How do I deal with the idea that 4 to 5 BILLION people will die in my lifetime resulting from climate change??

Question

All the scientific evidence says that if we continue burning fossil fuels, the greenhouse effect will increase, the polar icecaps will melt, and sea levels will rise 40 feet everywhere. 200 million people will become refuges.

All the scientific evidence says that if we continue burning fossil fuels, the oceans will continue absorbing that carbon, the oceans will become warmer and more acidic, and storms will become more severe and more frequent everywhere. The super cells depicted on "The Day After Tomorrow" are unrealistically extreme, but atleast 2 new catagories of hurricane will be established, and the Fujita scale for tornadoes will become obsolete. Millions will die globally every year in disasters.

All the scientific evidence says that if we continue burning fossil fuels, the percentage of methane in the atmosphere will increase proportionally, which will fuel bushfires and forest fires globally, increasing their intensity, speed, range, and frequency.

The list goes on.

Great answers everyone. Keep em coming. I'm having a great laugh out of this! Thanks for the hilarious answers from Just Moveon.org U Lo…, osborne_pkg, 55Spud. Also, thanks for the support from PG, and the intelligent responses from tonalc1, JOHN WALKUP, IngelaD, jake, afratta437.

Toniac1: The calculated mass of land-based ice at the north and south poles, if melted, would raise sea levels by a combined height of at least 40 feet, and this does not take high altitude glaciers or desalination into account. Good call with the number of deaths though.

JOHNNIE B: One of the effects of climate change is freak changes to weather patterns, including seasonal variations like what it sounds like you're experiencing.

osborne_pkg: Average temperatures would fall dramatically as ice melts, because of the feedback loop of liquid's ability to absorb solar heat.

afratta437: The ice age of the North Atlantic is still expected to happen when the thermohaline current shuts down.

Finally some decent answers!!
Steve E: True, everyone dies. And it is not a given that it will continue, but almost all predictions say it will advance FASTER than current records indicate, including many sudden shocks preceeded by long calms.
You're also right about the biofuels, except that you seem to be promoting hydro and nuclear which are proven to be equally as ineffective because the environmental footprint is more difficult to observe.
You are very much correct that we, on a mass scale, must learn new habits of energy conservation and mitigation.

niffoc14: You believe the solution lies in political will, and there is nothing wrong with that. I would suggest, however, that if the voting public are not aware of the situation they have created, they will have no reason to vote in people willing to react appropriately to this climate crisis.
Your understanding of Greenland is significantly flawed though. I strongly sugest you look into "Greenland moulins" ASAP.

See, the current belief in scientific circles is that the moulins that are allowing surface meltwater down to the bedrock of Greenland will cause lubrication of the ice sheets, resulting in significant movement. These ice sheets are hundreds of feet high, and with such a huge mass of ice moving and rubbing against another huge mass of ice creating friction, earthquakes are a common result. All of this has been observed, recorded, and proven as detailed.
The ensuing belief from this is that as surface meltwater lubricates the bedrock, more movement and more intense earthquakes will shake the outer edges of the sheet enough to break or shatter the mass, dropping chunks into the water. The NAC will probably not stop suddenly, but rather slow down gradually as desalination of the deep sea flow makes the water lighter and warmer. The early indications that this is happening have also been observed and recorded, with current flow at it's lowest average speed for decades.

Answer 1

Climate change is indeed serious and does have potentially devastating consequences but things are perhaps not as bad as you depict.

The number of people who will die is a much smaller number. Currently global warming claims 150,000 lives a year, a figure expected to double by 2030 and reach one million by 2100 (World Health Organisation). There will be similar increases in the number of people affected by diseases as a consequence of global warming; currently the figure is 10 million a year and is expected to reach up to 50 million a year.

More worrying than the melting of the Arctic ice is the melting of the Greenland and Antractic Ice Sheets - at least in terms of the human population it is.

The Arctic Ice Cap is floating and thus already displacinjg it's own mass of water, were it to melt completley there would be no change in sea levels. The most recent analysis indicates the Arctic is melting quicker than previously thought and suggests that in about 40 years the Arctic ice will melt completely each summer.

Sea levels are now rising by 3mm a year, the rate of rise is increasing and it's expected that by the turn of the century they'll have risen by 750mm. Whilst this may not sound a great deal it's enough to completely submerge many island communities (the highest point in the Maldives for example is just 800mm above sea level) and a rise of this magnitude would displace hundreds of millions of people, notably in poor regions such as Bangladesh and India.

