There are extremophile species that might do well with GW. I’ve even heard that there may be some microbal extremophiles up in the atmosphere of Venus…
Our current warming which could reach the same level as the PETM within a few 100 years – well who knows what will happen. There really isn’t any analog from the past.
No one is proposing conditions anything like Venus.
Distribution of temperature shift matters greatly. Expansion of growing seasons towards the poles is a major
As we have learned via invasive species, animal and plant migration can be extremely rapid. So can niche takeover and exploitation, and even physiological adaptation. Micro-species (those barely distinguished from other similar species within their genus) and small populations specialized withing small geographical niches may be especially vulnerable, but big scary numbers of speculated species extinctions would necessarily, statistically, target them. It’s not as if most life as we know it would become extinct. And yes, this loss of biodiversity may be an issue (except that the species mentioned before don’t tend to represent wide ranges, so have little overall impact), but it tends to clear the way for new explosions of adaptation and speciation.
So, once again, not much concerned about nature being able to handle it. A far bigger threat to biodiversity is desertification and habitat loss due to poor agricultural practices, and fisheries loss due to overfishing.
Those are the types of problems that we should be focusing on–they are also the types of problems that affect humans more quickly, more directly, and can more easily (and inexpensively) be controlled, to greater overall abundance to for humans. So plenty of incentives to address those problems, as opposed to the phantom menace of GW.
Considering that humans have never had to live through a warming hysteresis, as during the end-Permian when 95% of life died out, or the PETM when a good portion of species went extinct, it is hard to say how humans might fair. Some say we are mean and ornery enough to survive.
My particular concern is that GW, once we get up to 3, 4, 5, or 6C warming will have disasterous effects on food productivity. Without adequate food not many will be able to survive. I’m thinking within a century or two it will become like a vicious killer musical chairs of people scrambling and fighting each other to survive.
Eh. Expanded growing seasons will bring more food productivity. Intensive organic permaculture and aquaponics are agricultural approaches already poised to fill a gap or even usher in a new agricultural revolution if current predominant modes of agriculture fail.
Again, a simple principle is being overlooked: more available energy (heat) allows for more biological productivity (unless of course it gets too hot for life, but again, no one is actually proposing anything like that).
I’m surprised that you didn’t focus on seawater rise causing a loss of coastlines. This, I think, is the biggest impact to human infrastructure, given the large populations living along coastlines. Something we can adapt to, but probably the most significant economic cost area of adapting to warming trends.
I personally would rather turn off lights not in use today and the many others thing I can and am doing to mitigate GW and reduce my GHG emissions (and concomitant pollution) than risk such scenarios, even if by some people’s estimate those risks are fairly low.
Except that (as was pointed out by a poster earlier regarding the Kyoto Protocol), even by most of the estimates I’ve seen from scientists who are extremely worried about AGW and what major economic changes, pretty much anything we could do would have a pretty small effect. In fact, I’ve seen some discussion that according to some models, even a complete cessation of energy-related CO2 emissions would have little impact.
This is where I come back to the idea that it will most likely be much less costly, more politically-palatable, and easier to implement (since such implementation will happen naturally) to merely spend our money adapting to any climate shifts, like humanity has always done.
I just don’t like killing people. But that’s just me.
Destruction of economies will kill people. Even major reallocations of wealth can kill people.
We might actually be able to get somewhere as a society if radical environmentalists did not oppose nearly every reasonable and viable option, sacrificing it to NIMBY and ideals of stone age living and depopulation.
Even if they could only agree that nuclear energy is a huge part of the clean emissions solution, we might be able to get somewhere. But of course, that is opposed. As are, also, wind generators (they kill birds), tidal generators (they kill fish), thermal generators (they might potentially destabilize geology), and even solar thermal power plants (which, if you haven’t heard, also apparently kill large numbers of birds, lighting them up mid-air as their flight paths cross the solar reflector arrays; they call them “streamers” for the smoke plumes they emit as they smolder and streak through the air).
Another solution: let the radical environmentalists volunteer to start some stone age colonies and try to save the world themselves, while the rest of us go about seeking more reasonable approaches.
