But here in Ohio, Sohngen admits, most of the economy is “not climate sensitive.” And the Buckeye State is actually a half-degree to a full degree below the optimum climate temperature for agriculture.It is already very hard to pass climate change legislation; it is even harder to mount the argument when the negative consequences are not directionally clear for a given constituency.
“We can gain from a little bit of warming,” Sohngen said at the Review.
Showing posts with label temperature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label temperature. Show all posts
The mixed effects of climate change
The effects of climate change will vary across the world - for example, crudely speaking, agriculture in Canada and Russia will benefit, and agriculture in the tropics will suffer. These differences also occur on a smaller scale:
Land cooling, water warming
A favorite argument of global warming skeptics is that the average temperature has fallen in the last 10 years. Which is true... but oceans are shattering records for high temperatures:
Update: I didn't read through the whole post at first, so now that I have, here is my point made by a weightier figure:
The world’s oceans this summer are the warmest on record.The National Climatic Data Center, the government agency that keeps weather records, says the average global ocean temperature in July was 62.6 degrees. That’s the hottest since record-keeping began in 1880. The previous record was set in 1998.It doesn't take misleading statements to get scared about the Arctic in particular:
Meteorologists blame a combination of a natural El Nino weather pattern on top of worsening manmade global warming.
It’s most noticeable near the Arctic, where water temperatures are as much as 10 degrees above average.I recall from chemistry that water has a high specific heat and thus requires more energy to warm or cool. By that high-school logic, it would seem like water is the medium we should be watching... and thus we should be worried.
Update: I didn't read through the whole post at first, so now that I have, here is my point made by a weightier figure:
Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land. That’s because water takes longer to heat up and doesn’t cool off as easily, said climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
“This is another yet really important indicator of the change that’s occurring,” Weaver said.
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