Global warming

Last week the Wall Street Journal had a fascinating article on Greenland's experience with global warming. There are a number of interesting lessons to be taken out of it. The first is that global warming is not necessarily a bad thing:

Average temperatures in Greenland have risen by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 30 years -- more than double the global average, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute. By the end of the century, the institute projects, temperatures could rise another 14 degrees.

The milder weather is promoting new life on the fringes of this barren, arctic land. Swans have been spotted recently for the first time, ducks aren't flying south for the winter anymore and poplar trees have suddenly begun flowering.

Greenland represents one of the largely unrecognized paradoxes of global warming. In former Vice President Al Gore's recent film "An Inconvenient Truth," the melting of Greenland's ice cap, along with a similar cap in the Antarctic, is portrayed as one of the greatest threats of global warming. If the layers of ice and snow holding billions of tons of water were to melt, scientists warn that global sea levels would rise by 40 feet, submerging lower Manhattan, the Netherlands and much of California.

But to many of the people who live here in Greenland, the warming trend is a boon, not a threat...

Already, the temperature rise in Greenland has extended the growing season by two weeks since the 1970s -- no small matter since those two weeks come during the spring and summer when the sun shines for as long as 20 hours a day in southern Greenland. Warmer days allow farmers to take better advantage of the extended sunlight, which gives plants more energy and a better chance to survive and thrive. If temperatures rose enough to allow the growing season to begin in late April, rather than mid-May, Greenlandic farmers might be able to grow fruit, including strawberries or apples.

Improved crop production could help wean Greenland from its heavy dependence on expensive, imported produce: Greenlanders pay about $3.50 for a cucumber at a local grocery store, $5 for a head of lettuce and $7.50 for a pound of carrots. Since 1980, Greenland has seen farmland devoted to growing crops increase to about 2,500 acres from 620 acres.

That global warming can provide certain benefits is something you almost never see discussed. But how can an informed discussion take place if we aren't willing to discuss its net impact? Sadly, it seems that some people simply aren't interested in airing all of the facts:

Many climate scientists argue that any local benefits of the warming trend are more than offset by the global costs. One worry: That discussion of the benefits could undermine efforts to slow global warming. "I'm not keen to provide ammunition to those who oppose action," said Dr. Wallace Broecker, a researcher at Columbia University's Earth Institute, in an email declining an interview. "Of course there will be benefits. But the net will be bad."

"Of course there will be benefits." Interesting for him to say that, given that in the literature one most often reads about global warming these benefits are seldom mentioned.

Another important point raised in the article is that a warming trend in this part of the world is something has been seen before:

For Greenlanders, adapting to the effects of climate change is nothing new. Oxygen isotope samples taken from Greenland's ice core reveal that temperatures around 1100, during the height of the Norse farming colonies, were similar to those prevailing today. The higher temperatures were part of a warming trend that lasted until the 14th century.

Near the end of the 14th century, the Norse vanished from Greenland. While researchers don't know for sure, many believe an increasingly cold climate made eking out a living here all but impossible as grasses and trees declined. Farming faded away from the 17th century to the 19th century, a period known as the Little Ice Age. Farming didn't return to Greenland in force until the early 1900s, when Inuit farmers began re-learning Norse techniques and applying them to modern conditions. A sharp cooling trend from around 1950 to 1975 stalled the agricultural expansion.

Since then, temperatures have mainly been on the upswing. Ole Egede is taking advantage of the warmer climate. He and his brother live on Greenland's southwest coast on an isolated farm at the head of an inlet that can be reached only by helicopter or by a boat that can navigate around the icebergs that often choke the blue fiord. Mr. Egede started Greenland's first commercial potato farm in 1999 and it remains the largest potato farm in Greenland.

We see that warming trends have occurred before (indicating that it is not at all certain this is a man-made phenomenon), the net impact is unknown and not everyone is willing to engage in an honest debate on the subject -- yet the U.S. should run out and sign the Kyoto Treaty? Forgive my skepticism.