If nothing was done to stop global warming how bad would it get?
The ice on the poles will melt and flood vast amounds of landmass.
Climate changes will render fertile soil useless.
Famine, disease, and complete stagnation of all economic activity will occur. Civil wars, triggered by land owners will activate all possible weapons available. Decimation of population will occur, and climate will finally restabilize due absence of industry and other activities.
I’m so tired of the notion that if the ice caps melted oceans would rise to the mountains. The cap at the South Pole would melt and add to the water level.
However the ice at the North Pole would actually decrease the levels. Fill a glass with ice and water to the top, let it melt and you’ll see this work.
Also, if the South Pole was ever hot enough to melt the ice, we would have been long gone by then. Besides, evolution is more than able to adapt life to a few degrees of change every century (which still isn’t proven). I for one am not so conceited to think we can destroy a planet. Nature will take care of all of us one way or the other.
Zweistein General Questions is for factual answers, not ludicrous scaremongering.
For example you state that “Famine… will occur.” That is not supported by any reputable agency I’ve ever seen. For example the Economic Research department of the USDA says “Another critical component of natural resources is the earth’s atmosphere, a global resource that is beingmodified by human activities on an unprecedented scale (IPCC, 1990). Most notable are emissions of carbondioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels, which are associated with global warming and its possible effectson the location, productivity, and variability of agricultural production. Given the potential for farmers to adaptover time, global warming is not expected to constitute a threat to food production on a global scale, althoughsome resource-poor regions, particularly those in tropical latitudes, may suffer reductions in food availabilityand access”
Similarly your claim that “complete stagnation of all economic activity will occur” is basically rubbish not believed by anyone moderate on the entire planet. The IPCC has established best and worst cases for economic trends, and the worst case still predicts economic growth, not stagnation. “The A1 scenario family, with a global GDP of US$520 to 550 trillion in 2100, delineates the SRES upper bound, whereas the A2 and B2 scenarios, with a range of US$230 to 250 trillion in 2100, represent its lower bound. The B1 scenario family is intermediary.”: IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, 2001
I may have just been whooshed, but if you are going to post stuff like this in GQ you could at least include a smilie. Someone might think what you are posting is true.
Unfortunately this question has no real factual answer. The IPCC has produced 40+ possible scenarios for what might happen, grouped into 4 different classes. If you want the best gusses by the world’s leading experts then you can find the scenarios here: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/emission/114.htm
It is sufficient to say that things won’t be all doom and gloom. What global warming will basically do is shunt things around and cause some turmoil at worst. There will be more deaths form malaria in some areas, but less deaths in others. There will be more deaths from heat, more than counterbalanced by fewer deaths form cold. Some areas will become more productive with higher temperatures and higher rainfall, some will get less rain and heat waves.
There are to serious problems IMO. Animals and plants to move with changes in climate because hey are trapped on ‘islands’. The other problem is that all scenarios show a disproportionate share of the burden being heaped onto developing nations who can least afford to deal with them.
assumeing all global warming comes from burning natural resources (oil, coal, natural gas), which isn’t accurate but is a good majority of where it comes from.
assumeing that it can make the world no worse than it was when all the carbon dioxide and such was in the air before it got stuck being oil and coal and all that fun stuff.
Well, look at the planet Venus for an example of runaway global warming. Temperatures exceed 500 degrees there, and lead is a liquid element on the surface. Could that happen here? Unknown.
“Melting of the West Antarctica part of the Antarctic ice sheet alone could cause a worldwide sea-level rise of approximately 8 m. The potential sea-level rise after melting of the entire Antarctic ice sheet is estimated to be 73 m.”
Source: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs50-98/
“Estimated potential maximum sea-level rise from the total melting of present-day glaciers: 80.32 meters”
Source: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/
Wouldn’t global warming result in more water vapor in the air? Does anyone have figures for how much water would be added to the air as the temperature increased?
What about the reports that we are right on the edge of another ice age?
Why wouldn’t warmer temperatures and more water increase food production?
We are increasing the temperature relatively rapidly by burning fossil fuels; I doubt that we would melt Antartica but it is possible, and it would raise the sea level by about 80 metres, as said before.
However, this warming is against the long term trends. We are actually in an interglacial period of an ice age.
The very long term trend for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is downward, so that over the next few tens of millions of years glacial periods will become ore frequent and the Earth will become colder.
In a hundred million years or so the trend will be reversed as the sun increases in luminosity on its gradual path to becoming a red giant in 5 billion years time.
