Well actually as the north pole has been losing its permanent sea ice and making it possible for ships to cross thru, this brings in new shipping lanes and YES, different countries are noticing. Territorial claims are coming back.
Humanity will adapt.
There’s some question-begging that’s worth considering though - the way you phrase the question pre-supposes that “you” (or “I” or “our offspring and our preferred way of life”) will be part of the “we”.
Perhaps Canada will adopt the new immigration policies that the US is advocating with such enthusiasm, and build a huge wall on its southern border. 
Say, are there any jobs Canadians don’t want to do, eh?
Invite all the Middle-Eastern terrorists to immigrate … make the USA build the wall !!! … “Canada, just one step away from The Great Satan” …
IMO, the question isn’t particularly meaningful. What does “adapt” mean? Will humanity become extinct due to climate change? Doubtful. But what if half the earth’s population dies and the other half survives in greatly reduced circumstances in a much less hospitable climate characterized by mass extinctions all around us? Have we thereby successfully “adapted”?
If the question is supposed to imply that we will be able to deploy technology to largely or completely offset the effects of climate change, I have to disagree. We are basically helpless against even a single strong hurricane, let alone a global calamity. The best recourse we have is mitigation of the singular cause of the climate problem: carbon emissions. It’s the one thing we can control.
Here’s a few things to put that in perspective. A few temperature projections (somewhat on the pessimistic side) for different RCP emissions scenarios. RCPs are named after the projected radiative forcing they will create by 2100, and RCP 8.5 is “business as usual”, meaning no significant mitigation. RCP 6.0 involves significant efforts at stabilization and may be the best we can realistically achieve. This chart shows the total CO2 and CO2 equivalent concentrations by 2100 – somewhere between 600 and 1200 ppm. In the present interglacial it should be about 280 to 285 ppm, never more than 300 ppm, and in a million years CO2 has not varied by more than about 100 ppm, between 180 and usually about 280 ppm. This is how far we’ve disrupted the carbon cycle. We have created a whole new climate regime. To suggest that we can continue on this path with impunity and mankind will just pull a few technological strings and fix it all up is pretty much a pipe dream.
In relation to the above forcings and consequent temperature increases, this chart is the IPCC’s assessment of some of the potential consequences. It’s by no means clear that we can limit the temperature rise to 5°C, but even if we did, these are just a few of the consequences at that level:
[ul]
[li]Increased damage from extreme weather: floods, storms, droughts, and stronger hurricanes[/li][li]Permanent regional climate and ecosystem changes due to weakening of the meridional overturning circulation and other atmosphere and ocean dynamics[/li][li]Long term commitment to several meters of sea level rise due to ice sheet loss; inundation of low-lying areas worldwide; increased damage from storm surges[/li][li]Major extinctions around the globe; significant loss of biodiversity; nearly half of the world’s ecosystems affected; biosphere starts turning into a net carbon source[/li][li]Significant changes to ocean chemistry; loss of ocean life; widespread coral mortality[/li][li]Decrease of all food crop productivity in lower latitudes; regional decreases in higher latitudes[/li][li]Increased burden from malnutrition, cardio-respiratory and infectious diseases; increased mortality from heatwaves, floods, and droughts; new disease vectors appear[/li][/ul]
We are adapting pretty well so far to climate change. Climate related deaths have plunged since the introduction of fossil fuels. Also starvation and subsistence living have been driven to low levels never before seen in the history of humankind despite the explosion in population. Capitalism conquered the Malthusian Trap in a hurry. It will have no problem with climate change.
The modern day Malthuses will never know they were wrong, unless capitalism conquers death as well, as many “interesting” thinkers believe.
Yes. Fossil fuels have saved many lives in one way or another.
That argument is already old and shot down before in this board.
There is no need to attribute any special place to specific technology, what you describe there sounds like anthropomorphizing fossil fuels. Before the introduction of gasoline vehicles, horses (and the manure) were becoming a health issue in the big cities, but they were unceremoniously dropped once the internal combustion engine appeared. And so it will be with the current cars once the new electric cars become more mainstream. The point here is that your argument is really weak sauce; of course the technology was beneficial, but newer tech will be more so.
Too funny, I also have disrespected Malthus in this message board too, the important thing to know is that big capitalists also do recognize that it will be more expensive if we delay change.
So the point here is: I think that you are not even wrong. This is an issue were many capitalists that are not fossil fuel CEOs will be affected if no changes are pressed to protect an environment were more humans can develop new businesses in the future.
To be fair, it was welfare capitalism—the combination of market economies with strong governments, social safety nets, etc.—that actually produced substantial reductions in poverty and immiseration, starting in the mid-19th century.
And what exactly does it mean to say that capitalism “will have no problem with climate change”? Are you predicting that capitalist societies will successfully reverse all the impacts of climate change, or just that capitalist society in some form will manage to survive the climate-change impacts?
Unfortunately, you forgot to tell us how it’s going to do this. That string of trite generalities does not address any of the real problems we face – like the specific hazards I listed in #26, everything from extreme weather and large-scale crop failures, loss of ecosystems and mass extinctions, to increased mortality due to disease and weather events, all of which have a sound scientific basis. Despite all the terrific advancements you tout and the wonders of capitalism – or in many cases, because of the wonders of capitalism – people are still dying in coal mines, our air and water is still ravaged by pollution, and people are still dying prematurely of cardio-respiratory diseases caused by urban air pollution.
