Entropy

Look at this article that appeared in Der Spiegel in May 2007. It makes many of the same claims that I did. I was aware of this article back in 2007, but I dismissed it at the time. Granted, there are a few erroneous claims in the article; for instance, the claim that Antarctica is gaining mass is now known to be incorrect, but there were a couple of studies in 2006 that said the same. But looking back at the paleoclimatic reconstructions and computer model projections, it's spot on. Why are we always told that the Sahel is becoming drier and the poor Africans are dying when, in reality, it's America that will become hotter & drier due to climate change? Source: Der Speigel

While Skeptical Science is a good source for many of the silly denier arguments, I don't really put a lot of stock into its assessment here. First, it appears to be at odds with the geological record. Deserts expand when the global climate is cooler, not the other way around. Certainly, some areas would become drier, but global precipitation would increase significantly. Second, it's based largely on computer models which are unable to successfully reproduce past climate or successfully model current climate changes. For instance, if one were to believe model projections, the Arctic would retain ice year round through 2100. Observational evidence, on the other hand, suggests the arctic may become seasonally ice free as early as 2015 to 2020.

Good post. There is a lot of evidence in the paleoclimatic records to suggest that, contrary to popular belief, a warmer world would actually be beneficial on the whole to humanity. Of course, there would be winners and losers in a globally warmed world. By and large, however, the winners would outweigh the losers. The most obvious effect would be a sharp decline in injurious cold spells, and decreases in nuisance ice and snow events. The decline of arctic sea ice will open new shipping routes and allow for mineral and resource extraction from under the sea bed. According to the most reliable temperature reconstructions, the last time we've seen temperatures at present levels was about 5-8 kya, during the Holocene Thermal Maximum, also referred to as the Hypsithermal or Altithermal era. At that time, the Sahara was a much more hospitable place, far from the uninhabitable desert we've grown accustomed to. Likewise the Middle East and Southeast Asia is thought to have been much wetter. It was a different story in North America. Much of the western United States was desert, and semi-arid grassland expanded across the Plains and Midwest. Climate models project a similar future, and we are already seeing evidence of these changes in real-time observations. Imagine how many bodies we could feed if the Sahara reverts to savannah and forested land, and we are able to cultivate that region for crops. Likewise, climate change will allow cultivation of vast expanses of previously inarable land in northern Canada, Siberian Russia, and north China. Siberia is larger in area than the entire United States! One would expect a warmer climate today to be even wetter than the climate of the Altithermal, since many glaciers, a relic of the last glacial maximum, were still in the process of melting at that time. A warmer and wetter climate, coupled with enhanced atmospheric carbon, would also promote biodiversity. The increased plant life spawned by a future globally-warmed earth would increase global oxygen levels. We have millions of years of fossil records and climatic reconstructions that testify to this reality. During the early Eocene, 50-55 mya, tropical plants flourished in the Arctic and along the Antarctic coast! Far from being an uninhabitable hell on earth, the tropics were no more than a few degrees warmer than today. It strikes me as more than a little self-serving when its the NATO countries and Australia that have expressed the most concern over climate change, even going so far as to promote geoengineering, when it just so happens that many of these countries are the ones that would lose the most in a globally warmed world! The United States, southern Europe, and Australia would all experience desertification. Meanwhile, southeast Asia, including parts of China and India, the Middle East, and northern Africa would become wetter and more hospitable! Russia would, likewise, be well positioned in a globally-warmed world. Of the NATO countries, only Canada and northern and eastern Europe would experience net benefits.