| Thanks to the blog Skeptical Science and my pal Waqidi for pointing out a great chart comparing positive and negative effects of Global Warming with study citations. Positive stuff on left, negative on right.
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Negative |
Agriculture
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Agriculture
- Decreasing human water supplies, increased fire frequency, ecosystem change and expanded deserts (Solomon 2009)
- Decline in rice yields due to warmer nighttime minimum temperatures (Peng 2004, Tao 2008)
- Increase of Western United States wildfire activity, associated with higher temperatures and earlier spring snowmelt (Westerling 2006)
- Encroachment of shrubs into grasslands, rendering rangeland unsuitable for domestic livestock grazing (Morgan 2007)
- Decreased water supply in the Colorado River Basin (McCabe 2007)
- Decreasing water supply to the Murray-Darling Basin (Cai 2008)
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Health
- Winter deaths will decline as temperatures warm (HPA 2007)
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Health
- Increased deaths to heatwaves – 5.74% increase to heatwaves compared to 1.59% to cold snaps (Medina-Ramon 2007)
- Increased heat stress in humans and other mammals (Sherwood 2010)
- Spread in mosquite-borne diseases such as Malaria and Dengue Fever (Epstein 1998)
- Increase in occurrence of allergic symptoms due to rise in allergenic pollen (Rogers 2006)
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Arctic Melt
- An ice-free Northwest Passage, providing a shipping shortcut between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (Kerr 2002, Stroeve 2008)
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Arctic Melt
- Loss of 2/3 of the world’s polar bear population within 50 years (Amstrup 2007)
- Less compacted ice, hazardous floes and more mobile icebergs posing increased risk to shipping (IICWG 2009)
- Drying of arctic ponds with subsequent damage to ecosystem (Smol 2007)
Warming causes methane to escape from Arctic regions, contributing additional greenhouse warming. The following have been observed:
- Melting of Arctic lakes leading methane bubbling (Walter 2007)
- Leakage of methane from the East Siberian Shelf seabed sediments (Shakhova 2008)
- Escape of methane gas from the seabed along the West Spitsbergen continental margin (Westbrook 2009)
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Environment
- Greener rainforests due to higher sunlight levels due to fewer rain clouds (Saleska 2009)
- Enhanced plant growth, particularly in Amazon rain forests due mainly to decreased cloud cover and the resulting increase in sunlight (Nemani 2003).
- Increased vegetation activity in high northern latitudes (Zhou 2001)
- Increase in chinstrap and gentoo penguins (Ducklow 2006)
- Increased plankton biomass in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (arguably ENSO/PDO might be dominant influence) (Corno 2006)
- Recent increase in forest growth (McMahon 2010)
- Bigger marmots (Ozgul 2010)
- Increased Arctic tundra plant reproduction (Klady 2010)
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Environment
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Ocean Acidification
Note: this is not caused by warming temperatures but by the oceans absorbing more carbon dioxide (Dore 2009).
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Oceans uptake of carbon dioxide, moderates future global warming ( Orr 2005)
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Ocean Acidification
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Glacier Melt
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Glacier Melt
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Economical
- Increased cod fishing leading to improved Greenland economy (Nyegaard 2007)
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Economical
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Sea Level Rise
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Sea Level Rise
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Joe Duck 
Decreased water supply in the Colorado River Basin (McCabe 2007)
The issue of H2O supplies in the Southwest has been problematic for some times–not that the visionaries who built the Vegass wonderland were overly concerned with, like, where all the agua for the hotels, casinos, golf courses, and fountains
would come from, especially once the Colorado was tapped out (by LV, LA and Socal ag). Watuh? Hey, we’ll ship it in from the North Pole, wiseguy.Fuggetaboutit
20 years or so from now there will probably be water wars (along with oil wars, etc). Assuming human civilization lasts that long.
Where’s Duck’s commentary on the GOP/teabagger victory? Boehner in da House. The anti-AGW people are quite pleased, apparently, though the GOP rush to eliminate AGW/green policies seems premature and probably mistaken, IMHE.
That said, the corporate liberal response to the Tea-party is….predictably emotional and shallow as usual–as with the New Worlds gang’s usual emotional tirades. What, religious people, voting their candidates into office? Shocking. Matt Oja, aka “Motya” hasn’t quite figured out the meaning of the First Amendment (there’s like an ESL-ebonics version somewhere). Whether one agrees or not with the TP (I generally don’t– but find a few of their anti-corporate aspects interesting), voting’s, like, a right. For that matter, there are many religious democrats. Scalia’s decisions are not wrong because he’s a catholic, nor is a Feinstein wrong simply because she’s a jew. They’re wrong…. because they’re wrong. The religious issue is mostly a …non-issue–(well, in the case of…fundamentalists such as Sharie Angle, perhaps not)–in effect a type of racism, and usually purely ad hominem attack, which is to say hardly different than Rush Limbaugh’s rants.
The authentic democrat (ie, not NWs) realizes the fundamental political issues relate to Economics–not to Boehner’s taste in ties, or that he comes from Ohio, instead of Cal or New Yawk. Given that Obama and the Demos just extended BushCo’s tax cuts (not to say increased DoD budget, bailout of banks, etc) the idea that the demopublicans are so much worse–or even different– than republocrats is shaky at best.