What We Know About Climate Change by Kerry Emanuel

The book titled What We Know About Climate Change by Kerry Emanuel addresses human and natural forcings that are placed on the environment that affect climate change. The most important passages in this text took place in chapter five. In chapter five, Emanuel teaches the reader about the “consequential” and slight “benefits” of intense climate and carbon dioxide increases. Some of the benefits include “less energy [use] to heat buildings, previously infertile lands of high latitudes will start producing crops, and there will be less suffering from debilitating cold waves” (Emanuel, 48). Less energy will be used in particular activities, crops will be able to grow in places that they usually wouldn’t be grown, and people will be less likely to suffer from unbearable cold weather, but these benefits do not compare to the consequences. The consequences are much more serious and dangerous to the human species. Some of the consequential affects that Emanuel refers to are based on what high sea level increases will do to land, and how warming sea surfaces have already began to affect the world. If sea levels increase, flooding will occur on coastal regions. Some regions will be underwater and no longer apart of the world. However, warming of sea levels brought “the most active hurricane seen in 150 years of records” in the year of 2005. This was known as Hurricane Katrina.

Unless, Emanuel argues, a positive feedback occurs, these consequences will eventually take place. However, she also argues that these consequences can happen quicker if something unexpected happens that was not originally studied. This is called a negative feedback. The benefits are not so much of a benefit, when the consequences also apply. This is the most important passage to me because global warming is only important when the affects of it are known. Otherwise people would not be so concerned with it, if global warming did not affect the world that humans reside.