12-20-2018, 06:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-20-2018, 06:10 PM by Eric the Green.)
(12-20-2018, 04:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(12-20-2018, 02:30 PM)David Horn Wrote:Well, I figure as long as we have sunlight and water, we'll survive. The Earth has plenty of water and sunlight, so I'm not worried about survival. As far as nations that were built to survive, I think we are living in one if not the only one. So, I'm not worried about that either.
- Climate change will screw the pooch, top to bottom -- but the bottom will feel it the most. If you have the resources, you can relocate to the remaining "good" places.
You don't need to worry, and Alfred E Newman is a good role model. But.... to be concerned and able to recognize dangers and costs, is at least prudent. Humanity may survive, but there will be great costs incurred due to climate change; including having to relocate many cities (as David says, advantaging those who have the resources), and all places will be vulnerable to constant storms, hurricanes, floods, fires, droughts and heat waves. So it's not a question of survival as if this were a one-time response to an event. This will be a continual need to survive amid constant-increased dangers. And sea life will suffer the most, diminishing our resources from there to near zero, with further effects on climate; and as well, although rainfall will increase at times and places unknown, glaciers will be gone, making water supplies unpredictable. Crops will be impractical to manage amid all the droughts. I expect civilization to fall apart amid much conflict and disaster. And given the poor ability of the USA to choose competent leaders to begin with, I don't have much confidence that the USA will survive this new barbarian situation.
Some hundreds or thousands of years from now, as humanity declines to a population of under 1 billion, and returned to primitive living conditions, carbon pollution will decrease and gradually be returned to the ground, and with other planetary shifts as usually occurs, an ice age will succeed the warming. And because humans will have no carbon fuels left to burn, we will have no way of forestalling this ice age, and as carbon continues to decline, eventually there will be no greenhouse gas protection to regulate temperature, and this may lead to the earth being too cold to support much life, which is its normal condition without CO2.
And for what purpose will we have to endure all of this, which will happen if we continue on the course which Trump and many Republicans recommend? Just, and ONLY, to placate the CEOs of a few dozen fossil fuel companies; that's ALL. And to please libertarian economics believers who think we must placate them or be subject to what they call "socialism" (which means any government involvement in procuring the national welfare interests, IOW all those needs beyond just protection from attack or infiltration by feriners).