So says National Review editor James S. Robbins.
(via TP)
Global warming is great! 11
-
Posted 1:11 PM on 8 Aug 2006
by David Roberts -
Posted in
Read More About
David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.
Add a Comment
You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.
Comments
View as Flat
Chris Schults Posted 5:34 am
08 Aug 2006
Of course, you have to factor in ice-cap melt and the possibility that today's shoreline might move inland. The Al Gore scare film has some dramatic footage of the consequences of a 20-foot rise in sea levels. Most estimates I have read about talk about a three-foot rise at most, but let's not quibble. In the movie, oceans are seen rushing inland, implying some kind of inundation episode. But the waters will not rise so quickly, if they do at all. And if this threatens our cities one would think some form of sea wall would be in order. The Dutch have been doing this for years, there is no reason why we can't copy them.
A wall? Sure, let's build a wall along the entire coastline -- like that is going to happen. Can you say New Orleans?
And then there is this:
Granted, there will be some negative impacts in marginal areas. Some rare plant and animal species, hyper-adapted to highly specific climate conditions or micobiotic zones, are already unable to cope with the change. Many may go extinct; some already have. That's tough, but chalk it up to bad evolutionary choices. When those rigidly specialist species bet everything on a small part of the world in hopes it would never change, they made a very bad bargain. For our part, we have air conditioners, lightweight fabrics, and sunscreen. Why infinitely adaptable humanity has to pay the price for the evolutionary shortsightedness of other life forms is beyond me.
I'm speechless.
Look out! It's a media shower!
Permalink
kmp Posted 6:07 am
08 Aug 2006
If I just saw the text, I would think it was from the Onion.... except a not-quite-stellar day at the Onion.
Permalink
Matt Painter Posted 6:23 am
08 Aug 2006
The National Review's offices are just a few floors below my cubicle. I'm building a wall, Les Nessman-style, to keep their sea of ignorance from rising into my workspace. If it works for global warming (and the Dutch), I hope it works for me.
Matt
Don't let polluters get the last word. Sign up for SNAP at http://www.newenergychoices.org!
Permalink
Laurence Aurbach Posted 8:13 am
08 Aug 2006
There's a recent science fiction story that offers a razor-sharp commentary on this attitude. It is "The People of Sand and Slag" by Paolo Bacigalupi. It's about a future Earth where humans have conquered all of nature and adapted their own bodies to the resulting devastated ecosystem. Then, by accident, a small group finds a dog, a species they know nothing about. But they're curious about it, and that starts off the plot.
The story was nominated for a Hugo award last year and for the Nebula award this year. It was also included in several Best of 2004 anthologies. Here's a review.
Permalink
Chris Schults Posted 8:25 am
08 Aug 2006
Look out! It's a media shower!
Permalink
midnightowl Posted 10:24 am
08 Aug 2006
"At the root of global-warming alarmism is a deathly fear of change."
"But if the world is warming, I say "bravo.""
I was really really hoping he was just joking with this editorial, but it sounds like he's pret-ty serious here.
At the very least, I'm amused that he's only thought of the "benefits" of global warming to countries with cold or temperate climates. I guess those of us living in parts of the world with usually blazing temperatures will just have to deal, tsk.
www.tblbiz.info
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 5:11 pm
09 Aug 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor
Monterey Institute of International Studies
http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 9:39 pm
09 Aug 2006
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
Howell Haus Posted 2:29 am
10 Aug 2006
Were he to volunteer at a disaster site as we did during Hurricane Charlie two years back, he would have a better concept of affected change and the effects occurring from them. There is proof, and those unwilling to embrace should move to this little island he spoke of - and wait it out... without boats, of course.
He should take a week of his self-empowering vacation and visit the Inuit who are moving their villages, lifestyle, and self-sustaining lifestyles to another location. A location fraught with scary changes. He might just be moved to understand the implications of climate change and how it 'really' affects us and ride a bike back, doing some serious thinking along the way... like maybe it's already too late to change.
Aside, I hope he falls through the ice and a polar bear shites on him.
