Global warming -- what's the worst-case scenario?

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Well, afaict from watching Discovery/TLC/History Channel this week (I was recovering from surgery this week), the worst case could include:
(snip)
3) Various other disasters, including a Super Volcano™ which will go off in Yellowstone (or several other places), causing not only wide spread disaster in North America but also a drop in temperature of something like 10 degrees C (and bringing on a new ice age), meteor impacts doing much the same, super storms, super earthquakes, and alien invasions for all I know. I also saw part of a show claiming that a huge burst of cosmic radiation from a distant supernova could basically wipe the planet away instantly…and that within a few hundred (or thousand, or tens of thousands, or millions…who knows?) years the sun will start heating up even more than it already is, forcing us to go underground and eventually making the planet uninhabitable. Oh, and several shows on Big Foot and the search for Noah’s Arc…and such. (snip)

[/QUOTE]

I think that was the pain medication talking. The Supervolcano at Yellowstone isn’t part of the global warming scenario. I’m not an expert, but I’ve paid VERY close attention to this phenomenon because my home and everything I know and love will end up under hundreds of feet of hot ash when that thing blows. All we know is that, some day, it probably will blow, and for those of us in the Rocky Mountain West, there’ll be no surviving it. But that’s assuming the tornadoes, blizzards, and baking droughts that WILL be caused by global warming don’t get us first.

22

[QUOTE=Kimstu]
True, more or less. But this is not a valid argument for complacency about current anthropogenic climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. (Not saying that you’re trying to make that argument, but many “climate skeptics” do, along the lines of: “Eh, so what if we’re screwing up our existing climate equilibrium right now, because periodic orbital effects in the next few thousand years will produce even more severe climate changes! Let’s give up worrying about prevention and just concentrate on adaptation!”)
[/QUOTE]

I agree. I wasn’t saying we should be complacent with our CO2 production. Obviously we are having a non-zero impact on global climate, and the results will almost certainly be…unpredictable…and could be quite nasty. And we should look at reducing our CO2 footprint for other reasons as well (valid economic and foreign oil dependency reasons). Sorry if I gave a different impression there.

However, the truth is we as a species need to become more flexible where our climate is concerned because soon or late it WILL bite us squarely on the ass, whether we do it ourselves or just because thats the way the planet bounces.

[QUOTE=Kimstu]
Um, speaking of which, xt, congrats on getting through your surgery successfully! Hope your recovery is going well and not too boring.
[/QUOTE]

Thank you! Its been painful and I’m starting to go a bit stir crazy being cooped up in the house…but over all I’m doing much better than last week. Thanks for the thought though…I appreciate it! :slight_smile:

[QUOTE=Kimstu]
I think that was the pain medication talking. The Supervolcano at Yellowstone isn’t part of the global warming scenario. I’m not an expert, but I’ve paid VERY close attention to this phenomenon because my home and everything I know and love will end up under hundreds of feet of hot ash when that thing blows. All we know is that, some day, it probably will blow, and for those of us in the Rocky Mountain West, there’ll be no surviving it. But that’s assuming the tornadoes, blizzards, and baking droughts that WILL be caused by global warming don’t get us first.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry for the confusion there…I wasn’t attempting to imply that a super volcano (or any of that other stuff with the exception of the alien invasion) would be caused by global warming. I was just listing some amusing worst case scenario’s I saw this last week on TV…and making the point that any or all of these could/would be MUCH worse than the effects projected currently by what GW will do to us.

Speaking to the super volcano thingy, according to the show we are either overdue for the next big explosion (and the ground DOES seem to be rising, an indication that the magma chamber under Yellowstone is becoming pressurized again with gas) or we are still a hundred thousand odd years away from being overdue…take your pick. For my part I’m hoping its a few hundred thousand years away. :slight_smile:

-XT

23

No prob, xt. Just a note: it was Sunrazor who clarified the issue about Yellowstone and the “supervolcano”, not me.

24

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
So what? They also predict the Rapture and the Antichrist. I ain’t gonna hold my breath.
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You are confused. I said spiritual community, not religious folks.

25

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Certainly WE seem to be a contributing factor (this time) to the possible shift, but if we can’t adapt to whatever comes eventually we are doomed anyway. Simply put we can’t control the monster we live on, so we best learn to adapt to whatever it can throw at us.
[/QUOTE]
Not to slam you personally, but the problem with the “we can’t stop it so we’ll just have to deal with it” people in my experience, is that very few seem interested in figuring out ways to adapt either. It’s generally just used as an excuse to ignore the problem.

26

What the hell is the spiritual community?

27

[QUOTE=lekatt]
You are confused. I said spiritual community, not religious folks.
[/QUOTE]

The difference being?

And what makes the one group’s predictions more credible than the other’s?

