Originally Posted by
N2264J
"Global warming" is really the wrong label to apply. It's really global climate destabilization we're talking about.
In your example, a longer growing season may also mean that insects harmful to the crops stop dying off in the winter. Declining snow pacts to replenish the aquifers means water becomes an issue. Rain fall patterns change so breadbasket states like Kansas and Nebraska in the corn belt may turn into desert states like Nevada and Arizona. Really inconvenient if you're a farmer in Kansas.
For those who believe addressing global climate change now is an economic boondoggle, I would submit that the price is going to go up the longer we wait.
I'm terribly sorry... Global climate destabilization it is- global warming is far too specific.
I think you are missing my point. The science really never seems to be "settled", only the politics. Consider the past predictions 30 years ago. Perhaps we will be reading this 30 years from now scratching our heads as to why anyone entertained or predicted such an idea. The inconsistencies among scientists over the years are astounding, and yet only previous scientists have been wrong. New scientists are always right!
Consider 2000-2005; "Scientists" professed that the ice caps are melting in two seperate instances.
1) Down in Antarctica, scientists made headlines in several periodicals by claiming that global warming (as was called back then) was actually melting away Antarctica.....
“Study shows Antarctic glaciers shrinking” –
Associated Press, April 22, 2005
A month after such a story was created, they realized that... wait! Simple physics would suggest that Global Warming around Antarctica should be causing increased snowfall thereby increasing Antarctica's land mass...so all of the sudden, Antarctica is growing again! Amazing! So which is it really?
“Warming is blamed for Antarctic’s weight gain” –
New York Times, May 20, 2005
2)Up in the arctic,
In August 2000, the New York Times headlined on the front page that "The North Pole is Melting" and that "the last time scientists could be certain that the Pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago."
It turns out that two United Nations scientists were onboard a Russian icebreaker serving as a tourist ship when they encountered water at the North Pole. They told this to the newspaper without bothering to check the historical record. Open water is occasionally found at the North Pole at the end of summer. The Times ultimately retracted the story -- but that retraction appeared far away from the front page.
Why didn't the polar scientists check first before calling the paper? And why didn't the New York Times check the facts before publishing? The answers are obvious. Stories like this sell newspapers and generate government research grants. There's no incentive in telling the larger truth, not for science, not for the media, and certainly not for those public officials who lavish funding on global warming science.
The bottom line here is what I've said before... Science isn't settled on all of this, but the politics are. Who wants us to throw an increasing amount of money on this flim-flam?
As a side note: I'm certainly no Al Gore, or even a leading climatologist... however I do live in FL... we don't have much snow down here, but we do have aquifers and springs so I'm not sure where you are going with water being an issue.