The Canadians are starting to see one:
TORONTO — Predicted climate change might not be bad for everyone.
Canada would be a net economic winner, according to an April U.N. report cited by a number of authorities during interviews in recent days. The paper predicted that milder temperatures would expand agriculture while boosting the economy with lower winter heating bills.
Yale University economics and environment professor Robert Mendelsohn lists a number of gains that Canada could expect from a 50- to 100-year shift to a generally warmer and wetter climate.
Among them would be the ability to grow fruit and vegetables in areas that now are useful only for grain, and the opening of iced-over Arctic waters to navigation and other commercial uses.
“Canadians will clearly be better off in the future than they are today. I can say that with confidence,” he predicted. “The most dramatic gains could be in agriculture, depending on precipitation.”
See, change isn’t necessarily a bad thing after all.
We don’t know enough about climate change’s impact, that’s for sure. Objective science needs to keep advancing the argument. It’s encouraging to see the biodiversity people trying to get the world engaged in an intelligent discussion about what’s called the sixth mass extinction facing the planet — and to understand what is the connection to climate. IUCN (World Conservation Union) this weekend is convening people in France to create an IPCC-like organization to do that. I have a link to story on my frog blog. http://frogmatters.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/global-warming-squeezing-out-biodiversity-debate/