Bark beetles and egrets don't care whether Governor This or Senator That believes in global warming. They feel it in their whatevers. Responding to warmer temperatures, plant and wildlife are moving north or uphill to cooler elevations, according to a new study published in Science magazine. For example, higher temperatures in the Rocky Mountains have set off a population explosion of bark beetles now devouring its beautiful pine forests.
Will humans will follow the flora and fauna? The question, of course, goes beyond matters of biology. Climatologists say planet warming makes hurricanes fiercer and droughts meaner. Human inhabitants of regions prone to such calamities suffer the discomfort or fear of rising sea levels, wind, deluges and fire. But global warming will also cost them.
Insurers are now including climate change in their calculations of risks, reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This could mean higher premiums. It could mean forcing homeowners to spend more on such items as wind-proofing. It could mean shrinking coverage for natural disasters — narrowing the so-called God Clause.
The drought in Texas has reached biblical proportions. Wildfires are consuming homes. Ranchers have given up their cattle, as farmers lose their crops. In some parts, water supplies are so low and concentrated that people are brushing teeth with bottled water.
Climatologists are listing factors other than global warming, chiefly La Nina, a cooling pattern in the tropical Pacific that holds off rain. But climate change has left Texas starting from a hotter base. Its temperatures are now 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they were in the '80s and '90s. That means you need more water than before to grow the same amount of crops.
By 2060, Texas could be five degrees hotter than now, according to state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon.
He has declared this the worst one-year drought in recorded Texas history and the hottest summer of any state in U.S. history. (Oklahoma and New Mexico are not far behind.)
Texas is no stranger to droughts. There was a long and terrible siege in the 1950s. But besides a lower base temperature, the big difference in 1950 was that Texas had fewer than 8 million people to supply with water. It now has 25 million.
The drought has inspired Gov. Rick Perry to pray for rain. He accuses scientists who insist that humans burning fossil fuels plays a role in global warming (the expert consensus, actually) of making it up to enhance their research budgets. If man has little or nothing to do with it, then man can just sit back. Or perhaps move to Minnesota.
Meanwhile, Texas homeowners are confronting massive electric bills for running air conditioners as temperatures swelter in the triple digits for weeks at a time. A friend in Palestine, Texas, reports that he doesn't lower his thermostat below 85 degrees during the day, to avoid getting clobbered by a massive a/c bill. And monthly water costs are soaring, with some residential bills going well into the hundreds.
The wildfires have fouled the air. The beauty of local vegetation is gone. Birds migrating south could die of thirst. (Texans have been asked to put out bowls of water for the hummingbirds passing through.)
Elsewhere, North Carolina is cleaning up the debris from Hurricane Irene. New Jersey and Pennsylvania, hit by Irene, were flooded again by Tropical Storm Lee.
Stuff does happen in nature. But it takes a sturdy hostility to science to bash the experts giving us all fair warning of worse cataclysm ahead if we don't act. Do nothing to curb global warming, and we humans will be following the bark beetle up the slopes.
To find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2011 THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL CO.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
|
 |
Comments
|
4 Comments | Post Comment
|
|
"Insurers are now including climate change in their calculations of risks, reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This could mean higher premiums."
One could call this the "liberal effect upon pricing". We have seen this effect upon energy, upon health insurance, and now upon homeowner insurance. The sky is always falling on our heads from this viewpoint. Is it possible that energy companies use this type of "never waste a crisis" attitude to their pricing advantage? How about health insurance companies, could they have run up their pricing in anticipation of "pentagon hammer" payoffs once the government, never a frugal bunch, became the middleman? Homeowners insurance companies have now been given a reason to hike pricing. Not being as naive as the left, these smart people know which way the wind is blowing, and it is favorable to them. Not a word of science in this article. Speculation and models is all we are offered, but, man, you better be a true believer. When little old ladies are frozen in their homes for lack of energy, when retirees can not afford proper medical coverage, when the children, God bless them for they are our precious future, are starving because cows were emitting too much methane into the atmosphere and we needed the crops to grow "renewable" energy sources, will dear Froma be happy, finally? Right.
Comment: #1
Posted by: Tom
Thu Sep 15, 2011 9:49 AM
|
|
|
|
You might try studying some of the highly-respected skeptical climatologists' work before you write such a pro-CAGW column. A few facts that might give you pause:
America's hurricane-prone states, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, SC, NC, etc. had no hurricanes for 5 years. That's the first time that has happened since the early 1900s (I think 1909 to 1914, not sure, exactly). Recent studies by climatologists now say there's no connection between slightly warmer weather and the frequency of hurricanes. Statistically, over the past 60 years, no trend is perceivable.
The number of tornadoes of a Cat. 3 to 5 (the stronger ones, for which accurate records were kept years ago) has dropped almost 40% since the 1950s. The number of tornadoes has fallen, since slightly warmer weather over the Great Plains and the tornado-prone areas is reduced by the warmer winters and their impact on weather.