JD & Kelley Howell of
Palm Harbor, FL
visit us: Cut20.blogspot.com
Permalink
atreyger Posted 2:36 am
10 Aug 2006
The sea level change? Granted that will have little effect in areas like NYC, with a limited land area, which can be protected. How about most of the Gulf Coast, Florida and other low-lying areas? No one will pay trillions of dollars to reinforce that large of a land mass. That also feeds into 'increase in ag areas', which seems to only decrease with this. Plus the danger of severe flooding with hurricanes and massive rainstorms will only increase in these areas.
Ground Zero? Did he go to a high school with a view on WTC? Didn't think so. No one should use this in their tirades, especially sarcastically, unless they are from there. He's an asshole because of that. By the way, my high school was within 12 blocks of WTC.
I do not have any solid information about science on sea level rise, so I cannot suggest that he's wrong. However, there is hardly any doubt that when there is more water going into oceans, they will rise at least somewhat. Plus that graph has absolutely no reference attached to it, seems like I could cook that up in ten minutes.
Warmer, wetter world might mean more rainforests, but how are they supposed to exist, when we cut them to plant soy? Rare spp.? It's not rare spp. that will suffer. I will use corals as an example, these cannot grow outside of a certain temperature range, once they were plentiful, but now there is some evidence that warmer waters are causing bleaching of corals (the symbiotic algae are expelled), which leads to death within a year.
If by alarmists, he means all the major global insurance companies, well than color me (and them) stupid, and we are all wrong.
By the way, he conveniently does not mention severe fluctuations in weather, hotter weather during the summer (a la this year), increased hurricane activity, frequent catastrophic flooding, changes in ocean currents (that would basically freeze northern Europe and cool the Northeast significantly, there goes his theory about Vermont and Massachusetts) and more intense droughts that would be deleterious to growing crops.
By the way, if it seems like droughts and severe flooding in the same areas are incoherent, think again, since even if the land is parched, there is still only a certain infiltration rate at which water will 'squeeze' through the pores. When you have 5 inch rain events, unless the soil is sand or gravel, the water will not penetrate and will run off carrying lots of topsoil with it.
Permalink
PBrazelton Posted 4:26 am
10 Aug 2006
Or, you know, you could just read Grist or Google global warming and find out a thousand negative impacts of rapid global climate change, all of which are dismissed or ignored by James Robbins. There's not exactly a lack of evidence or research.
Global warming indicates an increase in the average temperature of the planet; this increase will be made manifest in regional and local climates unevenly. Some areas will swamp with water, others will endure long droughts. The global climate system is not some homogenous I/O equation - any dramatic disruption to its patterns will result in very different behaviors across the planet. This means more natural disasters and stronger weather related events - not something to laugh at. Ask anyone who has had to endure a drought, flooding, a tornado or hurricane. These events kill thousands and devastate whole economies.
As the northern reaches warm, insect and disease populations will migrate. Forests have always waxed and waned due to various events (notably the ice ages), but they need centuries to do so. If global warming is half as bad as it's looking to be, whole forests will be consumed by exotic insect and disease populations they have no defenses against. Plants only move through propogation, and without time, they simply die.
Rainforests will not increase, because rainforests are vast and delicate ecosystems that have developed in specific regions over millenia. Even assuming humans leave large tracts of land completely untouched (ha!), it would take an incredible degree of luck and time for anything that looks like a rainforest to emerge. Indeed, if the weather continues to change at its current pace, your average temperate forest will have a tough time emerging.
I'll say it again, in plain words: plants do not like rapidly changing weather.
If a north becomes 'comfortably habitable' for people, what then of the south? What will happen to plant ecosystems exposed to longer summers, shorter winters, greater heat, more frequent droughts? The answer has been repeated throughout human history: deserts.
"Hyper-adapted" species have always borne the brunt of large scale disasters, and in that Mr. Robbins is correct. However, chalking up the loss of thousands of species to being evolutionary dead ends misses the point: most threatened species are simply well adapted. I'll ignore the pathological lack of imagination, curiosity or empathy Robbins has for all non-human life in favor of pointing out that the pointless loss of these species is our fault. It's akin to dumping a few barrels of bleach into a lake, then laughing at the deaths of everything in it because they were "hyper-adapted" to living in water.
Is the this the paradise that Mr. Robbins foresees - a fleeing of equatorial lands, abadoning ancestral legacies so we can overrun the north like a plague? And the upside is that there will be a real estate boom in Canada? What a jackass.
Permalink