As someone else noted, global temperatures in Earth's past history have been quite a bit higher than today. Even with all the green house gas additions, there are probably episodes in Earth history where natural out gassings have raised CO2 levels just as rapidly as we are experiencing today and at least some life forms adopted.
That doesn't mean we should ignore this problem or that there aren't going to be significant consequences for life on this planet due to our lack of action because there will. My concern is economic. If Greenland and Antarctic ice melts catastrophically in the next few decades some prime real-estate is going to become worthless and our banking system is going to have to deal with a significant write down; I could also see lots of prime farmland becoming worthless as climate changes adding more onto the other problem. That's my worry because we won't be able to deal with this problem if our economic system suffers something similar to what happened during the Great Depression times 20.
Right now off the coast of the NE US there are several thousands of megawatt producing wind farms in the planning stages. This administration is doing its best to slow these projects down and fast-track gas development and combined cycle gas plant development. To have this much renewable energy off the coast of some of the highest populated areas in the US will do a lot to reduce our fossil fuel habit and may actually show if these type of projects can function on a big grid.
I'm very hopeful and slightly curious to see how this "race" turns out. Do the natural gas combined cycle plants in Pennsylvania get built and tied into the grid before these big wind farms of the eastern sea board get built? Whoever comes in first will probably put the other out of business or in the case of these wind farms, make sure they never get built. Interesting times these are.
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