[ExI] global warming again

[Stefano Vaj]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 8:55 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> On the contrary, in any case.  Even the most pessimistic (but sane) global
> warmers are not promising shriveling continents and starving millions.  Even
> the pessimistic models predict that sea level rise is sufficiently gradual
> that we would have *plenty* of time to move our great coastal cities inland,
> and design the the durn things correctly this time.  Much of the sea level
> rise prediction was based on the notion of the Greenland ice sheet melting
> if the global temperature rise was 3C.  But more recently, the mainstream
> science predicts the Greenland ice shelf can tolerate about a 6C rise, and
> that the ice was present thru a previous 5C rise.

In fact, apparently humankind was already more or less happily around
during repeated cycles where no Arctic ice whatsoever existed, in
spite of of the rather limited paleolithical technology.

This should put to rest the ludicrous notion that higher average
seasonal temperatures in the one-digit range would be "incompatible
with the survival of our species on Earth".

Entirely different issues are of course whether we should hope for a
warmer or cooler climate, and in either case what if anything we
should do about that.

--
Stefano Vaj