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su sophia

The author prefers to refer the disadvantages of climate change, and he said it. However, there are different attitudes stand in different stance. In my point of view, it is not that bad, and I think there are more advantages over disadvantages.

First, as it is said by the author, climate change is really a disaster for those countries in lower lands and people live there, and brings financial loss to them. But, from another aspect, I can see benefits. Migration brings development opportunity to those emigrated people’s destinations.

Second, it is absolutely great for those boreal and sub-arctic areas. The warmer climate will make winter warmer and make people comfortable and the land in higher latitude more suitable for crops, fruits and vegetables to grow and improve their yields. For example, Russia has large tracts of lands in cold areas which can not plant food, but with the more and warmer climate, the land will become good land for crops.

Third, it is good for inland areas and desert areas. Warmer climate make the air be humid and bring rainfalls to those arid regions, which contributes to improving desert circumstance and increasing vegetation coverage, and reduce desert’s bad effect on human beings. Also, it increases crops’ outputs in arid areas and helps to solve hunger.

Forth, the immigration caused by climate change promoting cultural exchange and cultural flourishing. Whatever the immigration within a country or among countries, they are both devote to mutual understanding and economy cooperation and cultural transfer and finally make the world a more harmonious and peaceful big family.

Fifth, people’s behavior did have impact on climate change. Since climate becoming warmer is a trend, so, people should try their best to not to speed the warmer process to let nature to be natural. Market failure is inherent, so every country should take its own responsibility of building a good environment for the big family. And government’s intervention is necessary to avoid market failure.

In conclusion, everything has two sides; we should balance it and avoid extreme.


Climate issues are big questions to all over the world, although there are boundary between two counties, they all share one piece of sky. Nowadays, some developed countries transferred some environment unfriendly and some heavily polluting industries to developed countries or less developed countries. They just try their best to protect their country from polluted, they have not been realized it will kill themselves at the same time. Because all the people share the air in this world, the air is flowing.
The thesis statement of this article is "The costs of climate change can be mitigated if economic activity moves in response". This is very important, we should develop economic with a suitable way, do not just want make money and regerdless of everything. And use some clean and renewable energy. Because many things in this world is limited.


The Schaeffler Company has begun the manufacture of solar panels and other parts for green building. Do you think that people will pay the added costs for green materials?

Zhang Shujiao

The article shows that the cost of climate change can be mitigated by moving the location of economic activities. That is to say, people can move around as they like in response to climate changes. In my point of view, it is not a good idea.
As we all know, the amount of people a place can hold is limited, the large scale of migration to one place will damage the ecological environment more seriously. with one place destroyed, people move to another place. People continue with the vicious cycle, more and more lands will be destroyed, which goes against the theory of sustainable development. This kind of behavior is also selfish, which shows no responsibility for the next generation.
Moreover, People will pay higher price of climate change by doing so. It can not solve problems fundamentally, but exacerbate climate deterioration. Climate change is caused by irrational human behavior. The way is to justify behavior of human beings toward the environment, but not change from one place to another.
The earth is a whole. All the decisions should be responsible for the environment and conform to sustainable development concept.


I don’t think it is a good solution that the cost of climate change can be mitigated by emigration. No doubt, it is an irresponsible action for all mankind if we purely use the emigration to solve the adverse effects of climate change.
First, this suggestion can’t solve the basic problems. If those people who live in low latitudes move to higher latitudes and the people who live in costal areas move toward inland regions with the climate warming, in that way, some day people would have nowhere to go. Moreover, the whole world faces with various crises besides the climate problems. The population problem is also very important. When we give up some cities, the global situation will become more serious.
Second, human beings have to accept responsibility or the punishment or consequences for what we have done. We should try to figure out solutions to improve this problem instead of escaping from responsibility.
Since the Kyoto Protocol came into force, climate change has aroused worldwide concerns. Low-carbon lifestyle has become the goal we all seek. Although it is time consuming and high cost, at least for now, achieving low-carbon lifestyle is the only solution.


An under reported fact...There's been NO global temperature increase in more than TWENTY years! THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING...nananananana!..THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING!!!