“Fossil fuel is God’s gift to man” is a useless aphorism that belongs in the 18th century, and was only credible during the earlier stages of industrialization before the cumulative and long-lived side effects began to catch up. Now we need to dump that kind of 18th century thinking and replace it with a sober and science-based assessment of how quickly we can ramp up renewable energy and stop the growth of carbon emissions and the looming disasters that they cause on so many fronts. Everyone would do well to read the current IPCC Working Group 2 report on Adaptation and Vulnerabilities to climate change.
The animal and mammal Homo Sapiens will survive.
The animal is actually one of the best designs nature has ever made
Perfect at nothing perhaps, but damned good at everything.
Can climb, can run, can travel long distances, can swim, has good stereo-optic vision, has good hearing, can see in both color and low light non color, has excellent sensory detection, can eat nearly anything, can make tools, can think out problems.
The animal is able to adapt to extreme changes extremely quickly, and it needs no 21st century technology to do so…
The modern Human civilization and society on the other hand is a different question.
It is based on very fragile things that collapse easy, it would probably fall apart and cease to exist, and a lot of people would as well because they have become dependent on it.
But the species would survive, it has survived for most of it’s existence with out those things, and done quite well.
Unless man can invent some kind of science fiction terraformer device, i think you will have a hard time making Venus here, and mother nature her self has pulled off some doozies here but “Life, uh, finds a way”
And Homo Sapiens is one adaptable little bastard
Will it?
North America 100mya
Could be a small beach resort instead? Just need a little subduction
By the way, i think the Inuit might tell you it has never been uninhabitable
Gee, that doesn’t sound very good. Sounds like we should probably try to do something to prevent or mitigate those catastrophic consequences of our present-day choices.
[QUOTE=Weisshund]
But the species would survive, it has survived for most of it’s existence with out those things, and done quite well.
[/quote]
:dubious: I mean, I guess that’s kinda good? Maybe I’m just a pessimistic Debbie Downer, but when I contemplate the prospect of “modern human civilization and society falling apart and ceasing to exist”, along with many of its constituent humans, I am not really all that consoled by the thought that at least this catastrophe won’t also eliminate our entire species forever.
Still, I guess when you factor in the knowledge that it’s only, say, your great-great-grandchildren who will perish in the collapse of human civilization, whereas it would be you who would have to pay a carbon tax now to try to prevent that from happening, the trade-off seems much more reasonable.
I guess.
I would imagine it depends on the timescale you are talking about and what you would constitute as “adapting.” Yes we are fantastic at adapting, but it takes time. When the environment changes faster than we can adapt, we die. That’s the oversimplified problem with the current rate of climate change as I understand it: the climate is changing faster than we will be able to adapt, at least without sacrificing millions of lives who otherwise would not have died if the climate was changing at a slower or even natural rate. I have not read a scientist claim we will turn into Venus, though.
Question from a non-scientist layman: If the unwanted carbon emissions are scrubbed from the Earth’s atmosphere, using future technology, say, around the year 2030, does that reduce the Earth’s temperature, over time, back down to a better temperature, or does it just merely prevent further increase in temperature?
That’s a really good argument, like the old Monty Python saw “Except for good roads, cheap medicine, abundant harvests …”
The industrial revolution has brought humans great benefits and it has brought great tragedy … but on balance the standard of living for most everyone has greatly increased … without fossil fuels humans couldn’t live in cities larger than a couple million people … that’s too much food to haul in with horse and wagon along dirt roads …
The way you listed the hazards in post #26 is stated as prophecy … world population will be cut in half within a hundred years? … there’s no scientific basis for that claim … what experiment can we perform to verify this? … are you seriously implying that over-fishing the oceans and clear-cutting millions of sq miles of forest don’t harm the natural ecosystems? …
Maybe you should restate these claims using scientific words … like “there is a 0.07 probability that malnutrition will increase 2% by 2100” … “the most probable result is a 10% reduction of tropical food production” … and don’t be afraid to provide links, preferable the ones that include the math …
BTW … I’ve meaning to ask … how much longer before we’ll be able to observe this catastrophic sea level rise … the current average of an eighth inch per year isn’t very impressive …
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The short answer is “it depends” – specifically, it depends on how many fast and slow feedbacks like ice cover reduction have already become self-sustaining. IOW, reducing CO2 levels will always immediately reduce CO2 forcing, but due to feedbacks those forcings may be operating on a higher climate sensitivity. There may also be GHG forcings from other GHGs, like the triggering of polar methane releases. And finally, it’s unclear that economical and reliable large-scale long-term CO2 sequestration is even viable – we’re talking about almost a trillion tons of residual atmospheric post-industrial CO2.
This would prevent rapid changes in temperature … we could still see +5ºC changes over thousands or ten’s of thousands of years … there’s no such thing as a “better” temperature as long as the change is very slow … 400 ppmv of CO[sub]2[/sub] is counter-indicating of such a slow temperature change …
Please stop misinterpreting my posts and imagining things that I never said. The “population cut in half” was an obviously hyperbolic, hypothetical way of asking the question, “what do you mean by ‘adaptation’?” – i.e.- if that happened, would we be considered to have successfully adapted? It was plainly not a “prophesy”. “A hundred years” was mentioned nowhere at all. Stop quoting things I never said.
Maybe you should follow my links, which you constantly seem to have a hard time doing. The chart I posted in both the current ongoing climate threads is from the IPCC WG2 AR5 and if you want the reasoning, the math, the hundreds of cited papers, and the probabilities of the stated outcomes in carefully calibrated language, they are all in the IPCC report that I’ve mentioned several times between the two threads, and which you apparently have not seen fit to look at.
How about up to 3 feet by 2100 (per IPCC), or possibly 4 feet per the Third National Climate Assessment, or 23 feet with the complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet?