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Originally Posted by
jimmac 
You realize of course by posting this you're admitting it's real?
Hardly, I am pointing out that three governments in control of Arctic resources believe thawing is real and that warming will provide the world with vast new resources. The link you provided was just biased and hysterical axe-grinding, underscoring the thread's title.
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Also what good will all that wealth be if we're starving to death?
We won't be starving to death - we will be dead, as will our children and grandchildren. These dire predictions are about what will happen by 2100, based on a single speculative factor.
Rest assured, an estimate made by experts in 1907 on the World's projected population, farm employment, productivity, human wealth, and the world state of human food production by 2000 would likey have been just as amusingly short-sighted as your source's 2007 gloomy prediction on 2100.
Consider that in 1907 American farmers used iron plows pulled by horses and mules, dry farming was new, and gang plowing was an "innovation". Genetics, cross-breeding, etc. was a primitive science. 33 percent of the American population made a living in agriculture - and it took 1 farmer to support 2 others.
In 2000 only 3 percent of the population is in agriculture. Each farmer now grows enough food for 100 others. Scores of new hybrids, strains, and species of plant are in production - along with new variants in animal livestock. Giant combines and tractors, combined with plant science and new land uses have revolutionized agricultural production. And biotech crops are emerging while farmers use satellite technology to track and plan their farming.
So is there any reason to suppose the agricultural (and industrial) revolution that started in the 1700's won't continue to raise rates of productivity? Farm production in the year 2100 is likely to be as superior to current farming and production as 2000 farming is from the farming practices of 1907. Whatever differences a few degrees will make in impact is nothing compared to the prior challenges presented by the conquest of the great plains (the American Desert of extreme drought, cold, heat, and storms) and development of many fold productivity rates.
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Also the loss forever of several species of plant and animal?
Many times more plant and animal species have been lost in the last 3 centuries due to man's activities than will ever be attributed to the northern climate growing milder. Land use has forever transformed the world environmental ecology into a shadow of its former self: Europe has no virgin forests and is either farmland or urban centers. The U.S. has only a few percent of virgin forests, the great hardwood forest that once extended unbroken from the east coast to the great plains is gone. The great plains prairie has been plowed under. Non-native species around the world have also destroyed habitats for flora and fauna. Africa's great rain-forests are mainly gone, and the Amazon is dying from development.
If I step out my door and look beyond the burbs I see nearly 100 percent of the perennial native grasslands of California eradicated by European annuals - gone is the California grizzly, American elms, American Chestnuts, wolves and passenger pigeons.
Global warming will a very late stage and minor factor to the world-wise demise of flora and fauna ...already well-underway.
