For those speaking about ice ages, I’m quite a believer in the Ruddiman hypothesis, also known as the overdue glaciation hypothesis or the early Anthropocene hypothesis. It proposes that humans had an impact on the climate system thousands of years ago by clearing forests and inventing agriculture, long before the Industrial Revolution.
If not for these greenhouse gas contributions, portions of northeastern Canada (Baffin Island and perhaps Labrador) would probably be growing ice caps right now. But the post-industrial changes are far more dramatic than anything we’ve seen; our climate is spiraling out of control and warming at an unprecedented rate. I think the records from ice cores and seafloor sediment cores should be enough to remove any reasonable doubt from this conclusion.
Even if human extinction happened, the glaciers would still be melting at a faster pace because the earth’s warming trend has been happening since the climax of the ice age. A pocket-earth climate model shows that by the end of this century, ocean waters will rise to 5 meters. Not only do countries with strong storms get floods, but countries like Tibet or Nepal would also be deep in water.
Desert countries like those in the Sahara or the Middle East would also get flooded. The earth’s digital elevation map would have a new definition. With a warmer temperature, more rain and more natural violence would be common.
CO2 buildup to 0.04% from 0.03% is really scary. I have a question for everyone panicking over climate change. Say you all get your way, and we successfully lower the CO2 in the atmosphere. Do you know what happens if we lower global CO2 from 0.04% to 0.02%? Well, that’s where plants don’t have enough CO2 and die. And if they die, they can’t produce oxygen.
When relating to horseshoes and hand grenades, 20 mass extinctions happened in the last galactic year, with the first one happening 440 million years ago with about 70 to 80% death! D’s in F percentages are classified as minor mass extinction levels! A C grade or better percentage of deaths are major mass extinctions!
One galactic year holds all of our clues to what happened before! Everything before fossils is just rocks bouncing around. Put the puzzles together!
Because of life, we kind of know what happened in the last two galactic years! Life springs up!! Fossil evidence is more than just rocks bouncing around! Things start to get really clear; the detective can do his job now! Let it melt. The earth might get lucky, destroy everything on it, and start again. And hopefully without human beings.
When all the polar bears starve to death, that will be a sign that the ice is melting. The bears need the ice to hunt for food. It’s less about climate change and more about a climate catastrophe. Maybe you guys should be talking about crop failures and the potential for billions to die a slow death from starvation.
And we’ll talk and talk and talk.
And we’ll celebrate agreements, the milestones of which are never met, then talk some more. The real solutions, the ones we already know about, we’ll avoid because we just don’t want to inconvenience ourselves. The good news is that Florida will be underwater by the end of the century, so there’s that.
And of course, in addition to the rising seas, the increased heat levels are going to affect people who are very far away from any ocean. It may very well be that summers in some locations are going to get so hot that people will die, and if and when that happens, there will be significant migrations, literally for survival, from those places too.
I have a few friends around the world who also want to add their views to this article. Here it is:
I live in New Orleans. In Louisiana, sea level rise has already contributed to increased flooding during storms. All of southern Louisiana is flat, so there is nothing to slow or stop the water as long as there is pressure pushing it onto land. As hurricanes increase in intensity, as predicted, more and more communities will be rendered uninhabitable due to massive storm surges. Even in the past few years, damage has increased dramatically; places that haven’t flooded in the past have been inundated up to 40 miles inland.
Here in the south of New Zealand, there has been what they politely call unseasonal weather. The suspended fences along coastlines where farming is practiced are common. Erosion to the landscape is becoming more evident and serious. Runoff is polluting our waterways. People talk about the heavy storms and flooding as if they were expected and compare them to other times when it was much worse, as if by saying that, it’s not so bad.
I can feel an ominous background vibe of foreboding and am looking for land inland with an altitude above 400 meters above sea level, away from the coast. I am trying to convey the need for preparedness, and scientifically backed-up information like this presentation is encouraged.
I have been watching all of this for many years. I made the decision about 45 years ago not to live near a coastline. I went through Hurricane Carla as a child when I lived within 40 miles of Corpus Christi in the Gulf of Mexico. Later, I lived in Long Beach, CA., which had earthquakes and a possible tsunami, plus I took notice of climate change in high school. (Science nerd). Now I live in Central Texas. No place is 100% safe, but near an ocean? Just NO.
I live in the Netherlands. We go blub-blub if water levels rise rapidly. A big part of our country is well beneath sea level as it is. So a rise of 2 meters will be interesting, to say the least. Especially with springtides. We seem to have a government that isn’t all that keen on taking drastic measures. It is frustrating at best. And we are world-renowned for our waterworks.
It is strange to see that it doesn’t seem to worry our politicians all that much. We are driven by economics. But if we don’t take action, the economic impacts will only get bigger and bigger. We have had a drought that is quite insane. With rivers running dry and prices flying through the roof because of it, a lot of goods are shipped over rivers in Europe.
And a lot of ships couldn’t travel or could only take a 1/3 to a 1/4 load because the water levels were at record lows. I think we are in for some tough times. And this summer is just a prequel. Thank you for the information in this video. It illuminates another side of climate change.