We know that the frequency and intensity of storms is increasing and that they're now occuring over a wider area than previously happened. It's probable that global warming is a contributory factor, but unlike other aspects of climate change, the correlation between storm activity and global warming isn't so clear, it's possible that there are as yet unidentified factors involved.

A few months ago I prepeared a report outlining the consequences of climate change. It's been uploaded in summarised format here - http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/effects.html

Answer 2

First - everyone that is alive right now will die someday from something. It is not a given that the current trend in greenhouse gas emissions will continue, nor will it necessarily result in catastrophe. I don't like the current reliance on fossil fuels, as you don't - my suggestion is to get very educated on how we use fuels, and figure out how to do something different. For example, look at the true 'thermodynamics' of ethanol use - it is not a panecea for reducing fossil fuel use as it takes almost as much energy to process corn/other stuff into useable fuel as it recovers. There are very few technologies that actually have a very small environmental footprint - even 'clean' stuff like hydroelectric has a definate environmental footprint. I don't see wind and solar replacing large generation fossil units, however hydro and nuclear can and should be used - the key to solving this is a deep understanding of how and where we use and produce energy, and then using that knowledge to change our processes in a constructive way.

Answer 3

what i think will happen is we all die in yours or my lifetime but alot may die from flooding in low places like parts of england and netherlands. there will be more hurricanes and more natural disaster which of course will lead to death but it wont wipe out the whole human race. u suffer from i dont know but i also feel this way and i am sure a lot of others think this too. the only way to prevent this from happening is voting in the right presidents and prijme ministers who have said they will make ppl change there lifestyle too live a low useage of fossil fuels and carbon. the one thing i am worried about at the moment is when greenland melts it will creat a huge lake and when it bursts its banks it will stop the north atlantic current thus sending britian into a ice age. another point is the dry places wil get ddryer and the wet wetter so more floods and more drought yipee not

Answer 4

I believe in global warming and think it's a serious threat but fortunately you're being miss lead about those figures.

We don't know the exact consequences from continue to emit as much or more carbon dioxide as we do now and it will probably be serious. Saying 4 to 5 billion will die during your lifetime is not scientific but just scare tactics of the worst of the worst of the worst scenarios and doesn't benefit the global warming cause at all. It only makes people either angry or makes them loose hope.

Answer 5

"All the scientific evidence says that if we continue burning fossil fuels, the percentage of methane in the atmosphere will increase proportionally, which will fuel bushfires and forest fires globally, increasing their intensity, speed, range, and frequency."

That's a new one on me. Do you have a citation for that?

Is the reference to 4 to 5 billion meant to get our attention? That number is inflated. (Though if it were 1/100th that is still a huge number and may well start to approach the potential real number)

Can you tell I am a scientist? I answer questions with questions.

Answer 6

I see you are following the advice of global warming alarmists:

Scientist’s need “to get some broader based
support, to capture the public’s imagination...that,
of course, entails getting loads of media coverage.
So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make
simplified dramatic statements, and make little
mention of any doubts we may have…each of us
has to decide what the right balance is between
being effective and being honest.
Stephen Schneider, Senior Fellow at the Center for Environment Science and Policy of
the Institute for International Studie, and Professor by Courtesy in the Department of Civil
and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, Discover Magazine.

Job well done!!!

Answer 7

The average temperture of the Antarctic is -55C. If the temperature gets warm enough to melt the polar ice caps, that means the average temperature of the earth will have to go up about 55 degrees Celcuis. If thats the case, the last thing you will have to worry about is drowning.

Answer 8

You could take solace in the fact that during that same time frame, at least 4 to 5 billion people will be born in China. Since they are the major contributors to Global Warming, it only seems fair that they should be the ones who replace all the people who die from it.

Answer 9

Yea, it reminds my of when the scientific evidence showed that planes would drop out of the sky, power plants would stop generating, banks would lose money, the stock market would crash, water would stop flowing to you tap, toasters would fail to work, cars wouldn't start, gas pumps would run dry, all because of the Y2K computer bug.


The scientific consensus was that this was going to be a major problem that would take years to resolve.

Still nothing happened. The same is true with so called global warming.....

Answer 10

The scientific evidence does not say any of those things except that melting the polar caps would raise the sea level (it has in the past). The rest of that's baloney.