Really we need to maintain fine control over the carbon balance to prevent freezing or flooding. And the atmosphere is still not understood well enough to do this very well.
SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html
Whether water level rises or falls when ice melts depends on a number of things, including whether the ice is freely floating, and the relative salt content of both ice and water. For ice floes floating in the ocean, yes, their melting would increase the volume of seawater. On the other hand, global warming could actually increase snowfall and ice buildup in Antarctica, by putting more moisture in the air, and lock up more water in ice, lowering the sea level. Can’t wait to find out.
I’m also not worried about “destroying the planet”; I just want future generations of humans to have a decent environment.
Well…in about 5 billion years or so our sun will expand in size sufficiently to engulf the earth. That is…the earth will actually be orbting inside the sun. The ultimate in global warming! 
First of all, what is “normal” for the earth? Just because our weather has been reasonably consistant for the last 5,000 years of recorded history is meaningless. That’s still the blink of an eye in the overall age of the earth.
If the earth gets warmer and drier, really bad things could happen. If it gets warmer and wetter, then the earth could turn back into the huge tropical paridise that some think it was during the age of the dinosaurs.
Some people think that the earth is a bit off on its weather right now because the solar system is passing through a dusty area of the milky way. Some people think that there are very delicate balances in the movement of deep ocean currents, and that if we upset these just a little bit we’re headed for another ice age. Some people even think that the current warming trend is a natural occurance and would have happened whether or not we pumped millions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere. One thing is for certain. People who claim that pollution is causing global warming and that if we don’t stop it soon we’re all gonna die really don’t have enough evidence yet to back up their claim. It certainly can’t be a good thing to dump all of this pollution into the air, but we don’t understand the earth well enough to say exactly what we are doing to it.
Well, the flaw in that logic is that Venus is 30 million miles closer to the sun, which of course makes it hotter. Astronomers still are trying to figure out what “triggered” the current Venusian climate, or if indeed it was ever Earth-like to begin with. As of right now, they don’t have a clue.
Plus, I think that if it were even possible for a Venus-like “runaway greenhouse effect” to happen on Earth, it would have already happened. The Earth has gone through much hotter stages with much denser, carbon dioxide-rich atmospheres, and if nothing in its 4½ billion year history has triggered it, I can’t see how a relatively minor “human infestation” can trigger it. You know, Law of Entropy and all that.
Sometimes I entertain the theory that our species originated on Venus, and became highly advanced and technological (moreso than 21st Century Earth society), but in the process “triggered” a cataclysmic greenhouse effect that ultimately destroyed the planet, and the survivors were forced to fly to Earth, mate with a few monkey-like bipeds, and in the process wound up forgetting everything about technology and our Venusian History. But that’s getting waaayy outside GQ… 
Seriously though, to suggest that Earth may someday turn into Venus, is at best misguided, and at worst pure scaremongering.
i posted what’s below a long time ago in GD, i’d like to throw it out again.
maybe this piece of anecdotal evidence could be analyzed by someone w/ more info in this field, but i like to look at it like this…
plant life originated before animal life. during the time that plant life existed by itself, it converted atmospheric CO2 into oxygen, possibly keeping carbon for itself during this metabolic cycle.
after several hundred million yrs, after this plant life settled in sediment & formed oil deposits, we now burn this back into the atmosphere.
i think it might be possible that the amount of CO2 released as a result of burning hydrocarbons finally results in an atmospheric CO2 level close to what the earth had before the wide-scale proliferation of animals or possibly plants.
I don’t think so Clu. IIRC most of the ‘lost’ carbon has been tied up in limestine and other rock deposits. The amount of fossil fuel material is relatively small in comparison.
This would also be true for Greenland’s ice sheet, which is nearly completely above sea level.
The figures given in subsequent posts would indicate a ruse in sea level of about 260 feet – any spot below 260 feet (~80 meters) above sea level would be undersea. This would flood a good deal of fertile coastal plain.
I need to disagree with your first sentence – there are several estimates of when Antarctica became iced over (I’ve seen 5 mya and 25 mya), but it was clearly mostly bare land in the early Tertiary and possibly until Pliocene times.
There are, however, two dire consequences of even moderate global warming that never seem to be brought into these discussions:
- Tropical storms (hurricanes, typhoons, etc.) form in specific areas where the ocean-surface temperature is above 27.5 degrees Celsius. As long as they remain within those zones, they grow; when they leave those zones, they begin to die. No hurricane that has ever hit the U.S. or even the West Indies was still growing; they were all on the downhill side of their development.
