mildweed• 17 years ago

Ask YC: How will 'Unequivocal Warming' provide new opportunities? Technology is our hammer, so what can we start making now?

A weather aggregator and tracker (and projector)?

Information services that decrease carbon emissions? Ex: http://neighborhoodfruit.com

Let's brainstorm right here.

mynameishere• 17 years ago

Not sure why it would lower crop production.

Also not sure why maple syrup is worth mentioning.

pchristensen2• 17 years ago

Because the American syrup tappers will lose their jobs to Canadians. 80% of syrup already comes from Canada.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Wouldn't that easily be offset by gains in citrus production? After all, more people drink orange juice that consume syrup. Heck, most of the syrup you get doesn't come from trees anyway.

abrahamsen• 17 years ago

The reason stated was pests.

Most likely both crop production and pesticide use will increase in the north, mostly due to increased temperature allowing for both longer growing seasons and better conditions for pests. The CO2 effect will be dwarfed by the temperature effect in the north. The effect in the south will mostly be determined be access to water, either as rain or irrigation, and have huge local variations. Where there is good access to water, production will rise (due to increased CO2), where there isn't, it will drop.

Overall, I'd expect a significant increase in crop production, but we may have to get used to new crops and varieties to get the full effect.

Alex39173• 17 years ago

"Not sure why it would lower crop production."

The conditions that crops need aren't based on average temperature, but rather they're based on the minimum temperature, the maximum temperature, and how long it takes to go from very cold to very warm and vice versa. With global warming the climate zones don't just shift north, but rather you get these situations where certain crops just won't grow at all. For example, grape vines have certain mechanisms to protect the buds during winter, but these mechanisms get disabled as soon as you get the first warm snap. The problem is that if it then gets cold again you lose all the buds, so no grapes.

With global warming what happens is you still have very low minimum temperatures in winter, but the average temperature is warmer and so you have these temporary warm snaps disable all the natural protection mechanisms that have evolved over thousands of years. So if you just move the vines north then they all die because their cold protection mechanisms get disabled and the buds freeze, and you can't keep them where they are because it's too hot in the summer so they die also. So what happens is that you just can't successfully grow good wine grapes anymore. Now obviously this is a pretty trivial example, but there are similar things going on for a lot of our major food crops. You can't just move them north, so we're just going to have major food shortages.

Another good example is wheat rusts. Every winter our top scientists go down to Mexico and create new types of wheat based on whatever rust is currently spreading. The only reason they have time to do this is because the wheat sprouts later in the US than it does in Mexico. But with global warming all the wheat will come up much closer together, so what may happen is that we just don't have wheat anymore.

(And believe me, wheat rust is pretty much the scariest shit you can imagine. There's a reason it was one of the biblical plagues.)

gruseom• 17 years ago

so we're just going to have major food shortages

That's a non sequitur. If certain things don't grow as well, it doesn't follow that nothing will.

randallsquared• 17 years ago

For example, grape vines have certain mechanisms to protect the buds during winter, but these mechanisms get disabled as soon as you get the first warm snap. The problem is that if it then gets cold again you lose all the buds, so no grapes.

But in fact, we know that grapes were grown at more northerly areas in the British Isles in warmer historical times. If it has been done, it's too late to suggest it's impossible.

pragmatic• 17 years ago

Just in time for one of the coldest summers on record.

It's hard for people to fathom the thought of global warming while their local weather is in fact colder.

Jared Diamond's Collapse is a good reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_(book)

What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last tree and doom the island think as he used his stone axe?

While I remain skeptical about global climate change, I can also appreciate the fact that polluting less and taking care of the environment is a good thing.

The problem is that even as America becomes cleaner, China, India and the rest of the third world are burning trees and coal like crazy.

jzachary• 17 years ago

I don't about where you live, but along the Gulf Coast region, it is hotter and drier than normal.

lilsis3• 17 years ago

I do not believe that human contribution to global warming is significant.

Water vapor is responsible for 95% of the greenhouse effect, yet somehow it is never brought up in global warming discussions. Why is this?

We've raised CO2 concentrations 100 ppm to 370 ppm... a concentration that's tiny in comparison to the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere... after all, we're on a giant ball of water.

I subscribe to the theory of giant ball of nuclear fire leads to warmer temperatures -> increase in ocean temperatures -> release of dissolved CO2 & increase in water vapor -> greater greenhouse effect

I don't hate the environment and obviously we should be reducing our impact, but cleaner air and water should be cause enough.

If anyone can explain to me why my reasoning is flawed I'll be happy to champion the idea that global warming is primarily driven by man... it would actually make my life easier to embrace it as fact. However, as it stands now, it seems to me a rather arrogant proposition.

adnam• 17 years ago

> Water vapor is responsible for 95% of the greenhouse effect

"For clear skies, water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, accounting for 60% of the total. The second most important greenhouse gas is CO2, which contributes 32 W m−2"

See "Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget", page 203 (7th page of PDF): http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring04/at...

lutorm2• 17 years ago

It doesn't matter if 99.9% of greenhouse effect is not caused by humans, if the extra 0.1% is. The gross heat fluxes in and out are enormous, but because they precisely balance they're not noticeable. An extra 0.1%, while very small compared to the total heat flux, is a purely net flux because it's not canceled out (until the Earth has warmed). It's simple conservation of energy.

Think of it this way: If you have a gallon of water and you pour it back and forth between two containers, you will eventually run out of water even if you lose only a few drops each time.

Another example: If you trade your assets back and forth between different stocks (and they don't change value), it doesn't matter how much money you start with, if you do it for long enough you will eventually run out of money due to the transaction cost.

A small effect can have a big impact if it's allowed to accumulate over time, and that's precisely what's happening with the greenhouse effect.

lutorm2• 17 years ago

Btw, the fact that the major greenhouse gas is water vapor does not make things better, it makes them worse. It means there's a feedback loop that amplifies the effect of increased CO2, because as the world warms, the atmospheric concentrations of H2O will increase, further increasing the warming.

philwelch• 17 years ago

"Water vapor is responsible for 95% of the greenhouse effect, yet somehow it is never brought up in global warming discussions. Why is this?"

Because the water vapor isn't what's increasing, except as an effect of the warming trend caused by higher CO2 concentration.

"I subscribe to the theory of giant ball of nuclear fire leads to warmer temperatures -> increase in ocean temperatures -> release of dissolved CO2 & increase in water vapor -> greater greenhouse effect"

Care to explain why the sun progressively got hotter in a way that strongly correlates with the release of CO2 since the Industrial Revolution?

swombat• 17 years ago

Please fix the URL to the NYTimes URL, since this is a NYTimes article...

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

I still haven't heard convincing arguments for global warming as fact. Climate change, yes, but warming as a result of human activity on a global scale no. Chief among my concerns is the fact that Mars seems to be warming as well. http://www.dakotavoice.com/2009/06/nasa-study-shows-sun-resp...

gabeybaby• 17 years ago

Let Carl Zimmer sort it out for you: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/02/27/unchecked-...

anamax• 17 years ago

I measure how serious someone is about CO2 and global warming by their enthusiasm for nuclear power.

A govt that claims to be concerned about CO2 that isn't pouring concrete for dozens of reactors isn't worried about CO2, it's worried about something else.

It's porkulus II, bigger and badder.

US Study Projects How 'Unequivocal Warming' Will Change Americans ...

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