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"Extremes" need putting into perspective. Around the dawn of human civilization (12,000BC), Britain was connected by land to Europe via Doggerland and the Nile

"Extremes" need putting into perspective. Around the dawn of human civilization (12,000BC), Britain was connected by land to Europe via Doggerland and the Nile was completely dried out. By around 6000 BTC, the Nile was flowing and Doggerland was completely submerged under 120m of water. A quick math suggests that if the sea level rose by 120m over 6000 years, it must've rose by 2cm/year on average. When you put the scaremongering into this perspective, and we're worried about sea level rises of a few centimeters over the course of a century, it just makes us look like idiots. The earth has had far worse extremes that we can't even comprehend. There's the idea that we're adding to the natural change of the climate, and so those effects will be compounded, or accelerated, or delayed. Putting again in to perspective, this will have an effect on humans in centuries (or millennia) to come. Imagine if the humans who initiated civilization had decided they weren't going to burn wood fires because "it might have an effect on the climate for other humans in 12,000 years." Yes, it is that absurd. We are dumb cavemen compared to the humans that will be around in a thousands of years to deal with any problems we think we're creating for them.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> When you put the scaremongering into this perspective, and we're worried about sea level rises of a few centimeters over the course of a century We’re not, particularly. Oh, sure, that sea level rise is one of the predicted effects of the thing we are worried about, and it will itself have fairly expensive consequences and kill lots of people, but we're really concerned about getting to the point of an unstoppable feedback loop that, among other things, ends the current ice age (and not in the loose sense of a glacial period, which we aren't in but there have been several of while humans have been on Earth, but in the stricter sense of a period when Earth has permanent polar ice; all of human existence has been during the current ice age.) > The earth has had far worse extremes that we can't even comprehend. Sure, the Earth has, and the lump of rock will still be around whatever we do to the climate. Humans, OTOH, have not been through anything like what the current warming trend will do if not arrested, and may well not be around if it isn't. The concern isn't about the Earth, it's about conditions of human life on Earth.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> When you put the scaremongering into this perspective, and we're worried about sea level rises of a few centimeters over the course of a century We’re not, particularly. Oh, sure, that sea level rise is one of the predicted effects of the thing we are worried about, and it will itself have fairly expensive consequences and kill lots of people, but we're really concerned about getting to the point of an unstoppable feedback loop that, among other things, ends the current ice age (and not in the loose sense of a glacial period, which we aren't in but there have been several of while humans have been on Earth, but in the stricter sense of a period when Earth has permanent polar ice; all of human existence has been during the current ice age.) > The earth has had far worse extremes that we can't even comprehend. Sure, the Earth has, and the lump of rock will still be around whatever we do to the climate. Humans, OTOH, have not been through anything like what the current warming trend will do if not arrested, and may well not be around if it isn't. The concern isn't about the Earth, it's about conditions of human life on Earth.