Since Greenland used to be green, why shouldn't it be natural for it to be green again?

Question

Since Greenland used to be green, why shouldn't it be natural for it to be green again?

Answer 1

If global warming gets to that point, our society will be in big trouble.  We can't move around like primitive animals.

Coastal areas will be totally flooded.  We'll lose a lot of expensive stuff and have to move huge numbers of people.  Agriculture will be totally disrupted by drought and temperature change.  More big bucks.

Rich countries can cope, but their economies will be ruined.  Poor countries can't, and many people (not all) will die of starvation.

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

But we can reduce the effects of global warming for a reasonable cost and also deal with the smaller unavoidable warming.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/worl...

A far better way to go.

By the way, Greenland was never really green.  The name was just a primitive con job to try to get people to move there:

http://www.greenoptions.com/blog/2007/04...

Answer 2

No reason. It is natural for it to be green again. It will be naturally green again. That has nothing to do with the debate about the amount of CO2 people are putting into the air though. Or at least it shouldn't.

Answer 3

Variations in climate have always happened naturally but even if  humans are totally innocent of any recent changes in the weather, we can't pretend that we had nothing to do with the vast flotillas of plastic rubbish riding the ocean currents and piling up in hideous, permanent mounds on remote shorelines, choking, snaring and poisoning the wildlife.  We're going to have to clear it all up one day!

Answer 4

Surely makes you wonder about all the scary "oceans rising a zillion feet and destroying almost every city" scenario if Greenland's ice melts.

We know it used to be farmland 1000 years ago, and were all of Europe's coastal towns and cities flooded 1000 years ago?

Answer 5

it may have been once, and it may be again, the earth was once mostly under water, and there was an iceage or three with glaciers covering most of the world at one time or another, that doesnt change the fact that it is gonna get a little hard to surrvive when a change like that occurs unless we admit it and start planning ahead, and if we are helping to speed along the process then slowing it down will give us more time to adapt.