Why global warming would be good for you

In today's NY Times, the Freakonomists discuss the relation between economics and weather: The Price of Climate Change. (Via Grag Mankiw.) They discuss two papers that deal with climate change:

Olivier Deschênes of the University of California at Santa Barbara and Michael Greenstone of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have written a pair of papers that assess some effects of climate change. In the first, they use long-run climatological models — year-by-year temperature and precipitation predictions from 2070 to 2099 — to examine the future of agriculture in the United States. Their findings? The expected rises in temperature and precipitation would actually increase annual agricultural production, and therefore agricultural profits, by about 4 percent, or $1.3 billion. This hardly fulfills the doomsday fears conjured by most conversations about global warming.

Indeed. Way back in 1995, Thomas G. Moore wrote an article for The Public Interest called Why global warming would be good for you.

Although most of the forecasts of global warming's repercussions have been dire, an examination of the likely effects suggests little basis for that view. Climate affects principally agriculture, forestry, and fishing. Manufacturing, most service industries, and nearly all extractive industries are immune to climatic shifts. Factories can be built in any climate. Banking, insurance, medical services, retailing, education, and a variety of other services can prosper as well in warm climates (with air-conditioning) as in cold (with central heating).

Moore goes on to say (and the whole article is worth reading) that a warmer climate would have many beneficial effects, from a longer growing season, the opening up of marginal farmland, to the mitigation of extreme weather, which is driven by the temperature difference between the equator and the poles, and which would lessen under a scenario of global warming. The Sahara might even cease to be a desert.

From his conclusion:

If mankind had to choose between a warmer or a cooler climate, they would be better off with the former. Whether the climate will warm is far from certain; that it will change is unquestionable. Human activity is likely to play only a small and uncertain role in these changes. The burning of fossil fuel may generate an enhanced greenhouse effect, or the release into the atmosphere of sulfates may cause cooling. It is simply hubris to believe that Homo sapiens can significantly affect temperatures, rainfall, and winds.

Then there's the late oceanographerJohn Martin, who came up with the easiest and cheapest way to mitigate global warming when he said:

“Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age.”

By dumping relatively small amounts of iron into the ocean, Martin realized that phytoplankton would bloom, pulling massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.