Greenlanders looking forward to global warming
Posted: Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 by StanleyTags: Bullshit, Climate Change
Although there may be benefits from global climate change, this article completely misses the point. Global climate change is beyond human control. Like a huge boulder on a hill, we may be able to push it off the hill and set the rock rolling, but we have little if any control of where it goes after that.
I'm not arguing that global warming may bring many beneficial side effects to the people of this world along side the detrimental ones. But to argue that global warming is something to look forward to is naive at best. My favorite part of the article is when they mention this regarding the melting of Greenland's glaciers:
"..global sea levels would rise by 40 feet, submerging lower Manhattan, the Netherlands and much of California. But to many of the people who live here in Greenland, the warming trend is a boon, not a threat." [MongaBay.com]
and then later:
"many climate scientists argue that any local benefits of the warming trend are more than offset by the global costs."[MongaBay.com]
So it's good to know that the flooding of lower Manhattan, the Netherlands, and much of California, will be offset by the local benefits climate change has on Greenland. That doesn't even take into account the flooding of Florida, parts of China, London, and the countless other areas across the globe succeptable to sea level rises.
Of course the metling of Greenland is only a small slice of the global pie. What happens when Antarctica which contains a lot more water than Greenland begins to melt? According to a JPL/NASA study in 2002, if Greenland and Antartica were to melt, sea levels would rise by 230 feet or 70 meters. Let's see Greenland offset the cost of flooding at that magnitude.
Greenlanders looking forward to global warming » [MongaBay.com]
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