What single fact or issue regarding global climate change affects you the most?

Question

One thing within the broader picture that you think stands out.

Answer 1

Droughts = less fresh water, and higher ocean level means more salt water = bad.

Answer 2

Impacts of global warming – would certainly be very harmful and dangerous:

A large body of scientific studies, exhaustively reviewed, has produced a long list of possibilities of impacts of global warming. Nobody can say that any of the items on the list are certain to happen. But most of the climate experts agree that the impacts listed below are more likely to happen. The exact timings, for them, are difficult to predict, but they are in the opinion that, if humanity manages to begin restraining its emissions within the next few decades, so that greenhouse gases do not rise beyond twice the pre-industrial level (we are already 35% above it and rising each year, at an accelerating rate) the consequences would certainly be very dangerous - probably including a radical reorganization and impoverishment of many of the ecosystems that sustain our civilization. Expected impacts are:

(1) Most places will continue to get warmer, especially at night and in winter. The temperature change will benefit some regions, at least for a time, while harming others like, patterns of tourism will shift. The warmer winters will benefit health in some areas, but globally, mortality will rise due to summer heat waves and other effects.

(2) Sea levels will continue to rise for many centuries. The last time the planet was 3°C warmer than now, the sea level was roughly 5 meters higher. That submerged coastlines where many millions of people now live. Also, storm surges will cause emergencies.

(3) Weather patterns will keep changing, probably toward an intensified water cycle with stronger floods and droughts. Most regions that are now subject to droughts are expected to get drier (because of warming as well as less precipitation), and most wet regions will get wetter. Changes in extreme weather events are hard to predict, but in some regions storms with more intense rainfall are liable to bring worse floods. Mountain glaciers and winter snowcap will shrink, jeopardizing many water supply systems. Each of these changes has already begun to happen in some regions.

(4) Ecosystems will be stressed, although some managed agricultural and forestry systems will benefit, at least in the early decades of warming. Uncounted valuable species, especially in the Arctic, mountain areas, and tropical seas, must shift their ranges. Many that cannot will face extinction. A variety of pests and tropical diseases are expected to spread to warmed regions. Each of these problems has already been observed in numerous places.

(5) Increased carbon dioxide levels will affect biological systems independent of climate change. Some crops will be fertilized, as will some invasive weeds (the balance of benefit vs. harm is uncertain). The oceans will continue to become markedly more acidic, gravely endangering coral reefs, and probably harming fisheries and other marine life.

(6) There will be significant unforeseen impacts. Most of these will probably be harmful, since human and natural systems are well adapted to the present climate.

Most of the above stated impacts are inter-related.

For further information please refer

http://www.environmentengineering.blogsp...

Answer 3

Ka Ching $$$. Its the cost of saving life's / homes / property / roads / dams / medical expenses /  you name it. Lets see is New Orleans below water level or not.

Happy Caving Carroll

Answer 4

The fact that AGW has not been proven.

Answer 5

The liberals who what to profit off of it.  They want to punish people for something they have no control over.  They then forcibly collect funds and spend it on things that do nothing except make themselves rich.  Carbon offsets/credits are scams.  When the natural cycle changes and it gets cooler then they will want to punish someone for that too.  I feel punished enough by not being able to drill for oil and high food prices due to artificial incentives to turn corn into fuel.  Liberals should work on real issues like GMO food that might be killing all the bees instead of making up issues and trying to punish people for no reason.

Answer 6

That fundamentally all of the consumption leading to emissions leading to warming boils down to one thing.  Population.  We've shot past the ability of natural sinks to absorb our excess carbon emissions.

The numbers work out such that developed countries can't reverse global CO2 emission growth.  Developing countries have proven unable to stem their birth rates (even to be able to simply feed themselves), so CO2 emission growth will only get worse.

By the time the situation is bad enough that developing countries feel enough pain to consider crafting a joint solution, we will have decades more future CO2-driven warming already built into global climate, and we may cross key tipping points that drive even more drastic change.  

As long as political correctness requires us to keep blinders on and fail to acknowledge that the issue stems from population and "development", we will not, cannot, address the root causes.

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Mark Anthony -

Global warming doesn't polarize people.  People polarize themselves.  It's a personal decision that some people choose.

Blaming external causes for our internal thoughts is simply an avoidance of responsibility for one's own actions.  Blaming some imaginary external bogeyman such as a government hoax or some slippery, amorphous concept "liberals" is far more convenient than owning up to any direct role each of us plays.  Denial is a both a powerful survival tool that we all wield and an addictive opiate.  I'd describe the polarization as attributed to, not caused by, the external, blamed situation.

bootedbylibsx2 -

Doesn't Christianity say something about mankind having free will, the power to do really bad things, but having the responsibility not to make those choices?  Then there's that pesky Bible:

"God will destroy the destroyers of the earth"  (Revelation chapter 11 verse 18)

If not people, then who does that refer to?

