What is the optimal temperature for the earth?

Question

The AGW supporters must believe that we are currently at the optimal temperature, but for a diverse plant life, what is the optimal temperature. I ask because I notice that the most diverse ecology is in the warmest part of the planet (rain forests).

Answer 1

While we know that the earth's mean temp is 14 degC it is impossible to gauge the optimal temp as the sun, moon & geographical locations on the globe are all inter twined.

Answer 2

Thank YOU Crazy!!! Finally someone on here with enough brains to know that life thrives in warmth. Life dies at below freezing. I.E. "Killing Frost".

There was a much wider diversity of life when Alaska and Canada was a Rain Forest!

Answer 3

At the best you already know, all your going to get is historical averages from regional/local areas.You will not find any references to a datum.This isn't the only problem they have in tropical locations in determining GW much less AGW.The RH/relative humidity screws up the models used to determine co2 iridescent properties.They have difficulty in proving which is the diver and which is a consequence.It just doesn't behave like they want it to.Then in the southern Hemisphere they can't comprehend the ocean as being one of the driving forces for climate change...that is most of them.

Answer 4

"There's no such thing as an "optimal" temperature of the earth. The nearest concept that is relevant is that there are ranges to which species and human society have adapted. Though it may not sound like much, a global temperature rise of 6 degrees is huge in climate terms. For example, the sea level rise it produced would flood coastal cities around the world."

Answer 5

the earth is an inanimate object it dose not care but we should.

if you want to farm in the food belt and you dont want food shortages 15degrees is just fine. dont go messing with the thermostat.

Answer 6

A temperature that allows our water supplies (snowpack) to remain available, our food production not to become challenged (such as by drought or desertification), and that does not seriously acidify the ocean or degrade food production there.

"An even larger amount of carbon dioxide (CO¸2) would also have been expelled by Traps volcanism...  As a greenhouse gas, it warms the atmosphere, changing ecological conditions. (Deccan Traps volcanism, coming before the end of the Cretaceous, is estimated to have warmed the world by 3° to 5°C, or 5.4° to 9°F; Ravizza and Peucker-Ehrenbrink, 2003.) And because it combines chemically to form carbonic acid, it also produces mildly acidic rain. Acid rain can dissolve calcium carbonate shells, particularly those at or near the ocean surface.  Additionally, acid rain leaches vital nutrients from the soil, resulting in plant stunting and death."

http://www.killerinourmidst.com/P-T%20bo...

Warming has been demonstrated to have negative effects in oceans in recent years:

Warming Oceans Put Kink in Food Chain, Study Says

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

Since 2000 the ocean surface temperatures have gradually warmed, and growth rates of the plankton have declined almost in lockstep, Behrenfeld noted.

"Projection into the future would suggest that as temperatures continue to warm, the climate will continue to suppress biology on a global basis," he said.

Warming is forecast to increase the frequency and magnitude of droughts and desertification:

Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas.  Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazi...

The effects may be felt in the United States much sooner than we expect:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

There is a 50 percent chance Lake Mead will run dry by 2021 and a 10 percent chance it will run out of usable water by 2014...

"We were stunned at the magnitude of the problem and how fast it was coming at us," said marine physicist Tim Barnett.

"Make no mistake, this water problem is not a scientific abstraction but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest," he said.

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I'm conservative too, but I'm not crazy!

Answer 7

I would like it to be around 80 degrees Fahrenheit all year round, myself. I'm always too cold! My plants and pets feel the same way.

Answer 8

Wow... that's a complex question to answer.  Life is surprisingly diverse.  In the forests of Europe, there is almost as much plant life diversity as in the jungles of Brazil.  Even if we go up into the Canadian tundra we will find thousands of different plant and lichen species.  You specifically refer to plant diversity, but the problem is, the only place plants are not diverse is in some lawn-head's pristine front yard.

Also, there is a LOT more to local climate than the average global temperature. To be quite frank, the computer models used to predict what will happen with every degree of warming or cooling make a huge number of guesses and approximations, so many that they can't be trusted.  Make for interesting TV, yes, but science, no.

As for human agriculture, the current average temperature plus or minus a degree is actually pretty darn good.  In fact, some have theorized that the black death was exacerbated because human agriculture was very negatively affected by the "Little Ice Age" which dropped average temperatures in Europe to between 0.5 and 1.5 °C below the current average temperature.  However, we do not actually have a reliable compilation of data on how good or bad agriculture was historically, and you can be certain that while some regions were hurt, others were helped.