So, Europe would be richer if we built a strong Southern border, quit with the greenery and freely burnt all Russia's gas & oil.

Not only in the short run - but we'd also have higher agricultural productivity and a better climate up here as the Earth warmed, more fish and more ocean trade routes.

... while the US & Australia, of all developed countries, would suffer most.

Any explanations for why behaviours and national interests are inversed?

Jukka Kautto

We pretend not see the elephant in the room, once the primary cause for all environmental problems is the rampaging population growth and that fact is refused by our brains crammed with illusive political and religious mambo jumbo of our self importance on the Earth. Consequently we choose only to treat the symptoms, while the world´s population become tripled during one life time and now the void between futile actions and the negative human impact is steadily widening. This is like the US economy, where the federal debt accumulates 21 faster than GDP and you are predestined to a rendez-vous with the brick wall.


This model is based on rather simplistic assumptions of how climate change will play out. The rational assumption is that land productivity will shift towards the poles, and shorelines will shift inward. If those were the only two impacts of climate change - sure, people & cities would just relocate inward and upward.

However - although there is no doubt truth in both of those assumptions, they by no means offer a complete picture of the potential affects of climate change.

There really are too many variables for us to accurately predict what will happen with any certainty.

Sure - financial managers, computer programmers, and electrical engineers could all move North, and resume their activities with no great change in productivity. But it is unlikely, for instance, that a 'clean shift' of agricultural land towards the poles will result in equivalent levels of production.


The article brings up a good point at the end. Poorer families moving to areas with affordable housing in disaster-prone areas could lead to a humanitarian crises. We saw the tragedy of Katrina - and Hurricane Sandy wasn't particularly pleasant either.

Hopefully policy changes will protect citizens from the destruction we are bringing upon ourselves and the true environmental changes will move slowly enough to give us time to catch up.


My impression is that these models wash over the fact that if they reflect reality and you contrast it with reality, history is the four horsemen.
This is what you get assuming classical equations of flow, than say something probably more realistic like quantum or nonlinear behavior, random, chaotic, messy.


On a pure definition, the Earth is experiencing climate change indeed, at least one way or another. But the 'climate change' being discussed and brought up by international organizations might have different meaning. They imply global warming induced by human and animal activities, and this is the cause for such a heated debate and much concern worldwide.

Science is no longer science but has been hijacked by politic. As such, its founding has been treated as unquestionnable and the ultimate truth. Any skeptics are treated as heretic, brought to mind the 'infidel' of Muslim.

I did not know human knowledge has reached the zenith of this universe that they have perfected the science to capture all things flawlessly. Their memo must still be in my Junk box.

Have someone watched the documentary on PBS about Magnetic field, polarization and solar activities, and the estonished foundings and correlation to the Mother Nature's activities? This is few years back and about the researches of few universities and one of the scientists wrote a code modelling the earth movement and Nature behavior in parallel to any change in magnetic field. The research incorporated the archeology study. Has this been part of the study, part of any discussion prior to the sweeping conclusion?

Yet, the flawless science of the perfect human beings, such as Al Gore leading the movement followed by our exemplary politicians and a worthy and effective UN, has studied enough to conclude otherwise.

So now is just the required actions needed to limit human activities that cause the climate change. One of which is carbon credit. Can someone explain how that helps reduce the carbon emission when it is just a license to emit? Creating and Paying a whole new bunch of bureaucrats an emission fee suddenly makes it ok, and the world is better already.

There are actually people believing in the politicians, UN and other international organizations. When just looking at the current political, economic crisis worldwide and how effective they have been it is enough to disband these incompetent.

My name is Stupid, last name Gullible and I have my questions I have doubts. You believe in them wholeheartedly, I like to know your name too.


