Does anyone know what the optimum global temperature should be?

Question

With the global warming issue is there a temperature that science deteremined we should be at and what is the acceptable tolerance?

Answer 1

Good question - but honestly, I don't think there is one. If you're a penguin, you want it cold. If you're from africa, you want it hot. I think the earth just has natural cycles and there is no "optimum temperature".

Answer 2

Well, history suggests it would be slightly warmer than current temps (based on climate optimum and Medieval Warm period, a time when humanity flourished). But, to liberals, the optimal climate is any temperature which would require major reductions in our personal life styles. Unfortunately, no matter what we do, the climate will do what it wants. Such as in the last 8 years, the temp has remained static or cooled even though CO2 continues to rise.

Answer 3

There is no optimum temperature.   It would help out all species to have a longer time period to adapt to any drastic changes though.

Answer 4

There can be no constant temperature under the current emission scenario, so a any theoretical constant temperature is a moot point.  Every bit of carbon dioxide we put into the air now contributes to long term warming:

"...unlike other greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide does not undergo a simple decline over a single predictable timescale. Instead, the excess carbon is first diluted by the carbon cycle as it mixes into the oceans and biosphere (e.g. plants) over a period of a few hundred years, and then it is slowly removed over hundreds of thousands of years as it is gradually incorporated into carbonate rocks.

The dilution of carbon is such that only 15-30% is expected to remain in the atmosphere after 200 years, with most of the rest being either incorporated into plants or dissolved into the oceans. This leads to a new equilibrium being established; however, the total amount of carbon in the ocean-atmosphere-biosphere system remains elevated."

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

Carbon levels will be elevated from today's levels for hundreds of thousands of years.  Temperatures will rise for hundreds od years, possibly thousands depending upon positive feedback from ocean CO2, methane deposits, albedo, and declining sulfate pollution.

Nothing short of a global effort will stabilize temperatures:

"Global problems require global solutions," said EDF atmospheric physicist Dr. Michael Oppenheimer. "For the treaty to be an environmental success, all greenhouse gases must be reduced and a pathway must be created toward the participation of all nations."

http://www.edf.org/pressrelease.cfm?Cont...

For the largest climate-forcing factors, these are some of the key players that need to be on board:

- For CO2, the United States must bring at least China, India and Russia into an agreement.

- For black carbon (60% as strong a factor as CO2) all of Asia must be included, particularly China and India.

- For methane (50% as strong a factor as CO2), Brazil's beef industry is a key player.

- For deforestation Brazil is way, way out front.

Since none of these steps is even being discussed, the cause of global warming is a moot point as well.  

Since we can have no effect on climate change given current politics in China, India, Brazil and the U.N., the conversation in the U.S. logically should shift quickly from one of response to one of adaptation (until developing nations decide to get on board for a response that has a "snowball's chance" of being effective).

Answer 5

Some where between boiling and freezing works for me.

Answer 6

there is no optimum temperature, but an optimum rate of temperature change is slow so that evolution can keep up, otherwise you get mass extinction. Higher temperatures will favor some species (like microbes) and put others in peril (like penguins)

Answer 7

lets go with thats hard to do but maybs it means other stuff

Answer 8

Since the secret to life the universe and everything is 42 the optimal global temperature must be 42 as well.

Rhetorical question!

Answer 9

YOU SHOULD LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL WARMING AND COOLING HISTERIA...

evrey time the tempeture of the earth changes a little there is doomsday people shouting the end of the world

The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, amidst hysteria about the dangers of a NEW ICE AGE. The media had been spreading warnings of a cooling period since the 1950s, but those alarms grew louder in the 1970s.

Three months before, on January 11, The Washington Post told readers to “get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come,” in an article titled “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The article quoted climatologist Reid Bryson, who said “there’s no relief in sight” about the cooling trend.

Journalists took the threat of another ice age seriously. Fortune magazine actually won a “Science Writing Award” from the American Institute of Physics for its own analysis of the danger. “As for the present cooling trend a number of leading climatologists have concluded that it is very bad news indeed,” Fortune announced in February 1974

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there is nothing wrong with the earth!!!! it just scare mongers predicting doomsday events for they can get more research money!!! reporting the earth tempature is going up but it pretty common does not get more money but saying the earth is dieing and we are all doomed does...

there is global warming on many planets other than earth...this is natural for example

the global warming on Mars is a well-known story. Between 1975 and 2000, Mars warmed up by 0.65 Celsius degrees, much faster than Earth: see Nature 2007. pluto and venus and other are also warming...

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly “lost” ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.

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worst case scenareo.....if all the polar ice caps melted we would just have to move from some of california florida new york city and almost all of lousiana and other low lying areas humans will adapt...other areas up north would become more habitable

earth has had many ice ages where ice has covered much more of the planet and global warming has accurred, long before we invented the car...and started to use oil and coal...

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Here is the text of Newsweek’s 1975 story on the trend toward global COOLING. It may look foolish today, but in fact world temperatures had been falling since about 1940. It was around 1979 that they reversed direction and resumed the general rise that had begun in the 1880s, bringing us today back to around 1940 levels.

NEWS WEEK STORY...

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

—PETER GWYNNE with bureau reports

Answer 10

The optimum global temperature for humanity is clearly the temperature at which the current civilizations infrastructure developed.  A significantly warmer, cooler, wetter, or dryer climate would have resulted in different locations of cities, agriculture, etc.

Answer 11

Man has obviously adapted to cold climates by using his large brain. Because he didn't have any notable, fur he had to resort to making clothes, building shelter and so on. History seems to indicate that man has been more prosperous at warmer temperatures. The Medieval warm period is a good example of this. There is pretty good evidence to suggest it was warmer than today, farming on Greenland etc.

The global warmers would have liked to hid this in their magical hockey stick graph. To answer your question, I prefer the temperature where I can shed clothes rather than have to put them on. Right now there is not that many places on the planet where you can go without a long sleeve shirt year round.

Answer 12

it depends if you are asking what is the optimum temperature for humans and warm blooded animals or for reptiles.  The reason the dinosaurs arent around is because the ice age happened and now the earth is warming up again.  So global warming is only really bad for humans but it will help reptiles flourish.  humans optimum temperature is cooler: 19 celcius

                reptile optimum temperature is warmer: 29 celcius