Climage Change - January 31, 2012

It was another very warm day today. Nice stroll with Anya this morning, followed by a walk to work. Then I was in the office until dark.

What a lousy season for the winter sports world. They cancelled the John Beargrease sled dog race up on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Ski areas are struggling to stay ahead of the melt, if they have snow-making equipment. Here's an animation of our snowcover this season. It's not that there's no snow out there; it's just spotty and pathetic.

I think a lot of us, in out daily lives, don't especially miss it. I certainly have plenty of friends who are missing the things they love to do in a winter with sustained deep freeze and deep (or even deep-ish) snow. But our daily lives of commuting on the freeway, and putting out the trash, and walking the dog are frankly simpler when it's 40°F than when it's -10°F. I can comfortably walk to work, which is good for me.

There was an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend arguing that climate change was still being legitimately debated. This in turn was roundly rebutted in Skeptical Science and by a larger and broader cross-section of science in, well, Science.

What the alarmism, most all of it legitimate, about climate change fails to take into account is that some of us would prefer, for our own selfish concerns, to have a warmer climate. Not the folks in Dallas and Las Vegas and Miami necessarily, but just from an everyday standpoint, there are worse things in the world than warmer Januaries.

But there's a particular kind of short-sightedness to this knee-jerk reaction, which the alarmists have been trying to point us to. It's like the consequences of giving up having a car: it may sound like a noble thing to do, but there are real ramaifications in what you are going to be able to do wtih your life. If we gave up dependence on private motor vehicles, we (an urban couple, even) would have to rethink where our son went to school, where we shop for food, what social and entertainment activities we did, and how much flexibility we have in our schedules.

Likewise, you can joke about enjoying warmer Januaries, but there are real consequences on a local level: less meltwater in the spring for crops, an end to skiing except as an occasional treat, like it is where I grew up in New Jersey, new plant diseases, and (maybe) hotter summers, which in the middle of the continent is not a trivial thing, even this far north.