This week saw a ferocious winter storm take the lives of more than a dozen people and leave millions without power. Weeks like these highlight the tragic state of our infrastructure as multiple states experience planned and unplanned blackouts. Moments like these can lead to people discussing Global Warming and its threat to humanity. However, there is another side to the debate you will rarely ever hear: The positives of Global Warming!
As the title suggests, Global Warming might actually save lives although your google results will actually come back with every article in the world disproving this notion. It can be extremely difficult to capture detailed arguments around this topic. Let's start with two major points. First, Global Warming is real. #ClimateChangeisReal It is a problem that needs solving. We should not go on an endless heating cycle of the earth. However, it is difficult to have a nuanced discussion about how we should tackle this issue with we are not being honest in the discussion.
Second, lets agree that a death is a death and we shouldn't weight some deaths more than others. There are statistics captured for the number of cold and heat related deaths. It is clear that people #OldPeopleAreScrewed are more likely to die from extreme cold than heat. However, correlation does not equal causation. There are other factors like a lack of vitamin D during winter months and other confounding factors that make this whole discussion a mess, but when you read google articles on the topic, they explain away all of the possible issues with cold deaths. Google's algorithm unwittingly is weighting cold deaths higher than heat deaths with the lack of balance in search results. Within minutes of reading multiple articles from my search, I find the authors proclaim cold deaths over stated and they move on to projecting that heat deaths will be way higher than anyone is accounting for. Based on what??? Where is the discussion about confounding factors in heat based death? Where is the discussion of Newton's Law of Cooling and Heating. #PhysicsNerdsNeedToStepUp
For those uninitiated, Newton's Law of Cooling and Heating basically says temperature changes the most in places where the temperature difference is the greatest. Basically, colder areas will warm up more from Global Warming than hot areas. The temperature change across the earth won't be uniform thanks to the laws of physics. You can experiment with this idea using glasses of cold and ice cold water. The ice cold water will change temperature faster assuming it is further away from room temperature than the cold water.
So if we know the earth won't warm evenly everywhere, where does this leave us? Again, correlation doesn't equal causation. The deaths from heat could still rise quickly due to a more hospitable environment for disease to grow. However, many of these types of diseases like malaria are easier to solve than the cold deaths. Many Americans may be shocked to know that the US used to have a huge problem with Malaria just like those poor countries in Africa. In fact, I should be more precise. The South had a huge problem with Malaria as its warmer weather was more conducive to the disease. The CDC was placed in Atlanta for this very reason. In many ways, Global Warming may be giving us easier problems to solve, but these types of discussions are very hard to find anywhere. I can't overstate the idea that finding the best solution to issues like Global Warming require honest discourse.
What else can Newton do for me? Well, the reality is in a world that heats up colder regions faster than warmer regions we can expect cold regions to produce longer growing seasons. This means more agricultural production. While some regions may become too hot for agricultural production, we can expect the regions that gain from agricultural production to be larger. The net benefit is more food for the worlds growing population. These types of "positives" for humanity are just rarely ever discussed. Instead, you will see multiple articles covering food insecurity due to Global Warming because of extreme weather events. Again, google is definitely tipping the balance on the discussion as the authors of the most popular articles do not do proper justice to both sides of the argument.
So you say the weather is going to get more EXTREME, ehh? Let's dig into that. Global Warming is not an overnight trend. #FuckYouIndustrialRevolution #EnglandsFault As such, we would expect to see increases in storm extremes like storm strength. Unfortunately, most articles tackling this issue only go back as far as my parents, and my parents weren't even around for the Spanish Flu. Hence, one reason for our poor reaction to the pandemic is our lack of Lived Experience with pandemics. #ActLikeYouBeenThereBefore The data around long term trend of extreme weather events is quite poor. However, a popular method of expressing increased storm strength used to be the increased economic damage from hurricanes. These articles were full of great sounding economics jargon like "inflation adjusted". While I'm actually a huge fan of economics done properly, I can tell you there are more dynamics to hurricane damage in dollar values than just inflation through the years. Another big dynamic is population. It goes without saying that many of us would love to have beach front property. The amount of people who move near the coasts is obvious. There is a reason the middle of the country is called "Fly Over" country. People fly over it as they go Coast to Coast. As our population increases, we also have seen a shift of people towards coasts. The shear increase in population density near coasts does an amazing job of predicting how much damage is caused by storms through the years in terms of dollars. As such, I have a hot tip. People will continue moving to Florida in old age, and economic damage from hurricanes will continue to rise. As such, home owners insurance in Florida should continue to rise as well because insurance companies need to be able to cover all the increased risk from everyone having insurance claims at the same time. Now, where in Las Vegas can I make that bet!
Now, you might think after all of this "controversial" talk about the "positives" of Global Warming that I'm your typical Global Warming denier, but I've said it before and I'll say it again. Global Warming is real and it does actually present a serious issue that needs solving. However, the engineer in me, the economist in me, the mathematician in me, and the general life experience in me says that you never really get difficult problems to be so one sided in the solution. I think we need to use some design thinking. Global Warming is a "Wicked Problem", and the conversation that needs to happen requires us to hold two seemingly opposing thoughts in our head at the same time. A more honest discussion that is not driven by those in the pulpit would seek to provide the pros and the cons to a wide range of solutions. There is a yearning for this kind of nuance in some sections of the population. Where oh where can we find a discussion worthy of this section of the population?
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