I've been slowly plowing my way though this article (h/t Smallest Minority). It brings up a few questions that I never see anybody answer (even the skeptics) that I've also been wondering about for some time (I have my own ideas as to the answers of course).
1. What are the benefits of global warming?
2. What are the benefits of global cooling? (this is alluded to in some respects by the AGW crowd's answer to What's the downsides of global warming?, but it is not explicitly covered)
3. What are the downsides of global cooling?
Until those questions are answered how can we possibly formulate a sensible policy to deal with climate change? Because if the answer to #3 is such that such is worse than the downsides of GW why put so much effort into stopping GW? Assuming that it is even possible to do so anyway?
Put "Benifits of Global Warming " in your search engine and you will find a number of answers.
This is the beginning of the first Article. More benifits for GW than GC.
Health and Amenity Effects of Global Warming
Revised May 30, 1996
(c)Thomas Gale Moore
Senior Fellow
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
JEL Code: J17, J31, Q25
Key Words: Global Warming, Amenity Values, Value of Life, Death Rates.
I would like to thank Michael S. Bernstam, Milton Friedman, Harry Gilman, Kenneth L. Judd, Edward Lazear, Charles G. Moore, and S. Fred Singer for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.
Abstract
A somewhat warmer climate would probably reduce mortality in the United States and provide Americans with valuable benefits. Regressions of death rates in Washington, DC, and in some 89 urban counties scattered across the nation on climate and demographic variables demonstrate that warmer temperatures reduce deaths. The results imply that a 2.5deg. Celsius warming would lower deaths in the United States by about 40,000 per year. Although the data on illness are poor, the numbers indicate that warming might reduce medical costs by about $20 billion annually. Utilizing willingness to pay as a measure of preference, this paper regresses wage rates for a few narrowly defined occupations in metropolitan areas on measures of temperature and size of city and finds that people prefer warm climates. Workers today would be willing to give up between $30 billion and $100 billion annually in wages for a 2.5deg.C increase in temperatures.
Health and Amenity Effects of Global Warming
I. Introduction
Many researchers, environmentalists, and politicians are forecasting that rising world temperatures in the next century will have devastating effects on humans (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, et al. 1991; Mitchell 1991; Cline 1992; Gore 1992; IPCC 1992). Although the calamities are barely spelled out, some scholars and writers have pointed to a warmer climate's being less healthful. Referring to the world as a whole, Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserted (IPCC 1995, p. SPM-10): "Climate change is likely to have wide-ranging and mostly adverse impacts on human health, with significant loss of life." The IPCC report feared that increases in heat waves would cause a rise in deaths from cardiorespiratory complications. It also foresaw a rise in vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and dengue and yellow fevers. The report did acknowledge briefly that in colder regions there would be fewer cold-related deaths.
The few studies that have examined the relation between warming and human health or mortality in depth have focused either on increases in the number of days of very hot weather and the resulting mortality or on the spread of infectious diseases by such vectors as mosquitoes, flies, and snails (Smith and Tirpak 1989; Kalkstein 1991; Stone 1995). Several major studies of the implications of global warming for the United States have neglected or claimed a lack of data on the effects on health or human welfare (National Research Council 1978; Nordhaus 1991; Cline 1992). This study examines the overall effect of climate and, in particular, temperatures on mortality in the United States and the value people put on a warmer environment.
Rarely has any research explored people's preferences for less chilly weather. Given the circumstantial evidence that people prefer warm climates over cold, it is somewhat surprising that the effects of warming on human well-being have essentially been ignored. We do know that many people upon retiring flee to southern and warmer locales. According to a survey of people turning 50 in 1996, almost 40 percent plan to move when they retire and the most important criterion in selecting their destination (40 percent) is a "more favorable climate" (USA Today, May 13, 1996, p. B1). Folklore alleges that physicians sometimes recommend that patients escape to a warmer climate, never to a colder one. Presumably retirees, at least, find that higher temperatures improve their welfare. As air-conditioning has mitigated the rigors of hot summers, the population of the United States has been moving South and West, towards climates that enjoy less extreme cold weather. Most Americans and Canadians taking vacations in the winter head to Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico, Hawaii, or southern California. Exceptions crowd the ski slopes, but they are a minority.
To my knowledge only one study (Hoch and Drake 1974) -- summarized in the U.S. Department of Transportation research described below -- has examined the preferences of people for various climates, an important measure of how weather affects human welfare. Many studies that have examined the quality of life in various urban areas, however, have found that warmer climates were correlated with a willingness to accept lower wages (e.g., Hoch 1974 & 1977; Cropper and Arriaga-Salinas 1980; Cropper 1981; Roback 1982 & 1988; Gyourko and Tracy 1991). As a gauge of preferences, that research and this paper both use workers' willingness to pay for a better climate as measured by the differential in wages among cities.
II. Health Effects
A. Past Research
In the early 1970s, the U.S. Department of Transportation sponsored a series of conferences on climate change that examined, among other things, the effect of climate on health care expenditures and on preferences of workers for various climates. At that time, the government and most observers were concerned about possible cooling of the globe. The Department organized the meetings because it planned to subsidize the development and construction of a large fleet of supersonic aircraft that environmentalists contended would affect the world's climate.
The third gathering, held in February 1974, examined the implications of climate change for the economy and people's well-being and included a study of the costs to human health from cooling, especially any increased expenses for doctors' services, visits to hospitals, and additional medication (Anderson 1974). For that meeting, the Department asked the researchers to consider a cooling of 2deg.C and a warming of 0.5deg.C. Robert Anderson, Jr., the economist who calculated health care outlays, made no estimate of the costs or savings should the climate warm; but his numbers show that for every 5 percent reduction in the annual number of heating degree days, a measure of winter's chill, health care costs would fall by $0.6 billion (1971 dollars).[1] In his paper summarizing the various studies on economic costs and benefits of climate change, Ralph D'Arge (1974), the principal economist involved in the DOT project, indicated that a 10 percent shift in degree days would be equivalent to a 1deg.C change in temperature. Thus the gain in reduced health costs from a warming of 2.5deg.C would be on the order of $3.0 billion in 1971 dollars or $21.7 billion in 1994 dollars, adjusting for population growth and price changes (using the price index for medical care).
A more recent set of studies has focused on excessive mortality related to heat spells in major cities (Bridger and Helfand 1968; Oechsli and Buechley 1970; Ellis 1972; Ellis et al. 1975; Weiner 1984; Kalkstein and Davis 1989; World Health Organization 1990; Kalkstein 1991). These studies have typically found a rise in deaths during periods of very hot weather for certain cities. The results have not, however, applied to all hot spells or to all cities. Work concerned with "killer" heat waves has generally ignored the reduction in mortality that warmer winter months would bring (e.g. Stone 1995).
Continued at;
http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/health.html
