If Global Warming is warming the earth a couple degrees every 100 years...?

Question

...then why are we in such a rush? Certainly in 500 years when its a balmy 10 degrees hotter we will have made enough progress to have figured out the problem, so we does it seem like people are freaking out telling us we have to act immediately? Why not make it a slow long drawn out process of taking better care of the earth, as oppose to a rush job that potentially causes a lot of economic harm?

Answer 1

Yea, we should at least wait till the temps get as high as they did during the Medieval Warming Period.

It was about 10deg warmer 1000 years ago.

Answer 2

A couple of degrees doesn't sound much does it but nature is very finely balanced. A one degree rise in temperatures can turn ice in to water, it's the trigger that starts migrations, signals hibernation, it's the difference between a dry day and a wet day, a flood and a drought, plants growing or not growing, animals surviving or becoming extinct.

If we take freezing point as a baseline then a 2 degree rise in temperature is the same as a 14% rise in temperature, the difference now becomes more apparent.

There is a need to act immediately. So far America and Europe have been spared the worst of the effects of global warming and less than half a million people have died as a result. Go to Africa and Asia and it's a very different story. Here many millions of people have been directly affected as a result of famines, floods, droughts, desertification, rising sea levels etc.

There is already a massive economic impact. Sir Nicholas Stern the former Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank calculated that global warming is presently costing the world $600 billion a year, a figure that's expected to rise to $4.2 trillion a year of nothing is done. Most of the time we don't notice these costs - $0.10 on a loaf of bread to make up for crop failures, $10 on annual insurance premiums to cover extra losses through floods, $5 on taxes to pay for the cost of fire departments tackling wild fires. These things go unnoticed because they're just one part of a larger cost but when they're all added together the cost is substantial.

Global warming made it onto the world stage in 1988, in 20 years we've done almost nothing to prevent it getting worse. We've put it off for long enough, the costs are spiralling, lives are being lost, the damage is mounting. If we don't act now things are going to get much worse.

Answer 3

A couple of degrees may not sound like a lot, but it is.

A couple of degrees hotter will cause the Greenland Ice Sheet to melt, which will raise sea levels by 23 feet.

A couple of degrees hotter will kill almost all the coral reefs in the oceans.

A couple of degrees hotter will cause more droughts, heat waves, water shortages, food shortages, etc.

A couple of degrees hotter will turn the oceans into net carbon emitters instead of carbon absorbers, because CO2 is less soluble in hotter water. Thus the greenhouse effect will get even worse and the planet will get even hotter. There are a number of feedbacks like this which will make global warming almost impossible to stop if the planet gets a couple degrees hotter.

A couple of degrees hotter is a big change. Ice ages are only about 7°C colder than right now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

And the average temperature of the planet hasn't been more than 1.5°C different than it is now over the past 10,000 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

Answer 4

Here is just one big problem - Many areas on earth have long term weather systems, which are susceptible to the slightest change in temperature. Take the huge ice mass on the north pole. Just 2 Degrees more can melt most of it and in sequence stop the warm water conveyor belt, which brings warm water from the Pacific and Africa to Europe. If that happens, Europe will be colder then Alaska, Africa will be a total Desert and the Pacific will heat up, most likely causing the whole West Coast of the USA to scorch year round to death.

Answer 5

The global temperatures only drop roughly 5 degrees C during an ice age. So ten degrees hotter would be a huge difference.

Answer 6

Let me tell u it is getting hotter by the year!!! Last year in Hong Kong is much more cooler with only about a handful of day's that the temp gets over 30 degrees Celsius. But now it's been days and the temp never droped. Atleast in Tai Po.

Answer 7

Because it's exponential. It increases by a larger amount every 100 years or so. It may be 2 degrees one century, than 4 the next.

In 500 years, it could be a 30 degree increase instead of 10.

I don't know the actual projection though...

Answer 8

Man, by your line of thinking, maybe we could just wait for another ice age to come around! Then we wouln't have to worry at all! Let's just stick our heads in the sand and continue pillaging the planet! We won't be around when it all goes to heck, anyway.

Answer 9

If we start heading towards a solution I suspect that it'll take about 500 years to implement, judging by many of the population

Answer 10

I agree. Thanks for pointing this out. I only hope that message could be heard around the world. Does China and India care about global warming?