I see two main problems with this.
First, that minor activity that uses 90% of land, agriculture, is the basis that allows us to have everything else. You are not going to move major cereal growing areas, and no, southern Russia is already prone to droughts and wildfires.
Second, there's no way that developed countries will ever willingly let tens of millions of Africans and Indians inside their borders. What is being proposed would dwarf the current levels of immigration.
I think it is much mroe likely that developed countries will keep doing what they have done for decades: whatch people in poor countries die. Since poor countries will suffer worse and suffer first, my prediction is apathy and delay. Pretending that the damage can be so easily avoided does not help.

paulo freire in reply to Papageno000

No, wealthy countries won't sit and watch people in poor countries die because those countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. Just see their rate of growth in the last few decades, much better than the developed world, despite global warming. Since in all likelihood they will be much wealthier in the future, they will also be much better equipped to deal with natural disasters, global warming or no global warming.

hmy_ in reply to Papageno000

Maybe, but the rich countries aren't holding the poor countries back or forcing them to remain poor in any way. Actually, it's the exact opposite.

It's easy to target the US and Europe, but as we've seen over the last two decades with China, if a poor country gets its act together, it can join the rich world.

Western carbon emissions through conspicuous consumption are hardly the primary causes of global warming and ultimately, everything goes back to overpopulation.

And overpopulation is not a problem in the rich world.


A little bit more on the Himalayan glaciers:


One Prof Jonathan Bamber, a Bristol University glaciologist, stated that “The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero.”

Would Sense Seeker now withdraw his very irritating accusation that I am knowingly presenting lies without evidence? Perhaps a bit much to hope for, but it ought to be an automatic response from a gentleman.

Sense Seeker in reply to Macumazan

Yes, the truth can be annoying. But if you did not lie, you certainly did misrepresent the facts.

You wrote: "we learn today that Himalayan glaciers have actually been INCREASING in volume". That is not supported by either of the sources you refer to.

Your quote from The Guardian shows that there was actually a loss, although it was near zero. Likewise, The Times of India reports that "good spells of snowfall in last three years have changed the trend with glaciers almost growing to their original size".

I trust you will gentlemanly admit you were in error.

Rob S in reply to Macumazan

Your point illustrates a debating tactic used by supporters of AGW. Whenever there is anecdotal evidence of the impact of global warming, such as the hurricane. they seize on that event as confirmation of their beliefs. Contrary evidence? They throw the speaker out of the meeting and assert that global warming refers to "climate, not weather".

Sierkovitz in reply to Rob S

There are overeager, trigger happy ignorami on both sides. Difference - in the agw sceptic team, the ignorami are just repeating arguments of their scientific leaders. The ignorant agw proponents - misrepresent what their scientific base says.


Sense Seeker might like to read the "Times of India" on the Himalayan glaciers:
Let us hope that Sense Seeker does not dismiss empirical data from Indian scientists as "lies" as he abuses other correspondents such as myself. (He rather makes a habit of it and certainly has displayed continuing abusive form.) He ought to appreciate that rational discussion is not helped by calling people liars.
On the Greenland icesheets, I did not say that Greenland is not losing ice, and would rather prefer that Sense Seeker have the decency to actually read what I wrote. One reads his words "...you give no evidence for your statements, and that is because you know full well that none exists." I now have provided evidence on the glaciers. One can only ask (as I have on many other occasions) that he desist from attributing base motives to his opponents, though it is sadly only too typical of ideologists. I repeat that global temperatures have NOT been rising for 16 years. Sense Seeker writes "clearly, the temperature is still rising." I have asked him on many occasions previously to provide the gradient of the relevant temperature figures fer the 16 year period. He has not complied. He writes "In contrast, I gave links that back up every statement I wrote." OK then, could we have a reference please, that denies we have been experiencing a temperature increase hiatus these past 16 years and gives us a figure for the gradient? Please use satellite data.

Sense Seeker in reply to Macumazan

Well, here's your gradient: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1996/plot/wti/from:1996/trend

Although of course you could easily have read it from the NASA website I referred to earlier: http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators#globalTemp. Both are based on satillite data, as per your request.

You, in contrast, now repeat that global temperatures have NOT been rising for 16 years, but you give no evidence. And never have.

To think you may be lying is perhaps even the most charitable explanation for your repeatedly posting claims that have been proven untrue.

