Will global warming ever make the earth uninhabitable?

Question

If so, is there a way to keep that from happening?

Answer 1

Uninhabitable? You mean for humans? Possibly. For all life in general? No.

Answer 2

I find it funny people are saying it will become uninhabitable for humans. If you look at humans we are the ONLY animal on this planet able to survive in any climate or environment with little support or technology except underwater, but we have subs that allow us to exist under water for extended periods.

Humans are very adaptable creatures so I don’t know why people are wigging out.

65 million years ago the earth was hotter and wetter than it is now and life existed, and it will continue to exist, short of a cataclysmic event like a massive meteor strike or full out nuclear war.

Obviously there is plenty we can do to improve air quality but there is no need to worry about the atmosphere becoming so toxic that it wipes out life, it would take a whole lot more toxins than we are currently able to produce.

Answer 3

even however uninhabitable the earth could substitute into, Mars is lots worse. many human beings think of leaving the earth is a probable selection to a minimum of one catastrophe or yet another, even yet it fairly is not. There may well be a time whilst a small social gathering of people might bypass out on some relocation venture or area colony, if truth be told rescuing "the species," yet for the billions left on the earth, it would be a protracted and depressing extinction technique.

Answer 4

For human beings, most definitly. Things like bacteria and small organisms like insects will most likely survive. Global warming will bring such a drastic change in environments that not many things will be able to live.

But there is a way to stop that now, and some people actually are. Green house gas emissions need to be drastically reduced, cleaner energy sources etc will really bring down the deterioration of the atmosphere. It is mankind's fault that this is occuring, and I think we're the only ones that have the ability to stop it.

Answer 5

Making the Earth totally uninhabitable would require enough energy to boil off the atmosphere. If nothing was done to stop the production of green house gasses, or to use the excess heat being trapped by them it IS theoretically possible.

Currently the rate of increase of "temperature" is not as great as the rate of increase of energy due to Latent Heat of Fusion of the polar ice caps. But once all ice turns to water then the temperature will increase faster until it reaches 100 deg, then you have to provide the Latent Heat of Vaporization to boil it all.

The atmosphere would expand to the point that solar winds would overcome the force of gravity and Earth would become the twin of Mars.

In the meantime, get used to bad weather. Every deg C rise in the ocean temperature = 1.3 billion atomic bombs (see the question 326,000,000 X ... ) and the expression of that increased energy is increasingly severe weather.

What can we do:

US DOE is working on CO2 burial and H2 gas commercial production, others are working on "mining" the energy in the ocean through wave and tidal power. Both cases require trillions of dollars to build the infrastructure WORLDWIDE, not just the US. 6 billion people / $7 trillion estimate = $1166 per person on the planet.

What can YOU do? Tell your government to stop wasting money, energy and lives in oil wars around the world and use your tax money to fund programs such as those mentioned above to reverse the damage done by burning it. If they refuse, vote them out or toss them in jail for crimes against humanity.

What am I doing? I am working desperately to get products to market that will help you reduce your carbon footprint and reduce the amount of energy people waste.

Answer 6

For many animal and plant species YES, many require very specific temperatures to be able to reproduce and live adequately, and the more fragile of these will not be able to adapt as quickly as the environment. For us? That I don't know but I am very concerned that whatever we do to make ourselves more comfortable with the change may also have a harmful impact. I think we have created a civilisation that has incredible inertia and I sadly doubt our ability to halt and reverse our actions. Every time we mess with nature, we create unknown forwarding problems.
These environmental issues are THE most important thing right now. WE put the planet in jepardy, WE need to try and save our grandchildren from a dismal future we cannot contemplate.

Answer 7

The sun will supernova and toast the earth but that won't happen for millions of years. The best way to prevent the global warming that's happening now is to turn down the sun because that's what's doing it.

Answer 8

Uninhabitable for us as humans maybe. I don't think there is a way to keep it from happening, as scientists have already indicated that the course has been charted in that directions and it'll take decades to reverse.

I think we have to do what we can now to reduce emissions to salvage whatever future we can secure for our great grandchildren perhaps.

I think we need contingency plans for every city on how to deal with the climate change as it is now and prepare for its impact.

Answer 9

I hear the bible says that the earth will be destroyed by fire. . .I think that's a fairly extreme example of global warming, and unpreventable, if the prediction is accurate.
More to what was on your mind, the legislation required to reduce emissions by the required amount would cost (it seems I hear it this way) upwards of $1 000 000 per American, and we as a nation are not willing to spend that much to enforce laws that tell us we can't do something.

Answer 10

Not likely. There's no need to exaggerate the problem of global warming. The reality is bad enough.

Coastal areas will see flooding and agriculture will be damaged by changing patterns of precipitation and temperature. Rich countries will spend billions of dollars coping. They will have to relocate people and replace lost infrastructure. They will have to change the way agriculture is done in various places and build huge new irrigation systems. The result will likely be a worldwide economic depression.

Poor countries will be unable to cope. Millions will die of starvation, due to damage to agriculture including salt water intrusion in low lying farm land.

We're not all going to die. But it will still be the worst disaster in human history.