The globe's temperature has gone up 0.8 degree Celsius since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850. Of that temp increase, only 0.2 to 0.3 C has occurred since man's CO2 output is enough to affect the greenhouse gas density of the atmosphere. Most of the increase occurred BEFORE man's heavy industrialization caused more CO2 to be put into the atmosphere. AGW did NOT cause most of the very modest warming the earth has experienced.
The tiny bit of warming that can even be possibly attributed to man's CO2 is so small,it's within the error margin of our ability to accurately measure temperature.
A recent paper by scientists doing experiments with the CERN accelerator, show that solar irradiance has a bigger effect on cloud formation than many were willing to acknowledge. Cloud cover increases of a tiny amount, 1% to 2%, can lower the earth's temperature a surprising amount. So solar irradiance is a bigger factor in global temperature variation than was realized - causes more of the natural climate variability than pro-AGW climatologists have been willing to recognize.
There's a lot more on the skeptical side of this issue. Please do some research before writing such a biased column.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Mark Michael
Thu Sep 15, 2011 2:48 PM
|
|
|
|
I have never seen a more incoherent debate than the one that is happening now over global warming. This is another issue that I believe could benefit by a White House that is not asleep at the switch.
There are two issues here, a fact which astoundingly seems barely to be acknowledged. The first is whether global warming is happening. Only the brain dead can believe that it is not. Just look at what is happening with the polar ice caps and the water level in the oceans of the world.
The second is the exact cause. It would be a real advance for civilization if we could at least get acknowledgement of basic data, like how high the water is, and the ice caps, etc. etc., so that we can move on to the second issue--the cause.
If the disbelievers at least make that concession to basic go-splat-when-you-fall-50-feet-onto-concrete reality, then we can have a rational debate about the cause. Let's then talk about what it means to be a "conservative."
If we don't want to make an ill-advised bet on everything being A-OK, we might conclude, as a matter of common sense, that we can't afford to be dead sure but wrong about the cause of global warming. If we conclude with confidence, which an alarming number of "conservatives" seem to want to do, that treating the planet like a garbage can is not the cause, all of those future generations we are always crowing about wanting to protect when we engage in economic budget-balancing debates will suffer mightily if our conclusion is wrong.
Can't we admit we don't know the exact answer, because nobody has a direct line to God? And given that this is the case, can we afford, as "conservatives," to take the chance that massively altering the shape of the planet's ecology by the uncontrolled growth of human population doesn't significantly have the potential to affect the way the planet controls heat exchange?
What true scientist can argue with that? How in the world can anyone who actually does care about the future of the human race, and the quality of life humans will have on this planet in the future, argue with the proposition that we cannot afford to be wrong about concluding that human activity has not been a significant cause of the rapidly approaching end of polar ice caps and the rising seal level?
Let's take the conservative approach. Let's acknowledge that we MIGHT be causing global warming by the uncontrolled new production of carbon dioxide and other man-made gases that retain heat, coupled with the uncontrolled destruction of rain forests that sink carbon. Let's NOT place ourselves in the position of having sentenced future generations to a wrong conclusion which we can't help them with because we all died long, long, ago, and it's their TOUGH LUCK.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Masako
Thu Sep 15, 2011 8:18 PM
|
|
|
|
Masako, we can't have a discussion on your first issue because you've already decided that anyone who doesn't acede to your view is "brain dead"". Kinda ends any debate, doesn't it? Demanding openmindedness of others while closing your own creates an unfertile field for discussion. Some scientists say that one polar icecap is decreasing while its opposite is increasing. Harrop talks about wildlife moving north, but consider it another way; Asian carp are in the great lakes these days. They didn't swim across the Pacific and then crawl across the country to get there. Freighters dumped their ballasts, and lo. Bark beetles rode lumber trucks north and found the situation to their liking. Call it a global ecology, doesn't that sound nice? As to issue 2, that is the exact point: If it is occuring we do not know the exact cause, all else is speculation and still open to debate. Mark Michael is not incoherent, as you charge. He is well researched and brings facts to the table. Don't be totally tone deaf on this issue.
Your sixth paragraph speaks in a loud and frightening voice, it reveals what is in your heart. "...to take the chance that massively altering the shape of the planet's ecology by the uncontrolled growth of human population ..." You desire control population growth, that is your central theme. This is a suspension of liberty, I am sure you are aware of that. Who will you anoint as this King who rules over reproductive choices? I thought such choices were sacrosanct in the liberal theology. Maybe I don't want your King ruling over my children some day. Let's not sentence future generations to a subservience based upon the whims of Czars, or Kings, or Whatevers. Let's preserve their liberty first. They may find that liberty a most useful tool when facing the vagaries of a vast universe.
Comment: #4
Posted by: Tom
Fri Sep 16, 2011 6:41 AM
|
|
|
|
|
|