Macumazan in reply to Sense Seeker

The NASA graph in fact shows a decline over the last 13 years. Sense Seeker might like to try placing the tip of his cursor on the upper bound of the 1998 figure (0.56 degrees) and then on the upper bound of the (latest) 2011 figure (0.51 degrees). He will then find himself able to reason as follows:
gradient = Rise/Run
= (0.51 - 0.56)/(2011 - 1998)
= -0.05/13

That is to say, the slope is negative on his own figures, for the 13 years to 2011. One would hope that he might now take the matter up with NASA if he thinks its graph is incorrect and not bother us anymore with his endless unsupported alarmism.

Sierkovitz in reply to Macumazan

Are you serious? Trendlines are not made by comparing terminal values and concluding based on that. If you'd actully put the data from 1998-2011 into any spreadsheet and took an effort to superimpose a generic trendline on those data you'd see that even though the first data point is a bit of an outlier (1998 was exceptionally warm) and the last data point is slightly on the low side, the trend is still rising - by 0.01C per annum.

Sense Seeker in reply to Rob S

Right, so you imagine that in a debate, truth doesn't matter and you can select and misrepresent the evidence in order to argue a point?

We'll read your future postings in that knowledge, Rob.

Macumazan in reply to Macumazan

Sense Seeker was asked for the gradient, and on finally providing a link to the data that in fact demonstrated the gradient to be NEGATIVE, now switches to the "trendline". At least one of his peas has finally been nailed, anyway, and we can now look forward to it not featuring in Sense Seeker's shell game anymore. On the trendline, the NASA data is given to hundredths of a degree, which is simply preposterous in global figures from pre-satellite days when weather stations used mercury thermometers. Without error bars, the exercise is meaningless, since the purported temperature rise could well lie (and almost certainly does lie) within the margin of error for the data. The earth has undoubtedly been warmer in the past, before anthropegenic CO2 emissions were a factor, and this, as many competent paleo-climatologists believe, as recently as Roman times or even when the Vikings colonised Greenland. That is to say, there is nothing "unprecendented" about modern temperatures and they are not yet outside of historical limits. If we can now continue without ad hominem accusations from Sense Seeker of his opponents "lying", we might now be able to begin an intelligent discussion.

Sense Seeker in reply to Macumazan

Macumazan, I am getting sick and tired of your distortions but I'll try to remain polite.
The gradient in the 16-year data that I sent (not to mention the record over the past 100 years) was POSITIVE. That changed after YOU, in contravention of the relevant rules in statistics, removed the earlier years and simply compared 2011 with 1998. That year, 1998, is a clear outlier and we know that it was due to an exceptionally strong EL Nino.
Of all the denialist claims, the one that goes 'the world is not warming' is by far the stupidest.

Rob S in reply to Sense Seeker

My comment was directed at YOU, SS. You were the person who used the fallacious argument that 2 extreme points on a scatter plot are the only data to be used to calculate the slope. Are you too dumb to know any better, or just using a rhetorical trick?

Rob S in reply to Sense Seeker

The rules of statistical analysis are quite rigorous, SS. First, they require that you use ALL the data, and not reject any as"outliers" unless they exceed specific statistical limits. Second, the results are assigned quantitative levels of significance. To conclude that the slope is "positive" the value has to exceed some standard, usually 2 sigma.

Has the world been warming using these standards.

A. T. Worth in reply to Sense Seeker

So Rob S is definitely correct here. You generally cannot exclude a data point as an outlier unless it's in the first or fourth quartile or you have reason to believe that it differs in some significant qualitative respect, like faulty data collection. Unless you think that the 1998 was collected improperly or that that it falls significantly beyond the first or fourth quartile markers, you cannot just discount it.

Sense Seeker in reply to A. T. Worth

Dear Worth,

Rob S is correct in what he writes about the rules of statistics, but wrong in accusing me of breaking those rules. (That was Macumazan, but that's a fellow denier and according to Rob this is a debate and therefore truth doesn't matter - unless you can make use of it to win a point. See above at Dec 7th, 19:44.)

Of course you can't simply exclude inconvenient data points. And of course I didn't exclude 1998.

Macumazan claimed 'no warming over the past 16 years'. I showed him the graphs over 1996-2012, which show clear warming. Not only did he then shorten the period to 1998-2011, but he also ignored all the in between years.

And you will agree that to select the start or endpoint of a time series *because* it is an outlier, is cheating.

