Assume AGW is real. What is the danger?

Question

Seems like it might get 5 degrees warmer by 2100, and the shoreline might creep up. So what?

Answer 1

The big danger to you is that it will cost you a WHOLE lot of money.

Moving people away from coasts, replacing things lost to flooding, and fixing the damage to agriculture will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Quite possibly enough to cause a Depression that will make the 1930s look like good times.

Poor countries will be less able to cope and food shortages will cause some to die.

More details here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNe...

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg2.h...

Answer 2

Let's look at the Medieval Warming Period, when the Earth was much warmer than it is today.  Wine grapes grown in northern Britain, Viking agriculture on Greenland.... what were the downsides?

If it was so awful, wouldn't the UN and others be touting it as a warning to us?

Considering how much life has benefited from warming over the past 10,000 years, driving back the crushing glaciers and covering the land with greenery and wildlife, I'm figuring we can look forward happily to the return of forests to Alaska and Antarctica, which were once green and thriving.

Answer 3

The big deal is that those couple of degrees Will make it hotter than you think. The weather Will get a loooooot more hectic, there will be more hurricanes, tornados, and other natural disasters (such as we saw at hurricane Katrina). the water that is creeping up is melted ice from the artic which is messing up animals habitats and killing them! and we will have so much CO2 in the air from all the pollution we put out that the air will become breathable and we will die. thats the danger!

Answer 4

There are a large number of vulnerable people around the world mostly in poor countries like Bangladesh.  Some communities are already suffering from climate change - many in African countries.  They will expect to be assisted by those countries who have been responsible for the carbon dioxide gases.  

Incidentally it is unlikely to be as much as 5 degrees.  If it was that much hundreds of millions of people will be affected.

Answer 5

a shore line that creeps up a bit is kind of a big deal - especially when nearly 1/3 of the earths population live in coastal areas.

Answer 6

A huge percentage of the U.S. will be affected by drought.  What will millions of Americans do when their tap no longer supplies water?  When crops fail on a grand scale?  When much of our agricultural land turns to desert?  When flooding in major cities challenges insurance companies, banks, stock markets, perhaps world currencies and financial systems?

When the glacial sources of rivers supplying 2.4 billion people in Asia are gone in as little as 25 years, we'll have several large nuclear powers with lots of people facing a desperate situation.  Leaders will have to act or get lynched by their own population.  It's a credible scenario for World War III.

Additionally:

- Global and regional warming could more than quadruple after 2100

- Sea level will still be rising at the end of the millennium (3000)

- Ocean pH will fall dramatically for all but the minimum emission scenario

- Business-as-usual could lead to abrupt climate changes

- Abrupt climate changes could occur long after emissions cease

- The ocean carbon sink becomes less effective the more CO2 is emitted

- The land could be a net carbon source on the millennial timescale

http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/research/theme1...

Longer term there was a major carbon release event in the past that we can look at for answers.  The "Siberian Traps" volcanoes erupted for hundreds of thousands of years and lava covered tens of thousands of miles.  The resulting warming and the acidification of the ocean caused 95% of all land and ocean species to die.  The most common form of life on the planet for years was fungus, feeding on the dead, decaying biological material.  Look up "Permian Triassic Extinction" for more information.

Answer 7

Go here and educate yourself

http://www.climatecrisis.net/thescience/

Answer 8

Millions of people live in the zone from the shoreline to about 5 feet above sea level.  Bangladesh, low lands in India, most of Malaysia,  and island nations would go.  

If the idea of the most densely populated places on earth being inundated doesn't bother you, then imagine spring break with no South Padre Island.  No Key West.  No Galveston.  Florida would be ONLY the panhandle.  Louisiana would be...well, it wouldn't be.  

Imagine the statue of liberty standing in three feet of water...in one scenario she could be up to her waist. If you thought the floods after Katrina were a mess for the ninth ward, wait till the streets flood in Manhattan. All those quaint and expensive cottages off Cape Cod?  Now they are IN Cape Cod.

"Creep up" doesn't mean it would move the shoreline in a distance of 5 to 15 feet.  It means it would move it UP.  

If you can not drum up compassion for the poor living in fishing villages in some third world country, imagine how the stock market will react when Wall Street traders need canoes to get to the office.

Answer 9

global flooding i guess. i dont worry about it, wait for the matter to actually become a serious one.

Answer 10

There will be many effects. Increased temperatures cause water to evaporate and form clouds more quickly, which will then rain more quickly. This will concentrate more rainfall in fewer places, causing floods in some areas and droughts in others. That's one example.

These changes in precipitation will cause problems for plants which are adapted to the current climate. We'll have to adjust as much as possible, growing crops in different areas than they're grown now.

Various species will also have to adjust to the changing climate. Many will not be able to adjust rapidly enough, and will go extinct. This will cause serious problems in their ecosystems.

Increased temperatures also cause water to expand, which contributes to rising sea levels. Also contributing to this are melting land ice, mainly on Greenland and Antarctica.

As more ice melts, the planet will become less reflective (ice reflects sunlight, dark oceans absorb it). This will cause the planet to become even warmer. There is also large amounts of carbon trapped in bogs beneath the permafrost, which is now melting. If this carbon is released into the atmosphere, it will cause even further warming.

Etc. etc. Lots of bad stuff.

In response to speakeasy - there were also extensive droughts during the MWP.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

"A repetition of such anomalies today, with more than 10 times as many people on Earth as in High Medieval time, could be catastrophic."

http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley...