If Global Warming reaches a critical point, will there be a "safe" place on Earth?

Question

This question is aimed at the people who admit AGW exists and are looking for solutions. Please don't waist my time if you are a denier, you wont make me change my mind by saying it's a hoax or by telling me I'm stupid for believing in it. Thanks.

Answer 1

There is no safe place, the only realistic safe place is the ISS or a self-sustaining base on the moon or Mars.

There can be 'short-term' safe places like Russia, or Europe but nobody can run away from the bigger long-term problem.

Answer 2

Yes, underground. You should read The Time Machine, it'll explain everything. And the humans that do survive the great warming will become our food supply, just like in the book. And by the way since you seem to believe in global warming.... I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you.LOL

Global warming is a hoax!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 3

I highly believe in it and i think there will be a point where there is no safe place on earth, if no action against it is started.

Once the food and water become scarce and people start to panic and/or start a war, where COULD we go?

God will save us though. He gave us the will to start doing something about it.

=)

Answer 4

Probably.  It's hard to say, because if the planet reaches a tipping point and global warming accelerates beyond our control, it's hard to say how much the planet will warm.  However, I suspect there will be areas which will remain suitable for humans, like Siberia, for example.

However, we're talking about quite a ways in the future - like toward the end of the century (by which I mean probably sometime past 2050).  

Again it's difficult to specify because for one thing, we don't know what humans will do in the future.  It's possible we'll reduce our greenhouse gas emissions enough to delay the tipping points or avoid them altogether, and it's possible that our emissions will continue to increase.  On top of that, we're not entirely sure what these tipping points are.  It could be 3°C warmer or 5°C warmer or a different temperature entirely.  There are also several different tipping points which will occur at different temperatures.

Answer 5

My basement....

And you're invited.

Answer 6

Yea, we can use the left over Y2K shelters to hide out in.

Answer 7

I'm definitely an AGW believer and have read several books on this subject over a period of many years.

I  think that there probably will be many "safe" places, but I'm not sure people will be able to tell ahead of time where they are.  

Global weather and climate patterns really are extremely complicated, and right now the climate scientists are still learning new things about how the climate is likely to change if we keep pumping more greenhouse gases into the air.

So you might think AGW will spare a certain area and be proven wrong, I think.  

Generally speaking, the books I've read suggest that low-lying coastal areas are not likely to be very safe, because of the well known problem of sea level rise if and when the Greenland ice cap or the mountain glaciers around the world melt.

Parts of the American Southwest also are projected to become much more desert-like than they are already because of AGW changing the shape of big circular air currents that bring hot air from the equator northwards (and southwards, in the So. Hemisphere) and then bring colder air from the temperate regions back towards the equator.

As AGW occurs, the Lamont Doherty Earth Observation Project at Columbia University has predicted, the size of these north-south convection cells will grow.  And in the Americas, this will have the effect of shifting the hot, dry conditions that now prevail in the deserts of northern Mexica a little further north into places like Arizona and New Mexico, making them more desert-like than they are today.

California also is expected to become significantly dryer as AGW proceeds because hotter temperatures will cause the snow pack in the high Sierra Nevada mountains to melt earlier in the spring.  The result should be more runoff in California's rivers earlier in the spring but much less runoff later in the summer, when the water is especially needed by California's irrigation-based agriculture.  

Similar problems with mountain glaciers disappearing and mountain ice melting at different times could be pretty dangerous for people in India, Myanmar and Southeast Asia.  The reasons is that as the climate gets warmer, the ice pack of the Himalayan Mountains is expected to shrink over the next century and reduce the flow of water in rivers like the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Mekong.  

In the shorter run, though, increased melting in the  Himalayas is probably going to cause more flooding for people living downstream - not just in India and Myanmar and Southeast Asia, but also in China on the other side of the continental divide.

Similar problems with mountain glaciers shrinking and threatening the water supplies of people living along snow-fed rivers downstream of the mountains are expected to occur in Peru, among other places.

If you have the patience, and you track AGW news and climate news on the web, you can go around the world identifying other areas that are apparently facing similar problems -- the risk of sea level rise or bigger hurricanes in one location, the risk of dryer and hotter deserts in another location, the risk of intense flooding in still another location, etc.

But as the old saying goes, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good."   Not all the effects of AGW will be bad, I think, and they certainly won't be equally bad for every part of the world.

Global warming is already believed to have brought better weather conditions to southern Greenland and to parts of Alaska, for instance, and is probably contributing to increasing agricultural productivity in these places.

Some predictions suggest that more AGW could bring wetter weather to the Sahara Desert and the semi-arid Sahel region of West Africa, and could help relieve desert conditions in these places.  

But overall, the books I've read indicate that the general effects of AGW will be negative.  

One climate risk that I think is scary and mostly unappreciated has to do with weather unpredictability and what this could mean for farmers around the world.  

If a changing climate means that farmers find it hard to  anticipate when to plant and where to plant it, that could potentially have a really negative effect on world food production.  This obviously would have economic and social ripple effects that could spread around the planet.  

Of course, it's also possible that AGW will mean improved farming conditions in some places -- say, Siberia or parts of Canada.  But if the farmers can't predict future weather patterns as well as they can predict weather patterns today, and if they therefore suffer from bigger crop losses because of unexpected droughts, floods, windstorms, etc., the problem of unpredictability and bad planning could cancel out whatever increased productivity a warmer climate will bring.

In a book that was published back in the mid-1990s, climate scientist Stephen Schneider suggested that the real problem with AGW is that we don't fully know what its effects will be.  We are thus conducting a giant experiment with "Laboratory Earth"  when we keep pumping greenhouse gases into the air.

Answer 8

The whole Earth will be safe. If you actually read the IPCC report, the predictions for the next 100 years do not look dangerous to me. Somewhere between 1.1 and 6.4°C temperature increase and between 18 and 59 cm sea level rise.

Then they go on to make lots of vague statements like, "Crop productivity is projected to increase slightly at mid to high latitudes for local mean temperature increases of up to 1 to 3°C depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that in some regions (medium confidence)".

It is not very scary stuff, at least not for me. Nothing to make me look for shelter or whatever.

Answer 9

It's an interesting question and I've given it some thought.

My conclusion is that there will be nowhere to hide.  And if there was, we all can't go there.

Start now building the infrastructure you need.  Resources exist with the information needed to build sustainable homesteads, even in suburban environments.  I don't think it's going to be possible in urban environments.  You can't grow food without land.

At some point, competition for scarce resources will become so intense that it will be impossible to purchase and build what you need no matter how much money or influence you have.  

Time is running out.

Answer 10

Not trying to insult you, but you should not believe in something that is not proven.  Scientists need at least 1000 yrs of accurate temperatures’ readings, starting from 1850 to present is only 158yrs.  That is only 16% of the information they need, any scientist worth their salt will not make a conclusion, they can make a hypothesis, opinion, or guess.  But never conclusion.  Mars, Jupiter, Triton and Pluto are also getting warming, and as far as I know there is no Human life on those plants.  So What is causing these other plants global warming?  Below is something you should read first then reconsider your position.

Answer 11

In a word, no.

My apologies.

Answer 12

Antarctica, you can hang out with penguins.