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Are the Effects of Global Warming Really that Bad?

“Short answer: Yes. Even a seemingly slight average temperature rise is enough to cause a dramatic transformation of our planet.

Five and a half degrees Fahrenheit. It may not sound like much—perhaps the difference between wearing a sweater and not wearing one on an early-spring day. But for the world in which we live—which climate experts project will be at least 5.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by 2100, relative to pre-industrial levels (1850–1900), should global emissions continue on their current path—this small rise will have grave consequences. These impacts are already becoming apparent for every ecosystem and living thing, including us.

Human influences are the number one cause of global warming, especially the carbon pollution we cause by burning fossil fuels and the pollution capture we prevent by destroying forests. The carbon dioxide, methane, soot, and other pollutants we release into the atmosphere act like a blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm. Evidence shows that the 2010s were hotter than any other decade on record—and every decade since the 1960s has averaged hotter than the previous one. This warming is altering the earth's climate system, including its land, atmosphere, oceans, and ice, in far-reaching ways.

Higher temperatures are worsening many types of disasters, including storms, heat waves, floods, and droughts. A warmer climate creates an atmosphere that can collect, retain, and unleash more water, changing weather patterns in such a way that wet areas become wetter and dry areas drier.
The increasing number of droughts, intense storms, and floods we're seeing as our warming atmosphere holds—and then dumps—more moisture poses risks to public health and safety too. Prolonged dry spells mean more than just scorched lawns. Drought conditions jeopardize access to clean drinking water, fuel out-of-control wildfires, and result in dust storms, extreme heat events, and flash flooding in the States. Elsewhere around the world, lack of water is a leading cause of death and serious disease and is contributing to crop failure. At the opposite end of the spectrum, heavier rains cause streams, rivers, and lakes to overflow, which damages life and property, contaminates drinking water, creates hazardous-material spills, and promotes mold infestation and unhealthy air. A warmer, wetter world is also a boon for foodborne and waterborne illnesses and disease-carrying insects, such as mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks.

Higher death rates​

Dirtier air​

Higher wildlife extinction rates​

Higher sea levels​

More acidic oceans”​



And that’s just the beginning.
Another "The Sky is Falling" thread....
 
Someone's been lying to you; human activity is a relatively small contribution to climate change at this point. . A few percentage points at most. Oh, and deaths because of extreme heat are dwarfed by deaths caused by extreme cold, so a little warming is actually beneficial.

Hey, if the Swedes can survive and produce such attractive and very intelligent women (far outpace men), then bring on the cold !!!!
 
Climate change is going to happen regardless of what we do or don't do. Also it's not like man can't adapt to whatever happens. Early man actually lived though the trailing edge of the ice age and that's without all our modern convinces.
So incredibly untrue and ill-informed.
 
So incredibly untrue and ill-informed.
I am sure you are incorrect!
Please consider that the climate was changing long before Humans existed, and would continue to change if we ceased to exists.
The portion of climate change that may be attributable to Human activity, is quite small in the overall range.
The IPCC says that we have warming of 1.07°C since the pre 1900 average.
Of that 1.07°C perhaps as much as 0.3°C is from solar increases between 1900 and 1958.
Perhaps another 0.2°C is from aerosol reductions since 1985, in the Northern Hemisphere, increasing the global average.
This would leave the warming attributed to greenhouse gasses at about the same as the forcing warming, or 0.64°C.

What all this means is that even if we managed to get CO2 levels back to the pre 1900 level, we would still have nearly have of the observed warming.
(P.S. no one is thinking we will actually decrease the CO2 level, but simply stop it's growth.)
 
I am sure you are incorrect!
Please consider that the climate was changing long before Humans existed, and would continue to change if we ceased to exists.
Let's just start with this asinine comment. Yes, climate has changed, blah, blah, blah. But never in the history of mankind has the climate has changed so rapidly. Say the last hundred years. The times that you're using as a gauge happened over thousands of years. So to think it's natural is just plain stupid and blind.
 
Let's just start with this asinine comment. Yes, climate has changed, blah, blah, blah. But never in the history of mankind has the climate has changed so rapidly. Say the last hundred years. The times that you're using as a gauge happened over thousands of years. So to think it's natural is just plain stupid and blind.
Actually we do not know how rapidly the climate changed in the past, so we really cannot say if the
recent rates of change are unusual.
A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years
The 73 globally distributed temperature re-
cords used in our analysis are based on a variety
of paleotemperature proxies and have sampling
resolutions ranging from 20 to 500 years, with a
median resolution of 120 years
(5).
 
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