Warmer temperatures globally mean larger areas where hurricanes can form, more area over which they can grow before leaving the “hurricane nurseries,” and hence larger and stronger hurricanes – and presumably more of them. Larger and stronger hurricanes will of course impact the “hurricane coast” (Texas to North Carolina) badly – but will also retain their strength enough to move inland and north before diminishing. Imagine a full-blown hurricane, as opposed to something dropping to tropical storm status, hitting Kansas or Kentucky or New England.
- If that is not adequate, a second consequence that seems almost contrarian in nature is waiting in the wings.
One of the first consequences of global warming will be the melting of part of the Arctic ice pack – particularly in those areas where it is only providing partial/seasonal cover. We are seeing the first signs of that in the opening of the Beaufort Sea today.
Now, the effect of an iced-over sea is to create an area with very low precipitation – by temperate/tropical precipitation standards, the Arctic Ocean is a desert. That changes when it becomes open ocean.
Significantly more evaporation from the open ocean surface (it’s relatively warmer, and the air can hold more absolute humidity) means greater precipitation in the Arctic – most of which will still be snow (check out the frost-free schedules for various points in the Arctic). More snow builds up, reflects more insolation and absorbs less, and in consequence takes longer to melt.
When more snow falls than melts, the result is a glacial buildup. Do this over a large enough area and you get an icecap.
Hence, contrary to what common sense tells you, one of the mid-term consequences of global warming is a new Ice Age.
I’ve been thinking about this discussion for the last day or two and have a couple of points/questions.
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If Anthropologists are to be beleived (and why not? they went to the same Universities as the global-warmers) man crossed the Bering Strait over an ice bridge thousands of years ago. I don’t have a degree in the field, but I’m pretty certain they weren’t crossing in SUV’s.
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When I was in 7th grade (13 years ago) my conservation teacher told us we were, in fact, still at the tail end of the last ice age.
I feel a big problem in today’s era is we have become so accustomed to everything happening RIGHT NOW! that we’ve lost sight of the extremely slow course nature takes. To think that 50 years of industy would change the climate faster than the last 4,500,000 years is absurd.
Last point. evolution theorizes ape to present man in about 30,000 years. Who thinks we’ll still be “us” IF global warming starts to have dramatic effects?
ACK! 7th grade was 17 years ago blush
Well this is GQ, so we really shouldn’t be debating this. If you wish to do so you should head to GD>
However I will say that your statement is absurd for all sorts of reasons.
Umm, no. Taxonomy states unambiguously that we are still apes. Evolution doesn’t enter into it.
If you mean the time from a primarily quadripedal ape to H. sapiens then you are way out in your figures. The first hominids appeared about 4.5 mya. Present man appeared either C1.6 mya or C60, 000 ya depending on how you care to define it. That gives a time span of either 4 million years or 4.5 million years.
Major Kong, you have asked a question that it will be impossible to definitively answer. There are simply too many variables and too many processes to be accounted for. The Earth’s climate is so complex that we don’t really have a good handle on how it works. Here are a few examples of processes that might be affected:
[ul]
Higher temperatures ==> more evaporation of water ==> more clouds ==> higher planetary albedo ==> less warming by sun ==> temperature stops rising
Higher temperatures ==> increased desertification (maybe) ==> higher albedo ==> see above
Higher temperatures ==> increased desertification (maybe) ==> possible loss of topsoil and arable land ==> decreased food supply
Higher temperatures ==> melting of icecaps and glaciers ==> lower albedo ==> more warming by sun ==> rate of temperature rise increases
Higher temperatures ==> melting of icecaps and glaciers ==> disruption of the “Oceanic Conveyor Belt” ==> who knows? Possible onset of ice age and increase in violent weather due to changes in El Nino/La Nina cycles
Etc.
[/ul]
Note that some of these possibilities may offset each other; others may exacerbate each other. Some are wild speculation; some are supported by hard science. Some are fairly easily calculable if you make the right assumptions; others are simply guesses.
For my part, I wonder how many things might be disrupted that we just don’t know about. A couple of decades ago no one had theorized about the conveyor belt mentioned above; now it has been fairly well documented. How many other such things are there?
I’m not ready to panic just yet, but global warming appears to be something we need to put some resources into figuring out. Asking questions as you did on this board is an admirable first step towards educating yourself on a tricky subject, and you have got some decent replies. You won’t get any hard, fast anwers, but I encourage you to keep looking and learning.
RR