Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Climate Change and Environmental Issues Far north feels worst effects of warming

Double Bump.

Global land temps at record levels in January, April


Graphs showing loss of Ice over 30 year period

Here's the Arctic graph:

Sometimes it is a little hard to take global climate change so very seriously. After all, for all the hoopla, average temperatures have only changed a small amount.

There is another way of looking at it. Even that small change means that spring arrives 1, 2, or 3 weeks earlier(from a temperature perspective). And Winter also come later (from a temperature perspective). The result is that the fire danger season is both increased and made more severe. As a result, we will likely see more wild fires and more severe fires.

Not to mention a longer growing season and a shorter AC and heating season. Of course, such positive predictions also totally ignore the complexity of the system and the chaotic opportunities to be found within. I mean, can we really determine whether we should "short" wool (useful in colder climes) and "go long" on sunscreen?:-)
Yours,
Issodhos

Put your money in construction companies, particularly the ones that specialize in building sea walls: To surrounds localities that will wind up below seak level the way 40% of The Netherlands is now (Be especially attentive to ones based in Florida).

Of course it is true in any complex system that if you do something--anything-- the results will be good for some things and bad for others.

My point was only that even apparently small changes in temperature can have significant effects. Perhaps these effects will in the end be overshadowed by other beneficial effects.

One thing for sure... we cannot be sure of the exact effects of increased temperatures. So essentially it is a roll of the dice with unknown odds and potentially enormous stakes. If you proposed such a risk to an investment banker... he would say you are crazy. But as you say... it might work out OK.

The continued warming of the Earth's surface may indeed has beneficial effects on humanity. Or it may not.

given the well-funded opposition to actually doing anything to stop the changes, we are all about to find out.

We have made the planet a living laboratory, in which we are the subjects of experimentation: How much of humanity can survive a drastic warming of the planet?

For instance, in one of the previous "experiments", the planet's environment changed drastically 350 million years ago. Not all of the details are known, but the rise of vertebrates was one of the main results: Particularly the dinosaurs and, to a lesser extent birds, mammals, reptiles and fish. However the Trilobites did not fare so well. With the except of hermit crabs they mostly went extinct.

We should retain good records of how our experiment progresses: So that any future industrial species on Earth will have much experimental evidence upon which to base any such experiments of their own.

Well, I guess as vertibrates, we need to accept that we are heirs to a legacy of vertibrateness, and conduct ourselves accordingly, Philidelphia.;-)
Yours,
Issodhos

Steve, I think you meant horseshoe crabs...

If I wanted to use a long-term investment strategy that depends on global warming, then I would short Florida commercial property REITs. It would not take many killer storms and just a couple of feet of sea-level rise to make all the property in south and central Florida pretty much worthless. I would look for opportunities when major chunks of the Greenland or Antarctic Ice Shelves slide into the ocean. That should start happening quite soon now...

Meanwhile, all my real estate investments are several hundred feet above sea-level!

I'm wondering what will happen when this research by two German scientists hits the fan?