I'm not kidding -- what's wrong with warmer temperatures? A few months back I was talking with an acquaintance who works as a meteorologist for Envirornment Canada. He made a comment that indicated that he thought global warming would be disastrous, so i asked him to explain why. He said, "widespread desertification." That didn't make sense to me, so I said something like this:
Why would increased warmth lead to desertification? Warmth doesn't make water disappear from the planet -- it increases the speed at which water evaporates, but evaporated water doesn't stay evaporated. It forms into clouds and falls back down to Earth as rain. An increased rate of evaporation means an increased rate of rainfall. Warmer temperatures and increased rainfall -- those are conditions in which vegetation grows and FORESTS spread, NOT deserts. If we look back in time about 150 million years to see what our planet was like in an era when the globe actually was warmer, we see, not a world-wide desert, but something closer to a world-wide rain-forest -- a place where life thrived and our ancestors* evolved. Now, I'm not saying that in the future we're going to have another world-wide rain-forest -- mankind won't let that happen -- my point is that a warmer planet is not inimical to life.
My meteorologist acquaintance didn't want to admit that I was right, but he did acknowledge that I had a point and that he couldn't think of an objection to what I'd said. And so our conversation politely passed on to other topics.
Of course, there will be problems associated with global warming. There are going to be a lot of people pissed off as their water-front property is flooded. But I don't see how global warming is going to be bad for mankind or the planet in the long run. The planet has gone through several cycles of warming and cooling and if I had to choose which cycle I'd want to live through, I'd choose a global warming cycle over an ice-age any day.
Incidently, my decision to post this was triggered by the comments of respect for David Suzuki over in the Greatest Canadian thread.
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* I know humans weren't around 150 million years ago -- by "ancestors" I mean the small mammals that would have been around then.
Why would increased warmth lead to desertification? Warmth doesn't make water disappear from the planet -- it increases the speed at which water evaporates, but evaporated water doesn't stay evaporated. It forms into clouds and falls back down to Earth as rain. An increased rate of evaporation means an increased rate of rainfall. Warmer temperatures and increased rainfall -- those are conditions in which vegetation grows and FORESTS spread, NOT deserts. If we look back in time about 150 million years to see what our planet was like in an era when the globe actually was warmer, we see, not a world-wide desert, but something closer to a world-wide rain-forest -- a place where life thrived and our ancestors* evolved. Now, I'm not saying that in the future we're going to have another world-wide rain-forest -- mankind won't let that happen -- my point is that a warmer planet is not inimical to life.
My meteorologist acquaintance didn't want to admit that I was right, but he did acknowledge that I had a point and that he couldn't think of an objection to what I'd said. And so our conversation politely passed on to other topics.
Of course, there will be problems associated with global warming. There are going to be a lot of people pissed off as their water-front property is flooded. But I don't see how global warming is going to be bad for mankind or the planet in the long run. The planet has gone through several cycles of warming and cooling and if I had to choose which cycle I'd want to live through, I'd choose a global warming cycle over an ice-age any day.
Incidently, my decision to post this was triggered by the comments of respect for David Suzuki over in the Greatest Canadian thread.
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* I know humans weren't around 150 million years ago -- by "ancestors" I mean the small mammals that would have been around then.