Ironic that h**l is a very hot place with lots of death and suffering, and we're sending the earth in that direction, isn't it?

A. No, natural changing climate is continuing as always, we're just releasing one of the natural warming forces, CO2, that has proven to change climate in the past.  In fact, we're releasing millions of years of carbon that plants and algae had successfully sequestered to keep climate moderate and stable for billions of years.

B. No, the earth is not damaged.  CO2-driven warming and mass extinctions have happened several times before.  Look up the Permain-Triassic Extinction.  The earth will continue, and life on it will eventually recover from our wounds.  Mankind, however, is entirely expendible, if we continue to choose that route.

Answer 7

The fact that people keep buying into the myth that we are destroying the world boggles my mind.  

Look at what you must believe if you think all this climate change is man-made.

If you are a Christian, and believe God created us and this world, then you must believe that we have more power than God.  Although it goes against your beliefs, you have to believe we are more powerful than God because we are destroying what he created.  You would have to believe that God created us to be here for no more than a few thousand years, in which case, we have no control of our destiny anyway.  Or you would have to believe that God was too shortsighted to think his creation would be so intelligent that it would be able to develop the technology to so easily destroy what he had so carefully created.

If you are more of a believer in evolution, or the so-called Big Bang theory, then you must believe that, even though this planet has been in a constant state of change for the last 4.5 billion years, the following events have occurred:

A.  The Earth has suddenly stopped it's well documented cycle of changing climate for some reason.

B.  Humans are so incredibly powerful that, within the last 150 years, we have been able to inflict catastrophic damage on the planet unlike anything it has endured in the past 4.5 billion years.

In either case, the Global Warming scaremongers are asking me to believe things that just aren't realistic.  The scientific data doesn't prove anything.  All it is is a bunch of numbers put together by minions of the scaremongers to propogate the theory.  A theory that is being used by the scaremongers for political and financial purposes, and a theory that keeps the minions of the scaremongers in millions in grant moneys.  That is the only reality I see.

Answer 8

I believe that water plays the most crucial part in global warming. We know what happens when we make water take an unnatural course. The desert is irrigated for crops and the weather changes in that area. A river is dammed up and water flows into a mountain full of hot magma and you get a volcano. The use and misuse of water is our greatest problem.

Answer 9

I am living in the most polluted air city in this world, Hong Kong. The roadsides are smelling the unbearable smoke from the exhausting pipes of moving vehicles and with and average API (air pollution index standardized by the World Health Organization is suggested as 30) 80-100 on a daily basis. It was recorded that a marathon runner died during his competition in the recent years in Hong Kong. I think god is punishing and cursing Hong Kong for its moving car capacity of more than 400/km, probably the busiest traffic in this world.

The global warning was once warned by Hong Kong scientists that Hong Kong will become not suitable human inhabitants with 20 years about five years ago. This means Hong Kong will become a city of death after 15 years. There are more than 10 million clinical visits by Hong Kong (total population of close to 7 millions) citizens for air pollution related diseases of asthma, heart and lung in 2007 as a recent report from the Li Ka Shing Medical centre of University of Hong Kong. As the global warning issues are stressed of the emissions of Co2, So2, No2, and the harmful particulates caused by the human activities in major cities in this world, it makes the temperature rises about one degree each year. It melts the ice caps located in the arctic circles, and results of many countries getting natural disasters of cyclone, tsunami, hurricanes, snow storm, and heavy rains. These natural disasters caused the reduction of agricultural products and caused the food prices inclined drastically. It affected many third world citizens become can't afford to eat. There is a current social problem of a quite few low income citizens become can't afford to live and enough food to eat in Hong Kong.http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/a...

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/environmen...

Answer 10

SCIENCE.

The lack of understanding of basic science - at it's very core the naysayers simply have a poor grasp of the issue because they do not understand how science works.  It's shocking, sometimes subtle - but totally apparent.  Look at JELLO's answers and you see it.

Here's a seemingly intelligent "skeptic" who repeatedly reveals ignorance with statements like:

"Scientists can only guess... they can't prove anything... etc."

Those who understand basic scientific principles and methodology recognize that those statements - while "true" are actually ridiculous.

Now "Booted" gives a very thoughtful response, but again it simply misses the mark and makes some serious leaps and  assumptions.  (Boot - You can email me for further discussion - others as well.  ("beelnite"   at   yahoo)).

I won't give a lesson here.  I just ask that all you self-described "skeptics" please go back to your 10th grade science teacher - bring them a bag of coffee or something and please ask them to review:  What is science and how does it work?

Until this happens and we all get on the same page - discussion seems meaningless and to me that is the largest hurdle we face on global climate change - and beyond.

We simply aren't all speaking the same language.

Answer 11

That unpredictable weather makes us sick.

Answer 12

That global warming polarizes us as a people.

J.S.

People do choose to be polarized however it has to be based upon a particular cause, or issue.

Answer 13

It's a symptom of a larger problem.