Why dont we accept Global Warming as a positive thing?

because the blatantly obvious truth that warmer is better than colder isn't on the brainwashing agenda

James P, I'm confused. In this answer you say that Global Warming is a good thing. in another answer, you said that it is clearly not happening. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ari4I...

so which is it? or are you just a typical denier with no actual knowledge of the matter and just parrot ideas from the denier camp?

There is no proof that life was better in the medieval warm period. firstly, the world's population at that time was estimated 450 million. that's only ~6% of our current population. How can we tell if the northern land will be enough to sustain such a population? I am skeptical that it will. And with the ice caps gone, glaciers receded, and poles purely void of ice, how will agriculture be able to thrive with such an unreliable source of fresh water? desalination plants? what do we do with the salt?

we have no idea what will be in store for us if we let things get out of hand with the climate. the medieval warming period was not a happy go lucky time like deniers fantasize. it was the era of the black death, the most detrimental epidemics in history.

we know of the bad things that can happen in the future and we know there are some positives. However, the positives are heavily outweighed by the number of negatives.

No Not in a million years.

You are basically forgetting the forest for the trees.

Its like stating that the donation given to charity by a mafia boss from drug money is a very good thing when you consider that the misery caused from the drug peddling far outweighs the good that the donation will do as it is money soaked in blood.

The thawing of the permafrost is a very dangerous sign that much of the enormous amounts of methane trapped will be released in huge quantities into the atmosphere were it will be swirled around causing enormous environmental upheaval.

The monstrous amount of methane released into the atmosphere will be the beginning of the end for a normal climate and weather patterns as many catastrophic natural disasters will be the result.

Our humanity's immediate future is put in jeopardy as a result of environmental destruction caused singly by man himself who has foolishly unleashed the wrath of nature through his folly and recklessness.

The immediate future looks very bleak as the feedback is yet to come back to us.

When it does all hell will break loose as droughts, floods, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, bush fires, mudslides, snowstorms, and more will be the order of the day where it will create untold suffering.

If the past is a good indication of the future, I can guarantee that the severity and frequency of natural disaster will only get worse.

The recent hurricane YASI and floods in Queensland Australia will pale in comparisons to what will DEFINITELY happen in the future worldwide according to the laws of cause and effect.

http://www.circleforhumanity.net/

Mostly because of the rate of change and the cost of adapting. Where crops grow best has already changed; that might be nuetral had we not already build so much infrastructure in the past 200 years.

The acidifying of the oceans seems to be harming shellfish, including plankton. As our supply of plankton diminishes, the food source for all other sea creatures diminish.

Rising sea levels will cause huge costs as all coastal areas have to adapt. Already, the City of Ventura in southern California is having to spend $5 Million in taxpayer funds to prepare their beach for sea level rise.

Water shortages are likely in many places. Already, the snowpack in the California mountians is less on average than 50 years ago and melts earlier. The snowpack is how California stores water for use in summer. Earlier spring melts with rain, means more Spring flooding and more common droughts in the late summers.

The ground under villages in Alaska is melting and destroying their buildings. One is already moving with the help of the Corps of Engineers and about $300 million in taxpayer dollars. Another has threatened to sue the oil companies to pay to move their village (that won't go anywhere, the cost will fall to taxpayers). Now perhaps it would have been better for that civilization to have had hard ground rather than permafrost to build on initially, but perfrost is what they had and perma-slush is what they have now.

If humankind could go back 1000 years and develop all over again in a climate that was 5 degrees warmer, the costs might not be so much now. We would have more extreme weather events, both droughts and floods but the locations of populations and the infrastrures would be built around those differences. A smaller Sahara, a longer growing season in wheat producing Canada, growing bananas in Mississippi,... those could all be good things that counter balance the bad. But its the rapid change that will be unimaginably expensive over the next couple hundred years.

First, if Alaska is to cold for you, move.

The harm from global warming out weighs the benefits. Harms of global warming include rising sea levels or more than a few inches, but more like several metres, droughts, expanding deserts and the loss of glaciers to people who rely on them to provide a steady supply of water for drinking water and irrigation.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-pos...

In addition, if sea levels rise by more than a few inches, the Arctic, including Alaska will still be cold. Get used to it or move.

edit for Pindar

"the blatantly obvious truth that warmer is better than colder"

So you don't believe in refrigeration, then. You just keep your food at a temperature which is perfect for bacteria. How do you handle ice cream? Do you put it in a container or do you just let it run all over the place.

A lot of people do in fact consider Global warming a positive thing and hope that it will happen as it has in the past. If the polar ice caps should melt the beaches around the world would become a little bit narrower. As the ocean surface increased. A article I saw back in the eighties pointed out and I did not crunch the number that appeared reasonable, because the conclusion was sound. It takes X gallons of water to cover one acre one foot deep and then I knew that was correct. But I don't remember it now. there are Z number of acres of ocean surface so it would take Y gallons of water to raise the oceans surface 1 foot if the shore was straight up with no beaches,But 1 inch of water ocean wide would make the oceans cover a hundred thousand extra acres. If there were no beaches, and if both ice caps were uniformly thick the land under them would slope up with no lakes. then ice yield 75% of water by volume. Both ice caps melt the ocean level raises 2 foot, If both ice caps melt beaches will be narrower and tidal swamps will be bigger .

Sorry but thats not how climate change or weather works. The climate is being pushed out of its normal equillibrium. You may get warming in northern parts of Alaska or the Arctic but that can't be a good thing for the world in general. In general you will get random weather going from hot to cold, stormy to not so stormy. If the warming was happening cause of the Sun you might have an argument because we would then have an even warming. But the energy for the warming is coming from our smoke stacks. If you think that is going to give you a nice wonderful warming and make Earth the next garden in paradise you have a rude awakening coming.

Its extreme random weather you are going to get.

So which is it guys, last week Richie and company were talking about Global Coolong an now we are talking about warming. Get your story straight will ya.

Great question. It is true that the Earth was warmer in the past

Example - Modern-day Egypt was once a lush, post-tropical

region, but now it's arid and dry, a desert. Obviously the Earth

has a natural warming, cooling cycle, which in part is controlled

by our Sun, or heliospheric weather patterns.

Our civilization evolved for the current climate and the ecosystems thriving with it, not one much hotter, which would mean fewer species (except insects), bigger deserts, tropical diseases like malaria spreading out of the tropics, most coastal cities under water, more extreme weather. We can probably adapt to all those effects, but the cost of doing so looks like being much higher than any offsetting benefits (warmer winters in the Arctic). If we do nothing to slow global warming, the likelihood is that feedback effects (release of methane) will eventually kick in leading to major rather than minor climate change (a change vastly huger than the "medieval warming period" and unlike probably irreversible for thousands of years). Most of that change will impact future generations not ours, but if we do nothing it will be harder for them to do anything. Many of the initial steps to limit fossil fuel consumption would involve cutting things like artificial government subsidies promoting oil and coal consumption that are economically wasteful, regardless of climate change or no climate change. Pretending that climate change is only positive will help those wasteful subsidies continue (as Koch Industries, etc. would wish).

Anecdotal news stories from Anchorage do not count as evidence and cannot be used to make inferences about the nature and potential consequences of long-term global climate change.

You know how many cities and towns are built near large bodies of water for easy access to trade routes? Those will eventually be underwater if the icecaps continue to melt.