If we didn't care about global warming and climate change what do you think is the worst that can happen?

Question

ocean. animals. polar bears. penguins. mosquitos. illness. temperature. society. adaptaion. glaciers, permafrosts, icelands. floods. hurricanes. earthquakes?. air pollution. be creative. be imaginative. what could be THE WORST THING THAT YOU CAN IMAGINE or THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN IF WE DIDN"T CARE ABOUT ENVIRONMENT/ GLOBAL WARMING / CLIMATE CHANGE?

Answer 1

A slow painful extinction!

Answer 2

On a personal level, I have got over my THE FATE OF THE ENTIRE WORLD DEPENDS ON ME USING LESS CARDBOARD!!!!! style paranoia and I have mellowed and stopped fretting. I can even accept with equanimity the inevitable extinction of tigers, polar bears etc. It's sad - but life and death are both sides of the same coin. I am not going to waste any more of my life worrying about the fate of the planet and I think everyone else should give it up and let the chips fall where they may.
But your question is what is the worst that can happen, and I think we will, in the future, become an even more segregated global society than we have ever been. It will come down to cold, hard cash when it comes to survival. The seas will rise, many species will become extinct causing a disruptive ripple through the remaining species which will last until a new balance is found to suit the nes environment. This has happened mant times in the past and was a natural thing until now.
Land disappearing under the sea will basically destroy countries such as Bangladesh, the Netherlands and the Maldives. There will be epic human migrations, millions of people scrambling to find a safe place to live. This will lead to wars and controlling fascist style states (as they will be the only ones with the balls to controll the situation and try to save themselves) All the wussy liberal countries will be destroyed from within by excessive immigration - breakdown of social services, law and order etc, in other words anarchy.
The most wealthy will opt for independent enclaves like medieval city states, these will be rigidly controlled and protected by their own private militia.
It will be the new Middle Ages and religious fanatisism will prevail over enlightenment. There will be plagues and pogroms. It will be like Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire - the Dark Ages. But as time goes by, things will settle and there will be a new Renaissance, and the cycle will continue.
Our use of this planet is not sustainable we will tip the balance and be forced into a new world order. We will adapt and the fittest will survive.

Answer 3

There have been a prophecy, but instead a report of one of the strongest potentials that existed in our reality. These are events that we could see coming because you are slowly creating them. This is the ability for us to see the potentials of what we are creating that we cannot see. It was that the giant country was going to lose the stability of its largest corporations; the bastions of finance would fall over. It would start with insurance and it did. And it’s important we understand why. There’s no punishment here. These businesses did’t fall over because they were corrupt. Neither did they fall over because they did something wrong. Really, it does not work that way. If that’s the way it worked on Earth, many things would have fallen over a long time ago. Instead, it was the beginning of the seeds of change in finance and banking that spoke of integrity. The consciousness of the masses decided to reinvent the way bankers work their banks, insurance companies work their money. The rules had to change and they are doing so! Many are still wondering what happened. There’s a financial pruning going on within this planet. Now what are we going to do with this information? Can we see the picture here? Have we the courage, the maturity, and the insight to celebrate the recession? Can we say, that we are moving forward with a little more integrity in these things that we thought might even sink us. The conspirators will tell you that this and that are going to happen and we are all doomed. Ironically, the proof, is the recession! There still is no understanding that what we are actually doing is pruning the system for integrity. The United States has a president of color. That wasn’t supposed to happen for many more generations. There simply was too much hatred, too much bias, too many issues and too many problems between races to allow for this. Yet it happened. With all the racial strife, perhaps we wondered how they would ever resolve those racial issues? Yet against all odds, they elected a man of color. This can only happen with a consciousness shift. These are not esoteric events. These are events around us in real life.

Answer 4

I think the earth would do the natural changes as it has done for centuries. I think Global Warming is a scare tactic by Gore to promote his own agenda. I recycle everything possible which will help lessen the landfills. The climate is changing because Earth is evolving as it has been doing for centuries. They predicted an ice age in the 60's. What became of that? Nothing! The chemical factories and oil spills in the air and ocean is most important and be heavily monitored.
The worst thing that would happen is that people would get sick from air pollution but as far as the penguins,bears etc. they will be fine. They will migrate just as in the past.

