Last edited Sat Sep 7, 2013, 08:01 PM - Edit history (1)
4* - 5* C by 2100 will prune the population by more than half. Those temps bake in 6*-10* C by 2150. At 6*C a few who go underground with some infrastructure might survive for a generation, but they will have nothing above ground to replenish their supplies and technology. At 8* - 10*, if life isn't similar to the molds that grow in geysers at Yellowstone, it will be history. Mammals sure don't have a future at those temperatures, and today's supporting eco systems will not be recognizable.
Thermal equilibrium will take some time and many more degrees before the effects of todays sequestered carbon have become a part of the upper limits of the thermal inertia, then and only then, cooling will begin. The earth might be fit for similar forms of life we experience today, in a few million years. If one is interested in this cycle, there is much to be learned from the geologic history and ice cores that have been studied in the past half century.
What can interrupt this and save us? Perhaps a limited asteroid impact or other natural episode that clouds our atmosphere such that another ice age begins very soon, and is not so severe it causes our immediate extinction. That would forcefully reduce the population until perhaps some humans could colonize the warmer areas not covered by too hostile an environment and climate. The question of our present civilization continuing on, well, I've never been able to imagine a scenario that ends well for our present dilemma.
I just don't feel scientists have what it takes to geo engineer a solution, or the sophistication in geo politics to allow peaceful attempts. Nature is too complex in the first case, humans are not socially, emotionally or spiritually evolved to the point where the second seems remotely possible.
One thing is certain to me, a democrat or republican, a capitalist, socialist or communist will not solve this problem. An anarchist would never try. That leaves the crap shoot of cause and effect, of whatever comes our way.
Find a comfortable place to watch with non attachment.
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