Canada is a winner in global warming...
The media never talks about the upsides of global warming...here's an article from the Washington Post.
It's not in Al Gore's PowerPoint presentation, but there are some upsides to global warming.Northern homes could save on heating fuel. Rust Belt cities might stop losing snowbirds to the South. Canadian farmers could harvest bumper crops. Greenland may become awash in cod and oil riches. Shippers could count on an Arctic shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific. Forests may expand. Mongolia could see a go-go economy.
This is all speculative, even a little facetious, and any gains are not likely to make up for predicted frightening upheavals elsewhere. But still ... might there be a silver lining for the frigid regions of Canada and Russia?
"It's not that there won't be bad things happening in those countries. There will be _ things like you'll lose polar bears," said economic professor Robert O. Mendelsohn of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. "But the idea is that they will get such large gains, especially in agriculture, that they will be bigger than the losses."
Mendelsohn looked at how gross domestic product around the world would be affected under different warming scenarios though 2100. Canada and Russia tend to come out as gainers, as does much of northern Europe and Mongolia.
posted by GayandRight @ 7:30 PM
5 Comments:
The Palliser Triangle in western Canada, which is already drought-prone, will likely become more drought-prone as the climate warms.
As you move further north, the soil quality declines markedly.
Most models suggest the rise in agricultural output will be temporary, peaking about 2020 and declining after that.
As far as forests go, Canada can't count on its forests being carbon sinks anymore, as global warming will lead to more forest fires and more carbon release.
Global warming is blamed for the mountain pine beetle problem in B.C., which has devastated lodgepole pine forests in that province (lodgepole pine accounts for about 25 per cent of the forest cover there).
Foresters are worried the beetle could attack the jackpine trees of the boreal forest next and then go national.
Cold winters would kill the beetle, but ...
The Fraser River almost had lethally high temperatures for sockeye salmon last summer (fortunately the run was delayed). But as the climate warms, so will the river.
Geopolitically, the Northwest Passage might open -- and the U.S. might make a power play and claim our northern territories for their own.
Bottom line is there are some minor benefits to global warming, but they don't outweigh the substantial costs.
Why does everybody say it will get drier if it gets warmer. It all depends on the proximity to water. The rain forest is a lot warmer than here but is not a desert. Large parts of Canada would probably become tropical if it gets warmer. The entire prarie regions used to be jungle as that's were the oil out there comes from and why they find dinosaur bones there.
This is something else we won't see on the CBC.
The entire prarie regions used to be jungle
That's because the 'prairies' during the Mesozoic era was as near the equator belt as the Caribbean Islands are today, and believe it or not, at that time the Rocky Mountains didn't exist, so that let a lot more humidity coming through the West Coast, hence why there was a jungle there. So needless to say, Alberta and Saskatchewan are the two provinces that are going to suffer the most if the temperature climbs up, and the Rockies aren't going to disappear anytime soon.
a lot of animal species are gonna have to adapt to the new weather, but most are going to perish. As for the bad soil up in the territories, that can easily be fixed. The lack of sun during winter time though, is another problem.
Why do so many AGW believers post anonymously? And why do they put irrelevant facts out there? Take the poor soil quality of the north as an example. Plants grow on mountains that have poor soil quality. That the soil is currently poor does not mean that plants won't grow there when the world warms up.
The next point was from a model that have not been accurate yet though they have been used since at least 1988.
As forests grow, the treeline is moving north which means more area to grow trees. Of course, to combat the forest fire troubles, we could harvest more wood and store the carbon away as the wood is used to build buildings. The young trees that take their place are a great carbon sink.
Anny worries about the mountain pine beetle leaving the mountains. As if that were likely. Sorry, but BC's winters are much warmer than Alberta's to Quebec's.
What does a geopolitical battle between the USA and Canada over the northwest passage have to do with global warming? The Northwest passage opens up every year. So what?
And according to the http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/Resources/gcc/figures/5_4.html pic, Alberta was no where near the the tropics.
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