Climate - Consequences
From Worldtraveller
So by now, if all's gone to plan, I might have convinced an agnostic reader that temperatures are rising, the cause is fundamentally greenhouse gases, and that temperatures will rise a lot more unless emissions are curbed drastically. The final part of the equation is to show why that's a bad thing.
This is not necessarily intuitive. Personally, I really like hot summers, and if temperatures here in the UK were to regularly break 40°C in the summertime, I would be quite happy. But the problem is not really climate change in the UK but what the global effects will be. Here are some of the ways in which climate change will be a terrible thing.
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Heatwaves
More hot weather is the most obvious consequence of global warming. Here in north-eastern Europe we've had two recent heatwaves, in 2003 and 2006, which saw incredible, unprecedented temperatures. 10 August 2003 saw temperatures break 100°F for the first time in recorded history in the United Kingdom. Hundreds of people died as a result of the heat; across Europe, the death toll in 2003 was estimated to be over 35,000 people. This was an enormous natural disaster.
People often say that while more summer deaths might result from global warming, there will be fewer winter deaths and that will more than balance it. This is only true in certain places. In the UK, for instance, each winter sees about 20,000 excess deaths, as things like flu and other respiratory or circulatory diseases are much more common in the winter time. However, there are two points to make here.
One is that a large part of the excess winter death rate in the UK is not due to the cold per se - we have a pretty mild winter climate really - but our poor preparation for it. Researchers looking at Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world where temperatures as low as -40°C are not uncommon, found that because the inhabitants wear clothing appropriate for the conditions, there is no excess death rate at all in the winter. Here in the UK, the winter excess death rate must be self-inflicted. Given that although our average winter temperature is already about 40°C warmer than Yakutsk and we have a far higher winter death rate, it seems unlikely that a couple of degrees of winter warming would reduce that high death rate.
The second point is that in much of the world, the argument does not hold at all. In the tropics, of course, one can't realistically claim that cold kills people. But hot weather does; tropical diseases kill millions each year, as do diseases of poverty like cholera and diarrhoea. Tropical diseases will spread into new areas thanks to global warming.
Rainfall
The anticipated effect of global warming on rainfall patterns is that wet climates will get wetter and dry climates will get dryer. Examples of this in action include increasing flooding here in the UK and in northern Europe, and increasing drought in Australia and sub-Saharan Africa. The enhanced occurrence of extreme rainfall or lack-of-rainfall events leads to huge economic costs: May-July 2007 was the wettest three-month period in the UK since records began in 1766, and is estimated to have cost £3 billion. The more common events like this become because of mankind's influence on the climate, the more the economy will suffer.
Hurricanes
Studies have shown that the total amount of power dissipated in hurricanes has risen significantly in the last thirty years, and it is strongly correlated with rising sea surface temperatures. Events such as the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in 2005 can be expected to become more common, as the strongest category of hurricanes becomes more frequent.
Crime
Numerous studies have found that hotter temperatures are correlated with higher crime rates. So, a warmer world could be expected to be a more crime-ridden world as well.
Sea levels
Sea levels will rise, due to two effects; the expansion of the sea water itself as it gets warmer, and the adding of water from glaciers and ice caps. Low-lying coastal areas will experience increased flooding, and some inhabited areas may have to be abandoned.
Summary
So all this does sound pretty bad. The positives of global warming are basically nicer summers for people at temperate and polar latitudes, but the negatives involve some serious social and economic harm. I'm convinced that the negatives outweigh the positives.
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Climate / Temperatures / Carbon dioxide / The Sun / Models / Consequences |
