Food for thought: Climate change may be a good thing
We often relate global warming with disaster and an end to life on Earth. But Global Warming has some positives too. That doesn’t mean that global warming shouldn’t need to addressed with serious actions or at least reduced to sustain life on our planet.
- Scientists are trying to figure out a way to implement global warming in Mars to make it habitable for life.
- Once, the ice melts and the Arctic Ocean becomes clear, a new trade route would open and make business must easier, quicker, and cheaper.
- Though it was thought that the increasing temperature will lead to an increase in the number of hurricanes and severe storms, but a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters suggests that it might actually be the opposite. The researchers suggest that warmer temperatures will actually decrease the number of hurricanes that hit the US and some other parts of the world every year.
- There will be more food production. As the summers will get a bit longer and hotter, the growing season will stretch for a longer period of time. Also, plants and trees will utilize the excess carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere, to synthesize more food as it acts like a fertilizer (as long as the massive floods and droughts are controlled by the humans). Presently, vast swaths of the Earth — the northern half of Canada, for instance, and the majority of Russia’s land area — aren’t suitable for agriculture. As the globe warms, however, high-latitude zones now on the verge of cultivation could become agriculture-friendly.
- The death toll per year will reduce considerably as fewer people will die in due to cold and winter-related issues. The winters will be much less a threat to mankind as its temperature will not be as low as now. In addition to saving us money on our heating bills, this could save billions in health care costs as well. One study said that warmer winters could save up to 40,000 lives a year in the US alone, mostly the young and elderly, with the reductions mostly in things like pneumonia deaths and other cold weather diseases.
- Without global warming today we would have been in the Ice Age till now, technically.
- For nearly thirty years, India and Bangladesh were having disputes over the control of New Moore Islands in the Sunderbans, but now, due to Global Warming, the Island is completely submerged under the waters of the Bay of Bengal.
- Positive effects of climate change may include greener rainforests and enhanced plant growth in the Amazon, increased vegetation in northern latitudes and possible increases in plankton biomass in some parts of the ocean.
- Nobody really knows just how much oil exists in the Arctic, but oil companies and various nations, are moving fast in their efforts to explore the possibilities. Russia is already taking a lead, claiming to promising stretches of international waters that had long been under frozen lock and key. Like the trading path, after the ice melts, drilling for Arctic oil, currently not a viable option, could start soon.
- More sunlight and heat energy can lead to the Earth be completely green in terms of energy as solar energy will become the main source of electricity for humans.
I urge everyone reading this article to read it as a peek into the other side of the ongoing phenomenon. This should not lead to raising any doubt in one’s mind about the dangers of Global Warming and shouldn’t negatively impact anyone’s effort to reduce it, however small it may be. Please do not think that you may stop trying to save the Earth and resume exploiting it. All that I have mentioned here are benefits for humans, for their greed and selfishness, and not for the Earth as a whole.
Cover Pic: sputniknews.com
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Amit Narayan Satpathy
Ok Indranil,but you mentioned that the Arctic regions would prove to be extended regions for cultivation.However,global warming would desertify large areas of the Equatorial region ,this balancing the amount of regions available for cultivation.Well I do understand that you have mentioned benefits of global warming for the greedy humans and not Mother Earth.Well written!
Indranil Basu
Dear Amit,
I have mentioned how a burst in natural vegetation shall take place in the Equatorial Region also. I do not think that the net amount of regions for cultivation will remain the same, but will increase, as utilising solar enery can help in irrigation and even manufacture of better fertilizers which will enable us to harness the region for cultivation.