I also hope that you will agree that if you look at the entire dataset (in this case since 1978), there is no evidence that the warming trend has stopped: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1900/plot/wti/from:1900/trend .

Macumazan in reply to Sierkovitz

What Sierkovitz weites is simply false. If the HadleyCentre/CRU figures of monthly mean global temperature anomalies from 1997 are used and a least-squares linear regression done on the data, the line of best fit (whose gradient is the RISE/RUN of start and end points OF THE LEAST-SQUARES-LINE-OF-BEST-FIT) fall within the error bars for the data. That is to say, there has been NO statistically significant warming trend whatsoever for 16 years.

Sense Seeker in reply to Macumazan

IF that was all the data we had, you would be correct in a technical sense. But only if you use an alpha level of 0.05. And it is against the rules to take an arbitrary short period of time: the maximum time you can go back until you find that the warming IS significant. Because why start at 1997?

SINCE we have data from before 1997, we have to include those in the analysis. If you look at the entire record over the past century, it is equally true that the trend over the past 16 years is not significantly different from that in the decades before. Therefore, the claim 'Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago' is false.

Only such cherry-picking of data, using arbitrary cut-offs, can support the deniers' claims. REAL statisticians have checked the data and concluded that mainstream science us right: our planet is warming. For example, Google 'muller BEST project'.

Sierkovitz in reply to A. T. Worth

Noone excludes anything. The point is: picking any dataset that shows minimal value of all the collection of possible datasets is just cheating. Moreover, to get a good impression of the actual trend, it is better to have your averages normalised to take the El Niño and La Niña into account. Then the trend becomes even more apparent.

A. T. Worth in reply to Sense Seeker

An alpha of 0.05, if I recall my last stat class correctly, is pretty much the standard so we cannot really fault Macumazan for using it. The time cutoff does seem odd, but I'm really not familiar enough with climate science to do much more than pontificate at this point, so I'm going to have to bow out. Unless we start talking at least-squares again...

Sense Seeker in reply to A. T. Worth

The cutoff is indeed odd. It takes a minimum number of data points to reach statistical significance. Looking back in time, there is ALWAYS a point in the temperature series after which the warming is no longer statistically significant.

Deniers will always claim that warming stopped after that date.

Rob S in reply to Sierkovitz

A statistically calculated slope also has a standard deviation in the value. Is the standard deviation small enough to quote the slope to 2 decimal places? If not, the slope is 0.0 C/annum


One gets somewhat tired of Sense Seeker's endless warnings when there has been no net warming for 16 years and when we learn today that Himalayan glaciers have actually been INCREASING in volume. Forget the bloody models and look at the empirical reality. That's how science is supposed to work. What Pachauri and Gore and the alarmists wrote is simply wrong. What Sense Seeker has been warning of, hasn't happened. We do not face the Greenland ice sheet vanishing, the Maldives being engulfed, mass extinctions, mass epidemics, catastrophic weather etc. Sooner or later, reality ought to intrude upon his evangelical prognostications. The END is not nigh.

Sense Seeker in reply to Macumazan

One gets somewhat tired of that endlessly repeated 'Global warming stopped 16 years ago' lie. The MET office officially denied any such thing and clearly, the temperature is still rising.
Greenland is losing ice, and so is Antarctica.
Face it, Macumazan, you give no evidence for your statements, and that is because you know full well that none exists. In contrast, I gave links that back up every statement I wrote.
Let's make a deal: you stop spreading lies, and I'll stop debunking them.


There is no consensus on global warming, if there was then we wouldn't have so much debate, or attempt at debate. Frankly the true believers in global warming generally refuse to debate the subject.

Also, since when are we looking to The World Bank as an authority on global warming? I thought the IPCC was the recognized authority?

Sense Seeker in reply to francisbjohn

Among scientists, there is clear consensus on the basics of global warming.

The debate you talk about is entirely outside of science. It's in blogs, 'think tanks', on TV, radio and journals, but not in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Only with the help of complicit media can the deniers get their anti-scientific rubbish out. It's a phoney debate organised by vested interests.

