Why don't people focus more on the benefits of global warming? The scenarios I've heard of are on the scale of 10s-100s of years, plenty of time where we can plan a good response. Plus, there's the question: mightn't the earth work better when it is warmer?
There are so many different ways to go with global warming, even if it is true, but we're constantly just told to be scared out of our minds about it and do whatever the experts tell us will save our hides. A sure recipe for manipulation if there ever was one.
> mightn't the earth work better when it is warmer? - yters
The majority of history has seen a warmer earth. Warmer means life-friendly. I just worry that we fail the transition.
The planet earth is currently in the middle of an ice age. At regular intervals polar ice caps expand, causing widespread glaciation and causing widespread devastation to the planet's ecosystems.
"Why don't people focus more on the benefits of global warming?"
Think about it: if we realize the Earth will turn into Venus 2.0, we will see a lot of money being invested in the development of cheap and reliable space travel...
Been paying attention for the last decade? Noticed the record droughts in the Amazon River Basin or hundreds of thousands killed by the worst tsunamis in 700 years?
Whether humans are the primary cause or not, this is climate change, and its nothing like the pleasant Hawaiian vacation you seem to imagine it to be. I don't see the bright side.
I understand our best forecast is that the enhanced greenhouse effect will increase global rainfall.
The local effect in the Amazon river basin is just as likely the result of local deforestation as the global carbon dioxide level. As someone else pointed out Tsunamis are known to be caused by earthquakes not weather. So it seems that your examples may not the best ones.
Now the effect of rising sea levels on my pleasant vacation on a pacific island is much less in doubt, some low lying areas will be underwater if the Antarctic or Greenland ice melts, which seems like it will take quite a while.
The greenhouse effect makes the biggest difference at the poles in the coldest time of the night. So people will be able to live and farm further north in Russia and Canada.
The cost of global warming seems to be about the cost of change, and the cost risk, rather than the cost of a definitively less hospitable climate.
Paying attention for the last decade includes a cooling for the recent past associated with short term patterns. Global warming is not about the cost of what we have seen, it is about what we will see if we emit CO2 at various levels in the future, which we don't know. And not knowing is not a reason to do nothing, but it is also not a reason to claim calamity is certain.
There are so many different ways to go with global warming, even if it is true, but we're constantly just told to be scared out of our minds about it and do whatever the experts tell us will save our hides. A sure recipe for manipulation if there ever was one.