The benefits of Global Warming

A lot of people are wringing their hands over the last hundred years as temperatures were gradually rising (the last 17 years notwithstanding). Chip Knappenberger at Master Resource explores the benefits of warmer weather - linked by Anthony Watts:

Global Savings: Billion-Dollar Weather Events Averted by Global Warming
Last week, the government�s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) finalized its list of �Billion Dollar Weather/Climate Disasters� for 2012. They reported 11 such events with the combined loss exceeding $110 billion, making it the second costliest year since their compilation began in 1980.

Since the number of billion dollar weather disasters has been increasing over time, the temptation to point a finger at anthropogenic global warming is too great for many global warming addicts to resist, despite the known problems with the list (for example, the lack of proper accounting for changing population demographics � a factor which explains virtually all of the increase).

It seems folks are extremely creative at coming up with reasons why virtually every weather disaster is �consistent with� human-caused climate change and how things will get worse in the future. However, such creativity evaporates when trying to come up with any positive weather/climate effects that are �consistent with� anthropogenic climate change.

To see this creativity/lack thereof in action, go read a few pages of the latest version of the government�s report from the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee. Or, to save some time, you can pursue my (and colleagues) comments on the report.

Some examples:

Hurricane Debby, June 2012. Hurricane Debby never formed. Increased vertical wind shear �consistent with� expectations from global warming prevented the development of tropical storm Debby into hurricane Debby. Damage estimates from tropical storm Debby have been estimated at $250 million with 5 direct and 3 indirect fatalities from the storm. Had global warming not helped to inhibit the growth of the storm system, these totals may well have been higher, exceeding a billion dollars. (For more information of the life of Debby, see here.)

And another:

California Freeze, January 11-16th, 2013. A 6-day major freeze event occurred across California�s agricultural regions, threatening a variety of crops including the state�s 2 billion/year citrus harvest. However, the region narrowly escaped widespread damage. Since an increased greenhouse effect from human carbon dioxide emissions preferentially warms the nighttime winter air, it is entirely �consistent with� expectations from global warming to hypothesize that absent global warming, a multi-billion dollar weather-related disaster would have occurred�much like the ones that have occurred there in the past.

Much more at the site.