At this moment, 20,000 scientists are at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. Here is a message from one of those scientists, who also has something to say about deniers and their use of 'open letters' in non-scientific media.

Peter the Cat in reply to francisbjohn

There may not be a consensus on the causes of global warming, or on the actions that need to be taken to mitigate against it. I don't think that anyone can seriously ignore the evidence that it is happening, see 1.6 billion data at http://berkeleyearth.org/results-summary/

The World Bank as, well, a world bank, would not be doing its duty if it did not explore what the economic impact of global warming might be. The IPCC is compromised by the politics surrounding it. My understanding, and I may well be wrong, is that the politicians have consistently watered down the the scientists findings. What is certain is that IPCC AR4 2007 grossly underestimated the rise in sea level for the years 1993>2011.


francisbjohn in reply to Sense Seeker

The views of SCIENTISTS on global warming is unimportant because most don't study the climate. Now climatologists, their opinions are more important and overall they're split. The consensus you speak of is a political consensus cooked up by people who want to exploit the idea of global warming for an agenda.

Sense Seeker in reply to francisbjohn

Francis, you totally have the wrong end of the stick here, I am afraid. But at least you won't fall for 'open letters' in business journals, assuming you are consistent in your opinions.

Climatologists are scientists and they are split about 97% convinced of AGW vs 3% unconvinced. The more they published in climate science, the more convinced they tend to be. For proof, see here. If you have better evidence, I am all ear.

Rob S in reply to Sense Seeker

Climatologists are uniformly in agreement on several points:
1. Theoretical calculations of warming trends evoking the direct effect of CO2 only explain a small fraction of the warming. There must be another effect. And it must be man-made.
2. They have hypothesized that water vapor in the major culprit, but have no data or theoretical models to support this hypothesis.
3. Despite claims of increases in extreme weather events, the most extensive quantitative study of extreme events shows NO upward trends over the last 100 years. Theur models that predict this increase are in error.
4. There has been an abatement in global warming with a trend over the last 16 years that is insignificantly different from zero. But a 15 year trend does not tell us anything about the overall trend. When this trend was only 10 years long, then 15 years would be significant, but now the bar has been raised to 20 years.
5. If there is no AGW to worry about, thousands of climatologists would have to look for gainful employment.

embb in reply to Rob S

Just add to point 4 that in the said period humanity emitted the trifling 30% of our total emissions. So, the point is not only that there no was temp increase but that there was no temp increase while CO2 emissions skyrocketed. If this does not falsify the AGW theory nothing will. Because it is a cult not science.


Oh yeah! First comment!

Emitting less CO2 != less hurricane
Emitting less CO2 != less tsunami
Emitting less CO2 != less earthquake

So, why emitting less CO2?

paulo freire in reply to Sex-master

This is an utterly ridiculous comment, but I once saw an advert for a book in the Scientific American Book club that made dire warnings against the consequences of global warming, which included, among others, earthquakes and tsunamis! I am a bit of an agnostic regarding the question of whether people are causing the planet to warm up, although I don't have any problems accepting it in principle. But the fact that such stupid statements find themselves within such a respected book catalog tells me that many alarmist statements are accepted by too many people without reflection.

Sense Seeker in reply to paulo freire

When I first heard about the claim that global warming could cause earthquakes I dismissed it as a denialist hoax to ridicule climate science. But it wassn't.

The idea is that continents are floating on the magma below, and if the kilometers thick ice sheets of Greenland, Antarctica and elsewhere melt away, those areas will lose weight and rise.

"The last ice age came to an end between 12,000 to 15,000 years ago and the ice sheets that once covered central Europe shrank dramatically," [said prof Pyle of Oxford University's earth sciences department]. "The impact on the continent's geology can by measured by the jump in volcanic activity that occurred at this time."

Seems all rather speculative, for the moment. On the other hand, if an earth sciences prof from Oxford takes this seriously, there must be something to it.

kxbxo in reply to Sense Seeker

Sense Seeker:

It isn't all that speculative.

Hudson Bay has been shrinking for exactly this reason since the end of the last ice age. It is sometimes termed "spring back", and is the result of the removal of the weight of the glaciers from the Laurentian shield


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