The world has been warmer than this in the past. Much warmer. So it depends on what timescale you want to use. Life already exists here, and life is the thing that allows this unstable mix of gases we call an atmosphere to exist together.
The mistake many people make is to think that the end result will be a dead, sand-blasted, Mad Max apocalyptic Earth with people running around in fur bikinis armed with knives. That's not likely to happen. It's far more likely that the North Atlantic Conveyor will shut down — almost like an emergency safety valve on a boiler. Ordinary maintenance feedback hasn't worked, so the big guns come into play. Once the Conveyor shuts down we get some form of ice growth, increasing albedo and putting the brakes on the warming (although how this happens exactly depends on what El Nino is up to and also a few more cosmic cycles such as solar activity and Precession).
What global warming really means is that the human species is taking the direct route to hell by way of a handbasket held together with second-rate sticky tape. We're busy wiping out top predators and their environmental niches, so completely fucking the ecosystem as we know it. But there have been mass extinctions before. Evolution will, eventually, take care of that. Where there is a niche for a large top predator, a large top predator will evolve. It's not going to be a land of ants, scorpions and cyanobacteria.
What it won't be is nice for humans. We're going to come under greater and greater pressure as things heat up. Look at what they're calling the "credit crunch" and look at the hardship it is causing. One of the big drivers behind that is the price of oil. Hey look! Fundamentally this is a closed system and when critical resources get scarce competition becomes rife in the population, with the weaker members being outcompeted. That we're doing it financially is a reflection of what makes a human organism "fit" within human culture. With global warming that pressure is going to be felt in areas even more fundamental. Food. Clean water. Land on which to live and cultivate food.
It won't be like in the movies. There won't be any of the heroism or the romance. It's going to be dirty, petty, miserable and selfish.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-09-25 09:34 am (UTC)The mistake many people make is to think that the end result will be a dead, sand-blasted, Mad Max apocalyptic Earth with people running around in fur bikinis armed with knives. That's not likely to happen. It's far more likely that the North Atlantic Conveyor will shut down — almost like an emergency safety valve on a boiler. Ordinary maintenance feedback hasn't worked, so the big guns come into play. Once the Conveyor shuts down we get some form of ice growth, increasing albedo and putting the brakes on the warming (although how this happens exactly depends on what El Nino is up to and also a few more cosmic cycles such as solar activity and Precession).
What global warming really means is that the human species is taking the direct route to hell by way of a handbasket held together with second-rate sticky tape. We're busy wiping out top predators and their environmental niches, so completely fucking the ecosystem as we know it. But there have been mass extinctions before. Evolution will, eventually, take care of that. Where there is a niche for a large top predator, a large top predator will evolve. It's not going to be a land of ants, scorpions and cyanobacteria.
What it won't be is nice for humans. We're going to come under greater and greater pressure as things heat up. Look at what they're calling the "credit crunch" and look at the hardship it is causing. One of the big drivers behind that is the price of oil. Hey look! Fundamentally this is a closed system and when critical resources get scarce competition becomes rife in the population, with the weaker members being outcompeted. That we're doing it financially is a reflection of what makes a human organism "fit" within human culture. With global warming that pressure is going to be felt in areas even more fundamental. Food. Clean water. Land on which to live and cultivate food.
It won't be like in the movies. There won't be any of the heroism or the romance. It's going to be dirty, petty, miserable and selfish.