Probably not on net balance, but it can certainly have some positive affects. For example, Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton writes:
The warming effect of carbon dioxide is strongest where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in mountainous regions rather than in lowlands, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading.
So global warming primarily causes cold areas to get hot instead of hot areas to get hotter. Well increasing the temperature in cold areas just happens to significantly increase human life expectancy:
Now a new NBER paper strikingly argues that warmer weather is better for life expectancy, not just comfort:
[B]oth extreme heat and extreme cold result in immediate increases in mortality. However, the increase in mortality following extreme heat appears entirely driven by temporal displacement, while the increase in mortality following extreme cold is long lasting.
In other words, deaths from heat reflect what coroners call a “harvesting effect”; heat kills people who didn’t have long to live anyway. The same doesn’t hold for deaths from cold.The life expectancy benefit of heat is large, too:
These longevity gains associated with long term trends in geographical mobility account for 8%-15% of the total gains in life expectancy experienced by the US population over the past 30 years.
Dyson’s talk can be found here. The study on temperature and life expectancy can be found here and here.
This guy can’t be serious. What happens in cold areas when it gets warmer? Let’s take Alaska. Is he saying that could be a new vacation spot? LOL. Where do they think all that ice is going? To our oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, roads, highways, and cities. Look at New Orleans…what a trade off. It’s going to get wet, very wet. I hope all those people who live longer because of the nicer weather (LMAO), can swim cause it’s going to rain, Rain, RAIN.
Let’s ask these scientists if they got their $10,000 check in the mail from interest groups that are continuing to keep the public in doubt about global warming.
Sorry HP, but this topic is a pet peeve of mine.
I could tell…but Freeman Dyson nor the economists are ‘interest group scientists’, also everything they say above can be verified just as easily as rising temperatures can.
Btw, the second link makes clear that this does not prove that global warming as a whole is good, only that it might have some positive aspects. That seems okay to say, right? Or does that get you kicked out of the gloom and doom global warming club too?
Many can profit from a failing economy. Does that make it a good thing? It depends what side of the coin you are on. This is the logic of the argument at hand.
Is there a short term benefit in all of this for some? I am sure. But, the long term devastation may (probably will), dwarf this observation.