Answer 5

Seriously--if we continue to produce CO2 at an increasing rate and do nohing to counter the effects?

Our civilization will eventually collapse. That could be centuries, but it would eventually happen. Humanity would survive--a few, at any rate. But we are already seeing the first effects in worsening storms and droughts, floods, etc.

Here's two examples from history/archaeology to illustrate:

a) thousands of years ago, the Sahara was a fertile plain--dry, but much like the savannahs of Africa further south. What happened? Climate change--in that cse natural, of course (though some archaelogists think overgrazing by prehistoric herding societies maight have played a role).

b) Several centuries ago, Easter Island (you know-with the one with the funky stone heads all over the place) was a forested island with a population of about 10,000. The people cut down all (and I mean ALL) the trees--apparently as part of their needing wood rollers to move all those statues tey built. In any event, when the last tree went, they could no longer get food from them--or build boats for fishing,e tc. The population crashed to about 1000 and remained there until the island was eventually found by European explorers.

The point: these were/are ecological disasters that decimated the human population--granted on a localized scale. But global warming is just that--GLOBAL. If we continue on our present self-destructive course for long enough--Easter Island and the Sahara are what we will get. And our civilization cannot withstand that.

Answer 6

I think Cobra has hit the nail right on the head!

The closest I could describe, using movie analogies, would be a combination of "Code 46" and "The Day After Tomorrow": enclaves of uberriche living in blissful ignorance of the world around them in modern city fortresses capable of withstanding the expected natural disasters (the 100 year storm becomes the monthly storm) while the less fortunate eke out a subsistence survival in a VERY harsh ecosystem where natural disasters are an almost daily occurence.

Answer 7

Don't worry, even if we DO care, bad stuff will still happen. For my money, as droughts and frequency of droughts increase, you will start to see people willing to fight over water and or access to arable land.

This is already happening in places like Sudan, Chad and to a limited extent in Mali - already - where once semi-arid regions are becoming intensively desertified.

Janjaweed militias in Sudan and Chad already have an established practice of running tribesmen and non-Islamic villagers from their villages and fields. They have even taking to attacking Islamic villages after harvest-time.

While small-scale wars are currently in progress and like most wars stem from a combination of factors, religious, ethnic or other reasons, increasingly regional climate change will cause groups to fight. I suspect that we will see major regional wars and possibly limited theater wide conflicts as a DIRECT result of resource limiting problems - whether it's water or persistent malnutrition or "need for expanded territory" or whatever the "reason".

Very likely within the next 20-30 years we will see at least one nuclear exchange between regional powers, most likely Pakistan and some other nation - whether India or one of the Russian Republics or another or China is another question.

Answer 8

I wrote a prologue to a story I was thinking about writing that was the worst scenario I could come up with to drive people into caves to live for hundreds of years.

It included:

Major Volcanos: Such as Yellowstone erupting

Earthquakes on fault lines we didn't know exsisted.

Perfect storms

And of course Nuclear War.

Answer 9

the worst thing that could happen is that we pretend we care, but actually do not.

as a result all these things you mention may happen, but the worst will be the human response to scarcity of recourses, which throughout history always has been the same: war.

however, there are a lot of creative, innovative minds around and many people do care these days. history also learns that it is possible to change the course of direction with new policies and inventions.

Answer 10

the worst thing that could happen is a low oxygen content in the atmosphere and everything would die, but that will never happen. the worst thing besides that is stronger hurricanes and earthquakes well all weather related disasters would magnified and on top of it all New Orleans would be flooded all the time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 11

It doesn't help people to understand the reality of this, if we exaggerate the effects. It's not going to kill us all. But the reality is bad enough to demand action.

It won't be a Hollywood movie style disaster. Gradually coastal areas will flood and agriculture will be damaged. But it will be very bad. Rich countries will cope, but it will take huge amounts of money. In poor countries many people will die of starvation, but not all of them. The best scientific analysis is here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL052735320070407
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf

Most scientists say, in 20-50 years. But we need to start right now to fix it, fixing it will take even longer than that.

Really good website for more information here:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

If you really want a "reasonable worst case scenario" Gore's movie is pretty close.