28

[QUOTE=lekatt]
You are confused. I said spiritual community, not religious folks.
[/QUOTE]
Same thing.

29

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
With a great deal of suffering and dying, so it is a big deal.

And why do people assume that the warming will continue to be slow ? As the famous frozen Siberian mammoths ( among other things ) demonstrate, Earth is capable of rapid climate changes that last a very long time. The climate could easily reach a tipping point where it warms up in a few years, not a few decades ( such as might happen if the world’s undergound methane reserves warm up enough to evaporate ). Good luck moving millions of people and reshuffling the world agriculture system on the fly without a lot of people dying.

I doubt we’ll see the end of civilization, much less humanity from global warming alone, but I expect the results will be a like combination of the Great Depression and a world famine/drought/flood.
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I’d have to see a cite for the “famous frozen Siberian mammoth” claim. In the meantime, you might peruse thia report of an article from Science magazine, which says it’s not so …

w.

30

Worst case scenario: All landbound ice melts. Sea levels rise by several feet. Doesn’t seem like much, but given square mileage of surface water, this is many millions of cubic feet of water, encroaching on land. Most shorelines are gradual, so newly created habitat is shallow. This is ideal for certain lifeforms and not ideal for others. Explosion in affected populations, expanding into new habitat, creates massive evolutionary pressure, and the rise of spectacular new lifeforms. These creatures, already living at the interface between land and sea, are pushed by natural selection into adapting to terrestrial habitat, which produces an invasion of human territory by fierce competitors formerly based in the water.

Ergo, the worst case scenario is that humanity is devoured by giant mutant crawdads.
Well, you asked.

31

[QUOTE=Cervaise]
Ergo, the worst case scenario is that humanity is devoured by giant mutant crawdads.
[/QUOTE]

Dammit! And our first line of defense – the chefs of New Orleans – are in such a distressed state!

32

[QUOTE=intention]
I’d have to see a cite for the “famous frozen Siberian mammoth” claim. In the meantime, you might peruse thia report of an article from Science magazine, which says it’s not so …

[/QUOTE]

Also here , a reasonably comprehensive overview arguing against the frozen mammoths = instant freeze argument.

And for a quick fictional treatment of how bad it might get in the US, along with a nifty cyberpubk story, check out Bruce Sterling’s Heavy Weather. Fiction, of course, but a nice treatment all the same.

33

Although I don’t want to actually have a crazy scenario like a snowball earth or something come to pass, I do think some of the crazier “worst case scenarios” on global warming would be kind of cool to see. At least if I weren’t human, and was just observing Earth from afar.

While Venus offers a good example of some crazy atmospheric conditions it’s not really the same. Jupiter probably has the coolest weather conditions in the solar system, with massive jet streams and gigantic storms three times the size of Earth.

34

[QUOTE=pool]
What the hell is the spiritual community?
[/QUOTE]

I see you have a gap in your education.

35

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Same thing.
[/QUOTE]

Discernment is a major part of intelligence.

36

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Although I don’t want to actually have a crazy scenario like a snowball earth or something come to pass, I do think some of the crazier “worst case scenarios” on global warming would be kind of cool to see. At least if I weren’t human, and was just observing Earth from afar.
[/QUOTE]

OK, I admit to this, too.

Sort of like that story about a piranha being pulled out of the Ohio River last month (I live on the river). The boys (all of my writers are in their 20s…they work cheap) in the newsroom were kicking that around and we decided that having hugely fatal, meat-eating fish from the Amazon all through the Ohio would be bitching.

37

With all due respect to those who have essayed answers to the question in the OP, would it be possible to start this over again, without threadshitting? Because this particular thread, which could have been very interesting, seems to have garnered an inordinate amount of jerkitude for the topic.

38

Ok so I asked you a question, fill in the gap.

39

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Not to slam you personally, but the problem with the “we can’t stop it so we’ll just have to deal with it” people in my experience, is that very few seem interested in figuring out ways to adapt either. It’s generally just used as an excuse to ignore the problem.
[/QUOTE]

Well, to be honest and not slam you either, its been my experience that the people who think we CAN stop it are equally uninterested in figuring out ways to adapt…in fact, they are less likely to WANT to adapt if they think we can just control the climate by going back to living in caves and such (yes, I’m exaggerating :)).

For my part, I DON’T think we can realistically have an effect on global climate change…and I still think we should reduce our dependency on oil and our over all carbon footprint, reducing CO2 and exploring viable alternatives. However, I’m also coming to realize that we need to look more deeply into the realities of living on this rock wrt its climate and said climates impact on us as both a species and as a industrial and technological civilization.

-XT

40

This is all a bunch of baloney.

More water means more evaporation, right? More evaporation means more rain, right?

Where the hell are people getting “severe desertification” from? Isn’t the concept of rising sea levels and more severe storms scary enough?